In Interview with Matthew Stibbe

If this is your first visit at iScatterlings, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

For some while now I have been wanting to interview some of my favourite bloggers. I never got around to doing it until recently. Now that I have been blogging for a while earning a few Brownie points and the timing seemed right, I recently carried out an email exchange with Matthew Stibbe.

Matthew runs three sites Bad Language, ModernPilot and Articulate Marketing. Matthew graciously found time after his long working days had ended to respond to my questions.

Question #1
During your last two senior years at high/grammar school, were you already aspiring to go into the career you have now carved out for yourself? If yes – why? If no – why not?

In England, in your last two years at school, you generally specialise in three subjects and I picked English, French and History, mainly with a view to what I planned to read at university. I didn’t give a great deal of thought to my future career. I was going all different ways. I toyed with becoming a pilot, a lawyer and I designed games. I also loved computers and wrote programs and things. The one thing I didn’t plan on was becoming any kind of writer. Funny how things turn out.

Question #2
What did you begin to study at college and end up receiving a degree in? Explain why if it differed. Explain the rationale behind your final selection.

I originally applied to read law at university but I had a change of heart and took a year off and reapplied to read modern history. During my year off I designed a couple of computer games - ‘Nam which was eventually published by Domark and Imperium which was published by EA. I chose history because I had really enjoyed it at school and because I was having so much fun designing historical games. I spent three years studying modern history and nothing else. I loved every minute of it. I went to Oxford University. I think the Oxford method comes as a surprise to foreigners - the only commitment, apart from sitting exams, was to attend 8-12 tutorials a term and produce an essay for each one. The tutorials were with practicing historians rather than teaching assistants. It was just you and perhaps one or two other students in each tutorial. You read out your essay and then argued about it for an hour. It was daunting - especially because the tutors were often world authorities on the subjects whereas I had spent just a day reading about it. Flimsy evidence, little research, last minute preparation - I suspect that the whole process was a wonderful rehearsal for the life of a freelance journalist!

Question #3
What music genre do you like listening to most? Who or which band influenced your early musical preferences?

Eeek. I like a lot of different kinds of music. It’s bit glib to say I like everything. Perhaps I should say that I adore some artists from lots of different genres. I wrote a blog post once about music I listen to while working which contains one of the two Philip Glass jokes that I know. (The post itself is at Bad Language). But if pushed, I’d say my favourite group is the Wu Tang Clan. Partly, I like the shock value (I’m a posh white boy from England). Partly, I think that we’ll look back on them and their like as the Shakespeare’s of our era. They are busy reinventing the language for us.

My wife, Aileen, is an actress and a beautiful singer. To my utter astonishment she has got me onto musicals in a big way. Particularly Stephen Sondheim. Into the Woods is my all-time favourite. Also, a big shout out to Aileen’s friend and colleague, Helen Chadwick (at www.helenchadwick.com). Once described as the Kylie Minogue of the natural voice movement, she is a unique and wonderful singer. She and her group sang at our wedding: “the words we speak, they become the house we live in.”

Come to think of it, although I have the musical ability of a badly tuned radio, I am surrounded by singers and musicians. Two dozen of our friends recorded a CD of songs as a wedding present - one of them had a recording studio and another friend produced it. It was SO moving and special. It would definitely be my Desert Island Disc.

Probably the bands that influenced me most when I was a teenager were The Smiths and The Cocteau Twins. Like going from Oscar Wilde to Salvador Dali. More recently, Sigur Ros do a similar thing to The Cocteau Twins with lyrics that are, well, lyrical without actually making any sense. Also, Talking Heads. Cool, deadpan and very playful with words.

Question #4
Given a choice of vacation, where would you go to experience an ideal holiday? And what is the best bit about a vacation for you, the travel to or the arrival? Why?

I’m more of a city person than a beach person. San Francisco is my favourite destination and I’d happily go there again. For a long time, I used to travel a lot for business and I used to enjoy getting on a plane and being away from the phone and the to-do list for a while. Now, I’m paying for my own tickets and travelling economy, it’s not so pleasant. My favourite kinds of trips are where I fly myself. I fly light aircraft as a hobby and I write about my trips and aviation in general on a blog called ModernPilot.com I had a business meeting in Rotterdam a few weeks ago and flew there myself and my door to door journey time was less than my colleague spent in security and checkin at Heathrow. Plus, you never miss your plane if you’re the pilot - it goes when you’re ready!

Question #5
What legacy would you like to be remembered for?

I don’t really think about a legacy much. Shelley’s poem says it all: “Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.” What matters is the here and now. With that in mind, I must keep reminding myself of what Dani Bunten said: “on their deathbed, nobody wishes they had spent more time playing video games.”

Question #6
Has electronic gaming progressed in a way you previously envisaged it would? If yes - provide a few salient examples of how.

Like a lawyer, I’m going to say yes and no. The graphics have improved way beyond anything I expected. Some games today are almost indistinguishable from movies. I was playing Call of Duty on my Xbox 360 and it’s astonishingly realistic. Similarly, I’ve seen Flight Simulator evolve over 20 years or so, from a simple grid and a few triangles for hills to something that looks like the real thing (even if it doesn’t quite fly like it). I have add-ons that simulate the look, performance and avionics of the Cirrus that I fly in the real world and
I often use it to practice tricky instrument approaches. I’m playing LEGO Star Wars and it is as beautifully animated and rendered as a Disney cartoon and, I think, more imaginative.

On the other hand, the actual gameplay - the rules and design that make the game fun to play - has hardly changed. People were playing multi-player online games in the late seventies. World of Warcraft looks awesome but it’s the same as MUD underneath. Most run and jump games have the same timing and feedback mechanisms as Super Mario did in the eighties. Today’s first person shooters have a history that goes back to 3D Monster Maze and similar games. I think some new ideas have come out of Japan but I wish there was more inventiveness in game design and less technical mastery in graphics. The problem is that a hit game takes 100 people two years and $10m to make. You wouldn’t gamble that much money on an untested idea.

Full disclosure: I founded and ran Intelligent Games, a development company. I designed a couple of games and programmed one, but mainly I was a boring, suited manager. Now I’m a writer. I’m cool and I wear jeans.

Question #7
Has blogging had a big impact on your personal life and career? ie Has blogging placed extra demands on your time? When are you most creative? Morning or evening? Do you only blog at certain times of the day or night?

I came late to blogging and I only started Bad Language this year. I had been writing restaurant reviews for pilots for a bit longer on a different site but that wasn’t really a blog. Being a professional writer means that blog isn’t a big challenge: I write 1-2,000 words a day so an extra couple of hundred isn’t difficult. Actually, it’s a pleasure being able to write without constraint as to subject, deadline or style. The blog, for the most part, is just me writing about stuff I’m interested in.

However, it is time-consuming. I probably spend 30-60 minutes a day on blog-related stuff, either reading other blogs or writing new posts. I spend a day or two every few months on blog techie stuff. I batch up improvements to the site that I want to make and then do them over a weekend. By writing first thing in the morning and getting up earlier, it hasn’t really eaten into my working day although it has made it longer.

As to whether it’s a benefit, the answer is ‘yes, definitely.’ I have had at least one piece of work commissioned directly through blogging - actually, from another top blogger. I’m sure several other projects were assigned to me because people knew me through the blog. I’ve also been quoted in national newspapers, Slate and on other leading blogs which is tremendous PR and much more coverage than I ever got from having a live PR person working for me. I get asked to do interviews like this and guest columns which are fun. I’ve also had a publisher contact me to see if I want to do a book. We’ll see what happens there. So it has generated real opportunities, cash money and new friends and interests. My flying blog, ModernPilot.com also has Google adverts which bring in enough money to cover my monthly hosting bill!

Question #8
BAFTAs for electronic games? Merited or not? How do you view the electronic game industry in terms of warranting artistic achievement awards and how does your view determine your answer to this question?. Do you support the inclusion of PC gaming software into what was once traditionally held as a pure theatrical arts based award?

Once you get past the fact that all awards are essentially commercialised in some way, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with them. Especially where they recognise individual talent (and I don’t mean the owners and managers) or where they recognise invention and originality. I don’t think the big industry awards do either very well.

I used to be a judge on an independent games festival for several years and I’d rather see those guys rewarded and recognised than throw bogus attention on industry giants who can spend their way out of problems.

Bit of a digression but it relates to the question of awards. My biggest regret looking back on my days in the games business was that I didn’t pay enough attention to the genius of the people who worked for me. I was distracted by administrivia most of the time. It seemed important but it wasn’t. People make great games not awards.

Question #9
What are your 3 all-time favourite PC or electronic games and why?

Top three games by time wasted: Civilisation, SimCity and Command and Conquer. Although as Bertrand Russell said: “time you enjoy wasting isn’t wasted time.” Of the games I’ve been involved with, I am very fond of LEGO LOCO. It’s just very cute. Also, Azrael’s Tear - the best 3D adventure game you’ve never heard of. It came out the same week as Quake and died.

Question #10
Given that blogging has entered our personal lives and mainstream business, do you find that blogosphere’s ‘elite’ or Blogebrities is dominated by the tekkie/ marketing/advertising/branding clique despite being the minority user group? If yes, is it healthy for blogging’s future? Also, do you subscribe to Web 2.0 or is it a myth?

The blogs I read are a mix of technology, business and aviation. The aviation roster is interesting because it shows that a subject with a small audience can produce stimulating, well-written blogs. I don’t think it matters which blogs are in the Technorati Top 100 if there’s a blog you like about a subject you enjoy. To use a bit of jargon, it’s the long tail of blogs that interests me, not the hit-driven peak. Interestingly, however much I care about my ranking and stats for Bad Language, I see my other blog, ModernPilot.com in a very different light. Perhaps I personify the very split I’m describing.

I just wrote a long article for Director, a leading UK business magazine, about Web 2.0. Not the word (which I don’t think is terribly helpful) but the technologies and trends that underlie it. One aspect of human behaviour is that we overestimate short term change and underestimate long-term change. Web 2.0 as a buzzword falls into the first category. But underneath the myth are real changes that will be genuinely important.

In Interview with Matthew Stibbe