Ian Colin Graham Bell (born 31 October 1962 in

Hatfield, Hertfordshire Hatfield is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England, in the borough of Welwyn Hatfield. It had a population of 29,616 in 2001, and 39,201 at the 2011 Census. The settlement is of Saxon origin. Hatfield House, home of the Marquess o ...

) programmed, designed and developed the computer game '' Elite'' (1984) with

David Braben David John Braben (born 2 January 1964) is a British video game developer and designer, founder and CEO of Frontier Developments, co-creator of the '' Elite'' series of space trading video games, first published in 1984. He is also a co-found ...

, which met with much acclaim.

Education

Bell attended the independent St Albans School. He studied at

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...

, graduating with a degree (1st) in Mathematics in 1985, and a

Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science Diploma in Computer Science, originally known as the Diploma in Numerical Analysis and Automatic Computing, was a conversion course in computer science offered by the University of Cambridge. It is equivalent to a master's degree in present-day nom ...

in 1986.

Career

Worked as a Senior Software Engineer for

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...

. Bell was a speaker at the 2009 GameCity game festival. Bell mentioned in his speech about the impact of games:

You're reaching into the minds and the imaginary spaces of children, and you're to an extent shaping their characters and their life stories. I'm glad liteisn't Doom because I'm glad that even though we didn't really think in these terms, I think its effect on players and on people's lives is good, both in the sense of giving them good memories but also in making people think in different ways and awakening interest.

Game development

His work on ''Elite'' (1984), included programming in

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ve ...

using assembly. The game was based on an open-ended non-linear game model, and included revolutionary 3D graphics, at the time. Prior to ''Elite'', he developed ''Free Fall'', a game set inside a coriolis space station with the player controlling an alien punching astronaut, described by Bell as "the first ever

Beat 'em up The beat 'em up (also known as brawler and, in some markets, beat 'em all) is a video game genre featuring hand-to-hand combat against a large number of opponents. Traditional beat 'em ups take place in scrolling, two-dimensional (2D) levels, ...

". ''Free Fall'', also a game for the

BBC Micro The British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers in the 1980s for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. Designed with an emphas ...

, was published by Acornsoft in 1983. Bell put later ''Free Fall'' and ''Elite'' with the associated

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

for free download on his website.

References

External links

*
The Guardian article ''Masters of Their Universe'' (2003)Gameplay video of Free Fall (1983)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Ian 1962 births Living people British video game programmers British computer programmers Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge People from Hatfield, Hertfordshire British video game designers Video game producers