WHILE stars of the small screen collected accolades in this year’s Bafta TV awards last weekend, a Chester-born programmer has reason to be cheerful with a Bafta of his own.
Rob Dodd, 33, is technical director at Fireproof Studios, which earlier this year won Best British Game at the Bafta video game awards for its debut title, The Room.
Rob, a former pupil of Queen’s Park High School, said he and his team had slowly become aware of the fact they had a top-quality title on their hands.
He said: “It came very gradually that we had done something a bit special. It took about eight months to develop and during that time we showed it to very few people.
“Our friends were saying it was really good but we didn’t believe them – it wasn’t until it was released when we found out what the true reaction was.”
Since its release last year, immersive puzzler The Room has been downloaded two million times and was nominated for a total of four Bafta accolades.
Rob, who now lives in Guildford, added: “I have always been interested in games, I studied computer science at the University of York then worked for Codemasters and Electronic Arts (EA) for eight years.
“Then a bunch of us from EA left to form our own company. There are a lot of these small firms now and they have done really well.
“At the awards ceremony there were these small games companies with the really big firms – one of the best bits on the night was seeing one independent programmer win for New Star Soccer 5, a title which took on games such as Fifa 13 and F1 2012 and won.”
The Room is available on the Apple app store and Google Play, while a sequel is due to be released later this year.
