A little over a year ago I conducted a series of interviews with a diverse, influential and talented group of developers both from and based in South Africa, which resulted in an article for industry trade site Gamasutra entitled ‘The South African Game Development Scene: Past Present and Future,’ which attempted to look at the history of game development in the country and surmise how an industry may rise and move forward here.

A lot of the interview material was unfortunately left out of the article for reasons of conciseness, and I say unfortunately because almost every response I was given was a gold mine of information and history that could potentially not only benefit aspiring South African game developers, and game developers in other developing nations looking to make a living in this industry, but also inform gaming enthusiasts around the world as to the complexity, and joy, of making videogames under difficult circumstances.

So after lying dormant on my hard drive for a year, I’ve decided to spruce up the interviews, which are just as relevant now as they were then, and start posting them here on El33tonline in a six-part series, starting today with part one, and an interview with Travis Bulford.

Bulford would be best known for his work at the small indie game developer Celestial on the action platformer Toxic Bunny, which was started in 1994 and completed in 1996 after a combination of part-time and full-time work.

Celestial then released another game in 2000, a cyberpunk role-playing game called The Tainted, after which the company began work on a Zulu War-themed real-time strategy title, which was never finished. After changing the company’s name to Twilyt in 2001, the group became dormant, and Bulford became a full-time Java software engineer.

Bulford also began work on a port of Toxic Bunny to the Java development platform. You should head on over to the official Toxic Bunny Java port site to show Bulford your support!

Let’s begin the interview:

Continue reading The Lost South African Game Developer Interviews Part 1: Travis Bulford..