Graeme Devine
Encyclopedia
Graeme Devine is a computer game designer and programmer
who co-founded Trilobyte
, created bestselling games The 7th Guest
and The 11th Hour
, and designed id Software
's Quake III Arena
. He was also Chairman of the International Game Developers Association
(IGDA) from 2002-2003. One of Graeme's trademark
s is his Scooby-Doo
wardrobe.
, Scotland
and began his career working on the TRS-80
at age 14 in the late 1970s. He joined Atari
at age 16 to port
their classic game Pole Position
to home computer
s, including the Commodore 64
, Apple IIe
and ZX Spectrum
. He also worked for Lucasfilm
's Games Division, Activision
UK, and Virgin Interactive
.
Devine founded Trilobyte
in December 1990 with Rob Landeros
. Together, they designed the original concept of the 1992 horror game The 7th Guest. Graeme was the lead programmer on the game and on its sequel The 11th Hour. The 7th Guest was a phenomenon, selling 2 million copies, and is credited (along with the game Myst
) with encouraging the use of CD-ROM
drives for games.
Devine was also one of the forefathers of file compression. The game The 7th Guest
made extensive use of movie footage, which required a great deal of disk space. Most games in the industry at that point were still shipping on floppy disks, which could only hold about 1 Megabyte of data each. The 7th Guest used roomier CD technology, but there was still a limit to how many CDs could practically be used for a single game. File compression technology at the time, especially for videos which could run into hundreds of megabytes, was still in a primitive state. However, Devine innovated a way to compress movie files, so Trilobyte could fit two hours of footage, along with the game itself, onto only two CDs
.
After the demise of Trilobyte
in the late 1990s, Devine joined id Software
to work as a designer on Quake III Arena and Quake III Team Arena. At id he gained recognition in the Mac gaming community for supporting development on the platform. He also worked on the Game Boy Advance
versions of Commander Keen
(2001), Wolfenstein 3D
, and Doom II
, and was a programmer on Doom 3
until he moved to Ensemble in August 2003. Matthew J. Costello
, who worked with Devine in The 7th Guest, would also help plot Doom 3 and, like 7th Guest, later novelize it. Devine then took the Lead Designer position for Halo Wars
, an RTS for the Xbox 360
. In February 2008 Devine was named one of the Top 100 Developers in the Video game Industry.
Game programmer
A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebase for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines all of which fall under the umbrella term of "game programmer"...
who co-founded Trilobyte
Trilobyte
Trilobyte is a computer game developer founded in December 1990 by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros. They are well known in the computer game industry for The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour games, and to a lesser extent for Clandestiny and other titles.- Logo :The official company logo consists of a...
, created bestselling games The 7th Guest
The 7th Guest
The 7th Guest, produced by Trilobyte and released by Virgin Games in 1993, is an FMV-based puzzle video game. It was one of the first computer video games to be released only on CD-ROM. The 7th Guest is a horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac...
and The 11th Hour
The 11th Hour (computer game)
The 11th Hour is a 1995 puzzle computer game with a horror setting. It is the sequel to the 1992 game The 7th Guest. It was developed by Trilobyte and used a later version of the "Groovie" graphic engine than that used by The 7th Guest...
, and designed id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
's Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena , is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly...
. He was also Chairman of the International Game Developers Association
International Game Developers Association
International Game Developers Association is the professional society for over 10,000 video and computer game developers worldwide.It is incorporated in the United States as a non-profit organization....
(IGDA) from 2002-2003. One of Graeme's trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
s is his Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...
wardrobe.
Biography
Devine was born in 1966 in GlasgowGlasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and began his career working on the TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
at age 14 in the late 1970s. He joined Atari
Atari
Atari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Atari, SA . The original Atari, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in...
at age 16 to port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
their classic game Pole Position
Pole Position
Pole Position is a racing video game released in 1982 by Namco. It was published by Namco in Japan and by Atari, Inc. in the United States...
to home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s, including the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, Apple IIe
Apple IIe
The Apple IIe is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The e in the name stands for enhanced, referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in that were only available as upgrades and add-ons in earlier models...
and ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
. He also worked for Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
's Games Division, Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
UK, and Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive
Virgin Interactive was a British video game publisher. It was formed as Virgin Games Ltd. in 1981. The company became much larger after purchasing the budget label, Mastertronic in 1987. It was part of the Virgin Group...
.
Devine founded Trilobyte
Trilobyte
Trilobyte is a computer game developer founded in December 1990 by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros. They are well known in the computer game industry for The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour games, and to a lesser extent for Clandestiny and other titles.- Logo :The official company logo consists of a...
in December 1990 with Rob Landeros
Rob Landeros
Rob Landeros is a computer game designer and graphic artist. Together with Graeme Devine, he co-founded Trilobyte, where he created the highly commercially successful games The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour...
. Together, they designed the original concept of the 1992 horror game The 7th Guest. Graeme was the lead programmer on the game and on its sequel The 11th Hour. The 7th Guest was a phenomenon, selling 2 million copies, and is credited (along with the game Myst
Myst
Myst is a graphic adventure video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan , a Spokane, Washington––based studio, and published and distributed by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in and released it for the Mac OS computer on September...
) with encouraging the use of CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
drives for games.
Devine was also one of the forefathers of file compression. The game The 7th Guest
The 7th Guest
The 7th Guest, produced by Trilobyte and released by Virgin Games in 1993, is an FMV-based puzzle video game. It was one of the first computer video games to be released only on CD-ROM. The 7th Guest is a horror story told from the unfolding perspective of the player, as an amnesiac...
made extensive use of movie footage, which required a great deal of disk space. Most games in the industry at that point were still shipping on floppy disks, which could only hold about 1 Megabyte of data each. The 7th Guest used roomier CD technology, but there was still a limit to how many CDs could practically be used for a single game. File compression technology at the time, especially for videos which could run into hundreds of megabytes, was still in a primitive state. However, Devine innovated a way to compress movie files, so Trilobyte could fit two hours of footage, along with the game itself, onto only two CDs
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
.
Work for id Software
Trilobyte
Trilobyte is a computer game developer founded in December 1990 by Graeme Devine and Rob Landeros. They are well known in the computer game industry for The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour games, and to a lesser extent for Clandestiny and other titles.- Logo :The official company logo consists of a...
in the late 1990s, Devine joined id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
to work as a designer on Quake III Arena and Quake III Team Arena. At id he gained recognition in the Mac gaming community for supporting development on the platform. He also worked on the Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
versions of Commander Keen
Commander Keen
Commander Keen is a series of video games developed by id Software in the early 1990s. The series focuses on the adventures of Billy Blaze, an 8-year old boy who travels through space and assumes the identity "Commander Keen". The series was successful at replicating the side-scrolling action of...
(2001), Wolfenstein 3D
Wolfenstein 3D
Wolfenstein 3D is a video game that is generally regarded by critics and gaming journalists as having both popularized the first-person shooter genre on the PC and created the basic archetype upon which all subsequent games of the same genre would be built. It was created by id Software and...
, and Doom II
Doom II
Doom II: Hell on Earth is an award winning first-person shooter video game and second title of id Software's Doom franchise. Unlike Doom which was initially only available through shareware and mail order, Doom II was a commercial release sold in stores...
, and was a programmer on Doom 3
Doom 3
Doom 3 is a science fiction horror video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. An example of the first-person shooter genre, Doom 3 was first released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. The game was later adapted for Linux, as well as being ported by Aspyr Media for Mac...
until he moved to Ensemble in August 2003. Matthew J. Costello
Matthew J. Costello
Matthew J. Costello is the author or coauthor of numerous novels and nonfiction works. His articles have appeared in publications including the Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated. He scripted Trilobyte's bestselling CD-ROM interactive dramas The 7th Guest and its sequel The 11th Hour, as...
, who worked with Devine in The 7th Guest, would also help plot Doom 3 and, like 7th Guest, later novelize it. Devine then took the Lead Designer position for Halo Wars
Halo Wars
Halo Wars is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009, in PAL territories on February 27, and in North America on March 3...
, an RTS for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
. In February 2008 Devine was named one of the Top 100 Developers in the Video game Industry.