A first-hand account of Quicksilva and its part in the birth of the UK games industry, 1981–1982

Mark Eyles

doi:10.1080/23311983.2016.1190441

A first-hand account of Quicksilva and its part in the birth of the UK games industry, 1981–1982

Mark Eyles

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Abstract

This article is a first-hand account of the birth of the UK game development industry through the lens of the rise of Quicksilva, the most successful game development company of the early 1980s. Between 1980 and 1982 Sinclair Research released the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers and these supported the nascent game development industry. The market created by the volume of sales of the ZX81 meant that UK game developers could, for the first time, support full time employees through their sales of games. Game developer Quicksilva was one of the first game developers in the UK and this account explains how the UK industry game development industry was improvised into being.
The material for this article is drawn from the personal collection, and recollections, of Mark Eyles, the first employee of Quicksilva.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-19
Number of pages	19
Journal	Cogent Arts & Humanities
Volume	3
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2016.1190441
Publication status	Published - 7 Jun 2016

Keywords

Quicksilva
entrepreneurship
games industry
Video games
computer games
Sinclair ZX80
Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
game development
1980s

Access to Document

10.1080/23311983.2016.1190441Licence: Unspecified

A first-hand account of QuicksilvaFinal published version, 5.08 MBLicence: CC BY

University of Portsmouth (Organisational unit)
Peter Howell (Chair), Neil Dansey (Member), Gavin Wade (Member), Ted Turnbull (Member), Mark Eyles (Member), Daniel Mcguire Pinchbeck (Member), Matthew Higgins (Member), Ted Turnbull (Member), Anna Limpens (Member), Mohammed Jahangir Uddin (Member) & Leila De Lara (Member)
2006 → …
Activity: Membership types › Membership of network or group

Cite this

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title = "A first-hand account of Quicksilva and its part in the birth of the UK games industry, 1981–1982",

abstract = "This article is a first-hand account of the birth of the UK game development industry through the lens of the rise of Quicksilva, the most successful game development company of the early 1980s. Between 1980 and 1982 Sinclair Research released the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers and these supported the nascent game development industry. The market created by the volume of sales of the ZX81 meant that UK game developers could, for the first time, support full time employees through their sales of games. Game developer Quicksilva was one of the first game developers in the UK and this account explains how the UK industry game development industry was improvised into being.The material for this article is drawn from the personal collection, and recollections, of Mark Eyles, the first employee of Quicksilva.",

keywords = "Quicksilva, entrepreneurship, games industry, Video games, computer games, Sinclair ZX80, Sinclair ZX81, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, game development, 1980s",

author = "Mark Eyles",

note = "As Creative Director at Quicksilva in 1981 Mark Eyles was one of a handful of pioneers establishing the UK games industry. After a career freelancing and running companies in the games industry he finished as Head of Design at Rebellion in Oxford. During this time he also made holograms and wrote for 2000AD and Sonic the Comic. In 2003 he joined the University of Portsmouth where he set up and ran three games courses in the School of Creative Technologies. He started the Women in Games conferences (ran from 2004 to 2011). In 2006 he formed the Advanced Games Research Group, which uses practice based research to investigate the boundaries of games; in 2012 he completed a PhD investigating ambient gameplay. He is an educational advisor to TIGA (the independent game developers association). He is a director of indie game developer Ambient Quest Studios, which has been running since 2008. ",

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A first-hand account of Quicksilva and its part in the birth of the UK games industry, 1981–1982

Abstract

Keywords

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University of Portsmouth (Organisational unit)

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