Name Fergus McNeill | ||
 | ||
Books Eye Contact, Knife Edge, Cut Out, Broken Fall: A DI Harland | ||
Fergus mcneill hertfordshire probation staff conference 2013
Fergus McNeill is a Scottish author and award-winning interactive entertainment developer. He has designed and created games since the early 1980s, working with companies such as CRL, Silversoft, Macmillan Group, Activision, SCi Eidos and EA. He was a founder member of TIGA and is a member of the Crime Writers' Association and BAFTA. He is the author of a series of contemporary crime thrillers published by Hodder & Stoughton.
Contents
- Fergus mcneill hertfordshire probation staff conference 2013
- Campaign digital screens oogcontact eyecontact author fergus mcneill
- Background
- Career
- Books
- Games
- Awards
- References
Campaign digital screens oogcontact eyecontact author fergus mcneill
Background
McNeill grew up in Scotland, living in Helensburgh and later in Fintry. When he was 11, his family moved to Hampshire, England, where he attended Swanmore Secondary School. Whilst there, he wrote his first games, which attracted coverage in the specialist computer press, and this led to him abandoning college plans to pursue a full-time career in the games industry.
Career
McNeill started developing adventure games using The Quill software. Initially, these were sold by mail-order under the Delta 4 brand, before publishing deals with CRL and Silversoft brought the titles to a larger audience. This led to McNeill working with Terry Pratchett to create the first Discworld game and, later on, adapting Murder Off Miami by Dennis Wheatley. After an affiliate label deal with Activision, McNeill set up a new studio for SCi in Southampton, focusing on PC games. While there, he oversaw development on movie tie-ins including The Lawnmower Man, and scripted the award-winning Kingdom O' Magic. He also co-produced (and provided the race announcer's voice-over for) Stainless Software's controversial racing game Carmageddon.
After SCi, he moved to Smoking Gun Productions, where he worked on a range of football management titles and interactive DVD games, before joining InfoSpace / IOMO as studio director in 2005. Two years later, McNeill and other staff from IOMO relaunched the studio as FinBlade.
Books
In 2011, he signed a three-book deal with Hodder & Stoughton.
A Detective Harland novella entitled Broken Fall was published in 2015.
Games
Early interactive fiction titles and PC CD games
More recently, McNeill has worked on the following apps: