For me it was starting out on my own after working for the one games company for nearly a decade. I didn’t have the rights to Swords and Sandals, nobody really knew who I was, so I really had to work hard to make a name for myself.

I had to hustle for a few years with freelance jobs, building up a new social media presence, releasing new games of varying sizes, letting the world know that I was the creator of Swords and Sandals etc. I was fortunate that the old company ended up selling the rights to S&S to eGames, and I was able to do a deal with them to revitalise the series once again.

The biggest lesson of my career. Never give up your IP. Not for any reason, unless it’s Disney offering you a billion dollars (and even then!) . When I was a young and naive developer I sat back and did nothing when the company I worked for at the time decided to trademark the games and game world I’d created.

The major issue was I’d come up with these games long before I even started there, and when Ieft, I had no rights to the Swords and Sandals name, or anything I’d created – even though these were games and concepts, characters and places I’d been working on since I was a kid. A similar thing happened to Richard Garriott with Origin and EA, (on a much bigger scale – eg he can’t ever make any new games called Ultima, for example.) 

I vowed never to make the same mistake again. It’s all worked out fairly well now with a business partner who is excited about the series, but I will never again allow any new IP to get out of my hands.