Mike Dawson (Designer)

**Mike Dawson** is the designer of the computer game *Dark Seed*, which has a character of the same name that he himself played. He was later a writer for television and went on to teach and speak about programming and game design.

## Biography

Dawson said that he became interested in game design as soon as he gripped the controller of an Atari 2600.

He later earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. He wanted to avoid a "boring programming job", so he turned to the newspaper ads to see if anyone was hiring. As it so happened, a start-up game company was looking to increase staffing, and Dawson applied. At the time, the company was literally just the president, Patrick Ketchum, and a programmer, John Krause. They were at that time working out of Ketchum’s house. Ketchum interviewed Dawson, and hired him on as not only a designer, but a producer and writer as well. This company - now with only three employees, Dawson included - would later become Cyberdreams. He would later recall working in such a small company:

> Because we were so small, we had to do a lot, but we also got to do a lot. Just a few months in my first fulltime job, I was going to Europe to work with H.R. Giger. I went to international trade shows and shows here in the US. I got to write, design and help make games. In many ways, the job was a blast. But it was also tough. We were a start-up, and as such, we were constantly spending money while generating no income.
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### Work on *Dark Seed*

*Dark Seed* started out as a collaboration between Dawson, Ketchum, and Krause. Because the company was pressure to finish the game by Christmas, a lot of work was involved. Dawson described it as: "Lots of work. Lots of pressure. Some silliness too."

Dawson's use as the photography model for the character was somewhat accidental, and to help with the budget, as he recalled in an interview:

> I needed to get a concept document out on the game and was working on it until the last minute, as usual. I had put my name in for the main character as a placeholder – and as an inside joke for the few of us at the company. I fully intended to come up with something else at some point. But when my boss saw it, he liked it and said we had to keep the name... I think this decision was made based primarily on money. If I played the part, we wouldn’t need to hire (and pay) a real actor.
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Although Dawson would work on several titles while at Cyberdreams, *Dark Seed* would be the only game that he saw from "start to finish". He has admitted that to this day he has a "strong affection" for the game, since he put a lot of himself into it. At the same time, he freely admits there is plenty he would change, and "some of the elements put into the game to make it more challenging weren’t fair to the player."

### After *Dark Seed*

Shortly after the release of the game in 1992, Dawson left Cyberdreams to write for television. He later began to write books on programming, thinking it would "be fun to write an entertaining book on programming". He would later go on to develop and teach courses for UCLA Extension and The Digital Media Academy at Stanford University, as well as the Los Angeles Film School. He teaches on programming and game development.

An urban legend arose that Dawson suffered a mental breakdown after releasing *Dark Seed*, although this isn't true at all. When asked what inspired this urban legend, Dawson replied: "Um... aliens?"

David Mullich, who would produce the sequel to *Dark Seed*, later met Dawson in person decades later, and recalled his impressions:

> Far from being the tormented and tortured soul from the *Dark Seed* series, Mike is an impressively normal guy (albeit with a sly sense of humor), but one who is far more heroic than his video-game counterpart for being an absolutely outstanding teacher who just celebrated ten years at The Los Angeles Film School, where he consistently receives the highest praise from his programming students.
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## Literary Works

* *Guide to Programming with Python* (2007)
* *C++ Projects: Programming with Text-Based Games* (2009)
* *Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner* (2010)
* *Beginning C++ Through Game Programming* (2015)

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/playing-catch-up-i-darkseed-i-s-mike-dawson
2. ↑ *Dark Seed* manual, pg. 6
3. ↑ https://programgames.com/page5.html
4. ↑ https://davidmullich.com/2018/10/08/life-as-a-videogame-character/