About

Tomas is creative director at Auroch Digital and design director at Red Wasp Design.  As games consultant he works with major organisations such as the Wellcome Trust, helping them to develop and deliver their gaming strategy. As a games designer he produced titles from original concepts to well loved IPs such as Star Wars and The Great Escape.  As a design director he developed and produced the critically and commercially successful Savage Moon series (for Playstation) and Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land (for mobile platforms & PC).  He also blogs at agreatbecoming.com

I currently run my own digital media consultancy, Auroch Digital – where we do games consultancy, gaming strategies and production amongst other stuff. For example we do a lot of work with The Wellcome Trust. I’m also part of an indie development project, Red Wasp Design where we’ve just released a 3D turn-based strategy game for iOS and PC based on the works of H.P.Lovecraft and the award winning RPG Call of Cthulhu, called ‘Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land‘. I’m based at the Pervasive Media Lab in Bristol where we make games, chat and run Game Jams as well as a monthly group for the local game development community.

Prior to all this, I worked for Cardiff City Council as an assistant psychologist and residential social worker in the mid to late 1990′s when I decided to go with my earlier inclinations (a love of games) and moved to working as a computer games designer for Hothouse Creations and Pivotal Games for PC, Dreamcast, PlayStation2 and Xbox. I have also worked as an associate lecturer at Bridgwater College and University of West of England (UWE) on matters of media and technology and computer games. I am the co-author of the first ever book on filmmaking and the Internet: PlugIn&TurnOn: A Guide to Filmmaking for the Internet, published by Marion Boyars Publishers (May 2004). I was the co-founder and Development Director of FluffyLogic, a digital media studio in Bristol that has made a number of well-received and profitable games, from September 2004 until September 2010. I am currently waiting for my viva for a PhD examining evolutionary theory and networked forms of media at UWE. I’m interested in evolution, science and reason, but I look forward to the day when the great Cthulhu awakes and ushers in the end times. Ai! Ai! Cthulhu Ph’Tagen. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu Rl’yeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

• I’m on twitter at: @TomasRawlings. Feel free to say hello.
• I’m on email at: tom at aurochdigital dot com
• I’m on LinkedIn too.  If we’ve connected, let’s link too!
• My YouTube account is here.  I’m told web video killed the radio star.

My Game & Appography…

• Abomination: The Nemesis Project (PC) – Level design, testing, interface and other design tasks.
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Dreamcast, PC & Playstaion) – Script-writing, testing and liaising with the IP holder.  This was the biggest selling UK computer game until GTA4 game along…
• Conflict: Desert Storm (PC, Playstation2, xbox, Gamecube) – Testing, gameplay evaluation and multiplayer lobby design.  First title in the million ‘Conflict’ selling series of action/tactical shooters.
• The Great Escape (PC, Platstation2, xbox) – Based on the 1963 film, I was Lead Designer on this title. It charted in the UK at no.2 (below Eye Toy).
• Conflict: Desert Storm II (PC, Playstation2, xbox, Gamecube) – Testing and gameplay evaluation.
• Conflict: Vietnam (PC, Platstation2, xbox) – Level design and scripting, script-writing and testing.
• The Dark Mirror (Paper RPG supplement) – Developed and wrote this add-on for the Call of Cthulthu RPG game which sees the players as the cultists rather than those trying to stop them.
• Hidden Danger UXB! (iPaq) – A GPS game for Hewlett Packard’s Mscapes platform. I was Lead Designer on this title which included an online user-generated content system.
• Savage Moon & Waldgeist DLC (Playstation3) – Lead Designer on this title, pushed the media campaign for the game  and did the follow-up community support. This was the top selling full game on PSN for the period following it’s release. (Waldgeist’s music was also nominated for an Ivor Novello award.)
• Savage Moon: The Hera Campaign (PSP) – Also Lead Designer on this title and did the follow-up community support and media campaign.
• Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth (iPhone, WM7 and iPad) – Lead Designer, community support and media campaign.  The game hit number 6 in the US paid App charts, twice!
• Eat Them! (Playstation3) – Another PSN title for Sony – Monster-smashing action game. I was the Development Director during most of this title’s development period, so getting involved in design, testing and fan and press outreach.  Here’s a review.
• Filth Fair (iPhone, iPad, Flash) – I produced this game for the Wellcome Trust. It was a no.1 trivia and word puzzle game on iPad. There is lots of information about it here.
• Cthulhu Christmas Calendar – Red Wasp Design’s first title. “Red Wasp has produced perhaps the most interesting iPad advent calendar ever.” DigitallyDownloaded.net.
• Bag It & Bin It (iPhone) – A game for Wessex Water to help people have fun and learn how to save water and dispose of waste correctly. I was the designer on this project.
• Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land (iPhone, iPad) – Game based on the cult writer H.P. Lovecraft and also on the paper RPG ‘Call of Cthulhu’ which has got some great reviews and was no.1 in the UK RPG category of the App Store.

Some of my writings…

• PlugIn&TurnOn: A Guide to Filmmaking for the Internet. Published by Marion Boyars Publishers (May 2004).
• The world’s best video diarists (The Independent)
• Open source websites: All change on the internet (The Independent)
• New Media: Who are the real winners now we’ve all gone Wiki-crazy? (The Independent)
• Narrative and Interactivity (originally for Develop magazine) 
• The Future of Consoles (Gamezebo.com)
• How to Start a Games Development Studio – Parts 1,2 & 3 (Gamezebo.com)
• Work for the Wellcome Trust Blog – Deus Ex, the Scientific State of Mind, Crysis & the Biological Singularity & On the Brink of climate change.
• From Paper to Digital: The Cthulhu Strategy of Games Development (gamesindustry.biz)

Public Speaking & Talks…

About My Blog…

My blog title comes from a line in the 1986 film Manhunter; “I am the Dragon. And you call me insane. You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing. To me, you are a slug in the sun. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is your nature to do one thing correctly. Before me, you rightly tremble. But, fear is not what you owe me. You owe me awe.” (Sampled in this great track). Why this? (It’s not that I’m a mentalist, honest!) I think that what we are witnessing with the rapid changes in technology all around us is a great becoming and yet we are so close to it that we often fail to recognise what is happening around us until the change is already the past. I am also a fan of the cool 80s style of the film. Manhunter also features the work of William Blake whose art is worn by the character (as a tattoo) that speaks the above quote. In addition, I’m a fan of the director, Michael Mann and so that snippit of the quote became my blog title.

Disclosures

Media blogger Jeff Jarvis in his book What Would Google Do? talks (and puts into practice) his ideas about how openness is important so readers know where you are coming from and can adjust your reading of  my works and writings as such. So here’s my version (the bigger stuff, I’m not going to list all the small local companies/organisations I have done bits of work for…)

In terms of big companies and organisations, you can see who we work with at Auroch Digital here. At FluffyLogic I worked with Sony and THQ. I’ve done sizeable projects for Hewlett Packard, Bristol University, University of the West of England and the University of Gloucester, and Swindon Borough Council. In the past I’ve worked for companies that developed for Eidos/SCi (now Square Enix) and I’ve also worked for Cardiff City Council.