Fergus McNeill (born in 1969) is a Scottish author and interactive entertainment developer. He has designed and created games since the early 1980s, working with companies such as CRL, Silversoft, Macmillan Group,

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

, SCi Eidos and EA. He was a founder member of TIGA and is a member of the

Crime Writers' Association The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. ...

and

BAFTA The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA, ) is an independent trade association and charity that supports, develops, and promotes the arts of film, television and video games in the United Kingdom. In addition to its annual awa ...

. He is the author of a series of contemporary crime thrillers published by

Hodder & Stoughton Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.H ...

Background

McNeill, born in 1969, grew up in Scotland, living in

Helensburgh Helensburgh ( ; ) is a town on the north side of the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, situated at the mouth of the Gareloch. Historically in Dunbartonshire, it became part of Argyll and Bute following local government reorganisation in 1996. Histo ...

and later in

Fintry Fintry is a small riverside village in Stirlingshire, central Scotland. It is located south-west of Stirling and around north of Glasgow. Landscape The village of Fintry sits by the Endrick Water in a strath between the Campsie Fells and the ...

. When he was 11, his family moved to

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

, 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 in order to pursue a full-time career in the games industry.

Career

McNeill started developing

adventure games An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

using The Quill software. Initially, these were sold by mail-order under the

Delta 4 Delta 4 was a British software developer founded by Fergus McNeill, writing and publishing interactive fiction. Delta 4 designed games between 1984 and 1992. Some were self-published, others were released by CRL Group, Piranha Software, Silv ...

brand, before publishing deals with CRL and Silversoft brought the titles to a larger audience. This led to McNeill working with

Terry Pratchett Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English author, humorist, and Satire, satirist, best known for the ''Discworld'' series of 41 comic fantasy novels published between 1983 and 2015, and for the Apocalyp ...

to create the first

Discworld ''Discworld'' is a comic fantasy"Humorous Fantasy" in David Pringle, ed., ''The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy'' (pp.31-33). London, Carlton,2006. book series written by the English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a fl ...

game and, later on, adapting '' Murder off Miami'' by

Dennis Wheatley Dennis Yates Wheatley (8 January 1897 – 10 November 1977) was an English writer whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s through to the 1960s. Early life Wheatley w ...

. 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 "The Lawnmower Man" is a short story by American writer Stephen King, first published in the May 1975 issue of ''Cavalier'' and later included in King's 1978 collection ''Night Shift''. Plot summary Harold Parkette is in need of a new lawn mow ...

'', and scripted the award-winning ''

Kingdom O' Magic ''Kingdom O' Magic'' is a video game released by Sales Curve Interactive in 1996. It is a comedic point and click adventure game parodying fantasy fiction. It can be played with either of two available protagonists, Thidney or Sha-ron. ''Kingdo ...

''. He also co-produced (and provided the race announcer's voice-over for) Stainless Software's controversial racing game ''

Carmageddon ''Carmageddon'' is a vehicular combat video game released for personal computers in 1997. It was produced by Stainless Games and published by Interplay Productions and Sales Curve Interactive. It was ported to other platforms, and spawned a s ...

''. 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 Infospace, Inc. was an American company that offered private label search engine, online directory, and provider of metadata feeds. The company's flagship metasearch site was Dogpile and its other notable consumer brands were WebCrawler and Me ...

IOMO IOMO was a British mobile game developer and publisher based in Hampshire, England. IOMO was founded by John Chasey, Glenn Broadway and Andrew Bain in 2000. Initially a developer, the company was very successful in the early stages of the mobile ...

as studio director in 2005. Two years later, McNeill and other staff from IOMO relaunched the studio as

FinBlade FinBlade is a British mobile game and mobile app developer. FinBlade was founded by John Chasey, Fergus McNeill, Steve Longhurst and Barry Simpson in August 2007. Much of the FinBlade team previously worked at mobile game developer IOMO. History ...

. In 2019 he took on the role of game director at Stainless Games.

Books

In 2011, he signed a three-book deal with Hodder & Stoughton. * ''Eye Contact'' (Detective Harland series #1) first published in 2012 * ''Knife Edge'' (Detective Harland series #2) first published in 2013 * ''Cut Out'' (Detective Harland series #3) first published in 2014 A Detective Harland novella entitled ''Broken Fall'' was released in 2015. A standalone historical thriller, ''Ashes of America'', was published in 2019.
The standalone crime thriller ''Up Close and Fatal'' was published in 2022.

Games

Early interactive fiction titles and PC CD games *''Sherwood Forest'' - Delta 4 *''The Dragonstar Trilogy'' - Delta 4 *''Quest for the Holy Joystick'' - Delta 4 *''Return of the Holy Joystick'' - Delta 4 *''

Bored of the Rings ''Bored of the Rings'' is a 1969 parody of J. R. R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings''. This short novel was written by Henry Beard and Douglas Kenney, who later founded '' National Lampoon''. It was published in 1969 by Signet for ''The H ...

'' - Delta 4 / CRL / SilverSoft *''

Robin of Sherlock ''Robin of Sherlock'' is a 1985 adventure game developed by Delta 4 and published by Silversoft. It parodies the earlier games ''The Hobbit'' and '' Sherlock''. It was written using '' The Quill''. The game mixes the universes of Robin Hood and ...

'' - Delta 4 / CRL / SilverSoft *''Galaxias'' - Delta 4 *''

The Colour of Magic ''The Colour of Magic'' is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the ''Discworld'' series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of only 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to ...

'' - Delta 4 /

Piranha Software Piranha Software was a short-lived video game publishing label created by Macmillan Publishers in 1986 and closed eighteen months later. In that time it gained a reputation for its unusual output from well known developers such as Don Priestley ...

*''

The Boggit ''The Boggit: Bored Too'' is a text adventure game by Delta 4 released in 1986 for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum home computers. The game is a parody of the J. R. R. Tolkien novel ''The Hobbit'' and of the earlier game based upon ...

'' - Delta 4 / CRL *''The Big Sleaze'' - Delta 4 / Piranha Software *'' Murder off Miami'' - CRL *'' Mindfighter'' - Abstract Concepts / Activision *''The Smirking Horror'' - Delta 4 / Destiny *'' The Town with No Name'' - Delta 4 *''

Psycho Killer "Psycho Killer" is a song by American rock band Talking Heads, released on their debut studio album '' Talking Heads: 77'' (1977). The group first performed it as the Artistics in 1974. The band also recorded an acoustic version of the song fe ...

'' - Delta 4 *''

'' - SCi *''

Cyberwar Cyberwarfare is the use of cyber attacks against an enemy state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, manipulation or economic war ...

'' - SCi *''XS'' - SCi *''

'' - SCi *''

'' (co-producer for SCi) - Stainless Software / SCi *''Robosaurs versus the Space Ba$tards'' - Smoking Gun Productions *''Space Ba$tards: Sudden Justice'' - Smoking Gun Productions *''Club Manager'' series - Smoking Gun Productions More recently, McNeill has worked on the following apps: *''Battleship'' - FinBlade / EA *''Battleship for iPad'' - FinBlade / EA *''Deadliest Catch'' - FinBlade / HandsOn *''Grooveyard'' - FinBlade *''Movie Quiz'' - FinBlade *''Ninja Ranch'' - FinBlade / AppyNation *''Pictureka!'' - FinBlade / EA *''Red Bull GP'' - FinBlade / SSP / Red Bull *''The Men Who Stare At Goats'' - FinBlade / SSP / Momentum Pictures *''Tennis Slam'' - FinBlade *''WordSearch'' - FinBlade *''Fry - Virtually Stephen Fry'' - HeadCastLabs *''Puzzler World'' - Puzzler Media *''Link-a-Pix'' - Puzzler Media *''Crosswords'' - Puzzler Media *''Wordsearch'' - Puzzler Media *''Pathfinder'' - Puzzler Media *''Sudoku'' - Puzzler Media *''Puzzle Paradise'' - Puzzler Media *''Puzzler'' - Puzzler Media *''Name Game'' - Puzzler Media

Awards

*Golden Joystick Award (runner up, 1985) *Sinclair User Classic Award (5 times) *Amtix Accolade Award (1986) *Crash Smash Award (twice) *CGR Golden Triad Award (1996)Computer Game Review magazine, March 1996

References

External links

Fergus McNeill website & blogEve White (literary agent)Hodder & Stoughton (publisher)FinBlade

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mcneill, Fergus Living people 21st-century British novelists Scottish crime fiction writers British video game designers Interactive fiction writers People from Helensburgh Scottish voice directors 1969 births