>Graham Deane
PRECOCIOUS PROGRAMMER
GRAHAM DEANE, THE TECHNICAL DIRECTOR of the hit game Burn:Cycle, found his calling at the ripe age of 12 when he first saw a computer at school in Cambridge, England. Almost immediately, he and his friends tried to program games. "We wrote a program for Atari's Space Invaders. It was literally the letter A coming down at you," Deane says with a laugh. After studying engineering at Leeds University, Deane joined Trip Media—a team of three young software developers—in their London quarters to develop the technical side of Burnr:Cycle. The complexity of the project was a far cry from programming in Deane's school days. "At first, the fact that you were actually controlling something on the screen was enough of a thrill for people," Deane says. "Today, you've got to test people's reaction skills. You've got to give them puzzles to figure out. And then you have to give the traditional video entertainment." Last October, Deane, 28, moved to L.A., where he oversaw production of the CD-ROM version of Burn:Cycle (see review). In his time off, he's a player. "I'm good at the game," Deane boasts. "I know all the short cuts."
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