IT Manager

Joining us from the gauze and straw and fragments of wooden crate in which he was shipped comes Ben 'Randles' Hopkinson. Originally formed from the slow, colossal collision of the Greater Eurasian tectonic plate with the concept of Mint, Ben hails from, sails from and even rails from Manchester, making him almost unique in that he's a Manchester United supporter actually from actual Manchester. After being weighed and tagged, he was eventually released back into the wild to work for us, but the scientists keep a close eye upon him and neither he nor we nor his girlfriend are very happy about that. We think they may be trying to match him up with another Mancunian Man Utd-ite to form a breeding pair, and as probably all of us know to our cost, it's rarely good news when a man with a dart gun suggests you go on a blind date.

Ben read Physics at Bristol University, and has been managing various bags, bottles and orchards of IT ever since for a variety of clients, some games-related, some scary and grown-up-big-proper-frowny-job. He used to be a very serious America's Army player - founding the Irish Online Army (IOA), twice making the European Semifinals of the Invite League. Not so very long ago Ben started a game service provider company of note by the name of Rackage Ltd, from wherein we filched him with no small haste. Lit unsteadily by the shivering fingers of eldritch energy creeping across the orbs of his custom-wound sinister silver Van Der Graff generators, he is king of all things IT-ish. He counts all of SD's electrons out and then he counts them all back in again. He arranges 10 hour SingStar LAN marathons. He got rhymes and you ain't got none. He's currently BOO! HAH! AHAHAHA! Made you...sorry. That was childish of me. He's over there.

Things You Were Too Afraid To Ask...

Every once in a while, we interrogate one of our own and put their answers up for all the world to see. Read on to find out more about what Ben does, how he ended up at Splash Damage, and more.

What do you do at Splash Damage?

I’m the IT Manager, which basically means I’m responsible for the technology we use on a daily basis. This includes servers, firewalls, switches and, of course, desktops. On top of that, I put together policies for resiliency, backup, disaster recovery, licensing and integrating new technologies that might help productivity.

I sit next to Jo and Joe; which leads to much confusion when I want to get the attention of one or the other. But a typical day involves buying things. Somehow the developers at Splash Damage have a higher than average hardware failure rate – the artists and level designers are always killing 24” LCD Monitors while the programmers (or maybe it's the tapirs?) chew through hard disks.

Why did you want to work in the games industry and how did you get started?

Well, like most men I know I always loved games and somehow I just didn’t grow out of it like many of my friends did after Uni. Initially the idea of working in the games industry horrified me as I feared being involved might ultimately lead to my disliking games.

It turns out I was wrong and somehow I kept gravitating towards games no matter how hard I tried to stay away: setting up a clan, competing in online ladders and leagues, being a ladder admin, setting up game servers attending major LANs and setting up smaller invite only mini-lans.

Eventually enough was enough and I decided to get involved, even if it was just in a peripheral way. A good friend and I started Rackage, a UK-based Game Server Provider. It was through Rackage that I made contacts at EA, Activision, Sierra and THQ, and eventually got to the source and worked alongside people from developers like Splash Damage.

Why did you join Splash Damage?

I had made contact with Splash Damage in early 2007 regarding Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars and I had found them surprisingly receptive to our input. I worked closely with the Splash Damage guys throughout the beta stages and up to completion. They showed a greater understanding of the core concerns of GSPs, Server Admins, PC and Multiplayer Gamers and quite frankly I liked what I saw.

What are the best and worst parts of your job?

The best is coming into work to find a FedEx package sitting on my desk containing two unreleased ATI R770 Crossfire cards with a big sticker saying “Engineering Sample.” To me that just reads fun. They send us all samples of all their upcoming products which quite simply rocks!

The worst would have to be having to explain again and again to desktop vendors why we don’t want their ordinary business class machines, and that I’m aware the Gaming Rigs are less stable or not suited to a business environment. Oh and not to mention trying to describe what we do to people who can’t understand the concept.

How does being Splash Damage's IT Manager compare to being the Technical Director of a Game Server Provider like Rackage?

There are many more people here at Splash Damage and as such it’s more of a team game and a much more social environment to work in than working remotely or at data centers. Rackage obviously was more server / hardware based while Splash Damage has a much more human element and lots of desktops.

What's the worst job you ever had?

During my A-Levels I worked at a Bingo hall in Rochdale called Mecca Bingo – the customers were great and I made a lot of good friends there, but we used to get self-paced computer based training in how to do customer service, which I found both ironic and irritating.

It’s probably a little unfair to single this job out it was actually pretty fun, but there were one or two supervisors on £0.05p an hour more than the students who thought it was in their Job description to be miserable (No, that doesn’t mean you, Karen).

What was your first gaming experience?

I have vague recollections of a beige machine that I think was called a grandstand with 5 or 6 pre loaded sports games; but the first system I really got cracking on was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 128k FDD (Floppy Disk Drive). There were some great games like Football Manager 2, Gauntlet and Project Stealth Fighter (Featuring Vector Graphics). I even did a bit of home brew making a naff poker game.

What types of games do you like, and what's your favourite game of all time?

Primarily I’d have to say I’m a competitive FPS PC Gamer. Jumping on Teamspeak or Vent for a big match is an unbeatable experience, especially if the team you’ve put together gels well and understands the play book. Some friends and I lost serious numbers of hours competing fairly successfully in the America's Army Euro scene.

However I’ve also always been a driving / flight sim fan and love the Command & Conquer / Red Alert series and games that bring a cinematic feel to gaming.

So I’d have to say it’s probably Americas Army, closely beating ArmA/Op Flash, Grand Prix 3, Lock-on Modern Air Combat, Red Alert 2, and Metal Gear Solid.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not at work?

Watching football, going to the cinema, feeding the Guinea Pigs, playing games, sitting back, relaxing and acting all cool.