Sometimes when you search around on the net, you might stumble onto something that's pretty darn interesting. Well, I found this recent-ish interview (April 2002) with the FIRST employee at Melbourne House / Beam Software (now Infogrames Melbourne House) !!! Veronika Megler was in the team that included Philip Mitchell, and Stuart Ritchie who developed "The Hobbit", over a period of 18 months. That title managed to push over a million units. Not too shabby! There's plenty of interesting anecdotes on that ground breaking adventure game..
"I responded to an advertisement at the university looking for a programmer to design and write games part-time. Alfred Milgrom, the owner of Melbourne House, hired me, and I became Melbourne House's first employee. I then brought Philip in, and he became the second employee. Alfred's dream was to provide a natural language interface, and he hired Stuart, who was a language expert, to figure out how to do that.Alfred's instruction to us was, "Write the best Adventure game ever". So Philip and I designed and wrote The Hobbit."
It's also a good insight into the early days of Melbourne House/Beam.. Definately worth a read! Click here.