Media Consumption: Atomic Planet's Matt Falcus

Today’s Media Consumption, a weekly column that digs deep to find out what our favorite game developers have been devouring in the four basic media food groups of audio, video, printed word and games, speaks to Atomic Planet Operations Assistant and QA Manager Matt Falcus. Matt Falcus joined brothers Darren and Jason at the UK company they founded, Atomic Planet, in 2003. He lends a hand in a variety of roles for the developer, including operations, quality assurance, and even design. Although this is Falcus's first official role in the games industry, he has grown up watching his brothers run a number of studios and develop a wide variety of games, including entries into the Dizzy and Bignose series for Codemasters, the home console versions of NBA Jam, the Nintendo 64 port of Forsaken, and Acclaim's original console adventure, Shadowman. Currently, Falcus and company are working on a Victorian England-centered first-person shooter called Daemon Summoner (pictured) and two thus-far unannounced projects. And as he does so, Falcus consumes the following: Sounds: "I’m a guitarist, so that has always influenced the type of music I listen to. The 90s ‘Britpop’ era affected me a lot, and my collection of albums from the 60s (Neil Young, Dylan, Pink Floyd) is growing pretty rapidly. At the moment I’m caught up in the wave of alt-country and Americana stuff coming from the US. I’ve got the latest albums by Calexico/Iron & Wine and Richmond Fontaine pretty much on constant playback. And I’m fairly partial to a bit of REM and Jeff Buckley." Moving Pictures: "I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t been to the cinema in months. I never make the time for it these days, which is terrible as there is a cinema complex opposite our studio. On TV however, I’ve been eagerly plodding through series’ of shows like Lost and Deadwood. I even recently started buying DVD collections of Quantum Leap to resurrect happy memories of years gone by – it was a great show!" Words: "I seem to always have at least two books and a few magazines on the go as constant reading material. I spent years trying to get through older books and modern classics, and came out of it with a serious taste for the works of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. But these days I’m more of a fan of travel writing. An American travel writer famous in the UK is Bill Bryson who hits the spot when it comes to comedy narratives of the places he visits. I’m trying to avoid getting through all his books too fast, just in case he takes his time writing anything new!" Games: "Aside from the games we’ve been working on lately – which have been quite varied, from first person shooters and sports simulations to quiz games – when I find time for gaming at home I have to confess to being a bit of a PC fan. In particular I love strategy and simulation games – always have done since first setting eyes on Sim City on the Amiga. So as you’d expect, Civilization IV has been pretty dominant on my screen, as has anything with the word Tycoon in the title. I’m looking forward to Tycoon City: New York when it’s released. It seems to promise a lot of the things I’d like to see in a game."