Black Mirror’s surprise end-of-year release Bandersnatch is the story of a young coder named Stefan programming a choose-your-own-adventure-style videogame. Set over the summer of 1984, the film takes place against the backdrop of the fast-growing 1980s UK games industry.
In the interactive film, Stefan (Fionn Whitehead) successfully pitches his game to Tuckersoft (home to his favourite game developer, the legendary Colin Ritman, played by Will Poulter). Wanting the cassettes in WHSmith in time for Christmas, Tuckersoft sets Stefan a deadline, and back to his bedroom he goes.
The days of lone geniuses like Stefan hunching over a Spectrum ZX to tap out miles of game code are gone, but when the first explosion of games consoles arrived in the UK, there was serious money to be made by bedroom coders and the companies who marshalled their talent.
“Motown for computer games”
In preparation for the roles of Stefan and Colin, Whitehead and Poulter (both of whom were born in the 1990s) were given a research documentary by Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker. Released in 2014, From Bedrooms To Billions by Anthony and Nicola Caulfield is a detailed film detailing the unusual story of the UK gaming industry in the 1980s up to the present day. At two and a half hours, it’s an extensive look containing interviews with key developers, publishers and journalists, spliced with archive footage from the time.
Here’s how the official press release describes it:
‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ reveals some of the remarkable stories, struggles and successes that saw the UK video games industry go from quite literally nothing into a major force littered with original thinkers, innovators and eccentric characters. The film takes you on a wonderful journey through those early 8 bit years, the transition into the 16bit era and PC, the influence of the Japanese and American consoles and the availability of finance, right through to the present day of triple AAA games, indie development and the future.
Here’s the trailer:
“The state of him. He’s made enough this year to buy a Lamborghini and he still smokes roll-ups.”
In From Bedroom To Billions, Will Poulter found inspiration for his character’s distinctive voice. He told Den Of Geek:
“I’m really not trying to conform to any kind of dangerous stereotypes about people who work with computers or ‘geek’, because I think a lot of that is quite mean-spirited—but a lot of the guys specifically that featured in this documentary [From Bedrooms To Billions] that I watched about computer programming in the UK… I came across two or three guys who had a quality to their voice that I was just mimicking.”
Fionn Whitehead too, found From Bedroom To Billions a valuable part of his preparation. “I got the same documentary [as Will], that was great. I watched that and then I had a base of knowledge because the documentary is incredible, it really does give you a lot.”
Take a look at the trailer here: