Nvidia trio form Code Mafia breakaway

Developers for the games industry

By Drew Cullen, 28th June 2002

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Richard Huddy, Nvidia's European Developer group lead, has jumped ship to form his own company. Called The Code Mafia, two Nvidia colleagues are also joining him, leaving only one member of the European Developer team. A bit of a hole to fill, then. But the team isleaving with Nvidia's blessing.

The Code Mafia will apply skills on improving graphics performance learned at Nvidia and apply them to the wider games industry, though a consultancy. "In the first instance we will specialise in PC and Xbox graphics and making games run faster," Huddy told us. "Later we'll add support for other consoles."

But why would anyone want to pay for graphics performance advice, when it is supplied free by the likes of Nvidia and ATI? In a word, independence. The expertise of the hardware vendors is all about gaining market advantage when offered to the games firms, according to Huddy: "We're turning the situation around to solve problems from the software developer's point of view.

"The key problem is not making the game look good - it's deadline - PC platform games take 18 months or so on average to complete, of which the last six months is all about compatibility. Keeping up to date is tremendously difficult, but for graphics performance, it's what we do all the time."

The Code Mafia's three former Nvidia staff (the others are Kevin Strange and Dave Horne) have accumulated 14 years of Developer Relations experience, Huddy says. Also coming on board is "engineering talent coming out of Silicon Dreams and Criterion.

"The skills that we have in graphics and performance mean that we're already in demand - which is obviously a good feeling for us. And we expect to make a positive difference to the games industry." ®