Mat Dickie

Mat Dickie (born 1980/1981)[2] is an English indie video game designer, developer and author who releases games under the name MDickie. He is most notable for his indie professional wrestling games,[3] such as Wrestling Revolution for iOS and Android devices, which received over 100,000 downloads two months after its launch in 2012.[4] The game later went on to surpass 10 million downloads[5] and its sequel, Wrestling Revolution 3D, went on to compete with WWE 2K games on the mobile and PC market.[6]

Mat Dickie
Dickie in 2018
Born1980/1981 (age 39–40)
Brigg, North Lincolnshire, England
Other namesMDickie
OccupationVideo game designer and developer
Years active2000–2009
2011–2019
2020–present[1]
Notable work
Wrestling Revolution 3D
Websitewww.mdickie.com

Dickie began his game development career in 2000 with his first PC game, going on to retire in 2009 to become an educator. He came out of retirement in late 2011 and transitioned to mobile game development, which led to the release of Wrestling Revolution in 2012. However, he once again retired from full-time game development in 2018. In 2019, Dickie confirmed that a new wrestling project was in development for the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices.

Many of Dickie's games are infamous for their awkward controls and poor graphics.[7] He has mentioned that the low resolution and low poly graphics in his games have allowed for better performance, in turn enabling him "to push a lot of boundaries".[8] The indie and low budget nature of Dickie's games have often contributed to their popularity, leading to Dickie describing himself as being "single-handedly responsible for the worst games to ever be enjoyed by millions of people."[9]

Early life

Mat Dickie was born in Brigg, North Lincolnshire in 1981. His parents worked on a small newsstand, where he stayed while they worked, and boredom drove him to express his creativity by producing makeshift toys for himself with the materials available there.[10] He attended Brigg Primary School.[11] He became interested in developing games at an early age, often sketching out ideas for games.[7] Some of his works were influenced by games he played as a child, including WWF No Mercy, Super Fire Pro Wrestling and WWF WrestleFest.[12]

Dickie also tinkered with Deluxe Paint on his Commodore Amiga until he acquired a PC in 1998, which signaled the beginning of his game development career.[13]

Career

PC game development (2000–2011)

One day, Dickie was walking through a Woolworths when he stumbled across a copy of DIV Game Studio, a programming language that promised to make game development easy. He purchased it, and spent the summer of 2000 learning it from the examples.[14]

Dickie released his first game, Hardy Boyz Stunt Challenge, in August 2000.[2] The game had the player play as one of the Hardy Boyz, who were wrestlers in the WWF (later renamed the WWE). The game took two weeks to complete and was posted on a wrestling website where it received 15,000 downloads and positive feedback, which inspired him to continue making video games and to make his own website in November 2000 to host his games.[7][15] He moved to Manchester in 2001 to complete a Bachelor of Science in video games and computers at Salford University.[2][11]

In 2006, Idigicon, who had previously published one of Dickie's games, Boxer's Story, contacted him again to make a version of his newest release, Wrestling Encore, for the British professional wrestling promotion One Pro Wrestling; however, legal complications arose due to 1PW not having the video game license to the American professional wrestlers working for them. In order to counteract this issue, 1PW attempted to buy the rights to the whole game off of Dickie instead of the rights to sell the version he had created for the promotion at their live shows, with the added benefit of him getting to meet the wrestlers working for the promotion at the time, including Bret Hart and Jeff Jarrett. Dickie declined this offer.[16]

In 2007, Dickie created his first major non-wrestling game, Hard Time, a prison simulator which was named by Games for Windows Magazine as the "Indie Game of the Month".[7] The game was almost released through a subsidiary of THQ. Dickie was also looking forward to develop his wrestling brand with them; however, they felt it was a conflict of interest.[17]

Dickie retired from developing video games in early 2009 after the release of The You Testament, a game based on biblical stories he developed in three months, with PC Gamer calling it the "best worst game ever."[18] Retiring from game development, he became a developer of educational applications, publishing educational resources on TES.[19] Dickie had ambitions of enhancing learning and making learning fun; however, he later came to the conclusion that entertainment did not have much of a role to play in education. As of 2017, his educational resources have been used in 10,000 classrooms; he was also invited to the 2011 TES awards.[20] He also became an author, writing a book on his game development career and writing others on religion and spirituality as a religious educator.

Mobile and console game development (2011 – Present)

In early 2012, Dickie was unemployed, about to buy his first home and awaiting the birth of his first child; this motivated him to come out of retirement and move to developing mobile games, releasing Wrestling Revolution as his first major mobile game.[7][21] He also released several 2D remakes of his classic PC games on mobile, such as Popscene in 2014, Wrecked, and Hard Time in 2017.[22] His most successful game to date, Wrestling Revolution 3D, reached 50 million downloads, becoming the first sports game on Google Play to do so.[7][23]

In July 2018, Dickie once again announced his retirement from full-time game development, citing "frightening intolerance" from digital retailers among other reasons.[24] In an interview, he also cited increasing demands from players after the release of AAA titles such as WWE 2K19. Dickie stated he did not wish to compete directly with WWE games, but intended to provide a "cheaper... lighter... [and] more creative alternative that's always going to be made by one man or a smaller team."[25]

In 2019, Dickie confirmed that a new wrestling project was in development for the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. This project was later revealed to be Wrestling Empire, which was released on January 11, 2021.[26]

Works
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

PC
  • Hardy Boyz Stunt Challenge (2000)
  • The Rock's Promo Cutter (2000)
  • Case 3:16 (2000)
  • Con-chair-to (2000)
  • THAT Love Triangle (2000)
  • Wrestling Vs Boxing (2000)
  • Big Bumps (2001)
  • Federation Online (2001)
  • EEW's Total Annihilation (2001)
  • Big BumpZ (2001) (Made with dark BASIC)
  • CVG Strikes Back (2001)
  • Rocky (2002) (Repackaged as Boxer's Story and later renamed to Arcade Boxing and released by Idigicon)
  • Sure Shot (2002)
  • Sure Shot: Star Wars Edition (2002)
  • Federation Wrestling (2002)
  • Big BumpZ (Made with Blitz 3D)
  • Federation Booker (2003)
  • The MDickie Show (2003)
  • Wrecked (2004)
  • Wrestling MPire 2004 (2004)
  • Booking MPire 2004 (2004)
  • Popscene (2004)
  • Sure Shot 3D (2004)
  • Popcorn (2005)
  • Wrestling Encore (2005)
  • Booking Encore (2006)
  • Grass Roots (2006)
  • World War Alpha (2006)
  • Talksport: Clash Of The Titans (2006)
  • Hard Time (2007)
  • Reach (2007)
  • Wrestling MPire 2008: Career Edition (2008)
  • Wrestling MPire 2008: Management Edition (2008)
  • Popscene: Track 2 (2008)
  • The You Testament (2008)
  • The Making Of A Prophet (2010)
  • Under Development (2011)
  • Wrestling MPire Remix (2011)
  • Wrestling Revolution 3D (2017)

Mobile
  • CM Punk's Promo Cutter (2011)
  • Moksha (2011)
  • Sure Shot (2011)
  • Flash Stuntz (2012)
  • Wrestling Revolution (2012)
  • Booking Revolution (2013)
  • Hard Time (2013)
  • Popscene (2014)
  • Wrestling Revolution 3D (2014)
  • School Days (2015)
  • Weekend Warriors MMA (2015)
  • Super City (2016)
  • Wrecked (2017)
  • Extra Lives (2017)
  • Back Wars (2018)[27]
  • The You Testament: The 2D Coming (2018)
  • Wrestling Empire (2021) [28]

Console

Books
  • Inspiration for the Interactive Generation (2009, ISBN 1441414983)
  • Sportuality (2009, ISBN 0956160913)
  • A-fear-ism: The Ignorance Of Atheism (2010, ISBN 1449978347)

References
  1. Mat Dickie [@MDickie] (Oct 4, 2019). "I thought I had taken wrestling as far as I could, but there's one last title I want a shot at... facebook.com/MDickieFans/photos/a.227441470654037/2617511061647054" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  2. "Virtual Enterprises". Archived from the original on 2001-10-21. Retrieved 2017-01-13.
  3. Miller, Patrick (September 2012). "IT'S REAL TO ME | INDIE WRESTLING GAME DEVS ADD NEW LIFE TO THE GENRE" (PDF). Game Developer Magazine. p. 4. Retrieved 2017-01-12.
  4. "Adobe® Gaming & Mat Dickie: Wrestling Revolution" (PDF). Adobe. September 20, 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 12, 2016. Retrieved November 2, 2016.
  5. "Wrestling Revolution - Android Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2017-01-20.
  6. Goodwillie, Jack (2015-04-20). "WWE: Can WWE 2K Compete With Wrestling Revolution 3D? | Wrestledelphia". Wrestledelphia. Archived from the original on 2015-04-26. Retrieved 2017-01-20.
  7. Strokel-Walker, Chris (2018-01-10). "The rise, fall, and rise of MDickie—or, how to be the best worst game developer". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2018-01-11.
  8. Bogan, Daniel. "Uses This / Mat Dickie". usesthis.com. Retrieved 2018-05-25.
  9. Colburn, Randall. "Meet the man behind the some of the worst, most inexplicably successful video games ever made". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2018-02-08.
  10. "MDickie.com". mdickie.com. Retrieved 2018-03-30.
  11. Cox, Rachel. "A mouse click away from his millions?". Scunthorpe Telegraph. Retrieved 2017-01-12 – via MDickie.com.
  12. "MDickie.com". mdickie.com. Retrieved 2019-03-07.
  13. "MDickie.com". mdickie.com. Retrieved 2019-02-25.
  14. Mat Dickie (2018-01-10), Ars Technica Interview, 12 minutes in
  15. Mat Dickie (2018-01-10), Ars Technica Interview, 14 minutes in
  16. "MDickie.com". mdickie.com. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  17. "Joel Striker's Interview". mdickie.com. Retrieved 2019-03-08.
  18. Cobbett, Richard (2010-12-04). "Crap Shoot: The You Testament". PC Gamer. Retrieved 2018-01-11.
  19. "MDickie's profile on TES". TES. Retrieved 2018-01-17.
  20. Mat Dickie (2018-01-10), Ars Technica Interview, 2 minutes in
  21. Dickie, Mat (2018-01-10), Ars Technica Interview, 24 minutes in
  22. Cook, James (2013-10-25). "Hard Time 2D". The Kernel. Retrieved 2018-02-15.
  23. Creswell, Jacob (2020-10-20). "The Most Underrated Wrestling Game EVER Was Made by ONE Person". CBR. Retrieved 2020-11-18.
  24. "MDickie". www.facebook.com. 2018-07-25. Retrieved 2018-09-26.
  25. Dickie, Mat (2018-10-26). Post-Retirement Catch-up (Podcast). Event occurs at 32:58.
  26. "Wrestling Empire for Nintendo Switch - Nintendo Game Details". www.nintendo.com. Retrieved 2020-12-16.
  27. Mat Dickie [@MDickieDotcom] (2018-07-08). "I'm pleased to confirm that the mobile remake of my time-travelling war game is now going by the simpler yet more descriptive title of "Back Wars"!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  28. Mat Dickie [@MDickieDotcom] (2021-01-17). "One more thing..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
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