FRANZ LANZINGER
“The whole reason I became a games developer was because I was completely addicted to videogames”
Franz Lanzinger
Who said hanging around in arcades playing silly videogames would never lead to anything? Franz Lanzinger did just that and it led to him joining Atari’s coin-op division, producing the wonderfully imaginative Crystal Castles. It did help that he had a solid background in mathematics and programming and his technical nous saw him continue to make games for home consoles and computers for many decades. He now writes books about game design and any budding coders interested in creating games using Unity should check out his published work at franzlanzinger.com He also plays classical piano and laughs a lot. Not at the same time, though.
On the first level of Crystal Castles, the letters FXL are part of the structure. That’s you, right?
[laughs] Yes, that’s me. The X stands for Xaver, the German version of Xavier.
Was this you making a point about programmers deserving credit for their work?
Atari did let you include your initials by way of recognition but not your full name. They were afraid, and probably rightly so, that competitors would steal their employees so wanted to keep the names secret. By the time I left, Atari allowed each team to have a credits screen, which was the right thing to do… and I was partly responsible for that.
How?
I put an Easter Egg into that said “Programmed by Franz Lanzinger” and management had a fit. They sent me a written letter saying if I didn’t remove it, they’d reduce my bonus. I thought that was a bit bizarre but I took it out… which I really regret. I should never have told them I’d
