Quote:
"The Software Designer"
Stewart is developing Pop Icon, the new game for Mega. It's going to be bigger than Tetris, sexier than Tomb raider, more violent than Grand Theft Auto 3 on Playstation 2.
Virtual blood will be spilt in the contest to become a pop heartthrob, circumnavigating hazards such a wearing glittery platform shoes and singing Dancing Queen.
Stewart is currently working on the 3D graphics, and inputting millions of lines of code. It was for this that he achieved his first-class degree in Mathematics at Cambridge: to become the priest of a modern-day sect, decoding the liturgy of ones and zeros.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is his Mary Magdalen; a creature from Monsters Inc tucked furrily among the congealed coffee cups his conceptual inspiration.
When Stewart looks entirely blank, his sausagey fingers flying across the keyboard, he has gone into the zone - a deep meditative state of coding. At moments of high excitement, when he's found a showstopper bug, Stewart removes his shoes, a reflex of searing aromatic intensity.
An entire Eco-system lives in his sweater, fuelled by pizza droppings. The convivial niceties of social eating have been obscured by his hyper-intelligent analytical creative skills.
This is a man who names his servers Princess Leia, Gandalf and Han Solo; who speaks the language of bytes and glitches
Who makes cracking the Enigma code seem like tiddlywinks.
PC Format constitutes a tottering tower in his bedroom, with thumbed copies of The Lord Of The Rings delicately balanced on top.
In between re-running Star Wars videos, he plays Warhammer.
Games are his passion: he dreams of making the ultimate game. Pop Icon will be networked between contestants all over the world, an excitement only equalled by the release of the Xbox console from Microsoft.
Stewart may not possess deodorant, but he is blessed with cryptic insight into this brave new world of electronic superiority.
If Stewart says Intergalactic Sword & Sorcery is 'pants', then it's no-good rubbish and the designers should go back to playing Command & Conquer.
The only way to demystify Stewart's terrifying modern wizardry is to regard him as a plumber, for when you show him your system; he always sucks his teeth and says "Who did this then? I'll have to build you a new one".
Source: The Telegraph (Telegraph Magazine - Back Page), Last Saturday