A few months ago, Broken Sword creator Charles Cecil walked out of the office of Revolution Software and onto the Shambles, the Diagon Alley-esque street that has survived since York’s days as a medieval trade hub. He closed the door behind him, somewhat grumpily - he’d had to work late, and it was already past eight o’clock. Then a voice piped up behind him.
"And one day, when you get older, you will play Broken Sword," said a young woman to her toddler. "This is where Revolution are based." Cecil had stumbled across an annual pilgrimage to the site where British point-and-click adventures are made.
From the sounds of it, this young woman was not alone in making the journey. Cecil registered Revolution’s office address on Google a year ago - and received an email to say that 40,000 people have checked it out since. "We’re incredibly blessed to have a really positive and lovely collection of people who want us to succeed and love the games that we write," Cecil says.
"We love our interaction with them." These might read like the words of a good community manager, rather than a man expressing a deeply-held sentiment. Yet Cecil does not take his relationship with Revolution’s fans for granted.
At times in his long career, he has lost touch with his audience. And at others, he’s feared they might turn their back on him. In the early '80s, when Cecil was writing text adventures for Artic Computing, he would go to microfairs.
"We would meet fans, and it was wonderful.