Re: Some sad news to report
@Aprone, I think to a large extent developers often get seen for their games or other development work, rather than as people. To a lot of people Tom Ward will be the guy who took over race way and montizuma's revenge orders from alchemy and who hosted a lot of old games like the pb and DanZ titles on his site. He however did a lot more than that ust like everyone. First in his development work, always had a great understanding of game mechanics having owned virtually every games console and computer going from several old Atari machines, a nes, snes, Sega MEgadrive (genesis), going right up to an Xbox, gameboy advanced, Ps3 and several modern machines (if his wife threw these things out this is sad indeed!),
He played these often with sighted assistance or along with his son, sinse he lost his site early on and found himself unable to play many more modern games. His understanding of game mechanics and what made a good game was always exceptional, whether talking about arcade titles back in the Atari days or modern fps, which is one reason I was always a little sad that he never quite got to the position where he made as many games as he desired.
Outside of games though he had a lot of interests. he was a keen scifi buff and a life long Trecky, indeed he'd read a hole lot of expanded universe fiction, one reason why his first game was startrek final conflict, a slightly more modern adaptation of Trek 2000 from Gma games with next gen sounds and uptodate ship mechanics.
He was also a huge starwars fan (I'm sorry I never heard his opinion on the new film).
He read a lot of sf and horror, but was in general less of a fantasy nut, indeed as I said I just finished Phantoms by Dean Koontz which was a book Tom recommended, he was also into steven King and John Saul.
one other major thing about Tom, is that he loved stuff that was going on. if people check the monthly topics, you'll find many c ontributions by tom about Christmas, halloween, and other public occasions in his town, festivities which he enjoyed a lot, especially sinse he could share them with his son. We also had some quite entertaining discussions of English vs American food and word choices (information I'm finding very useful myself at the moment given I'm marrying an American).
Tom himself did not have an easy life, and not just because he died so young. he met his wife rather early and they fell in love without being exactly friends. Tom always had a keen interest and knolidge of science and rationalism, while his wife and her family were very much right wing, ultra religious christians (he once told me his wife's relatives objected when he referd to "deviled eggs" at a picknick). This created major problems for his relationship, for example I know they argued about his Son's schooling, sinse where Tom wanted him to have a secula education, Tom's wife wanted his son to go to an ultra religious school and Tom found it highly difficult when for example his son told him that at school they'd learned scientists lied about the existance of dinosaurs.
This gave Tom a somewhat Jaundiced view of religion, particularly because where he was inclined to a more natural position, believing in things like process theology, his wife and her relatives wouldn't accept anything but strict adherence to their belief system. (one reason I was so annoyed it said "tom Attended several churches" in his obituary).
Tom did campaign against religiously intolerant legislation, for example some laws that were passed in the states which made it very hard for homosexuals to get jobs, and I know he counted himself a rationalist, and somewhere between an agnostic and a complete atheist, although he admited himself that this was mostly due to his less than ideal contact with his wife's christian relations.
He a lso had a facial problem which made it extremely difficult for his speaking voice to be heard, and this, combined with the fact that in his town there really wasn't much by way of activity beyond church related things made circumstances rather difficult.
On list, and on the forum Tom was always a nice guy, but undoubtedly was a very human man, occasionally prone to fits of annoyence, even in his moderating. However one thing I always respected very much about Tom is he was very prepared to admit when he'd spoken out of anger, and was a man who was fully aware of his own imperfections, which is something that very few people can do.
Personally, I counted Tom as a friend, someone who I'd known very well for the 10 years I've been in the audiogames community. I conversed with him on this forum, on the audeasy mailing list and occasionally by private e-mail on a dayly basis, I even beta tested and discussed having a friend of mine voice act for one of h is games.
Over the last few monthly topics, I've very much missed seeing Tom's updates, likewise I don't think the audeasy list will ever be the same without him.
I can't say what'll happen to his games or anything else, but personally I can say I've lost someone who was as close a friend as someone can be over the internet, and I hope some of these reminiscences will give people an idea of the man I personally knew, perhaps not always a happy man or an easy man, but certainly a good man and a good friend.
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