Chris Wilkins and Dan Stevens are the gentlemen who run Tower Games, and to officially introduce them and the site to our readers, I recently interviewed Wilkins via e-mail about their site in relation to military history and PC gaming. Enjoy!

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WW: To begin, thank you for the interview, Chris. Would you please tell us a bit about yourself?

CW: My name is Chris Wilkins, 37. Born in Australia. Lived there most of my life. Now live in Switzerland as I married a Swiss some 7 years ago and we decided to move here. My computer training is self-taught. However, I am not the "technical brains" behind Tower Games. I do the writing. Dan Stevens in Queensland is the one who knows programming, Java, databases and all the other things make it all work. However we work together as a very good team.

I’ve been involved in wargames for over twenty years. I first got started with Squad Leader (hate ASL). I have played many battles of ACW with miniatures (which is where the interest for Line of Muskets came from). Dan and I used to play with a group of friends when we were both in Sydney. It was a lot of fun.

I also play Rugby and love motor racing. And I’m very glad that Schumacher is finding the going a bit tougher this year. It makes the races more interesting.

WW: How did the creation of Tower Games come about?

CW: It really started one day at Dan’s place. We were on his back porch enjoying a glass of wine. I casually mentioned I thought it would be great if it was possible to open a window on a computer and play a wargame with someone. It would stop all the hassle of going to someone’s place, setting up, arguing over the rules, rolling dice, putting the pieces back on the right spots after the cat has run across the board, etc. Dan, with a knowing gling in his eye, said he had thought of a computer design that might just make such a thing happen. As I was involved in marketing, and can write, it seemed a perfect match. From there away we went.

It took at least one year before we had something that worked. From initial inception to having troops moving around in a meaningful way took a long time. As for the problems we had, there wasn’t really one BIG problem or bug but rather thousands of small bugs, each one capable of not letting the site or game work. We had to hunt each and every one down in the development phase.

We got no assistance from outside except making use of the standard developements of Java along the way. Since we started Sun has released a couple of versions of Java and each one has made things a bit easier for us.

And why Java? Because we write the game and the website, and then everyone, no matter what computer they have, can play it. We don’t have to write a version for each operating system. We are just making use of something that millions of other people across the world do.

WW: Why was the first Tower Games release Line of Muskets, an American Civil War game?

CW: It was really a question of game design. In the American Civil War the tactics were simple. Everyone stood in a line and fired. They didn’t go in for the eloquent manoeuvres of the Napoleonic times. And everyone had a musket, unlike WWII, where the assortment of weapons is staggering. So we thought it would be the easiest one to start with.

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