Marc Schröder



Marc Schröder is the creator of the Poke646 series. Born in Germany, he created what would become Poke646 as the theme for his diploma and graduated in graphic design from Fachhochschule Münster University of Applied Sciences.

After finishing Poke646 and releasing it to critical acclaim he founded the independent design studio Mindmotor.Studios, under which he would produce Poke646's sequel, Poke646: Vendetta, and do freelance work such as sound, website, graphic, and game design, most notably being the web designer and texture artist for Black Widow Games.

Biography
"Marc started playing Pong in the late 70's and programming on the C64 in the early 80's. Two decades later, his videogame addiction resulted in the critically acclaimed Half-Life SP mod Poke646, developed as his graduation project in graphics and design at the University of Applied Sciences. Marc worked for Gearbox Software as a level designer and texture artist in the commercial games Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and James Bond 007: Nightfire, and now runs his own design studio."

- Marc's Bio on the Black Widow Games Website

"In mid 2000 I had to decide what theme to choose for my diploma in graphic and design at university. Here in germany a diploma at university is more than just a course or a single grade, it should somehow reflect everything you've learned over the past years and sum it up in one piece of work. So I asked myself: "What did you learn during the last 5 years?". And the longer this question lasted in my head, the clearer the answer became: "Gaming!". Well, I never actually learned anything about gaming in any course at university, but it's been my passion since the early 80's so what better than to mix fun and work? The idea of a diploma with a Half-Life modification took shape..."

- Introduction to the Backstory of Poke646's Conception (Archived)

"In the early beginning, Poke646 was only planned as a short episode with a couple of new weapons, mainly a showroom of my graphical capabilities for my professors, so to say. Back then I didn't even have a team nor did I think I'd need one. However, very soon Poke646 developed more and more, I hired team members and overhauled the concept a couple of times. I think it was this process of slowly adding new features instead of starting with an overloaded concept which kept us on track and boosted our creativity every time we worked on the mod."

- Conception of Poke646 – Marc Schröder Interview with HomeLan Fed (Archived) (Originally, I had the link shortened via Google due to formatting issues, but Google made changes to their service and now the link is probably lost forever. Thanks Google, and thanks a lot Fandom cause if you had just made links longer than like, five characters work instead of breaking the page horrifically, this wouldn't have been an issue in the first place. Thanks a lot.)

"From the feedback I receive, Poke646 seems to be exactly what the players expect from a well crafted SP mod: a compelling storyline, lots of cool new stuff and interesting environments to explore. Of course you have that couple of hardcore CS gamers who complain about the weaponry or the lack of realism, but since these folks have never been my targeted audience anyway, I can well live with that. As long as it is constructive, I really appreciate all kinds of criticism because it shows that the players out there actually care about what they're playing."

- Player Reception – Marc Schröder Interview with HomeLan Fed (Archived) (Link was shortened due to Fandom being garbage, then the shortened link no longer works due to Google being garbage. See above for more info.)