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ATI's Richard Huddy talks about Get In The Game

by Ryszard Sommefeldt on 28 June 2004, 00:00

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qay2

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Introduction

GITG logo


Ever seen NVIDIA's The Way It's Meant To Be Played (TWIMTBP) Logo? If you're a gamer, I'm sure you have. Did you realise there was a developer relations programme behind it, NVIDIA assisting developers to (hopefully) write good code that runs well on NVIDIA hardware? Did you also realise that ATI have a similar programme called Get In The Game (GITG)?

I'm guessing the majority of gamers won't have. ATI's deal with Valve regarding Half Life 2 might ring some bells, since that's a Get In The Game tie-in, but that's about the only really visible part of GITG.

Tasked with investigating both programmes for a series of articles on HEXUS, both from a gamer's perspective and from that of a developer, the chance to talk to both NVIDIA and ATI directly was not to be missed. Who better to ask about their developer relations programmes than the companies that run them? Google and website trawling only gets you so far. At ATI, the obvious man to talk to about GITG and developer relations is their head of European Developer Relations, Richard Huddy.

Richard is a veteran of the 3D graphics industry. Having previously held positions, amongst others, at Rendermorphics (a British company bought by Microsoft due to its impressive 3D graphics technology, and who's staff at the time helped integrate 3D into Windows and create the early DirectX 3D implementations), Criterion (another British 3D company, and who are still around) and NVIDIA, Richard has had 3D graphics developer experience since realtime 3D became feasible on consumer hardware, be that a CPU or GPU.

Now, heading up ATI's European Devrel operation, Richard has progressed full circle, from writing 3D code himself to helping those who write it now, allowing them to get the best out of ATI's hardware, primarily using DirectX 9.

While my initial focus for this article was GITG as a basic concept from a developer's point of view, I couldn't resist also asking Richard some targetted questions about his role at ATI and how he views and assists ATI's Get In The Game endeavour.

So here's Get In The Game from an ATI devrel perspective.