http://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/jul/12/david-braben-elite-kickstarter-raspberry-pi How David Braben's 1984 space game Elite inspired the Rasberry Pi With sequel Elite Dangerous due, the open-world game developer says the freedom to explore matters Will Freeman The Observer, Sunday 13 July 2014 David Braben, the game developer David Braben, the game developer, set Elite in space because of the limits of eighties' rendering technology. Photograph: Kevin Nixon/Rex Features David Braben is one of the UK's most established game developers. He is the original creator of the legendary space exploration game, Elite, and a founder of the group that created the Raspberry Pi, a single-board computer designed to promote programming in schools that has sold 3m units. Elite's sequel, Elite Dangerous, is due to be released later this year. "So many things have shifted since I made the original Elite, 30 years ago. They're good things, they aren't all about hardware, and they've allowed us to do so much more than could be done back in 1984. "But ironically, things are also returning to how they were back then. There's a freedom today as developers are able to do what we like, often free from publishers. "If you look back to the 1980s, when a lot of people like me were writing games in our bedrooms, it was the same. In life I like to look behind the set. I like to see how the world works. For me, that's what the original Elite was. It wasn't a space game first and foremost. It was an open-world game that gave the player freedom. Freedom to explore, and freedom to lose themselves. "That was because I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to be limited in a game to linear 'A or B' choices. I want to explore and play and see how things turn out if I do them my own way. That's how Elite came about. That's what I want Dangerous to be. "The space setting was chosen because it was the only one we could render on the technology at the time. "The clue is in the word 'space'. It was a big open area with dots in it, and some ships. That was what we could get working on the BBC Micro and similar machines at the time. But I do really feel like the logical successors to the original Elite are games like Grand Theft Auto. "In its own way, creating Elite inspired the Raspberry Pi. "With Elite, I had a fantastic opportunity. I learned to program on the Acorn Atom, a computer quite like a BBC Micro. Everything in the box was there for me to learn making games. "Until Raspberry Pi, kids today didn't really have that. "So many devices are closed off and inaccessible. I wanted to offer what I had, making Elite 30 years ago, to people today, and fortunately, so did many others that formed the Raspberry Pi Foundation. "Which we all came together to make and which has now outsold the BBC Micro. "We don't need to make every child a coder. But if we can erode 'technofear' then that's amazing. Machines like the BBC Micro did that, and they were what made Britain – on a technology front – so great. "But then there was that huge gap, where computer science disappeared from schools for all those years. Now it's all coming back, and it's great if Raspberry Pi can be a part of that."