About
I am Ben Deane, a thirtysomething Englishman living in Los Angeles. By day I am a video game programmer. In my spare time I am a dabbler in all sorts of things. I go by the online moniker elbeno.
My interests include anime, arcade games, board games, bread, computer games, computers, cryptic crosswords, cryptography, Drogon, free software, gadgets, Go (the board game), Harry Hill, Haskell, heraldry, interactive fiction, jazz, juggling, languages (both natural and computer), Linux, Lisp, MAME, Marmite, mathematics, open source, poetry, programming, science, table tennis, tiddlywinks, trivia, unicycling, and video games.
If you google for me…
- I’m NOT the Ben Deane who lives in Lenexa, KS.
- I AM the Ben Deane who has the Amazon listmania lists: “Stop Thinking in C++”, “C++ Programmer’s Bookshelf” and “Popular Science Classics”.
- I AM the Ben Deane who worked on Populous: The Beginning.
- I’m NOT the Ben Deane on Myspace from Belgium.
- I’m NOT the Benjamin Deane who’s a programming coordinator for heartland.k10 church.
- I’m NOT any of the Benjamin Deanes who were born in the 1600 and 1700s.
- I AM the Benjamin Deane who appears on Mobygames with various credits on games developed by Bullfrog, Kuju and Electronic Arts.
- I AM the Ben Deane who took part in the London Open 2000 at Bridge Leisure Centre, Sydenham.
- I AM the Ben Deane who was blown to pieces by a large quantity of Semtex left outside my window in Emmanuel College.
- I’m NOT Ben Deane, the innovative developer-builder whose homes helped to define the California style in home building in the ’60s.
- I AM elbeno on Myspace, Wikihow, LiveJournal, flickr, and a few other places.
My gameography in approximate chronological order:
- Syndicate Wars (1996)
- Theme Hospital (1997)
- Dungeon Keeper (1997)
- Populous: The Beginning (1998)
- Theme Park World (aka Sim Theme Park) (1999)
- Shogun: Total War (2000)
- Shogun: Total War – The Mongol Invasion (2001)
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s (Sorcerer’s) Stone (2001)
- Reign of Fire (2002)
- Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior (2003)
- Goldeneye: Rogue Agent (2004)
- Medal of Honor: Airborne (2007)
- Tiberium (cancelled 2008)
- Battle.net (2010 onwards)
- StarCraft II (2010)
- World of Warcraft (2010 onwards)
- Diablo III (in production)
You can reach me at “blog@” this domain.
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