I don't know who did the badge descriptions, I'm afraid - it was after my time, but I imagine the design for them was handled by Studio Liverpool's in-house graphic design team.

You're right about it being a dream job - for the most part I loved every moment of my six years there, but in the end I had to leave for family reasons.

To this day I'm still amazed I got the chance to work there - the studio manager during my time, Clemens Wangerin, took a chance on hiring me and once I had my foot in the door I just ended up doing lots of different things.

If I'm being honest, I was never really brave enough to push myself to the forefront while I was there. I think a lot of the time I was pretty star struck myself by all the awesome programmers and artists I was surrounded by.

For the first 18 months after I left I rued the day and wished so much that I could go back to a previous save-point in my life from before I chose to leave. When Clemens left at the end of 2009 and then nearly everybody I had worked with got made redundant earlier this year, the spell was broken and I knew there was no going back.

It was the best six years of my career, for sure - I don't think I'll ever have another job that lives up to it, but then how could I? Guy who runs a WipEout fan site lucks into a job at the place where it all started, then goes on to write the back story and join the WipEout development team.

It doesn't get any better than that, I don't think, which is why I'll always look back on my time there with such fondness.