“Even to this day, I think people would be surprised to hear how much of Wrestling Empire is the exact same logic, statistics and mathematics I was messing around with when I was eight years old,” Dickie said. When Dickie got his hands on a computer as a teenager, the natural progression of his creative mindset brought him to computer games where he was able to replicate the games and ideas he crafted physically onto a screen. In doing so, he quickly discovered he had a knack for entertaining people through his creations. Long before he owned a computer, Dickie spent his leisure time putting together his own original card, dice and board games fashioned out of cardboard. His childhood consisted of him spending the majority of his time in his parents’ newspaper press. I’m quite a sensitive person, so to be around that 24 hours a day, I wasn’t the right person for it and I’m a lot happier because of it.”īorn and raised in the North of England, Dickie has been making games his entire life. It doesn’t reach me and doesn’t get to me, though it used to drive me crazy. “I think I’ve reached a point in my career where I’m fairly well isolated from the negativity. “I realized there is no happiness to be found in comment sections,” Dickie said. The demanding, and in many cases, impolite mentions that find their way to the top of his posts don’t phase him the way they did at one time, and he has even found a way to eliminate Twitter mentions from his daily routine. Connecting with his fans is one of his favorite parts about the job however, he has notably steered clear of all other forums for feedback, particularly the comments sections on his Facebook and YouTube pages. To this day, he sets aside a couple of hours every morning to read and reply to emails, even if it means having to break out Google Translate. That is not to say MDickie doesn’t enjoy interacting with his fans. It has since become this hub where I can set the right tone with more than 100,000 people and that’s a very powerful tool with my business now.” I could have sat there and taken the abuse, or I could confront it in the middle of the ring and say I’m going to harness this better than my enemies, turn the tide on them and turn it into a source of positivity in my own life. It was a real cause of anxiety for me, so by turning the logo from red to silver really meant a lot. “Just imagine the idea that 50,000 people could hate you and 1,000 people would like you. “What meant so much to me about this award was when it was red, it made me uncomfortable as my channel started as this source of ridicule,” Dickie said. He thanked the fans by sharing some words of wisdom that helped him through troubled times and abusive feedback: “If you don’t like the story life is telling you, tell life a different story.”
He blew past 100,000 subscribers in February of last year, and upon doing so received a silver plaque. The proof is in the pudding when it comes to Dickie’s work, and his growing YouTube channel is no exception.
He has been called the “video game equivalent to Tommy Wiseau,” “the worst developer of all time,” and someone who is “in on the idea that he knows his games are kind of bad.” However, upon playing even 10 minutes of Dickie’s latest effort, it should become quickly apparent to the average gamer that nothing could be further from the truth. However, many of these reviews focus less on the nuts and bolts of his games and more on unfounded rhetoric and labeling.
Despite having reached tens of millions of people from all over the globe with PC and mobile efforts, Dickie has endured some scathing reviews for otherwise successful games in the traditional sense. The road to Wrestling Empire has not been easy for the English developer, who also goes by MDickie, the eponymous name of his one-man shop.
For independent video game developer Mat Dickie, a 20-year journey has landed him and his signature series Wrestling Empire on the Nintendo Switch, bringing a familiar style of game home on a console that’s not only perfect for it, but whose developer served as the inspiration for a career that has spanned more than 50 published games.