Obituary for Mick Schnelle – News

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With Mick Schnelle, one of the most prominent German game testers passed away last night – and my long-time editor colleague, employee, author and partner in dispute. A personal obituary.

Mike Schnell was not just any games journalist. He was one of the most senior of the “second generation” in Germany, he was one of the most influential for a long time, and he was one of the most non-conformist.

You probably knew Mick Schnelle from many sources and publications: From PC-Joker and Amiga Joker, from PC Player, from GameStar. Perhaps from his translation work for well-known book series. Or from Retro Gamer. Probably from the game veterans podcast or again here from GamersGlobal.

I knew him to be a very fine fellow under a very grumpy exterior. I deliberately chose the photo above. I know he liked it and it’s the Mick I’ll remember – and not the increasingly ill Mick who I last saw in person a few years ago and have only had casual contact with for the last two years would have.

Mick, who was born in Hagen in 1964, started with computer games in 1978 with the universe of video games on the television at home. This was followed by almost all classic home computers and home consoles and finally the PC. In his “Retro Revivals” in Retro Gamer he told some anecdotes from that time.

Only buying a new PC every ten years at the earliest, but then getting the best of the best that would last a long time was one of his not inconsiderable peculiarities. Which ultimately made it difficult for him to assign further tests, since he absolutely didn’t want to install Windows 10, and when he finally tried it, he couldn’t on his ancient luxury server.

Mick studied chemistry after school, but eventually knew that he never wanted to work in this field. He once said that the height of the university building must have given some chemistry students suicidal thoughts. Mick decided to become a playtester. So he broke off his studies and began his professional life on May 3, 1993 as an editor at Joker-Verlag.

His first test, on Space Hulk, appeared in PC Joker. The following quote (thanks to kultboy.com) comes some time later from the update test on the Amiga, from Amiga Joker 11/93:

Even on the PC, the board game version of the futuristic “Warhammer 40000″ scenario didn’t exactly make the sky shine – on the Amiga, the SF battles finally turned into raw bursts…”

Mick gave 44% and showed in his first tests what drives him and that he is not inclined to praise. In this context, it should be noted that the publications of the Joker publishing house did not necessarily have the reputation for the very strictest evaluations.

I got to know Mick when he joined the PC Player editorial team in 1996. Incidentally, he sat in the office with Roland Austinat, and entering this office was always a special experience, because of the friendly exchange of words between the two.

After being approached by “Headhunter” Toni Schwaiger, he then switched from PC Player to GameStar, where he was an important support for me with his expertise, but also with his age, especially in the first few months and years. And of course with his many contacts in the games industry.

Mick wasn’t a fan of beating around the bush. Hesitating in front of the industry or the opinion of the readers – or even in front of his superiors – was not his thing. If eight editors in the room had essentially the same opinion, a “wait a minute” was guaranteed to come from Mick. Majority consensus, “Oh, Mick!” sighs and the expectations of the editor-in-chief simply didn’t matter to him. He said what he thought and only let go of his point of view when he could be persuaded. And that was difficult! Often he ended up wrong or represented a recognizable minority opinion. But again and again, with his lonely contradiction, he made us think and came up with a better solution. Mick wasn’t a pleasant employee in these moments – but a valuable one.

In addition to his sense of his own opinion, Mick Schnelle also had a completely different side: he was a nice colleague who helped others instead of banging them on. He stood by his young colleague and officemate Rüdiger Steidle with advice and action. You could rely on Mick’s statements, and if I just wanted to chat or cheer myself up, I was happy to go to him.

The fact that some of the publishers laughed at him when he marched into the GameStar editorial office with his shopping bag (he considered a suitcase or a bag unnecessary) did not bother him. That was just as much a part of his little quirks as carrying his own food in a Tupperware can on any long-haul flights: “You can’t eat the food eaten on airplanes!”

Mick had many interests outside of computer games, as anyone who has ever talked shop with him about Buffy or How I Met Your Mother or many other series or films or books knows. And of course there was his big pop idol Helene Fischer, whom he visited at numerous concerts and for whom he indirectly worked as an editorial office for a while.

For “Spaceship GameStar” or “The G Files” or other GameStar editorial videos, Mick was never above playing the role of the cute, goofy scientist or technician, be it as the engine room boss, rubber chicken abuser or Dr. Test; he also wrote some of the screenplays for RSGS. But that was always a persona – in his actual tester job, Mick approached things completely differently.

Namely as serious as it is unconventional. I still remember how he solved a StarCraft mission in testing, in which you were supposed to shoot a way through a troop transport, in a completely different way: by pixel-by-pixel advance and with the active use of save/load. So he got through the map without an exchange of fire, completely different from what Blizzard intended, but in a typical Mick way – and with insights into game design.

In this way he tracked down many bugs and imperfections, especially in his favorite genres, simulation and building games. Just as an example, here is his 2014 review of Stronghold Crusader 2 – a game from a series he actually loved: striving for fairness, but relentless in the matter, and putting his finger into the smallest wound.

Mick’s philosophy as a game tester is perhaps best summed up in his reply to a column by Christian Schmidt. The latter had complained that German games journalism was not progressing, but remained in petty feature evaluation for die-hard game fans. Mick’s reply column wasn’t the friendliest and wasn’t the most linguistically polished, but it was absolutely clear and honest: Mick wasn’t ashamed of the classic playtester’s alleged “little littleness”, he prided himself on being a craftsman and advocate in the service of his readers .

In truth, Mick was never a bean counter: he didn’t like simulations when their manual was as long as possible – although he proudly mentioned reading it in the test – but when the creators hadn’t forgotten the fun of playing among all the features. He loved the early Sid Meier Sims, also Comanche or titles with dynamic campaigns like Eurofighter Tycoon. But alas, it was too much like “pilot training” instead of fun, see for example the test of IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad. In general, he didn’t like the direction his body and stomach genre took after the turn of the millennium.

In recent years, Mick has tested one or the other game for GamersGlobal, which often resulted in a “no test therefore”: After 10, 15 or 20 hours invested, he often contacted me and said that the game in question was so buggy and unfinished that he refuses to judge this crap. He doesn’t want any money for it either. Most of the time I was able to persuade him to at least write or draft a “non-test” news item, and then sometimes, many patches later, to post the test. An example of this would be X4 Foundations.

Due to health reasons, working with Mick slowly but steadily became more difficult. His PC situation, see the anecdote above, wasn’t helpful either, because the review codes simply didn’t work for him anymore. But above all, his body didn’t play along anymore, according to his own words, he lacked the concentration.

Mick didn’t let his fate get him down: when I phoned or emailed him, he didn’t make a big deal out of his multiple ailments. As his health continued to decline, he still typed the odd text on the iPad, but eventually the collaboration ended. His last text on GamersGlobal should have been the review for Aquanox – Deep Descent in 2020.

Until the beginning of July 2022, he still wrote regularly on his Facebook account how his beak had grown. With his way of defending his own, often borderline opinions, fearlessly and against any protest, he offended many of his contemporaries. So basically the same as before. But unlike earlier colleagues and certainly many recipients, the social media clientele could no longer discover the soft core under the rough shell.

For me, Mick is one of the most critical, competent and fearless editors I have had the privilege of meeting in almost three decades of games journalism. He had rough edges, hobbies and quirks, he was rarely comfortable, but always open to discussion. He was honest. he was funny He was a real character.

Mick Schnelle passed away on the night of July 27th to 28th, 2022. He was 58 years old.