Thanks for posting this here, Jintor.
He was a friend in real life, he brought me to the old place and then here. If you don't mind, I'd like to talk about my recollections of Cam for a bit as a way to unpack his passing.
He loved comics and old games, particularly if they were on Commodore 64. I think he ended up with 5 of them at one time. And he loved Street Fighter 2, where at one point he had bought more than 10 versions. We counted them at one point. He loved to tell a story of how he was almost killed trying to buy a copy of a game (I think it was a home version of SF or SF2). He was also a huge fan of Jeff Minter's games. Whereas others just saw a headache simulator, Cam was in love with the craziness.
He was a games journalist before I knew him and apparently at onetime Atari tried to get him fired from a magazine gig after a bad review of something. He had a story about waiting in line for a taxi at E3 and Peter Molyneux just cut in front and took the cab "I got this one, alright lads."
We worked together on games for about 6-7 years so I can't speak too much about his journo days or his later side hustle of comics (which he loved).
He designed Ty the Tasmanian Tiger 2 for the GBA, then was the Lead Designer on the Legend of Spyro, where he had to deal with publisher Vivendi's mandate to make it less a platformer and more like Lord of the Rings. Cam's way of explaining the game, "It was just like Final Fight."
He was Lead Designer on Viva Pinata Party Animals, which was a fun project to work on, Legend of the Guardian's The Owls of Ga'hoole: The Game (which was based on the movie directed by Zack Snyder based on the Guardians of Ga'hoole books. No, me neither). No prizes for guessing he would sell that as Ace Combat. He moved over to PR for a bit then back to design with some work on Microsoft Game Room and then Happy Feet 2. That's were we stopped working together and were just mates. He went off and worked for a local distributor of games, then several years at a digital agency before a short lived web3 game dev (often, you go were the work is). He had just started a new gamedev job only a few months ago and he seemed happy enough.
Just as I'm typing this, so many various memories come flooding back.
At one E3, he managed to use his contacts to get us in to see Nintendo Wii stand (which, its funny to think about now, had a massive live to get into see and we were just waived inside). I have a photo somewhere were Peter Molyneux is having the wii demoed to him and Cam is photomombing him while playfully shaking his fist. We mucked around with a podcast for a few years before people knew what to do with them. He also wanted to do let's plays years before that became a massive thing. When we'd head off for lunch, he'd be impatient crossing the road and it was like watching 3D Frogger. He was obsessed with the show House for a while (which dates this of course). He was one of the few people I was close to but never had an argument with. He was generally an easy person to be around. He really opened up when he bumped into his friends from games journalism. He loved GDC and E3 and would try and visit the hotel figeroa to hang out with his pals.
We'd kept in touch but only saw each other occasionally after I moved overseas for a while. I last saw him when we had lunch in 2020. He just seemed really happy making his comics, particularly Rose. I regret not trying to pin him down for lunches more often but he just really wanted to spend every spare moment working on his comics, or evangelising the making of comics, teaching people about making comics. Games? Pfft! But he never really moved far from games professionally and always came back. I don't know why he didn't post more over here, I think he'd just had it with gamesby the point since he just liked 80s and 90s games. He was terribly upset by what he saw during Gamer Gate (friends of his harrassed and the general petty shittiness of the whole thing) so maybe that had something to do with it. He wasn't interested in CoD or Souls or Mass Effect, but I remember he was big on Football games and played a fair bit of FIFA. Though he'd probably stop that and go back to Sensible Soccer or Street Fighter 2. As well as his obsession with Jeff Minter's games, he also loved Sid Meier games and was really into Civilisation. Cam, if I've left anything out, tell me.
edit: Archie. He loved Archie comics.
Also, he had a continuing issue with getting gmails meant for some other Cameron Davis. I had hoped it was the other Cam, but no, it was our Cam.
He really was a legend. RIP Cameron. Condolences to Sabrina and his family.
