Casino Royale - Comédie sur Télé 7 Jours

UPDATED:2020-01-20 - Made some bug fixes and documented the apps better.
Hello Everyone!
I've written a script for unnecessary Win 10 apps and would like to get some feedback. I've been only the sole "script guy" at my work so please be gentle with your comments :)
I've focused on some new elements I haven't used much before like help comments, logging, and try/catch blocks that I can standardize on across my scripts.
In my limited testing I'm using this as a Computer logon script through GPO to run this script.
Thanks!
Note, I just realized I have a few bugs to work out. I was testing with Powershell 7 RC1 with the more recent changes I've made and didn't realized I had broke are some things running in 5.1. Like 'split-path -leafbase'.
Shoot, well either way I was looking for more constructive feedback on the layout, logic, and process.

<# .SYNOPSIS Removes installed and provisioned Appx packages in Windows 10. .DESCRIPTION To simplify the user experience and to streamline the configuration of Windows this script removes unneccesary Windows 10 apps. These have been sorted into 4 categories: Home = Computers used in a home setting. The difference between this and the ones below is this keeps the Xbox apps, and Mail app as they make sense on a personal computer. Named = Computers that are normally used by a single person in a typical office environment. Or at least typical where I work. Shared = Computers that are normally shared by multiple people with shared logins and have more direct functions (Lab PC, HR Kiosk, Conference Room PC etc.) Server = Computers that are used in a server type function, running Windows 10, and not used as a desktop PC. (Manufacturing floor PC, badge printing system etc.) Note that these lists are cumulative. Home = Home list Named = Home + Named lists Shared = Home + Named + Shared lists Server = Named + Shared + Server lists Suggest putting this in a computer based GPO login script .EXAMPLE PS C:\>.\Remove-Win10Apps.ps1 Removes all apps from the default home list asking for confirmation for each found app. Writes log to 'C:\Logs\Remove-Win10Apps.log'. .EXAMPLE PS C:\>.\Remove-Win10Apps.ps1 -LogPath '\\server\share\appremoval.log' Removes all apps from the default home list asking for confirmation for each found app. Writes log to '\\server\share\appremoval.log'. .EXAMPLE PS C:\>.\Remove-Win10Apps.ps1 -PCType "Shared" -Whatif Won't remove but just list all apps from the combined default home, named, and then shared list that it's found. .EXAMPLE PS C:\>.\Remove-Win10Apps.ps1 -PCType "Server" -Confirm:$false Removes all apps from the default home, named, shared, and server list without prompting for confirmation. Writes log to 'C:\Logs\Remove-Win10Apps.log'. .INPUTS None .OUTPUTS None .NOTES More than just inspiration taken from the following https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10/blob/mastescripts/remove-default-apps.ps1 http://guidestomicrosoft.com/2016/08/26/simple-function-for-logging-powershell-script/ #> #Requires -RunAsAdministrator #Requires -Version 5.1 [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess = $true, ConfirmImpact = 'High')] param ( # Specifies the list of apps from Home (the least removed) to Server (the most removed) [ValidateSet("Home", "Named", "Shared", "Server")] [String]$PCType = "Home", # Enter the full path to where you'd like the script to log it's changes. [parameter(Mandatory = $false)] [ValidateScript( { if ($_ -notmatch "(\.log)") { throw "The file specified in the path argument must be of the type .log" } return $true })] [System.IO.FileInfo]$LogPath = 'C:\Logs\Remove-Win10Apps.log', # Lists the entries in the different PCTypes depending on what's selected and closes [switch]$List ) begin { function Write-Log { param( # Enter text you'd like to display on a single line in the log. [parameter(Mandatory = $true)] [string]$Text, [parameter(Mandatory = $true)] # Enter the severity of the log entry. [ValidateSet("WARNING", "ERROR", "INFO")] [string]$Type, # Specifies the path to save the log file to. [ValidateScript( { if ($_ -notmatch "(\.log)") { throw "The file specified in the path argument must be of the type .log" } return $true })] # Sets the path to the log file to C:\Logs\ + the name of the script running the function + .log [System.IO.FileInfo]$Path = 'C:\Logs\' + ([io.path]::GetFileNameWithoutExtension($MyInvocation.PSCommandPath)) + '.log' ) #Makes sure that it updates the "exists" property or else the file keeps getting recreated. $Path.Refresh() if ($Path.Exists -eq $false) { New-Item -ItemType 'file' -Path $Path -Force } [string]$LogMessage = [System.String]::Format("[$(Get-Date)] -"), $Type, $Text Add-Content -Path $Path -Value $LogMessage } Write-Log -Text "Starting Remove-Win10Apps script with -PCType $PCType and -LogPath $LogPath" -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath #Checks OS is Windows 10 and terminates if it's not. if ([Environment]::OSVersion.Version.Major -lt '10') { Write-Warning 'Exiting...you must be running a version ofy Windows 10 to run this script.' Write-Log -Text 'Exiting...you must be running a version of Windows 10 to run this script.' -Type 'ERROR' -Path $LogPath Exit } #Region App Listing $AppsHomePC = @( "Microsoft.3DBuilder" #3D Builder - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/3d-builde9wzdncrfj3t6 - View, create, and personalize 3D objects using 3D Builder. "Microsoft.Appconnector" "Microsoft.BingFinance" #MSN Money - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/msn-money/9wzdncrfhv4v - Finance simplified. Know more about your money with the world’s best financial news and data. Grow your finances with handy tools and calculators, any time and anywhere. "Microsoft.BingFoodAndDrink" #MSN Food & Drink - NA (Discontinued) "Microsoft.BingHealthAndFitness" #MSN Health & Fitness - NA (Discontinued) "Microsoft.BingNews" #Microsoft News - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-news/9wzdncrfhvfw - Delivers breaking news and trusted, in-depth reporting from the world's best journalists. "Microsoft.BingSports" #MSN Sports - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/msn-sports/9wzdncrfhvh4 - The MSN Sports app is packed with live scores & in-depth game experiences for more than 150 leagues. "Microsoft.BingTranslator" #Translator - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/translato9wzdncrfj3pg - Microsoft Translator enables you to translate text and speech, have translated conversations, and even download AI-powered language packs to use offline. "Microsoft.BingTravel" #MSN Travel - NA (Discontinued) "Microsoft.BingWeather" #MSN Weather - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/msn-weathe9wzdncrfj3q2 - The best way to plan your day. Get the latest weather conditions, whether you're hitting the slopes, or the beach, or checking the forecast for your commute. See accurate 10-day and hourly forecasts for whatever you do. "Microsoft.CommsPhone" "Microsoft.ConnectivityStore" "Microsoft.FreshPaint" #Fresh Paint - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/fresh-paint/9wzdncrfjb13 - Unleash your inner creative with Fresh Paint – the ultimate canvas for your big ideas. Fresh Paint is a fun and easy to use painting app with the right tools for artists of all ages. "Microsoft.GetHelp" #Get Help "Microsoft.Getstarted" #Microsoft Tips "Microsoft.Messaging" #Microsoft Messaging - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-messaging/9wzdncrfjbq6 - Microsoft Messaging enables, quick, reliable SMS, MMS and RCS messaging from your phone. To get started, select Messaging from the All apps list. "Microsoft.Microsoft3DViewer" #3D Viewer - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/3d-viewe9nblggh42ths - Easily view 3D models and animations in real-time. 3D Viewer lets you view 3D models with lighting controls, inspect model data and visualize different shading modes. In Mixed Reality mode, combine the digital and physical. Push the boundaries of reality and capture it all with a video or photo to share. "Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub" #Office - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/office/9wzdncrd29v9 - The Office app enables you to get the most out of Office by helping you find all your Office apps and files in one place so you can jump quickly into your work. "Microsoft.MicrosoftPowerBIForWindows" #Power BI - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/power-bi/9nblgggzlxn1 - Monitor your most important business data, directly from your device. Get a quick overview with intuitive, at-a-glance visuals, or dive deep into your data and discover new insights with interactive dashboards and reports. "Microsoft.MicrosoftSolitaireCollection" #Microsoft Solitaire Collection - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-solitaire-collection/9wzdncrfhwd2 - Check out the new look and feel of Microsoft Solitaire Collection on Windows 10! "Microsoft.MinecraftUWP" #Minecraft - NA (Discontinued) "Microsoft.MixedReality.Portal" #Mixed Reality Portal - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/mixed-reality-portal/9ng1h8b3zc7m - iscover Windows Mixed Reality and dive into more than 3,000 games and VR experiences from Steam®VR and Microsoft Store. Get extraordinary access to live sports and entertainment and connect with others in the ultimate high-octane VR gaming experience. "Microsoft.NetworkSpeedTest" #Network Speed Test - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/network-speed-test/9wzdncrfhx52 - Network Speed Test measures your network delay, download speed and upload speed. "Microsoft.Office.Sway" #Sway - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/sway/9wzdncrd2g0j - Create visually striking newsletters, presentations, and documentation in minutes. "Microsoft.OfficeLens" #Office Lens - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/office-lens/9wzdncrfj3t8 - Office Lens trims, enhances, and makes pictures of whiteboards and docs readable. You can use Office Lens to convert images to PDF, Word and PowerPoint files, and you can even save images to OneNote or OneDrive. "Microsoft.OneConnect" #Paid Wi-Fi & Cellular or Mobile Plans# "Microsoft.People" #Microsoft People - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-people/9nblggh10pg8 - People in Windows 10 puts all the ways you connect with all your friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances in one place, so it’s faster than ever to keep in touch. Check out what your people are up to across the services they use and choose how you want to connect with them. "Microsoft.Print3D" #Print 3D - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/print-3d/9pbpch085s3s - Quickly and easily prepare objects for 3D printing on your PC. With support for Wifi printers, you can 3D print from anywhere on your network. Get the best out of your printer by tuning many custom settings like the extruder temperature and printing speed. "Microsoft.SkypeApp" #Skype - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/skype/9wzdncrfj364 - Skype keeps the world talking. Say “hello” with an instant message, voice or video call – all for free, no matter what device they use Skype on. Skype is available on phones, tablets, PCs, and Macs. "Microsoft.Wallet" #Microsoft Pay# "Microsoft.Whiteboard" #Whiteboard - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-whiteboard/9mspc6mp8fm4 - Meet the freeform digital canvas where ideas, content, and people come together. "Microsoft.WindowsFeedbackHub" #Feedback Hub - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/feedback-hub/9nblggh4r32n - Help us make Windows better! Provide feedback about Windows and apps by sharing your suggestions or problems. If you want to be even more involved, then join the Windows Insider program and keep up with the latest alerts and announcements, rate the builds, participate in feedback Quests, and earn badges. "Microsoft.WindowsMaps" #Windows Maps - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-maps/9wzdncrdtbvb - Maps is your guide to everywhere. Find your way with voice navigation and turn-by-turn driving, transit, and walking directions. Search for places to get directions, business info, and reviews. Download maps to use when you’re offline. Tour the world virtually with breathtaking aerial imagery and 360 degree street-level views. Plus, you get the same experience across all your Windows 10 PCs and phones. "Microsoft.WindowsPhone" "Microsoft.WindowsReadingList" #Windows Reading List - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-reading-list/9wzdncrfj3rx - Do you ever run out of time to read articles or watch videos you’ve found online? With Reading List, you can easily track and manage all of the content you want to get back to later in a beautiful display. You can share content to your list from the web or from other apps and easily come back to it when you have more time. Whatever you like to read or watch, the app makes it easy to save, find and get back to things you like, listing content you've saved in chronological order. "Microsoft.YourPhone" #Your Phone - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/your-phone/9nmpj99vjbwv - You love your phone. So does your PC. Get instant access to everything you love on your phone, right on your PC. Reply to your text messages with ease, stop emailing yourself photos, and receive and manage your phone’s notifications on your PC. #3rd Party "2FE3CB00.PicsArt-PhotoStudio" "46928bounde.EclipseManager" #Eclipse "613EBCEA.PolarrPhotoEditorAcademicEdition" "6Wunderkinder.Wunderlist" "7EE7776C.LinkedInforWindows" "89006A2E.AutodeskSketchBook" "9E2F88E3.Twitter" "A278AB0D.DisneyMagicKingdoms" "A278AB0D.MarchofEmpires" "ActiproSoftwareLLC.562882FEEB491" #Code Writer "AdobeSystemIncorporated.AdobePhotoshop" #Photoshop Express "CAF9E577.Plex" #Plex "ClearChannelRadioDigital.iHeartRadio" "D52A8D61.FarmVille2CountryEscape" "D5EA27B7.Duolingo-LearnLanguagesforFree" #Duolingo "DB6EA5DB.CyberLinkMediaSuiteEssentials" "DolbyLaboratories.DolbyAccess" "Drawboard.DrawboardPDF" "Facebook.Facebook" #Facebook "Fitbit.FitbitCoach" "flaregamesGmbH.RoyalRevolt2" "Flipboard.Flipboard" #Flipboard "GAMELOFTSA.Asphalt8Airborne" "KeeperSecurityInc.Keeper" "king.com.*" "king.com.BubbleWitch3Saga" "king.com.CandyCrushFriends" "king.com.CandyCrushSaga" "king.com.CandyCrushSodaSaga" "NORDCURRENT.COOKINGFEVER" "PandoraMediaInc.29680B314EFC2" #Pandora "Playtika.CaesarsSlotsFreeCasino" "ShazamEntertainmentLtd.Shazam" "TheNewYorkTimes.NYTCrossword" "ThumbmunkeysLtd.PhototasticCollage" "TuneIn.TuneInRadio" "WinZipComputing.WinZipUniversal" "XINGAG.XING" ) $AppsNamedPC = @( "microsoft.windowscommunicationsapps" #Mail and Calendar - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/mail-and-calenda9wzdncrfhvqm - The Mail and Calendar apps help you stay up to date on your email, manage your schedule and stay in touch with people you care about the most. Designed for both work and home, these apps help you communicate quickly and focus on what’s important across all your accounts. Supports Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Gmail, Yahoo! and other popular accounts. "Microsoft.XboxApp" #Xbox Console Companion - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-console-companion/9wzdncrfjbd8 - The Xbox app brings together your friends, games, and accomplishments across Xbox One and Windows 10 devices. The best multiplayer gaming just got better. "Microsoft.XboxGameOverlay" #Xbox Game Bar - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/xbox-game-ba9nzkpstsnw4p - Win+G it with Xbox Game Bar, the customizable, gaming overlay built into Windows 10. Xbox Game Bar works with most PC games, giving you instant access to widgets for screen capture and sharing, finding new teammates with LFG, and chatting with Xbox friends across Xbox console, mobile, and PC—all without leaving your game. "Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay" #Xbox Gaming Overlay "Microsoft.XboxIdentityProvider" #Xbox Identity Provider "Microsoft.XboxSpeechToTextOverlay" #3rd Party "4DF9E0F8.Netflix" #Netflix - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/netflix/9wzdncrfj3tj - Netflix has something for everyone. Watch TV shows and movies recommended just for you, including award-winning Netflix original series, movies, and documentaries. There’s even a safe watching experience just for kids with family-friendly entertainment. "SpotifyAB.SpotifyMusic" #Spotify - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/spotify-music/9ncbcszsjrsb - Love music? Play your favorite songs and albums free on Windows 10 with Spotify. ) $AppsSharedPC = @( "Microsoft.Office.OneNote" #OneNote - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/onenote/9wzdncrfhvjl - OneNote is your digital notebook for capturing and organizing everything across your devices. Jot down your ideas, keep track of classroom and meeting notes, clip from the web, or make a to-do list, as well as draw and sketch your ideas. "Microsoft.Todos" #Microsoft To Do - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-to-do-lists-tasks-reminders/9nblggh5r558 - Got something on your mind? Get Microsoft To Do. Whether you want to increase your productivity, decrease your stress levels, or just free up some mental space, Microsoft To Do makes it easy to plan your day and manage your life. "Microsoft.WindowsCamera" #Windows Camera - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-camera/9wzdncrfjbbg - The Camera app is faster and simpler than ever. Just point and shoot to take great pictures automatically on any PC or tablet running Windows 10. "Microsoft.WindowsSoundRecorder" #Windows Voice Recorder - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-voice-recorde9wzdncrfhwkn - Record sounds, lectures, interviews, and other events. Mark key moments as you record, edit, or play them back. ) $AppsServerPC = @( "Microsoft.MSPaint" #Paint 3D - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/paint-3d/9nblggh5fv99 - Whether you’re an artist or just want to try out some doodles–Paint 3D makes it easy to unleash your creativity and bring your ideas to life. Classic Paint has been reimagined, with an updated look and feel and a ton of new brushes and tools. And now, create in every dimension. Make 2D masterpieces or 3D models that you can play with from all angles. "Microsoft.MicrosoftStickyNotes" #Microsoft Sticky Notes - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-sticky-notes/9nblggh4qghw - Need to remember something for later? Use Microsoft Sticky Notes. They're the simple way to quickly save something for later, so you can stay in the flow. With Sticky Notes, you can create notes, type, ink or add a picture, add text formatting, stick them to the desktop, move them around there freely, close them to the Notes list, and sync them across devices and apps like OneNote Mobile, Microsoft Launcher for Android, and Outlook for Windows. "Microsoft.WindowsAlarms" #Windows Alarms & Clock - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-alarms-clock/9wzdncrfj3pr - A combination of alarm clock, world clock, timer, and stopwatch. Set alarms and reminders, check times around the world, and time your activities, including laps and splits. "Microsoft.WindowsCalculator" #Windows Calculator - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-calculato9wzdncrfhvn5 - A simple yet powerful calculator that includes standard, scientific, and programmer modes, as well as a unit converter. It's the perfect tool to add up a bill, convert measurements in a recipe or other project, or complete complex math, algebra, or geometry problems. Calculator history makes it easy to confirm if you've entered numbers correctly. "Microsoft.Windows.Photos" #Microsoft Photos -https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-photos/9wzdncrfjbh4 - View and edit your photos and videos, make movies, and create albums. Try video remix to instantly create a video from photos and videos you select. Use the video editor for fine-tuned adjustments — change filters, text, camera motion, music, and more. You can even add 3D effects like butterflies, lasers, or explosions that magically appear in your video. "Microsoft.ZuneMusic" #Groove Music - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/groove-music/9wzdncrfj3pt - Listen to your favorite music in Groove on your Windows, iOS, and Android devices. Create a playlist with music you've purchased or uploaded to OneDrive or pick your background music on Xbox One. "Microsoft.ZuneVideo" #Movies & TV - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/movies-tv/9wzdncrfj3p2 - All your movies and TV shows, all in one place, on all your devices. Movies & TV brings you the latest entertainment in one simple, fast, and elegant app on Windows. On your PC and Windows Mobile, the app lets you play and manage videos from your personal collection. On all your devices, you can use the app to browse and play movies and TV shows you’ve purchased from the Store. ) <#---APPS THAT SHOULD NEVER BE REMOVED FOR ANY TYPE OF WINDOWS PC $RemainingAppsForReference = @( #"1527c705-839a-4832-9118-54d4Bd6a0c89" #File Picker - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"c5e2524a-ea46-4f67-841f-6a9465d9d515" #File Explorer - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"E2A4F912-2574-4A75-9BB0-0D023378592B" #App Resolver UX - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"F46D4000-FD22-4DB4-AC8E-4E1DDDE828FE" #Add Suggested Folders To Library - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"InputApp" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin" #Microsoft.AAD.Broker.Plugin - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.AccountsControl" #Microsoft.AccountsControl - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Advertising.Xaml" #Microsoft.Advertising - Framework apps which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.AsyncTextService" #Microsoft.AsyncTextService - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.BioEnrollment" #Hello setup UI - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.CredDialogHost" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.DesktopAppInstaller" #App Installer - Keeping just in case we ever want to deploy UWP apps #'Microsoft.DirectXRuntime' #? - Framework apps which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.ECApp" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.HEIFImageExtension" #HEIF Image Extensions - Keeping so HEIF compressed images can be opened #"Microsoft.LockApp" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge" #Microsoft Edge - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.MicrosoftEdgeDevToolsClient" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Framework.1.3" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Framework.1.6" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Framework.1.7" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Framework.2.1" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Framework.2.2" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.1.4" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.1.6" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.1.7" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.NET.Native.Runtime.2.2" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.PPIProjection" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.RemoteDesktop" #Remote Desktop - Functionality, expected to be there #"Microsoft.Services.Store.Engagement" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.StorePurchaseApp" #Store Purchase App#Framework app which other apps depend on (not really but needed for store to function) #"Microsoft.UI.Xaml.2.0" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.UI.Xaml.2.1" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.UI.Xaml.2.2" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.VCLibs.120.00.Universal" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.VCLibs.140.00" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.VCLibs.140.00.UWPDesktop" #Framework app which other apps depend on #"Microsoft.VP9VideoExtensions" #Keeping so VP9 media can be played back #"Microsoft.WebMediaExtensions" #Web Media Extensions#basic functionality #"Microsoft.WebpImageExtension" #Webp Image Extension#basic functionality #"Microsoft.Win32WebViewHost" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.Apprep.ChxApp" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.AssignedAccessLockApp" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.CapturePicker" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.ContentDeliveryManager" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.Cortana" #Cortana - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.NarratorQuickStart" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.OOBENetworkCaptivePortal" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.OOBENetworkConnectionFlow" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.ParentalControls" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.PeopleExperienceHost" #People Hub - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.PinningConfirmationDialog" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.SecHealthUI" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.SecureAssessmentBrowser" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.ShellExperienceHost" #Start - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.Windows.XGpuEjectDialog" #? - apps which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.WindowsFeedback" #Windows Feedback - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Microsoft.WindowsStore" #Microsoft Store -Vital functionality #"Microsoft.Xbox.TCUI" #? - App shouldn't be removed as it causes issues with Windows Photos, Windows Hello and others #"Microsoft.XboxGameCallableUI" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Windows.ContactSupport" #Contact Support - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Windows.CBSPreview" #? - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"windows.immersivecontrolpanel" #Settings - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage #"Windows.PrintDialog" #Print UI - App which cannot be removed using Remove-AppxPackage ) #> #EndRegion App Listing switch ($PCType) { Home { $AllAppsToRemove = $AppsHomePC } Named { $AllAppsToRemove = $AppsHomePC + $AppsNamedPC } Shared { $AllAppsToRemove = $AppsHomePC + $AppsNamedPC + $AppsSharedPC } Server { $AllAppsToRemove = $AppsHomePC + $AppsNamedPC + $AppsSharedPC + $AppsServerPC } } If ($list) { Write-Output "LIST OF APPS IN -PCType $PCType" ForEach ($App in $AllAppsToRemove) { Write-Output $App } Break } $ProvisionedAppxPackages = Get-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online $ProvisionedAppxPackagesToRemove = @() #Determine what apps that are provisioned on this PC to be removed by comparing against the list (Home, Named, Shared, Server) foreach ($Appx in $AllAppsToRemove) { $ProvisionedAppxPackagesToRemove += ($ProvisionedAppxPackages | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -eq $Appx }) } $InstalledAppxPackages = Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers $InstalledAppxPackagesToRemove = @() #Determine what apps that are installed on this PC to be removed by comparing against the list (Home, Named, Shared, Server) foreach ($Appx in $AllAppsToRemove) { $InstalledAppxPackagesToRemove += ($InstalledAppxPackages | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq $Appx }) } } process { If ($ProvisionedAppxPackagesToRemove.length -ge 1) { Write-Output "***Removing select provisioned appx packages for this machine...***" Write-Log -Text 'Removing select provisioned appx packages for this machine' -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath foreach ($ProvisionedAppx in $ProvisionedAppxPackagesToRemove) { if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess($ProvisionedAppx.DisplayName, 'Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online -AllUsers')) { try { $ProvisionedAppx | Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -Online -AllUsers -Verbose -ErrorAction Continue Write-Output $("Removed " + $ProvisionedAppx.DisplayName) Write-Log -Text $("Removed " + $ProvisionedAppx.DisplayName) -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath } catch { Write-Warning $('Unable to remove ' + $ProvisionedAppx.DisplayName) Write-Log -Text $('Unable to remove ' + $ProvisionedAppx.DisplayName) -Type 'WARNING' -Path $LogPath } } } } else { Write-Output "***No provisioned appx packages from your selection were found for this machine...***" Write-Log -Text 'No provisioned appx packages from your selection were found for this machine' -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath } If ($InstalledAppxPackagesToRemove.length -ge 1) { Write-Output "***Removing select installed appx packages for this machine...***" Write-Log -Text 'Removing select installed appx packages for this machine' -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath foreach ($InstalledAppx in $InstalledAppxPackagesToRemove) { if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess($InstalledAppx.Name, 'Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers')) { try { $InstalledAppx | Remove-AppxPackage -AllUsers -Verbose -ErrorAction Continue Write-Output $("Removed " + $InstalledAppx.Name) Write-Log -Text $("Removed " + $InstalledAppx.Name) -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath } catch { Write-Warning $('Unable to remove ' + $InstalleddAppx.Name) Write-Log -Text $('Unable to remove ' + $InstalleddAppx.Name) -Type 'WARNING' -Path $LogPath } } } } else { Write-Output "***No installed appx packages from your selection were found for this machine...***" Write-Log -Text 'No installed appx packages from your selection were found for this machine' -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath } } end { Write-Log -Text 'Stopping Remove-Win10Apps script as it has finished running' -Type 'INFO' -Path $LogPath }

Burnout Paradise - Where the developers are now

With the remaster of Burnout Paradise release soon and worked on by Criterion and Stellar Entertainment (see Paul Ross for details on that company) I thought it might be fun to make a thread and track down the devs. If you want some additional reading about Burnout, Three Fields released a history about how it started in January.
For a quick summary, Criterion was originally a 3d graphics rendering technology company owned by Canon. It was spun out and became the “modern” Criterion Games in 1999/2000. In 2004 it was purchased by EA.
Most info/quotes are from company websites and LinkedIn. Now, this thread is long enough already, so let’s get started (this thread is long enough that I’ll have to go into the comments to finish the thread.
Fiona Sperry worked as EA Criterion Studio GM. Sperry helped form the modern Criterion Games and previously worked at McGraw-Hill. In 2014 she left and co-founded Three Fields Entertainment.
Alex Ward worked as creative director. Ward helped form the modern Criterion Games and previously worked at Acclaim. He continued to work at Criterion until 2014 (including a unreleased game codenamed “Adventure”) when he co-founded Three Fields Entertainment.
Peter Hawley worked as executive producer. Hawley previously worked at companies including Lionhead (where he was one of the first employees) and Sony. He joined Criterion in late 2005 and in 2009 became vice president of product development at EA. In 2010 he joined Crowdstar before co-founding Red Robot Labs in 2011, where he worked at CPO and later CEO until 2014. He next joined Zynga before coming CEO of Telltale Games in September 2017.
Craig Sullivan worked as lead designer. Sullivan joined Criterion in 1997 and was the first game designer for the studio. He previously worked at Millenium Interactive as a designetester. In 2009 he became creative director at the company before joining Ghost Games in 2013. Sullivan left Ghost Games at the end of 2016, and in May 2017 joined Amazon.
Jon Lawrence worked as senior development director. Lawrence joined EA in 1998 and worked on series including Harry Potter, F1 and Black. In 2012 Lawrence left to work at Sky before returning to EA shortly in 2013. Later that year Lawrence joined Microsoft as development director, and worked on Warface. In 2015 he joined Natural Motion before joining Digit Game Studios in 2017 as director of production.
Steve Uphill worked as art director. Uphill previously worked at Kuju Entertainment before joining Criterion in 2002. In 2008 Uphill left Criterion and joined Black Rock Studio to work as art director on Split/Second. In 2011 he co-founded ShortRound Games where he worked as art director. In 2016 Uphill returned to Criterion and is currently studio art director.
Stephen Root worked as audio director. Root worked at Acclaim for five years as head of audio before joining Criterion in 2000. In 2008 Root left Criterion and joined Codemasters, where he is currently VP of development creative services.
Olly Read worked as a technical director. Read joined Criterion in 1999 and worked at the company until 2011. In 2012 Read started work as a “game programming ninja” at Escapist Games.
Paul Ross worked as a technical director. Ross joined Criterion in 1996 and worked as CTO before leaving in 2014. He next worked at Three Fields Entertainment before leaving in 2016. Ross next founded Stellar Entertainment in 2016, which is making Burnout Paradise Remastered.
Pete Lake worked as a producer. Lake worked as an artist for early Criterion games before starting production on Paradise. In 2010 Lake worked as a producer for Harry Potter and The Sims. In 2013 he returned to Criterion.
San Shepherd worked as a producer. Shepherd previously worked at EA and Pyro Studios before rejoining EA in 2006. Near the end of 2008 Shepherd left and in 2009 joined Zero Point Software as a board member. At the same time, Shepherd co-founded Escapist Games and became director for European Construction Company. Since 1990 Shepherd has also been director of Citilet Booking, and in 1997 founded The Copenhagen Post, where he worked as CEO for five years. He also produced weekly music shows for Danish TV in the 90s.
Matt Webster worked as a producer. Webster joined EA in 1990 and worked on games including Syndicate, Theme Park and Populous II. He also created the initial concept for the first Fifa game and associate produced the game. After EA purchased Criterion Webster joined the company as producer. In 2013 he became GM of Criterion.
Hamish Young worked as a producer. Young joined Criterion in 1999 and had worked as a technical director and a lead programmer on previous Burnout games. Young continued to work at Criterion until 2013, when he joined Avalanche Studios (for quick reference this is the Just Cause studio, not the Disney Infinity one) where he works as a designer.
Steve Cuss worked as a development manager. Cuss worked at IBM and Intelligent Games before joining EA in 2003. Since 2005 Cuss has worked as a producer for Criterion.
Helen King worked as a development manager. King joined Criterion in 2006 but left in 2009 and joined Codemasters, where they worked on Bodycount. After leaving in 2011 King joined Deepmind in 2012, which was later bought by Google.
Radek Majder worked as a development manager. Majder previously worked at companies like Plastic Wax, Forte Studios and Perception before joining EA in 2006. Majder worked as development director at EA until 2013. In 2014 they joined BBC where they worked until 2017. They are currently head of development management at Mclaren Applied Technology.
Alan McDairmant worked as a development manager. McDairmant previously worked at Inner Workings, Data Design & Artwork, Red Lemon Studios and Visual Science before joining Criterion in 2005. McDairmant continues to work at EA/Criterion and most recently has worked as a director of product development/studio leadership on games such as Battlefront 2, Battlefield 1 and Need for Speed.
Dan McDonald worked as a development manager. McDonald previously worked in QA on series like Burnout, Harry Potter and Populous. McDonald did interviews for Burnout Crash and seemingly left Criterion afterwards. He was credited as a production manager for Until Dawn in 2015.
Sheri Patterson worked as a development manager. Patterson previously worked at Pixar (on the Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Boundin’), Blue Sky and Charlex before joining Criterion in 2006. In 2008 she left and worked as a producer for various companies including DreamWorks and Disney (on Frozen). Patterson also worked with companies including Apple, Google and Land Rover.
Cath Schell worked as production coordinator. Schell first appeared in Criterion credits in 2002, and is still with the company. She posts a lot of mushrooms.
Charnjit Bansi worked as a designer. Bansi previously worked at Codemasters before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2009 Bansi joined Bizarre Creations as a/the game director (Activision doesn’t tend to give detailed credits so I can’t tell if Bansi was the only person with the role). After consulting for a month in 2011 at Neversoft Bansi joined Sledgehammer Games as a/the development director.
Richard Bunn worked as a designer. Bunn previously worked in QA at Sony and as a level designer at Argonaut before joining Criterion in 2004. Bunn worked on the design of the “open-world traffic system, vehicle A.I. behaviours and the Crash Mode gameplay,” for the game. After leaving Criterion in 2007 Bunn rejoined Sony where he worked for three years on the original version of Until Dawn and the canceled Eight Days. After leaving in 2011, Bunn has worked at Mindshapes, Nice Touch and most recently Aceviral.
Matt Follett worked as a designer. Follett joined EA in 1999 working in QA and design. He joined Criterion in 2008 after working on previous Burnout games, and worked on algorithms and scripting for Paradise along with the PC version. Follett later became a lead at Criterion before leaving in 2014. Since then he has worked for Boss Alien.
Paul Glancey worked as a designer. Glancey previously worked as an editor for games magazines in the late 80s/early 90s before joining Eidos in 1998. He joined EA in 2000 before leaving in 2008. He next worked as design director on Split/Second before joining Ubisoft in 2010. In 2012 Glancey returned to Criterion.
Tommy Hudson worked as a designer. Hudson joined Criterion in 2005 and worked at the company until the end of 2010. Hudson next joined DICE where they worked on Battlefield. In 2013 Hudson joined Remedy and worked on Quantum Break. They are currently lead designer on a new game at Remedy.
Oliver Reid-Smith worked as a designer. Reid-Smith joined Criterion in 2004 before leaving in 2010. They worked as a lead designer on Split/Second before becoming a freelance consultant in 2012. Reid-Smith has worked on games including The Room, Disney Infinity and Blackwood Crossing.
Steve Watt worked as a designer. Watt joined EA in 2004 and worked as lead online designer. In 2008 Watt left and joined Codemasters where they worked as lead designer. After the closure of the Guildford studio in 2011, Watt did some freelance in 2012. Later that year, Watt joined Microsoft.
Ben Earnshaw worked as a level designer. Earnshaw worked on AI and planned race routes for the game, before leaving at the end of 2007. He next joined Dark Energy Digital as a designer on Hydrophobia. In 2010 Earnshaw left the gaming industry and joined his family’s woodworking company.
Mata Haggis worked as a level designer. Haggis previously worked at Channel 4 and MTV before joining Criterion for 2007. Haggis worked on building the world and make it seem believable. In 2008 he joined Rebellion where he worked as a designer on Alien vs Predator and PDC World Championship Darts Pro Tour. After leaving Rebellion in 2010 Haggis lectured at NHTV for five years before becoming a professor. From 2013 to 2016 he worked with Sassybot freelance, and since 2000 has worked as a game designer with Matazone.
Dave Sage worked as a level designer. Sage joined Criterion in 2007 after short work lecturing. In 2008 Sage left and joined Codemasters, where he worked until 2011. Since then Sage has worked for various groups teaching, and currently is general manager of a cafe/bicycling company.
Jason RM Smith worked as associate CG supervisor. Smith joined EA in 1998 and worked at Bullfrog and EA UK before joining Criterion. At the end of 2007 Smith left and joined Lucasarts where he worked on The Force Unleashed, 1313 and other games. When Lucasarts closed Smith co-founded Soma Play where he worked until 2017. He currently is a creative consultant.
Richard Franke worked as a lead artist. Franke worked as an artist for Scavenger and Mucky Foot before joining EA in 2002. At the end of year Franke joined Criterion, where he worked until 2012. After leaving Franke founded Magic Notion where he has made games and worked as a contract artist for Media Molecule.
Mark Hamilton worked as a lead artist. In 2008 Hamilton left Criterion and co-founded Fireproof Games.
John Lewis worked as a lead artist. Lewis worked as an artist at ICE, DA Group and Bits Studios before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2012 Lewis left and joined Codemasters. Lewis is currently art director at the studio.
James Lipscomb worked as a lead artist. Lipscomb worked at Line One, Red Hot Chilli and Orange Crush before joining EA in 2002. In 2009 Lipscomb left and joined Disney where he worked on Split/Second. At the end of 2011 Lipscomb joined Lucasarts where he worked until the company’s closure. After that he worked at Rumble, Gaia Interactive and Linekong working in UI and UX. He is currently director of UX at pocket gems.
Neil Manners worked as a lead artist. Manners seems to have joined Criterion in the mid-90s. He seems to still be at EA, last working as a senior animator on Need for Speed Payback.
Barry Meade worked as a lead artist. Meade joined the studio in 2003 after working at PCSL, Bullfrog, Scavenger, Negative Productions, Mucky Foot and Iguana. Meade worked mostly on the lighting for Paradise. In 2008 Meade left Criterion and helped found Fireproof Games, where he currently works.
Yuta Nakamura worked as a lead artist. Nakamura worked for Video Systems before joining EA in 2001. Nakamura went on to work as a art director on Need for Speed games before joining DICE in 2016.
David Rack worked as a lead artist. Rack joined Criterion in 2003 and worked at Criterion until 2008. After leaving Rack co-founded Fireproof Games, where he is currently a lead artist.
Damien Rayfield worked as a lead artist. Rayfield worked at Rebellion before joining Criterion in 2004. In 2008 Rayfield left and co-founded Fireproof Games.
Roger Schembri worked as a lead artist. Schembri worked as a graphic designer before joining Criterion in 2004. Schembri worked on UI before leaving in 2008 to work as a lead UI artist at Codemasters. At the end of 2010 Schembri left and joined Fireproof Games.
Chris Cannon worked as an artist. Cannon joined Criterion in 2005 after animating and storyboarding for various companies. In 2008 Cannon left and co-founded Fireproof Games, where he is a lead designer.
Max Cant worked as an artist. Cant joined Criterion in 2005 and worked as an environmental lead. In 2008 Cant left and joined Codemasters as an art director. After leaving Codemasters in 2011, Cant worked for six months at both Koyoki and Vatra Games. At the end of 2012 Cant joined Deepmind, which was later bought by Google.
Tony Cartwright worked as an artist. Cartwright “worked for a several game companies, some that he would prefer not to mention, working on titles that he’d also prefer not to mention.” (mostly movie tie-ins) before joining Criterion. In 2008 Cartwright left and co-founded Fireproof Games, where he is currently a lead artist.
Ingmar Clarysse worked as an artist. Clarysse worked at Larian and Argonaut before joining EA in 2004 as a VFX artist. In 2008 Clarysse left and joined Rocksteady Games, where he works as lead on VFX on the Arkham series.
Will Evans worked as an artist. Evans worked at Teletext before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2009 Evans joined Codemasters before joining Supermassive Games in 2010. After leaving in 2014 and working for 9 months at Rodeo Games, Evans co-founded Playsport Games in 2015.
Dave Flynn worked as an artist. Flynn joined the games industry in 1991 working at Storm Education Software. Flynn also worked at Oregan Software, The Automotive Association and Interactive Studios/Blitz Games (including work on Glover) as well as co-founding Paradise Games. In 2003 Flynn joined Criterion before leaving in 2008 and joining Slightly Mad Studios.
Nicole Gabriel worked as an artist. Gabriel worked as a 3D modeler for various architecture groups before joining EA in 2005. Gabriel worked on the art for Paradise City before leaving in 2009 to work as a freelance artist.
Derek Germain worked as an artist. Germain worked at Bits Studio before joining EA in 2005 as an environmental artist. In 2009 Germain left before joining Slightly Mad Studios as a snr artist. In 2011 Germain left and joined FIreproof Games, where he is a senior artist.
Jack Griffin worked as an artist. Griffin joined Criterion in 2005 before moving into management in 2012. Griffin is currently development direction at the company.
Ben Hall worked as an artist. Hall joined Criterion in 2005. On Paradise he worked on vehicles and later the environment. Hall moved into world design for later Criterion games before becoming lead. In 2013 Hall moved to Ghost Games for five months before working on Battlefield Hardline as an artist for seven months. In 2014 Hall joined Ubisoft where he worked as a level designer on Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. He is currently working as world director on an unannounced game from Ubisoft Quebec.
James Hans worked as an artist. Hans ran Infinite Detail before joining Criterion in 2001. In 2011 Hans became a producer at Criterion before leaving in 2014. Since leaving, Hans has worked as an artist/producer at Natural Motion.
Scott Harber worked as an artist. Harber joined Criterion in 2003 and worked as a technical artist on Paradise. In 2013 Harber worked for a year as technical art director on an unannounced EA game before working on Battlefield Hardline. In 2014 Harber left and started Sc0tt Games which he ran for a year before joining Natural Motion as lead technical artist.
Young Jin Park worked as an artist. I’m unable to find additional information about what Park did (they are credited on Black and Burnout Dominator, but their Mobygames page is mixed with another person with the same name).
Jin Jung worked as an artist. They were last credited with Hot Pursuit, but I’m unable to find any additional information.
Quyen Lam worked as an artist. Lam worked shortly at La Paraguas and Axis Animation before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2008 Lam left and joined Ubisoft, where he worked on Driver: San Francisco. After a short three months at Slightly Mad, Lam joined Rockstar as an environmental artist in 2010.
Kwok Law worked as an artist. Law previously worked on films and television like Harry Potter before joining Criterion in 2005 as a level artist. In 2008 Law left and joined Doublesix Games, where he was a seniolead artist. In 2012 Law left and joined Born Ready before joining Digicub nine months later. In 2013 he co-founded Polynation Games until 2016, when he founded Massive Kwok.
Steve Leney worked as an artist. Leney worked at Mindscape for most of the 90s before joining EA in 1998. In 2008 Leney left and joined Relentless Software, where he worked until 2016. Since leaving Leney has worked as an artist at Make Real.
Mikael Mettania worked as an artist. Mettania worked at Atari and Eutechnyx before joining Criterion in 2005. He worked as a senior vehicle artist on Paradise and a world artist on the DLC. In 2013 Mettania moved over to Ghost Games for seven months before joining Natural Motion as art director in 2014.
Lyndon Munt worked as an artist. In college, Munt worked on Driv3r before joining Criterion in 2004. In 2010 Munt left and joined Fireproof Games, where he is currently a senior artist.
Ben Murch worked as an artist. Murch previously worked at Rebellion before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2007 Murch left and joined Codemasters as a senior artist. In 2010 Murch co-founded Rodeo Games. In 2016 he co-founded Perchang.
Adriaan Pottas worked as an artist. Pottas previously worked at Three Blind Mice and Indestructible Productions before joining EA in 2005. In 2009 Pottas left and worked for a year at Ignition London as a senior artist. Since 2010 Pottas has lectured at Southampton Solent University.
Richard Thomassen worked as an artist. Thomassen worked at Psygnosis for a year before joining Criterion in 1998. In 2013 Thomassen moved to Ghost Games before returning to Criterion the following year.
Marcus Wainwright worked as an artist. Wainwright worked for a year at Rebellion and joined Criterion in 2005. At the end of 2008 Wainwright left and soon joined Codemasters, where he worked until the start of 2012. After a year at Climax Wainwright joined Deepmind in 2013, and is currently a senior technical artist.
Chris Walley worked as an artist. Walley previously worked at Revolution Software before joining Criterion in 2001. On Paradise Walley was lead previs artist. In 2008 Walley left and became director at Escapist Games.
Sam White worked as an artist. White joined EA in 2005 and worked as a graphic designer and GUI artist. In 2009 White left and joined Supermassive Games as an interface artist. In 2015 White left and became director at Playsport Games.
Iain Angus worked as a lead programmer. Angus was an intern at APR Smartlogik before joining Criterion in 2002. In 2011 Angus left and joined VLI before joining Konami in 2013. In 2015 he joined Lionhead until its closure in 2016. He currently works as a development manager at Creative Assembly.
Chris Cummings worked as a lead programmer. Cummings previously worked at Eutechnyx before joining Criterion in 2004. In 2009 he left and joined joined Media Molecule. In 2015 Cummings spent a year at Hello Games working as a programmer on No Man’s Sky before joining Happy Robot Games and Future Tech Labs in 2016.
Alex Fry worked as a lead programmer. Fry joined Criterion after college and worked on rendering. Sometime in the last few years Fry moved over to EA Guildford and currently works on rendering for Frostbite. If you want to learn more, Fry did an interview with EA
Andy Hubbard worked as a lead programmer. Hubbard joined Criterion in 2004 working on physics. In 2008 Hubbard joined Black Rock Studios to work on Split/Second before becoming director of ShortRound in 2011.
Mark Huntley worked as a lead programmer. Huntley worked at Bullfrog from 1993 to 2000 before joining EA. After some Harry Potter games Huntley worked on Paradise. At the end of 2010 he left EA and in 2011 joined Codemasters as a lead programmetechnical director on for online. In 2013 he moved to Lionhead where he worked until the company’s closure. Since then he has worked as a technical program manager at Highlight - See Clearly.
Steve Lucas worked as a lead programmer. Lucas worked at IBM for around a year before joining Criterion in 1998. In 2013 Lucas moved to Canada and became a technical director at EA.
Toby Nelson worked as a lead programmer. I’m unable to find out much info about Nelson. Their first game as part of Criterion was AirBlade and they directed Burnout Crash.
Tad Swift worked as a lead programmer. Swift worked for about a decade in programming/consultation before studying games programming in 2003 and 2004. Swift joined Criterion in 2005 as a junior programmer before becoming lead VFX programmer for Black and Paradise. Swift next went into core engine technologies before leaving in 2013 to join Lionhead. Swift worked as a lead programmer for Fable Legends before joining the Microsoft Advanced Technology Group as a senior software engineer.
Rajan Tande worked as a lead programmer. Tande joined EA in 1996 and in 1999 became a lead programmer. After two years as technical director for Harry Potter, Tande joined the Burnout team in 2006. After Paradise, Tande moved over to EA Bright Light where he worked until its closure in late 2011. He next moved to Maxis Emeryville in California where he worked until its closure in 2015. Since then, he has been CTO at Magic Fuel Games.
John Twigg worked as a lead programmer. Twigg previously worked at EA Black Box before joining Criterion in 2006. Twigg led the design of the audio software for Paradise before leaving in 2008 to joining BNP Paribas. In 2010 he co-founded Crankcase Audio and has worked for a year or so at companies including United Front Games, Snowball (which he co-founded) and Credit Karma.
David Addis worked as a programmer. Addis worked at Codemasters for a year before joining EA in 2005. On Paradise Addis worked on the HUD and refactoring the system. In 2008 he left and joined Lionhead where he worked until 2012. Since 2013 he has worked as lead UI programmer at Natural Motion. Since 2010 he has also run ESP Games.
Mark Baker worked as a programmer. Baker worked at Sony, Metrowerks, Mucky Foot and Climax before joining Criterion in 2005. Baker worked on tools and workflow for Paradise before leaving in 2008 and joining NCSoft for five months. Later in 2008 he joined Black Rock Studio and worked as a lead programmer on Split/Second. In 2011 Baker joined Mind Candy before returning to EA in 2015 as a technical director for development release engineering.
Peter Bliss worked as a programmer. I’m unable to find much information about Bliss but they seem to still be at Criterion.
Garry Casey worked as a programmer. Casey joined Criterion in 2006. At some point Casey moved over to Ghost Games and last worked as online lead on Need for Speed Payback.
Rob Cowsill worked as a programmer. I’m unable to find much information about Cowsill but it seems like they joined Rebellion in 2009 any maybe currently works at Force Field.
Ken Cropper worked as a programmer. Cropper is still at Criterion, and is currently director of engineering.
Antony Crowther worked as a programmer. Crowther joined the games industry in 1983 and worked at Aligata Software, Mirror Soft, Mindscape, Gremlin Interactive, Infogrames and Genepool before joining EA in 2004. In 2006 Crowther moved to Criterion for a year before returning to EA. Since 2011 Crowther has worked as a technical consultant at Sumo Digital.
Graham Daniell worked as a programmer. I was unable to find much information about Daniell but they seem to be at Rocksteady.
Robert Dodd worked as a programmer. Dodd previously worked at Codemasters before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2008 Dodd joined Supermassive before becoming technical director at Fireproof Games in 2011.
Jon Evripiotis worked as a programmer. Evripiotis worked at Travellers Tales before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2008 he joined Bloomberg as a software engineer.
Martiño Figueroa worked as a programmer. Figueroa joined Criterion in 2005 and worked as an AI and gameplay programmer for Paradise. In 2011 Figueroa left and worked at The Foundry for 10 months before co-founding and becoming director of JFDP Labs in 2012. Since 2015 Figueroa has been director of Madruga Works which released Planetbase.
Rich Geldard worked as a programmer. Geldard joined Criterion in in 2005 and is still with the company as technical director.
Joseph Goodwin worked as a programmer. Goodwin joined Criterion in 2006 and worked on tools, UI and localization for Paradise. Goodwin is still at Criterion as a software engineer.
André Jacobs worked as a programmer. Jacobs previously worked at Fifth Dimensional Technologies, Adreniware, I-Imagine and Climax before joining Criterion in 2006. Jacobs worked on the traffic system for Paradise which was later used in Criterion Need for Speed games. In 2008 he joined Lionhead before joining Bloomberg in 2010. In 2012 Jacobs became lead programmer at Medopad before leaving in 2015 and working a year at ICSA. Since 2010 he has also run Voxel Beast.
Matthew Jones worked as a programmer. Jones previously worked at Terabyte and Infogrames/Atari before joining Criterion in 2006. In 2013 Jones left Criterion and worked JFDP Labs on contract while being self employed. In 2015 he joined Microsoft as a senior software engineer in rendering.
Ian Lambert worked as a programmer. Lambert is still part of Criterion and works on UI and UX.
Ling Lo worked as a programmer. Lo worked out Logica, Coment, Argonaut and Symbian before joining EA in 2005. Lo worked on tools and build for Paradise before moving to Vancouver in 2008 to work with EA Black Box. In 2012 Lo moved to Burnaby and has worked as lead online engineer for the Garden Warfare series.
Phil Maguire worked as a programmer. Maguire joined Criterion in 2005 and worked on Freeburn Challenges, Mugshots and Road Rules for Paradise. After working on autolog and multiplayer for Need for Speed games Maguire because technical director of Criterion in 2013. In 2014 he left and help found Three Fields Entertainment.
Alex Mole worked as a programmer. Mole joined Criterion in 2005 and was lead online programmer for autolog. Mole is currently technical director of Criterion. In 2016 Mole gave a talk at GDC.
Robert Perren worked as a programmer. Perren joined Criterion in 2005 before becoming lead tools and workflow programmer in 2012 at Criterion/Ghost Games. In 2014 he left EA and became technical manager at Falmouth University.
Davide Pirola worked as a programmer. Pirola previously worked at companies including Psygnosis, Steel Monkeys and Kuju Entertainment before joining Criterion in 2005. As part of Criterion, Pirola was the self-described “lowest ranked programmer ever.” Here is Pirola’s description of working at Criterion unedited: “My main duty was playing foosball at their mega bar and basically trying to do as little as possible! I mostly succeeded for almost 5 years, my contribution to their games was very minimal, in fact the worst part of every game they made was probably my code, specially crafted in such a way that was a mess to understand and run, credits go where credits due people… I once tried to write some proper code, I remember, it was a Thursday morning, but then I've changed my mind.” Pirola left in 2010 and is currently “Le Grande Fromage” at JFDP labs.
Gavin Rouse worked as a programmer. Rouse joined Criterion in 2002 and seems to now be at Ghost Games as a senior software engineer.
Andrei Shires worked as a programmer. Shires is still at Criterion and seems to work on front end and UI.
Dave Smeathers worked as a programmer. Smeathers joined Criterion in 2006 after being “forced into making video games to pay off his online poker debts.” On Paradise Smeathers worked on coding physics and coding crashes. Smeathers later became physics lead on Need for Speed Most Wanted before leaving Criterion in 2013 to join Fireproof Games.
James Smith worked as a programmer. Smith worked at Mentor Graphics before joining Criterion in 2003 as an audio programmer. Smith became lead audio programmer before leaving Criterion in 2007 and moving to Canada to work at Black Box. In 2012 he left and joined The Coalition, where he is lead audio programmer.
David Steptoe worked as a programmer. Steptoe joined Criterion in 2002 and later became lead audio programmer. In 2013 he left and joined Escapist Games, before leaving at the end of the year. In 2014 he joined Lionhead where he worked until its closure. Steptoe currently runs Audio Software Development, which he formed in 2016.
Alex Thomson worked as a programmer. Thomson previously worked at Rebellion, Elixir and Kuju before joining Criterion in 2006 as a senior software engineer. He has worked as a technical director and lead software engineer in his time at Criterion.
Alex Veal worked as a programmer. Veal joined Criterion in 2006 as an online software engineer. In 2014 he left Criterion and helped start Three Fields Entertainment
James Warren worked as a programmer. Warren joined Criterion in 2005 as an audio programmer. He currently seems to be at Ghost Games and is audio lead.
Tom Williamson worked as a programmer. Williamson previously worked at The Marketing Bureau before joining Criterion in 1999 as a software engineer. In 2011 he left Criterion and the following year became director at JFDP Labs, where he worked until 2017. In 2012 he also started a company called Threeshinyapples Limited.
Ben Woodhouse worked as a programmer. Woodhouse joined Criterion in 2005 as a graphics programmer. On the Paradise engine, Woodhouse worked on “lighting, shadows, occlusion culling, frustum culling, scene management, and various low-level CPU/SPU jobs used in the rendering pipeline.” At the end of 2009 he left Criterion and joined Lionhead as lead engine programmer. After the closure of Lionhead, he joined Epic where he is currently lead console programmer.
Chris Hegstrom worked as audio lead. Hegstrom previously worked at Stormfront Studios and Lucasarts before joining Criterion in 2005. At the end of 2007 Hegstrom left and joined Sony where he worked on God of War. In 2010 he joined Microsoft as audio director before leaving in 2015 and starting Symmetry Audio. In 2016 he joined Technicolor before joining Amazon in September 2017.
Steve Emney worked as an audio designer. Emney was previously self employed before joining Criterion in 2004. He became audio director at Criterion before joining Disney to work on Split/Second in 2009. After the closure of Black Rock Emney became director of TRC Family Entertainment in 2012 where he worked until 2014. Since 2014 he has worked for eMotion in Sound and since 2015 has worked for The Trailerfarm.
Lewis James worked as an audio designer. James joined Criterion in 2005. In 2008 he moved to EA Montreal until 2011, when he moved to Guerrilla Games. At the end of 2013 he left and became director of Improbable until 2015, when he joined La Indiana Sound.
Zsolt Marx worked as an audio designer. Marx previously worked at Rockstar Vienna before joining Criterion in 2005. In 2008 he started to work on other EA games before leaving the company in 2010 after working on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Since 2012 he has worked as a producer and lead programmer at Noizoo Games.
Thomas Belmont worked as an additional producer. Belmont previously worked at Ubisoft (first in QA and later as a designer and producer) and Eliad Technologies before joining Criterion in 2006. In 2011 he moved to Vancouver to work on other EA games before leaving in 2014 and becoming a producer for online technologies at Ubisoft.
Nick Channon worked as an additional producer. Channon joined EA in 1996 in Vancouver before moving to the UK in 2000 and joining Criterion in 2006. In 2008 he moved back to Vancouver and is currently senior director of business development at EA.
Neil Kaminski worked as an additional producer. Kaminski previously worked at companies including Bullfrog, Pure and Argonaut before joining Criterion in 2005 as a lead artist. In 2006 he became a producer before leaving in 2008 to become studio art manager at Codemasters in 2008. In 2011 he left and joined Escapist Games before joining Pixel Heroes in 2013. After leaving in 2016, he joined CCP in 2017.
Emily Newton Dunn worked as an additional producer. Dunn previously worked in PR for various companies before joining Criterion in 2005 as a producer. In 2007 Dunn moved to EA and became a game designer before becoming lead game designer at Playfish in 2011. In 2013 she left and after being after a few companies for a few months Dunn joined Another Place in 2014. In 2017 she left and after seven months at Playdiation joined Media Molecule in January 2018 as a consultant system designer.
Anja Haman worked on additional support. Haman previously worked at Radical before joining EA in 2005. In 2007 she left before joining Black Box in 2009-2011. From 2012-2015 Haman worked at Work at Play and has been part of Microsoft since the end of 2017. Since 2000 she has worked as president of Haman Consulting.
Maëlenn Lumineau worked on additional support. Lumineau worked as a translator before joining EA in 2000. In 2007 she joined Criterion as as operations manager before leaving in 2013 and joining Ubisoft as a producer.
Adrian Selby worked on additional support. Selby joined Criterion in 2002 as a producer before leaving in 2009 and becoming a producer at Disney. After 2011 Selby worked at some non-video game companies like BP before joining Boss Alien in 2015.
Harvey Wheaton worked on additional support. Wheaton previously worked at companies including JPMorgan Chase before joining EA in 2003. In 2007 and 2008 he was COO/director of product development at Criterion before joining Supermassive in 2008 as their studio director. At the end of 2013 he left and, after working as a consultant for over a year, joined Codeclan in 2015. In 2017 he became executive producer at Natural Motion.
Graeme Williams worked on additional support. Williams worked at Virtuality, Psygnosis and Rebellion before joining Criterion in 2002 as head of product management. In 2004 he became development director before leaving in 2008. After five months at Supermassive Williams joined VIrtual Toys where he worked until 2011. He next joined Digital Chocolate before joining Ubisoft in 2013. From 2014-2016 he worked at Guerrilla before taking a break and joining Virtually Live in 2017.
Paul Dibden worked as an additional artist. Dibden joined EA in 2005 as a graduate artist before eventually becoming a development director. In 2013 he left and co-founded Milkcap before joining Splash Damage in 2015 as a producer.
John Humphries worked as an additional artist. Humphries previously worked at Bubball before joining EA in 2005. In 2008 Humphries left and joined Realtime Worlds as a lead environmental artist. In 2010 he founded Onyx Digital.
Vincent Jenkins worked as an additional artist. Jenkins joined EA in 2006 as a concept artist before joining Codemasters in 2008, where he worked until 2011. Jenkins has mostly worked as an artist for films, including Rogue One, Game of Thrones and Casino Royale. He last worked on concept art for Solo.
Rasmus Jorgensen worked as an additional artist. Jorgensen joined EA in 2000 as a concept artist before leaving in 2007 to join Codemasters. In 2010 Jorgensen left and spent about a year at Leading Light, Double Negative and Ghost A/S before joining IO in 2014.
Jason Lord worked as an additional artist. Lord joined EA in 1993 and worked as a video director until 2012. In 2012 Lord started Liquid Crimson, which has worked with companies including Square Enix, Supermassive, Hello Games, Microsoft, IGN and Capcom.
Osman Nazlivatan worked as an additional artist. Nazlivatan previously worked freelance and at Argonaut before joining EA in 2004 as a technical artist. In 2007 Nazlivatan left, and after months freelance at Big Head, joined Hotch Potch as lead artist/director. In 2011 Nazlivatan left and after under a year at both Natural Motion and Sony joined King in 2014. ~~In 2016 Nazlivatan left King but I’m unable to find what they’ve done after.~~ Edit: Nazlivatan is still at King
Justin Rae worked as an additional artist. Rae joined EA in 1996 and was lead artist on F.A. Premier Manager games. In 2008 Rae left and became director of art at Supermassive before starting his own company, Studio 96, in 2016.
Peter Reeve worked as an additional artist. Reeve previously worked at a few different companies before joining EA in 2004 as a video editor. In 2008 Reeve joined Black Rock before freelance in 2009 and working with companies including EA and Crytek. He currently works at RMV Productions.
Dean Stolpmann worked as an additional artist. Stolpmann worked as an artist at companies including Frontier and Sony before joining Criterion/EA in 2005. In 2007 Stolpmann joined Outso and Codemasters before joining Supermassive as art director in 2010. Stolpmann joined Gameloft shortly after before becoming head 3D tutor at South Seas Film & TV school in 2013.
Avril Lavigne sang the song “Girlfriend” which was featured in the game. The song released in 2007 and the music video has been viewed over 400 million times. Lavigne also recorded the chorus of the song in 8 different languages.The song also got another version with Lil Mama.

The Daily Mail

Every weekday evening at around 9pm, in the Daily Mail’s headquarters in Kensington, west London, the slightly stooping, six-foot three-inch figure of Paul Dacre emerges into the main open-plan office where editors, sub-editors and designers are in the final stages of preparing pages for the next day’s paper. The atmosphere changes instantly; everyone becomes tense, as though waiting for a thunderstorm. Dacre begins with a low growl, like an angry tiger. His voice rises as several pages are denounced, along with those responsible. Imprecations reverberate across the office, sometimes punctuated by the strangely anomalous command to a senior colleague, “Don’t resist me, darling.” Pages must be replaced or redesigned, their order changed, headlines altered. New pictures are required with new captions. Dacre waves his long arms, hammers the air with his hands, shouts even louder and, if particularly agitated, scratches himself.
Nobody tries to argue. For all the fear and exasperation – “He never thinks of logistics and he has no idea of what’s an unreasonable request,” says one former sub-editor – there is also admiration. Dacre, Fleet Street’s best-paid editor, who earned almost £1.8m in 2012, has been in charge of the Mail since 1992 and, by general consent, is the most successful editor of his generation. The paper sells an average of 1.5 million copies on weekdays, 2.4 million on Saturdays. Only the Sun sells more but, on Saturdays, the Mail has just moved ahead. Its 4.3 million daily readers include more from the top three social classes (A, B and C1) than the Times, Guardian, Independent and Financial Times combined. Its long-standing middle-market rival, the Daily Express, slightly ahead when Dacre took over, now sells less than a third as many copies.
Under Dacre, the Mail has won Newspaper of the Year six times in the annual British Press Awards – twice as many prizes as any other paper. If anything, its authority and clout have grown in the past two years as Rupert Murdoch’s Sun has struggled with the fallout from the hacking scandal. Politicians no longer fear Murdoch as they once did. They still fear Dacre. The opposition from Murdoch’s papers to the government’s proposals that a royal charter should regulate the press is muted. Dacre’s Mail is loud and clear about the threat to “our free press”. Summoned twice before the Leveson inquiry – the second time because he had accused the actor Hugh Grant of lying in his evidence – he didn’t give an inch.
Everyone who has ever worked for Dacre, who has just passed his 65th birthday, praises his almost uncanny instinct for the issues and stories that will hold the attention of “Middle England”. No other editor so deftly balances the mix of subjects and moods that holds readers’ attention: serious and frivolous, celebrities and ordinary people, urban, suburban and rural, some stories provoking anger, others tears. No other editor chooses, with such unerring and lethal precision, the issues, often half forgotten, that will create panic and fear among politicians. “He’s the most consummate newspaperman I’ve ever met,” says Charles Burgess, a former features editor who also occupied high-level roles at the Guardian and Independent. “He balances the flow of each day’s paper in his head.”
“He articulates the dreams, fears and hopes of socially insecure members of the suburban middle class,” says Peter Oborne, the Mail’s former political columnist now at the Daily Telegraph. “It’s a daily performance of genius.”
But Murdoch’s decline leaves the Mail under more scrutiny than ever. Is Dacre at last running out of road? Rumours circulate in the national newspaper industry that members of the Rothermere family, owners of the Daily Mail, are increasingly nervous of the controversy that Dacre stirs up, notably this year with its attack on Ralph Miliband, father of the Labour leader, as “the man who hated Britain”. More than any other editor since Kelvin MacKenzie ruled at the Sun – and, among other outrages, alleged that drunkenness among Liverpool football fans led to the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 – Dacre attracts visceral loathing. His enemies see the Mail, to quote the Huffington Post writer and NS columnist Mehdi Hasan (who was duly monstered in the Mail’s pages), as “immigrant-bashing, woman-hating, Muslim-smearing, NHS-undermining, gay-baiting”.
The loathing is returned, with interest. In Dacre’s mind, the country is run, in effect, by affluent metropolitan liberals who dominate Whitehall, the leadership of the main political parties, the universities, the BBC and most public-sector professions. As he once said, “. . . no day is too busy or too short not to find time to tweak the noses of the liberalocracy”. The Mail, in his view, speaks for ordinary people, working hard and struggling with their bills, conventional in their views, ambitious for their children, loyal to their country, proud of owning their home, determined to stand on their own feet. These people, Dacre believes, are not given a fair hearing in the national media and the Mail alone fights for them. It is incomprehensible to him – a gross category error – that critics should be obsessed by the Mail’s power and influence when the BBC, funded by a compulsory poll tax, dominates the news market. It uses this position, he argues, to push a dogmatically liberal agenda, hidden behind supposed neutrality. Scarcely an issue of the Mail passes without a snipe and sometimes a full barrage in the news pages, leaders or signed opinion columns at BBC “bias”.
To its critics, however, the Mail is as biased as it’s possible to be, and none too fussy about the facts. In the files of the Press Complaints Commission, you will find records of 687 complaints against the Mail which led either to a PCC adjudication or to a resolution negotiated, at least partially, after the PCC’s intervention. The number far exceeds that for any other British newspaper: the files show 394 complaints against the Sun, 221 against the Daily Telegraph, 115 against the Guardian. The complaints will serve as a charge sheet against the Mail and its editor.
This year, the Mail reported that disabled people are exempt from the bedroom tax; that asylum-seekers had “targeted” Scotland; that disabled babies were being euthanised under the Liverpool Care Pathway; that a Kenyan asylum-seeker had committed murders in his home country; that 878,000 recipients of Employment Support Allowance had stopped claiming “rather than face a fresh medical”; that a Portsmouth primary school had denied pupils water on the hottest day of the year because it was Ramadan; that wolves would soon return to Britain; that nearly half the electricity produced by windfarms was discarded. All these reports were false.
Mail executives argue that it gets more complaints than its rivals because it reaches more readers (particularly online, where the paper’s stories are repeated and others originate), prints more pages and tackles more serious and politically challenging issues. They point out that only six complaints were upheld after going through all the PCC’s stages and that the Sun and Telegraph, despite fewer complaints, had more upheld. But the PCC list, though it contains some of the Mail’s favourite targets such as asylum-seekers and “scroungers”, merely scratches the surface. Other complainants turned to the law. In the past ten years, the Mail has reported that the dean of RAF College Cranwell showed undue favouritism to Muslim students (false); the film producer Steve Bing hired a private investigator to destroy the reputation of his former lover Liz Hurley (false); the actress Sharon Stone left her four-year-old child alone in a car while she dined at a restaurant (false); the actor Rowan Atkinson needed five weeks’ treatment at a clinic for depression (false); a Tamil refugee, on hunger strike in Parliament Square, was secretly eating McDonald’s burgers (false); the actor Kate Winslet lied over her exercise regime (false); the singer Elton John ordered guests at his Aids charity ball to speak to him only if spoken to (false); Amama Mbabazi, the prime minister of Uganda, benefited personally from the theft of £10m in foreign aid (false). In all these cases, the Mail paid damages.
Then there are the subjects that the Mail and other right-wing papers will never drop. One is the EU, which, the Mail reported last year, proposed to ban books such as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series that portray “traditional” families. Another is local authorities, forever plotting to expel Christmas from public life and replace it with the secular festival of Winterval. It does not matter how often these reports are denied and their flimsy provenance exposed; the Mail keeps on running them and its columnists cite them as though they were accepted wisdom.
The paper gets away with publishing libels and falsehoods and with invasions of privacy because the penalties are insignificant. Often the victims can’t afford to sue and, if they can, the Mail group, with £282m annual profits even in these straitened times, can live with the costs. The PCC, even when its rules allow it to admit a complaint, has no powers to impose fines or to stipulate the prominence of corrections.
Besides, many victims don’t pursue complaints because they fear the stress of going to war with a powerful newspaper. They included the late writer Siân Busby who, the paper wrote in 2008, had received “the all-clear from lung cancer” after “a gruelling year”. In fact, the diagnosis had come less than six months earlier and she hadn’t received the “all-clear”. More important, as her husband, the BBC journalist Robert Peston, explained in the James Cameron Memorial Lecture in November this year, she wanted to keep the news out of the public domain to protect her children.
“The Mail got away with it,” Peston said. “As it often does.” (The Mail, in a statement after the lecture, said the information had been obtained from Busby herself and that the reporter had identified himself as a Mail writer.) In his 2008 book Flat Earth News, the Guardian journalist Nick Davies compared the paper to a footballer who, to protect his goal, will deliberately bring down an opponent. “Brilliant and corrupt,” Davies wrote, “the Daily Mail is the professional foul of contemporary Fleet Street.”
Even a list of official complaints and court cases doesn’t quite capture why the Mail attracts such fear and loathing. It has a unique capacity for targeting individuals and twisting the knife day after day, without necessarily lapsing into inaccuracies that could lead either to libel writs or censure by the PCC. For instance, as publication of the Leveson report on press regulation approached, the Mail devoted 12 pages of one issue – and several more pages of subsequent issues – to an “exposure” of Sir David Bell, a name then almost entirely unknown even to well-informed members of the public. A Leveson assessor and former Financial Times chairman, Bell was allegedly at the centre of a “quasi-masonic” network of “elitist liberals”, bent on gagging the press and preventing freedom of expression. This network, based on the “leadership” training organisation Common Purpose, had spawned the Media Standards Trust, of which Bell was a co-founder, which in turn had spawned the lobby group Hacked Off, an important influence on Leveson. To the Mail, this was a perfect illustration of how well-connected liberals, through networks of apparently innocuous organisations, conspire to undermine national traditions and values.
The paper also targets groups, often the weak and vulnerable. The Federation of Poles in Great Britain complained to the PCC that the Mail ran 80 headlines between 2006 and 2008 linking Poles to problems in the NHS and schools, unemployment among Britons, drug smuggling, rape and so on. Most of the stories, as the federation acknowledged, were newsworthy and largely accurate. The objection was to the way they were presented and to the drip, drip effect of continually highlighting the Polish connection so that, as the federation’s spokesman put it, the average reader’s heart “skips a beat . . . with either indignation or alarm”. The PCC eventually brokered a settlement that led to publication of a letter from the federation.

Yet there is something magnificent about the Mail’s confidence and single-mindedness. Other papers, trimming to focus groups, muffle their message, but the Mail projects its world-view relentlessly, with supreme technical skill, from almost every page. It is a paper led by its opinions, not by news. It is not noted for big exclusives, nor even for rapid reaction. “We were often known as the day-late paper,” a former reporter recalls. “Dacre wouldn’t really be interested in a story until he’d seen it somewhere else. We would sometimes give our exclusives to other journalists. Dacre surveys all the other papers, selects the right lines for the next day and follows them.”
Although Dacre has little enthusiasm for new technology – he still doesn’t have a computer on his desk – his paper is perfectly primed for the age of instant 24-hour news, when the challenge is not so much to find and report news as to select, interpret and elaborate on it. Long before other papers recognised the merits of a features-led or views-led approach, the Mail under Dacre was doing it.
The Mail gives its readers a sense of belonging in an increasingly complex and unsettling world. Part of the trick is to make the world seem more threatening than it is: crime is rising, migrants flooding the country, benefit scroungers swindling the taxpayer, standards of education falling, wind turbines taking over the countryside. Almost anything you eat or drink could give you cancer. Above all, the family – “the greatest institution on God’s green earth”, Dacre told a writer for the New Yorker last year – is under continuous assault. The Mail assures readers they are not alone in their anxieties about this changing world. It is a paper to be read, not on trains or buses or in offices, but in the peace and quiet of your home, preferably with an old-fashioned coal fire blazing in the hearth.
“Readers like certainty,” says a former Mail reporter. “Newspapers that have a wavering grip on their ideology are the ones that struggle. The Mail is like Coke. It’s consistent, reliable. Dacre is one of the best brand managers in the business. He lives the brand.”
Dacre lives mostly in the shadows. His two appearances before the Leveson inquiry gave the wider public a rare glimpse; apart from Desert Island Discs in 2004, he never appears on television or speaks on radio. If the Mail needs to defend itself (and it deigns to do so only in the most desperate circumstances), the job is assigned to an underling. Requests for on-the-record interviews are invariably refused, as they were for this article. A rare exception was made for the British Journalism Review, whose then editor, Bill Hagerty (a former editor of the People), interviewed Dacre in the tenth year of his editorship. There was also that audience with the New Yorker last year. Public lectures are equally unusual for him, though he gave the Cudlipp Lecture (in memory of Hugh Cudlipp, a Daily Mirror editor who was an early hero of his) in 2007, and addressed the Society of Editors in 2008.
Even former staff members mostly prefer not to be quoted when talking about Dacre. If they agree to be quoted, they wish the quotations to be checked with them before publication. BBC Radio 4 used actors for several contributions to a recent profile. The journalists’ fear is not only that they may be cut off from future employment or freelance work – “The Mail pays far better than anybody else and you don’t want to jeopardise the £2,000 cheque that might drop through the letter box,” said one writer – but also that the Mail may hit back. These concerns are shared by many politicians, who are equally reluctant to be quoted.
Dacre has few social graces and even less small talk. His body language is awkward, his manner prickly. He seldom smiles and, according to one ex-columnist, “He doesn’t laugh, he just says, ‘That’s a funny remark.’” He treats women with old-fashioned courtliness, opening doors and helping them with coats, but is otherwise uncomfortable with them, perhaps because he was one of five brothers, went to an all-male school and has no daughters. He speaks gruffly, with a slight north London accent and an even fainter trace of his father’s native Yorkshire. He sometimes buries his rather florid face deep in his hands, as though exasperated with the world’s inability to share his simple, common-sense values. He became notorious for the ripeness of his language – so frequent was his use of the C-word, almost entirely directed at men, that his staff referred to “the vagina monologues” – but when Charles Burgess told him women didn’t like hearing it he was profusely apologetic. On Desert Island Discs, he confessed to shouting at staff. “Shouting creates energy,” he said. “Energy creates great headlines.”
He still shouts, but in recent years, as an insider reported, “He’s no longer the expletive volcano he once was; his barbs these days tend to concern the brainpower of his target and their supposed laziness.”
He owns three properties: a home with a mile-long drive in West Sussex (known to Mail staff as Dacre Towers), a more modest weekday residence in the central London district of Belgravia and a seven-bedroom house in Scotland with a 17,000-acre shooting estate. He is a member of the Garrick Club, and sometimes takes columnists to lunch at Mark’s Club in Mayfair, which one recipient of his hospitality described as “very decorous, the sort of place you could have gone to in the 19th century”. He sent both of his sons to Eton.
There are no stories of past or present indiscretions involving women, alcohol or drugs. Jon Holmes, a contemporary at Leeds University who is now a sports agent, recalls him as “a very cold fish; he never, ever, seemed to go out in a group for a drink or a meal or anything”. A former Mail reporter says: “We’d all be in the Harrow [a Fleet Street pub, heavily frequented by Mail journalists], and he would come in, buy a half-pint, take it to the opposite end of the bar, drink alone, and leave without speaking.”
He has an apparently stable and successful marriage to a woman he met at university, which has lasted 37 years. He frequently attends Church of England services, but is not a believer. He likes and sometimes goes out to rugby union matches, the opera and theatre – the last partly because his wife, Kathleen Dacre, is a professor of theatre studies and partly because he has a son who is a successful director and producer with surprisingly avant-garde leanings. Asked what television he watched, he once mentioned Midsomer Murders and nothing else.
He mostly eschews the trappings and opportunities of wealth and power. It is impossible to imagine him as a member of the Chipping Norton set or anything like it. He rarely dines or lunches with the powerful or fashionable, nor does he attend glitzy parties and social events. Frequently, he lunches in his office on meat and two veg. Sometimes he will lunch with politicians, but he has little respect or liking for them as a class and thinks it wise to keep his distance; Oborne recalls how, one evening, he ignored at least five increasingly urgent requests to take a call from a senior Tory minister. He declines nearly all invitations to sit on committees; his chairmanship of an official inquiry into the “30-year rule” (under which Whitehall records were kept secret for three decades) was unusual. “Editorship is not for him a route to something else,” says a former employee.

Dacre was born and spent much of his childhood in Enfield, an unremarkable middle-class suburb of north London whose inhabitants, he told the New Yorker, “were frugal, reticent, utterly self-reliant and immensely aspirational . . . suspicious of progressive values, vulgarity of any kind, self-indulgence, pretentiousness and people who know best”. Though his parents divorced late in life, his family was then (at least in his eyes) stable, happy and secure.
But the more important clue to him and his relationship with the Mail’s Middle England readership is the Sunday Express of the 1950s and 1960s under the editorship of John Gordon and then John Junor. “That paper,” Dacre told the Society of Editors, “was my journalistic primer . . . [It] was warm, aspirational, unashamedly traditional, dedicated to decency, middlebrow, beautifully written and subbed, accessible, and, above all, utterly relevant to the lives of its readers.” Talking to Hagerty, he described Junor’s Sunday Express as “one of the great papers of all time”.
After leaving school in Yorkshire at 16, his father, Peter Dacre, joined the Sunday Express at 21 and stayed there for the rest of his working life – mainly as a show-business writer but also, for short periods, as New York correspondent and foreign editor. Each Sunday that week’s paper was discussed and analysed over the Dacre family dinner table.
It was then in its heyday, selling five million copies a week, and it didn’t go into severe decline (it now sells under 440,000) until the 1980s. It was a formulaic paper, which placed the same types of stories and features in exactly the same spots week after week. As Roy Greenslade observes in Press Gang, his post-1944 history of national newspapers, it was “virtually devoid of genuine news”; what it presented as news stories were really quirky mini-features, starting, as Greenslade put it, “with lengthy scene-setting descriptions or homilies”. Its staple subjects were animals, motor cars and wartime heroes. Its biggest target was “filth”, in the theatre, the cinema, books, magazines and TV programmes.
It particularly deplored any assault on the delicate sensibilities of children. Dacre’s father criticised the BBC in 1965 for the unsuitable content of its Sunday teatime serials. Lorna Doone, he wrote, ended “gruesomely”, with a man drowning in a bog, and in the first episode of a spy serial the actors used such expressions as “damn”, “hell” and “silly bitch” at a time supposedly reserved for “family viewing”. “Have the men responsible for these programmes,” asked the elder Dacre, “forgotten that there can be no family without children? What kind of men are they? Do they have families of their own?” Another piece denounced the BBC’s Sunday evening play for “an overdose of twisted social conscience”.
The young Dacre was hooked by newspapers. He only ever wanted to be a journalist and he always had his eyes on editing: “I’m a good writer, but not a great writer,” he told Hagerty. As a child in New York, during his father’s posting there, he would wake to the clattering of the ticker-tape telex machine outside his bedroom. In school holidays, he worked as a messenger for Junor’s Sunday Express and then spent a gap year before university as a trainee on the Daily Express. At the fee-charging University College School in Hampstead, north London, he edited the school magazine, and once ran, he told the Society of Editors, “a ponderous, prolix and achingly dull” special issue about the evangelist Billy Graham. It “went down like a sodden hot cross bus”, teaching him the essential lesson, which the Mail remembers every day on every page, that the worst sin in journalism is to be boring.
To his disappointment, his application to Oxford University failed. He went instead to Leeds, where he read English and edited Union News, taking it sharply downmarket from, in his own description, “a product that looked like the then Times on Prozac” to one that ran “Leeds Lovelies” on page three. It won an award for student newspaper of the year. The paper supported a sit-in (led by the union president, Jack Straw, later a Labour cabinet minister), interviewed a student about “the delights of getting stoned”, wrote sympathetically about gay people, immigrants and homeless families, and called on students to help in “breaking down the barriers between the coloured and white communities of this town”. At the time, he subsequently claimed, he was left-wing, though Jon Holmes, who worked on Dacre’s Union News, says: “I never heard him express a political view except in favour of planned economies for third-world, though not first-world, countries.”
His left-wing period, as he calls it, continued until the Daily Express, which he joined as soon as he left Leeds, sent him to America in 1976. He stayed there for six years, latterly working for the Mail. “America,” Dacre told Hagerty, “taught me the power of the free market . . . to improve the lives of the vast majority of ordinary people.”
The Mail brought him back to London in the early 1980s and made him news editor. According to various accounts, he would “rampage through the newsroom with arms flailing like a windmill”, shouting “Go, paras, go” as he despatched reporters on stories. He climbed the hierarchy until in 1991 he became the editor of the London Evening Standard, then owned, like the Mail, by the Rothermeres’ Associated Newspapers. Circulation rose by 25 per cent in 16 months and Rupert Murdoch sounded him out about the Times editorship. To stop him leaving, the Mail editor David English resigned his chair, recommended that Dacre should replace him, and moved “upstairs” as editor-in-chief, another title that Dacre eventually inherited after English died in 1998.
Dacre’s editorship has been more successful than his mentor’s but most staff do not love him as they did English. English, though capable of great coldness to those who fell into disfavour and no less likely to fly off the handle, had charm and charisma. “He would be delighted when you rang,” a former foreign correspondent says, “and he’d want to gossip and know about everything that was going on. Sometimes we’d talk for an hour. But Paul doesn’t give good phone.”
He will invite writers into his office, push a glass of champagne into their hands and start saying their latest story is rubbish even as he does so. “And you hardly got time to finish the bloody drink,” a former reporter complains. A former executive says: “His track record for creating columnists is nil. He buys them up from elsewhere. He doesn’t home-grow talent because he doesn’t nurture and praise it. That’s where he’s unlike English.”
Dacre is a passionate and emotional man. Though the story that he sometimes sheds tears as he dictates leaders is probably apocryphal, nobody who has worked with him doubts that he is sincere in the views he and the Mail express. “He’s not an editor who wakes up in the morning and wonders what he should be thinking today,” says Simon Heffer, a Mail columnist. Another columnist, Amanda Platell, a former editor of the Sunday Mirror and press secretary to William Hague during his leadership of the Conservative Party, says: “When I was an editor, I had to second-guess my readership because they weren’t my natural constituency. Paul never has to do that.”
But while his views are mostly right-wing, he is not a reliable ally for the Conservative Party, or for anyone else. This aspect of his way of working is little understood. More than most editors, it can be said of him that he is in nobody’s pocket, not even his proprietor’s. He inherited from English a paper that was slavishly pro-Tory (“David was always in and out of No 10,” said a long-serving Mail editor), firmly pro-Europe and read mainly by people in London and the south-east. Dacre changed the politics of the paper and the demographics of its audience. Today, it is resolutely – some would say hysterically – Eurosceptic and a far higher proportion of its readership is from Scotland and the English north and midlands. The Mail has ceased to take its line from Tory headquarters or to act as a mouthpiece for Conservative leaders. Indeed, every Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher has fallen short of Dacre’s exacting standards. That applies particularly to John Major and David Cameron. According to a former columnist, Dacre regards the latter as “brash, shallow, unthinking and self-advancing” and he takes an equally jaundiced view of Boris Johnson. Twice he backed Kenneth Clarke for the party leadership, despite Clarke’s enthusiasm for the EU.
Clarke is a model for the politicians Dacre generally favours even if he disagrees with most of what they say: earthy, authentic, unpretentious, consistent in their values. Jack Straw and David Blunkett – both, like Clarke, from humble backgrounds – are other examples. For a time, Dacre took a relatively kindly view of Tony Blair, having been impressed by the future prime minister’s “tough on crime” approach as shadow home secretary. But he was always suspicious of Blair’s socially liberal views on marriage, gays and drugs and he told Hagerty that once Labour attained power, he saw the new government as “manipulative, dictatorial and slightly corrupt”. He wished, he added, that Blair had “done as much for the family as he’s done for gay rights”.
Gordon Brown, however, was smiled upon as no other politician had ever been. The two men developed a strange friendship, involving meals together and walks in the park, which one Mail columnist described to me as “the attraction of the two weirdest boys in the playground”. Brown, Dacre told Hagerty, was “touched by the mantle of greatness . . . he is a genuinely good man . . . a compassionate man . . . an original thinker . . . of enormous willpower and courage”. At a Savoy Hotel event to celebrate Dacre’s first ten years as editor, Brown was almost equally effusive, describing the Mail editor as showing “great personal warmth and kindness . . . as well as great journalistic skill”. “We tried to tell Dacre,” says a former Mail political reporter, “that Brown was not a very good chancellor and the economy would implode eventually. But frankly, Dacre has poor political judgement. They were united by a mutual hatred of Blair. Both are social conservatives; they’re both suspicious of foreigners; they both have a kind of Presbyterian morality. Dacre would say that Brown believes in work. It’s typical of him that he seizes on a single word as the key to his understanding of someone else.”
It is inconceivable that the Mail would ever back a party other than the Conservatives in a general election, but Dacre’s support can be cool, as it was in 1997 and 2010. Although he described himself to Hagerty as “a Thatcherite politically” and though self-made entrepreneurs are among the few people who can expect favourable coverage in the Mail, Dacre is, to most neoliberals, a tepid and inconsistent supporter of free enterprise. Nor is he a neocon. The Mail opposed overseas military interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria. It has denounced Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and torture. It may be hard on immigrants and benefit scroungers, but it is often equally hard on the rich and famous, pursuing overpaid bosses of public-service utilities to their luxurious homes, exposing “depravity” among the well-heeled and high-born, and rarely treating TV and film celebrities with the deference that is the staple fare of other tabloids.
Many Mail campaigns have centred on liberal or environmental causes: lead in petrol, plastic bags, secret justice, the extradition to the United States of the hacker Gary McKinnon, and so on. For a time, the Mail furiously campaigned to stop Labour deporting failed (black) asylum-seekers to Zimbabwe, even though, almost simultaneously, it was berating ministers for allowing too many illegal immigrants to stay. Other campaigns, such as those against internet porn and super-casinos (both of which influenced government action), though reflecting the Mail’s conservative social agenda, highlighted issues that concern many on the left.
Dacre’s most celebrated campaign, which even some of his enemies regard as his finest hour, was to bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. In 1997, over the five photographs of those he believed were responsible, he ran the headline “MURDERERS” and, beneath it, asserted: “The Mail accuses these men of killing. If we are wrong, let them sue us”.
It was hugely courageous, but did it exonerate the Mail from accusations of racism? Critics point out that the paper rarely features black people except as criminals, though this is not exceptional for the nationals. The “soft” features on women, fashion, style and health are illustrated almost entirely by white faces and bodies.

Dacre’s somewhat belated support for the Lawrence campaign was prompted by a personal connection: Neville Lawrence, Stephen’s father, had worked as a decorator on Dacre’s London house of the time, in Islington. The Mail’s campaign, critics argue, was based on substituting one frame of prejudice for another. Young Stephen eschewed gangs and drugs, did his homework and wanted to go to university. His parents were married, aspirational and home-owning. In everything except skin colour, the Lawrence family represented Middle England, while his white alleged killers were low-class yobs who threatened the safety of all respectable folk.
In that, as in much else, Dacre’s Mail recalls 1950s Britain, which rather patronisingly welcomed migrants from Asia and the Caribbean as long as they behaved as though they and their ancestors were English. “If you’re in twinset and pearls, your colour is irrelevant,” says a former Mail journalist. “And Dacre’s attitude to gays changed when he realised it’s possible to be an extremely boring gay person.”
The Mail’s attitudes to drugs are also redolent of the 1950s. Writing about the disgraced Co-operative Bank chairman Paul Flowers, Stephen Glover – the Mail columnist whose views, according to insiders, track Dacre’s most closely – criticised commentators who “concentrated on his financial unsuitability”, placing “relatively little emphasis” on his “moral turpitude”.
Most of all, the Mail seems determined to uphold the 1950s ideal of womanhood: the stay-at-home mother who dedicates herself to homemaking and prepares a cooked dinner for her husband on his return home every night. That, the paper’s defenders say, is something of a caricature of the Mail’s position. It objects not so much to working mothers as to middle-class feminists who insist that women can “have it all”. English aimed at turning the Mail into “the women’s paper”, and succeeded: it became the only national newspaper where women accounted for more than half the readership. That remains true, and yet Dacre sometimes seems determined to drive them away. The paper subjects women’s bodies, clothes and deportment to relentless and detailed scrutiny, and often finds them wanting, particularly in the thigh and bottom department. It gives prominent coverage to research that warns of the negative effects of working mothers on children’s lives.
The Mail’s poster girl is Liz Jones, the columnist and fashion editor celebrated for her self-hatred and misery. “She has so much,” says another Mail journalist, “lots of money, expensive houses, the newest clothes. But she’s never had a child, she hasn’t kept hold of a man, and she’s unhappy. The message is: it’s what happens to you, girls, if you pursue worldly success. You can succeed but, oh boy, you will suffer for it.”
The Mail’s punishing hours, requiring news and features executives to stay at the office until late into the evening (not uncommon in national newspapers), and its largely unsympathetic attitude to part-time employment make it an unfriendly environment for working mothers. When Dacre took over at the Mail, he immediately appointed a female deputy, which, said another woman who then had a senior role in the group, “was quite a statement”. But the paper now has few women in its most senior positions, other than the editor of Femail (though sometimes even that post is occupied by a man), and few staff have young children.
Yet in some respects, the Mail, even though it does not recognise the National Union of Journalists, is a good employer. Unlike the Mirror, it is not under a company ruled by accountants who single-mindedly seek “efficiencies”. Unlike the Times and the Sun, it does not have a proprietor who touts his papers’ support to the highest bidder. Unlike the Guardian and Independent, it is not beset by financial problems. The proprietor, Viscount (Jonathan) Rothermere, whose great-grandfather Harold Harmsworth founded the paper with his brother Alfred in 1896, allows his editors wide freedom, as did his father, Vere Rothermere, who appointed Dacre. The Mail, alone among national newspapers, has had no significant rounds of editorial redundancies in recent years and its staffing levels (it employs about 400 journalists) are comparable to what they were a decade ago.
Dacre’s paper is his sole domain; MailOnline is run separately (though Dacre, as editor-in-chief, has oversight) and although the website carries all daily and Sunday paper stories, much of its content is self-generated and the editorial flavour is distinct. Dacre demands, and mostly gets, a generous budget, paying high salaries for established editorial staff and columnists and high fees for freelance contributors. Journalists are driven hard but, at senior levels in particular, they rarely leave, not least because Dacre is as loyal to them as they mostly are to him. Outright sackings are rare and nearly always accompanied by large payoffs.
Those who do leave often reach the top elsewhere. The current editors of both Telegraph papers – Tony Gallagher at the daily and Ian MacGregor at the Sunday – are former Mail executives.
Despite more than two decades at the helm, Dacre shows few signs of slowing down. After heart trouble some years ago – which caused an absence of several months from the office – his holidays, which he usually takes in the British Virgin Islands, have become slightly longer and more frequent. But he still routinely puts in 14-hour days.
Nevertheless, speculation about his future has grown among journalists on the Mail and other papers. At the end of November, Dacre sold his last remaining shares in the Daily Mail and General Trust, the Mail’s parent company, for £347,564; he disposed of the majority in 2012. His latest contract, signed on his 65th birthday, is for one year only. Geordie Greig, the 53-year-old editor of the Mail on Sunday, is widely regarded as the most likely successor, though Martin Clarke, the abrasive publisher of the phenomenally successful MailOnline, now the most visited newspaper website in the world, is also tipped and Jon Steafel, Dacre’s deputy, is favoured by most staff. The surprising announcement in November that Richard Kay, the paper’s diarist and a long-standing friend of Dacre’s, is to leave his position looks like another straw in the wind, particularly given that his almost certain replacement is Sebastian Shakespeare, previously the diary editor at the London Evening Standard, where Greig was editor before he moved to the Mail on Sunday.
Fleet Street rumour has it that Kay is being moved because he upset friends of Lady Rothermere, the proprietor’s wife, and that she is also behind the abrupt departure of the columnist Melanie Phillips, apparently on the grounds that her style – particularly during a June appearance on BBC1’s Question Time – is too shrill. Lady Rothermere, it is said, is desperately keen to oust Dacre in favour of Greig. Senior Mail sources pooh-pooh such tales, but they stop short of outright denials that Dacre is nearing the end of his days on the paper.

Season 6 Nevada State Prison Casino Theory

Note: I am updating if I think of new ideas. Updated 29.02.16
I have been looking at clues for S6 in AHS Hotel and I think the setting for next season may be based on Nevada State Prison. Prison has been a popular fan theory and has been hinted at since S1, where RM says we can find clues for S6. See my comment below about prison references in S1.
I think that being set in Nevada the season would have a Western feel and we may see Native American Reservations and their casinos.
Here is some of the evidence I found to support my theory:
PRISON REFERENCES In Hotel Tristan states that he spent time in prison. He later says he lied about this but he has his reasons. Are those reasons the writers giving us a clue to S6?
Are those trapped hands in the titles a clue to S6 as well as hinting at things to come in S5?
The Swedish girls in episode 1 are excited about going on the Fast and Furious ride. The main character in the film is an escaped convict. The girls themselves soon find themselves imprisoned.
Remember in Asylum when they played I put a spell on you and it was a clue to coven? Well. I think it was in episode 1 of Hotel they played Hotel California and the lyrics: we are all just prisoners here.
When Mr. March kills Miss Evers she describes herself as his last meal which is what a condemned man gets to eat. I think we may be seeing executions in S6.
The scene where Sally tries to help Iris commit suicide is reminiscent of execution by hanging. Sally places a bag over Iris's and then a noose round her neck.
Also a number of charcters spend time imprisoned within the corridors of the Cortez. Could this be a foreshadowing of S6 like Vivien being committed to the Asylum hinted at S2 setting?
The books that Liz gives to Tristan are Oscar Wilde who was imprisoned for homosexuality, at the time illegal and Emily Bronte who wrote a poem called the prisoner.
When Marcy is showing Will and Lachlan the hotel. Lachlan is throwing a ball in a similar way to the famous scene from the film The Great Escape.
In Devil's Night it is stated that Manson cannot attend because he is still alive and serving time in state prison. Mr. March introduces the murderers to John and he explains how each one died in prison. This also includes executions. So we have cult and prison references.
I may be clutching at straws here but I have noticed a number of bird references in Hotel. Are these references to jailbirds? Escaped convicts? Could there possibly be a creepy homage to the Birdman of Alcatraz?
Also in the TV series The Prisoner the main character is known as number 6. Number 6 - season 6 maybe?
GAMBLING REFERENCES The name of the hotel may suggest a casino theme. The El Cortez in Vegas is the longest continuously running hotel and Casino.
In the 1995 film Casino Sharon Stone's character's surname is Mckenna. We learn this is also Sally's surname.
There also seem to be a lot of references to cards and card games. You can't have missed the ace of spades references and there are giant cards displayed in the school. The Countess says she was the queen of disco as she rides through the club on a horse. More on horses later. Could Queenie have been seen in the finale as her name is a link to the theme? She's also there for the price is right, possible casino link? Could Ramona Royale's name hint to Casino Royale? Or a royal flush? Also Elizabeth Taylor starred in several films about gambling and we have a hotel character who is her namesake. Could we see GaGa's poker face next season?
POSSIBLE LINK TO NEVADA Having recently read that Nevada State Prison used to house a casino these clues seem to link together. I'm thinking that the prison setting could be based on the Nevada prison like the Cortez is based on the Hotel Cecil. The prison has only recently closed and is still used for executions. Past executions at the prison included hangings, firing squads and gas chambers. A prison theme would fit in with the modern timeline with flashbacks that has been announced. The prisoners could still be involved in illegal gambling in modern times with flashbacks to the legal prison casino and past executions.
Iris uses sage to cleanse the hotel. Sage is associated with Nevada and appears on the state flag.
CARSON CITY LOCATION AND COWBOYS The original warden of the prison was Abraham Curry and he and other ghosts are said to still haunt Carson City including the ranch near the prison. This could fit in with those Thacher school references in the finale as the boarding school is situated on a ranch and students take equestrian studies. There is currently a wild horse taming programme for low security prisoners in Nevada. Wild horses and bears also referred to are found in the area. Horses also link in with the gambling theme.
Back to the hotel name again Cortez the killer was a song by Neil Young and his band The Crazy Horse which links in with those Thacher references.
In the season finale Iris calls Drake a cowboy. She has previously referred to John in the same way. In the same scene she talks about 2 football teams from Carson checking in to the hotel.
Horses have been mentioned in other seasons. When Kit goes home in S2 he randomly tells Grace they should get a horse. In S4 Dandy has a horse figure in his play room and Ma Petite says she would like a pony.
In the late 1870s prisoners working at the quarry in Carson City discovered large fossilised foot prints. This could lead to a mystery creature theme.
GOLD RUSH Another possible link could be the references to gold and adventurers throughout the season. Gold prospectors were attracted to the area. There is also a myth that in the 1860's a stagecoach carrying gold bullion to the mint was robbed in Carson city. The armed gunmen escaped with the gold. All of the thieves were killed in a gun battle except Manuel Gonzales who was sentenced to 20 years in the prison. He remarked he could see where the treasure was buried from his window. Gonzales died before he could recover the treasure. The treasure has never been found, probably because the story is untrue, but it could provide an interesting subplot. When Gonzales is released and goes to retrieve the treasure after years of waiting, he is killed by whatever left the footprints or he actually gets the treasure but is then killed by the ghosts of the other jealous gunmen?
In the finale Mr. March talks about being the Captain of the ship and calls the other ghosts mateys. Could he be making a treasure seeking pirate reference? Is the Blue Parrot lounge another pirate reference? Max, the boy with measles is also seen wearing a pirate costume.
Maybe the prison could be set on an Alcatraz style island and that is where those water references tie in. There could be a light house on the island and we could get a homage to the film The Fog.
EGYPTIAN GODDESS Another possible link to the Nevada area is Sekhmet the Egyptian goddess. (Bare with me.) She has a lion's head. In the trophy room there is a scene where the lion's head is centre of the frame. The Temple of Goddess Spirituality connected to Sekhmet is in Nevada. Could also tie to references of Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. The Countess calls her a goddess. We could see murders being committed as sacrifice to the goddess. Iris speaks of the sacrifices she has made as a mother and Sally says killing can be righteous. Mr. March mentions libations when they drinking on Devil's Night and he calls the man they murder a sacrifice.
A prison setting could also include some of those cult themes that have been hinted at. There seems to be plenty of real life material here that S6 could draw on as well as many prison, Western and casino films that could be used as inspiration.
I was thinking that a good film to play homage to in a prison season would be The Green Mile. I Googled this as it's been a while since I saw the film and was interested to see that the Asylum in the film is called Briar ridge. Sound familiar? Also there is a mouse that's gets healed and gets longevity. The Countess is referred to as little mouse in Hotel. Incidentally, the movie Top Hat, the clue to the hotel season in S4 is referenced in this film.
LINKS TO FREAK SHOW A link to this theme from Freak Show could be Dandy Mott. The plot of the novel Mott the Hoople involves a freak show, prisons and gambling. Freak show also includes lots of references to the wizard of Oz. Could these be a clue to the TV prison series Oz?
Freak show also made reference to the electric chair a few times.
A link to the Nevada area from Freak Show is that Massimo says that he was building villages for atomic bomb testing in the Nevada dessert.
There were also a few Western references in Freak show. For example the bar Del and Stanley go to was called High Noon.
So in summary convicts, executions, cowboys, card sharps, sacrifices and goddesses. I think it could happen.

S6 Theory updated sacrifice, gambling, executions

I have been looking at clues for S6 in AHS Hotel and I think the setting for next season may be based on Nevada State Prison, which had a casino, and the Carson City area. Prison has been a popular fan theory and has been hinted at since S1, where Billie Dean talks about the negative energy in prisons.
I think that being set in Nevada the season would have a Western feel (Valentino mentions working in Westerns to Donovan) and we may see Native American Reservations (we saw a character dressed in native American fancy dress accused of being insensitive) and their casinos.
I also think there is evidence that we will see executions.
Here is some of the evidence I found to support my theory:
PRISON AND EXECUTION REFERENCES In Hotel Tristan states that he spent time in prison. He later says he lied about this but he has his reasons. Are those reasons the writers giving us a clue to S6? Are those trapped hands in the titles a clue to S6 as well as hinting at things to come in S5? The Swedish girls in episode 1 are excited about going on the Fast and Furious ride. The main character in the film is an escaped convict. The girls themselves soon find themselves imprisoned. Remember in Asylum when they played I put a spell on you and it was a clue to coven? In episode 1 of Hotel they played Hotel California and the lyrics: we are all just prisoners here.
When Mr. March kills Miss Evers she describes herself as his last meal which is what a condemned man gets to eat. I think we may be seeing executions in S6.
I believe that Hallie being put down may have been included in Hotel as a reference to execution by lethal injection. The scene where Sally tries to help Iris commit suicide is reminiscent of execution by hanging. Sally places a bag over Iris's head and then a noose round her neck. John is also seen hanging.
Also a number of characters spend time imprisoned within the corridors of the Cortez. Could this be a foreshadowing of S6 like Vivien being committed to the Asylum hinted at S2 setting? The books that Liz gives to Tristan are Oscar Wilde who was imprisoned for homosexuality, at the time illegal and Emily Bronte who wrote a poem called the prisoner. When Marcy is showing Will and Lachlan the hotel. Lachlan is throwing a ball in a similar way to the famous scene from the film The Great Escape. Valentino says fame is a prison. There are many more references. In Devil's Night it is stated that Manson cannot attend because he is still alive and serving time in state prison. Mr. March introduces the murderers to John and he explains how each one died in prison. This also includes executions.
The scene where Nick/Liz takes the champagne into the hotel bedroom is very similar to prisoners taking their meal through the hole in the bottom of their cell door.
I may be clutching at straws here but I have noticed a number of bird references in Hotel. Are these references to jailbirds? Escaped convicts? Could there possibly be a creepy homage to the Birdman of Alcatraz? Also in the TV series The Prisoner the main character is known as number 6. Number 6 - season 6 maybe?
GAMBLING REFERENCES The name of the hotel may suggest a casino theme. The El Cortez in Vegas is the longest continuously running hotel and Casino. In the 1995 film Casino Sharon Stone's character's surname is Mckenna. We learn this is also Sally's surname. There also seem to be a lot of references to cards and card games. You can't have missed the ace of spades references and there are giant cards displayed in the school. The Countess says she was the queen of disco as she rides through the club on a horse. More on horses later. Could Queenie have been seen in the finale as her name is a link to the theme? She's also there for the price is right, possible casino link? Could Ramona Royale's name hint to Casino Royale? Or a royal flush? Also Elizabeth Taylor starred in several films about gambling and we have a hotel character who is her namesake. Could we see GaGa's poker face next season?
POSSIBLE LINK TO NEVADA Having recently read that Nevada State Prison used to house a casino these clues seem to link together. I'm thinking that the prison setting could be based on the Nevada prison like the Cortez is based on the Hotel Cecil. The prison has only recently closed and is still used for executions. Past executions at the prison included hangings, firing squads and gas chambers. A prison theme would fit in with the modern timeline with flashbacks that has been announced. The prisoners could still be involved in illegal gambling in modern times with flashbacks to the legal prison casino and past executions. Iris uses sage to cleanse the hotel. Sage is associated with Nevada and appears on the state flag.
CARSON CITY LOCATION AND COWBOYS Cowboys sitting round a campfire would tie in with those Campfire gold references. We see Australians wearing cowboy hats check in to the hotel and as mentioned earlier there are many references to horses. The original warden of the prison was Abraham Curry and he and other ghosts are said to still haunt Carson City including the ranch near the prison. This could fit in with those Thacher school references in the finale as the boarding school is situated on a ranch and students take equestrian studies. There is currently a wild horse taming programme for low security prisoners in Nevada. Wild horses and bears also referred to are found in the area. Horses also link in with the gambling theme. Back to the hotel name again Cortez the killer was a song by Neil Young and his band The Crazy Horse which links in with those Thacher references. In the season finale Iris calls Drake a cowboy. She has previously referred to John in the same way. In the same scene she talks about 2 football teams from Carson checking in to the hotel. The finale is called Be our guest which is a tourism campaign slogan for Carson City.
Horses have been mentioned in other seasons. When Kit goes home in S2 he randomly tells Grace they should get a horse. In S4 Dandy has a horse figure in his play room and Ma Petite says she would like a pony.
In the late 1870s prisoners working at the quarry in Carson City discovered large fossilised foot prints. This could lead to a mystery creature theme.
GOLD RUSH Another possible link could be the references to gold and adventurers throughout the season. Gold prospectors were attracted to the area. There is also a myth that in the 1860's a stagecoach carrying gold bullion to the mint was robbed in Carson city. The armed gunmen escaped with the gold. All of the thieves were killed in a gun battle except Manuel Gonzales who was sentenced to 20 years in the prison. He remarked he could see where the treasure was buried from his window. Gonzales died before he could recover the treasure. The treasure has never been found, probably because the story is untrue, but it could provide an interesting subplot. When Gonzales is released and goes to retrieve the treasure after years of waiting, he is killed by whatever left the footprints or he actually gets the treasure but is then killed by the ghosts of the other jealous gunmen?
EGYPTIAN GODDESS Another possible link to the Nevada area is Sekhmet the Egyptian goddess. (Bare with me.) She has a lion's head. In the trophy room there is a scene where the lion's head is centre of the frame. The Temple of Goddess Spirituality connected to Sekhmet is in Nevada. Could also tie to references of Liz Taylor as Cleopatra. The Countess calls her a goddess. We could see murders being committed as sacrifice to the goddess. Iris speaks of the sacrifices she has made as a mother and Sally says killing can be righteous. Mr. March mentions libations when they are drinking on Devil's Night and he calls the man that they murder a sacrifice. There are many references to gods and goddesses throughout the season.
A prison setting could also include some of those cult themes that have been hinted at. There seems to be plenty of real life material here that S6 could draw on as well as many prison, Western and casino films that could be used as inspiration.
I was thinking that a good film to play homage to in a prison season would be The Green Mile. I Googled this as it's been a while since I saw the film and was interested to see that the Asylum in the film is called Briar ridge. Sound familiar? Also there is a mouse that's gets healed and gets longevity. The Countess is referred to as little mouse in Hotel. Incidentally, the movie Top Hat, the clue to the hotel season in S4 is referenced in this film.
LINKS TO FREAK SHOW A link to this theme from Freak Show could be Dandy Mott. The plot of the novel Mott the Hoople involves a freak show, prisons and gambling. Freak show also made reference to the electric chair a few times.
A link to the Nevada area from Freak Show is that Massimo says that he was building villages for atomic bomb testing in the Nevada dessert.
There were also a few Western references in Freak show. For example the bar Del and Stanley go to was called High Noon.
So in summary convicts, executions, cowboys, card sharps, sacrifices and goddesses. I think it could happen.
The following are some of my replies to comments I have received to this post that may be relevant:
PRISON REFERENCES S1 I focused on the prison theme because RM said that clues to the S6 could be found in S1. There were numerous hints to cults which could fit in with a prison theme. But, the thing that stood out for me most that Billie Dean talks about the negative energy in prisons and asylums. Larry lied about spending time in prison and his story arc also ends with him actually in prison and Violet says she feels she is trapped inside a prison.
I've read that Al Capone travelled to Carson City in a bid to legalise gambling. In S5 there were also references to prohibition and Elliot Ness. Tristan cutting his face could also have hinted to Scar face.
A Carson City setting may also include reference to the Reno brothels: Just of the top of my head hints towards prostitution would include Sally saying that she was not a prostitute, Mr Wu not paying for it, the porn stars filming in the hotel and Aileen Wuornos claiming to be a prostitute to commit her murders.

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AEDUB Ratings for UK Week 59