Uplink, Darwinia and Defcon - the cult classics from the Last Starfight... am, Bedroom Developer, Introversion. And not from the mighty first years of the eigthties, but now, in the 21st century, and not from the uncharted corners of the Far East, but here, in the sleepy town of Glastonbury, England. We bought Defcon, reviewed it, and because of the pressure from our readers, we knocked on their front door. Victoria opened the door and introduced Thomas, their commercial director, so we sat down, with a jug of Guinness, for a chat. On Skype.
G365 - Hi. This is the Gamer365.hu from Hungary, a small but glorious country in Central-Europe, and we are here to talk about Introversion, about Defcon, Darwinia and about indie development.
Thomas Arundel - Hi!
G365 - Let's start with the firm itself. I have noticed that two of you [our two contacts from Introversion] have the same family name. Is it some kind of family-business then?
TA - Yeah, the business is kind of similar of a family, if you like, the company was started by four of us out of university.
G365 - Planning to grow bigger or stay this size?
TA - I think at the moment we'll stay this size. At the moment we have a very healthy burn rate, but with more people this would increase dramatically, and it may start problems if our game does not perform well. Right now we can afford to write it out and we don't have too many headaches if we have to cut salaries for a couple of months. So I think it is safer for us to remain smaller.
G365 - I see. So that's why you are the last of the bedroom programmers? Are you really?
TA - When we started out, we certainly were the last of the bedroom programmers, because other bedroom programmers seemed to be making commercial games. Since then, since the digital distribution has improved indie development a lot, it is easier for people to put out games and make some money back of them, so yes, we should rename the title to be, I don't know, last of the bedroom programmers of the last era or something. But, since I talk from my own kitchen, and we don't have a central office, we haven't got a real title to change.
G365 - So you predict more indie games in the future?
TA - Definitely. Here we have digital distribution, which took developers and customers closer to each other, so quitting your job and create the game you imagined is becoming a more viable thing to do. And as the infrastructure develops to support that, I think you will see smaller teams again, not like in the old days, when people turned a game out a week with cassette tapes, but I think that's definitely improved the possibility of people being smaller independent developers.
G365 - In our country, we have 3 or 4 game studios, and they are constantly struggling with human resource shortages. These days, videogames are so popular among the youth and somehow these young boys and men just don't want to participate in creating games. Just like how the demo-scene devolved in the last ten years. Why?
TA - Hm, that's kind of strange, didn't Hungary have a particularly strong tradition of playing videogames?
G365 - Sure we have. In the eighties we had blooming Commodore64/+4 and Amiga scene with active and famous groups but lately this energy vanished somehow.
TA - I think that will change. You know, most countries have some kind of shortages, recently we have some shortage of creative people here in the UK, but that's not what really makes a game. What makes a game is one or two people who have a real creative vision about how the game is actually going to work, and once you have a design doc, an idea or just an inspiration or a creative lead, making a game is just an engineering challenge, make up the polygons on the screen, make the physics right - that is an engineering problem you can solve with programmers. But from out point of view I think the hard thing is to find creative people.
G365 - Speaking of programming - what technologies do you use? I mean programming languages, tools, etc.
TA - We use Visual Studio 6 and C++ and pretty much everything that was done in house, like networking code, game and graphics engines. In our games graphic is very simple, the design is atmospheric and fits within the game rather than trying to use graphics as a way to poke up a crappy gameplay or crappy game experience, where I think some of the larger game companies are starting to tend today. So, everything is developed by us, we own all IPs, we don's sign any other way.
G365 - Is C++ an easy start for beginners? Should we make a "Game Programming For Dummies" based on that?
TA - Well, I think it is possible to pick up; the key is to just give it a go. There are freeware game engines and OpenGL library for quite a long time. Now we have got a bit further down the road with five years of experience, so we started to look around using other stuff like the DirectX engine, but if you just start trying stuff out, that is the quickest way to learn anything.
G365 - Back to Defcon. It seems to be a clear success, what's next?
TA - Next year we'll got a load of Darwinia updates, we'll revisit Darwinia a bit, because some interesting stuff will coming out for that, and then sometime in 2008 we're going to put out a new game, still unclear what's going to be though, we have some ideas, like a first person shooter, but it won't be an other World War II. set, that would be weird and pretty wacky. Chris has set up a new blog on our website which should give a bit more insight into the fourth game as it progresses, which you can find here www.introversion.co.uk/blog. Our biggest challenge is the resource issue, finding the time and the people to help us make the content of a new game can be extremely tough. Maybe we'll outsource the art and engine stuff to somebody else and we just maintain creative control over bits that counts to us, the gameplay, the atmosphere. It's not the best solution, but if it keeps us afloat financially then that's always an option.
G365 - How big projects are you thinking in? Do you feel desire to create AAA titles? Or you stay with little ones?
TA - Well you know, it would be great if we could create AAA titles because we can make a lot of cash, which means we wouldn't have to worry about money in the future, sure, but that's not necessarily feasible. We have limited resources, we have to make games that fits within these limited resources, and that is our main mantra, if you like, and that's why we have to focus on gameplay and atmosphere. For example the Defcon music is very simple way to generate very good atmosphere. There are other clever tricks in Defcon as well, like the colors are changing with the number of population. They are quite easy to do but really add something to the game.
G365 - Where do you get the idea from? The cold war is over.
TA - It was inspired by the film Wargames, basically. Its one of Chris' favourite movies and he was watching some months ago and thinking - this would make a great game. We were surprised no-one else seemed to have done it before. How the game got started is possibly the craziest part of the story. Chris said he was watching an episode of 24 on TV and got the idea to try and make this Wargames inspired game in 24 hours. One full day later, he had the basic structure of what he was looking for and 12 months of polish and beta testing later we have the final product, DEFCON.
G365 - Were there any controversies about Defcon? As I can see from here, the British press is quite eager picking on videogames, and... let's just say, Defcon is signed as Pegi 7+, while players do demolish Earth with nuclear weapons...
TA - Right, 7+ is the rating they gave for the game. But this is a strategy game; the whole idea is abstracted away. You don't see any of the death you cause, you only see a cold and calculated announcement on the screen. There are much bigger exemptions, like Carmageddon, which had very bad press in the UK, because it was pretty graphic and pretty rude.
G365 - Will you release any patches, upgrades, mods, (map)packs or even sequels for Defcon?
TA - Yeah, sure. For Defcon we have got a new mod-pack, like a big patch, that allows easy modding support and other cool features that allows alliance game play. But we have some pretty cool mods out there actually, from our user community. I saw one recent which is a Christmas Game: you have to deliver gifts for people like you were Santa and whenever gifts are dropped, a big snowflake appears. It's kind of weird but entertaining and funny, and very creative.
G365 - You sell your games on Steam. With Darwinia, you stated that you sold more through it then any other channels. How have you decided to use Steam? Will you use any other digital distributors?
TA - In 2005 we were talking to a couple of industry people, and they said Steam is opening up to third parties. So we contacted them and developed a very good partnership. They have about 2 and a half million active users every month, and we liked the way the Steam client works, it has pop-ups, it goes to people's desktop - some find it invasive, but for a small company as we are, this is huge amount of PR.
And once you have a good relationship, you stay with that.
G365 - THE question from our readers: Defcon for consoles?
TA - Defcon for console would be very cool, I like the idea having it on a DS. It might work well with a Wii controller, which is an interesting idea. We were talking to some other developers about possibly making a DS/Wii version of Defcon - that would be great.
G365 - We have XNA for 360, Linux for PS3 - it seems that we are at the dawn of indie for consoles, isn't it?
TA - 360 is a potential one, and there will be a Linux version of Defcon sometimes in February, so I don't think it would take up too much work to put that on PS3. But the problem is that you can not distribute it as a commercial thing - same problem with the XNA.
G365 - Any other game plans for consoles?
TA - It takes us about 18 months to put together a game, so we have to stay within our resources. But definitely Darwinia and Defcon could be great console games and we do our best to ensure that they can come out.
G365 - For the last question - as a PC developer, how do you see the future of the PC as a gaming platform?
TA - Pretty good, I think. There is a fashion at the moment to say that PC platform is dead and only casual games will prevail, but I don't think that's true. Right now the PC is a very easy platform for people to develop on, because it is open, the internet is an easy distribution method, you can also assure retail deals if you work hard, and as a platform I think you can make very good commercial successes out of it. It also gives you an opportunity to present your company, your ideas, and console platform holders can use it to consider whether they want to do a business with you in the future. It is something that takes you closer to your customers, without all the license fees and verification testing. So it is a good stepping stone, but not one we want to leave behind, you know.
G365 - That's for tonight, thanks for your time and patience and have a nice weekend!