Interview with Introversion Software

Q: Your arrangement with Valve and their Steam distribution service seems to have really helped put Introversion on the map. How did the Steam distribution of Darwinia, Uplink and DEFCON come about, and do you intend to continue the online distribution method with you future titles?

Certainly Steam has been a bit of a saviour for us. It took quite some time for Valve to accept Darwinia; we had to change the demo and adapt the gesture control mechanism to make it a more accessible game before they would consider it. When Darwinia was initially launched on retail we really struggled but with Steam we managed to sell more copies of Darwinia in 3 weeks than we’d managed in the whole previous 6 months selling via our online store and retail! The success we had with Darwinia on Steam made it feasible for us to put DEFCON and Uplink out on there too which was another great opportunity for us and it makes sense for us to continue with this form of distribution in the future.

The great thing about this method of distribution is that it enables us to reach a much larger number of our target audience and cut out the middlemen, such as distributors and retailers, which increases our cut of the profits. The bonus for indies is that far less risk is involved in retailing a product via digital distribution which in turn encourages and allows them to be more innovative with their games than they might be if they were otherwise releasing into retail where they have so much more to lose.

We think there is a market for the kind of games we’re creating otherwise there wouldn’t be room for us in the industry. Time and time again we get people writing in saying thank you for creating games that are different to anything else out there. Some of the games that are coming out at the moment are incredible, their attention to detail and the quantity of custom content and they obviously appeal to a mass market – but when you play the same kind of game, (and after all how many first-person shooter variation can there be?) after a while you might look around for something different and that’s when games like DEFCON gain some credibility.

It’s great to hear that Uplink is still gaining some positive press! Longevity of our games is one of the single most important things for us because they literally keep the cash-flow and the exposure coming in when we’re between games. From Day 1 we were amazed by the success of Uplink, we’d never expected it to sell the way it did. In fact we hadn’t even been planning to release Uplink publicly, we thought that its subject matter (computer hacking) the lack of 3D graphics and the dominance of the big name publishers would make it impossible to sell. In many ways I think that some of these elements were exactly why Uplink did sell. It was a game less focused on presentation and technology and more interested in concept and ideas, something that really captured the imaginations of those playing it. Uplink was disarmingly realistic – one reviewer told me how he’d actually disconnected his internet connection whilst playing it because he really believed that he was hacking!

I don’t know, we’d like to think that it’s all about the games we produce – if we continue to make unique games that people enjoy then I’d like to think that people will continue to buy them and that there’ll always be a space for us in the industry. I think the only risk we have is if we did something crazy like sell all our IPs to a major publisher, or release DEFCON 2, 3, 4… – but that’s never been the plan so I think we should be safe at lease from that kind of backlash! All we’ve ever wanted to do is make original games that are addictive and great to play, whilst getting paid to do it, so in that sense, I guess, our future plans haven’t changed a bit.