At Introversion we used to proclaim ourself the last of the bedroom programmers – a pertinent and concise tagline that summed up our belief that something had been lost within the games industry. A creativity that had been so rife during the eighties and nineties, had been squeezed out through corporate greed by the turn of the century, and we wanted to show that the internet provided technology (digital distribution) that would enable a return to those halcyon days. Over the years that followed, Introversion grew and it became apparent that we couldn’t claim the last of the bedroom programmers crown any longer – this was a baton that had to be passed to the likes of 2D Boy – and we had to find a new tagline. My personal favourite was “Game Design from Our Souls”, but this was considered too risky when read aloud (try it ) and we finally settled on the following: Original Video Games.
This is what we care about most – pushing the boundaries and exploring crazy game design ideas to see what works. This is not a viewpoint shared by the majority of publishers. Publishers are interested on making a financial return and this involves maintaining a close grip on development projects to ensure that (as much as possible) they don’t go over time and over budget. There are a number of techniques used to manage the risk of a project – production of a vertical slice, creation of an up-front design document, culling of features that will take too long or our not easily understood, and the publishers wield these instruments mercilessly. The difficulty is that the reduction of schedule risk is usually synonymous with the crushing of creativity and creative risk-taking. To be creative one requires the flexibility to try out ideas, see which work, modify and improve on them – this creative “try, test, improve” iteration really needs to run throughout the length of a project, however this is usually unacceptable to the money men who reduce games to a line on a profit and loss sheet.
Based on this realisation Introversion was founded on the principle that in order to produce Original Video Games we would need to self-fund those games and distribute them ourselves. We were one of the first companies to adopt this approach and it worked well. We handled the advertising, marketing and e-commerce systems, and found a successful niche for ourselves producing games that were simply too risky for publishers (we have offered all our games to publishers and been turned down each time) and proving that there was in fact a market for them. We decried publishers in public (most famously at the 2006 IGF Awards), and encouraged others similarly to self-publish.
Despite our success on the PC we wanted more. Once we had taken the creative risks and made the games, it seemed sensible to release them on as many platforms as possible. The difficulty was that in order to release an Xbox game one needs to pay an upfront royalty to Microsoft based on the number of units that are produced. This would require an upfront investment of maybe $100k and we didn’t have access to this kind of money – but then Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) was announced.
A chance meeting with an agent and a clearing up of the IGF awards for Darwinia, resulted in the opportunity to port Darwinia to XBLA. This caused much debate at Introversion Towers – in the Red Corner the conservatives argued that Microsoft were just another publisher and would require us to change the character of the game – smiley faces on the Darwinian’s and re-setting to a less abstract environment. In the Blue Corner the progressives argued that the removal of the physical goods had resulted in a platform upon which Microsoft would take more risks, and by seizing the opportunity we would be able to bring Darwinia to a much wider audience. The progressives won.
