Introspective Interviews: Chris Delay From Introversion

Well, I am so proud to say that I had the opportunity to do a interview with Chris Delay of Introversion. He is the creative director at Introversion, and one of the main people behind the vision which games see. He is a really cool guy and although there were a few moments where “no comment” popped up, nevertheless, this was a really awesome experience. Getting to know him was really something great and I hope to interview them again sometime.

Diving Straight In There:

1)      The hype is, at the moment centered on Subversion with the release of recent screenshots everybody is expecting something legendary. For those out there that have no idea what it is could you elaborate a bit on this project?

Sure – Subversion is going to be set in a modern High Tech environment, with you taking “mission control” over a team of skilled operatives in a hostile High Security building. You will be using Sabotage, Social Engineering and Grifting, custom Electrical and Mechanical devices, Distractions, Hacking, Stealth, Acrobatics, Precision demolitions, Trickery, whatever gets the job done. In the best case scenarios your enemies will never know you were even there. When things go wrong, a well prepared escape plan and well timed precision violence will get you out of a tight spot – or maybe not.

2)     “Social Engineering” has been mentioned as a tool that can be used in your mission, how would this be implemented as it is effectively trying to mimic human stupidity which is very hard.

Yep – we’ll figure it out though.  We’re being very tight lipped about many things in Subversion at the moment.

3)      You are having cities procedurally generated would this be along similar lines like Uplink where you would be able to break in to computers or in this case building just for the challenge or as a distraction?

We’re not sure yet – probably a little bit of both. We’re big fans of subturfuge and mistrust and I’m sure those themes will make it into subversion.

4)      Would the city be aware? I.E would a building notice if the one next to it was robbed (if you go in loudly) and thus adapt making you adapt your strategies.

No comment

5)      How far will the A.I be in making you make decisions versus electronic security?

No comment

6)      What are the creative influences for you in this specific game?

We tend to take a lot of our inspiration from movies that really touched us when we were growing up.  I remember (in a very immature way) deciding that I had enough of movies, everything I’d seen over the last few months had been really bad and I went to the cinema for what the 15 year old me decided was the last ever time.  Then I watched Sneakers.  This showed me what I wanted to be when I grew up and restored my faith in Hollywood.  Sneakers is a big part, but so is Mission Impossible, Leverage, Oceans 11, The Sting.  Grifitng heist style movies have had a lot of attention in the movies, but now it’s time for us to make a game out of it.

7)      Any challenges that you are currently facing that you would like community feedback to help out on?

Lots, and we’ll reach out when we are ready!

8)      Anything else you care to share on the game?

Not at this time, your honour.

9)      For those that have no idea at all (the clueless) could you explain to them what Darwinia is and what your vision of it was?

The world of Darwinia is a virtual themepark, running entirely inside a computer network and populated by a sentient evolving life form called the Darwinians. Unfortunately Darwinia has been overrun by a computer virus which has multiplied out of control. Your task is to destroy the Viral Infection and save the Darwinians from extinction.

10)   We saw the release of Darwinia+ on XBLA in February how has the sales been going and in general how has the reception been of the game.

We’ve been really pleased with the critical response.  We’ve had lots of fantastic reviews and the press were really keen to receive us and run features and competitions regarding the game.  I can’t go into too much detail regarding the sales numbers, but we hit our minimium sales target so we are happy enough with that.

11)   Previously your team has not worked with a publisher thus had no other guidelines except those you set for your game, what were challenges you were faced with when working with Microsoft?

Microsoft were actually very good to work with – they did have problems with aspects of our designs, but they always used evidence to help us understand where the problems were and worked with us to produce designs that both parties were happy to run with.  The biggest issue was that we had no idea how much work we were going to need to put in to bring in the finished project.  Microsoft were much more concerned about the whole experience – things like the menus and intro-sequence were much more important to them then to us, and it took us a long time to get on the same page.  My advice to any developers working on XBLA for the first time would be to make sure that there are approved designs for everything agreed upon at the start!

12)   After this experience are you willing to work with other publishers or are you on the fence regarding publishers?

It depends on what you mean by publisher.  I see Microsoft, Sony and Valve as platform holders that deliver customers.  If you want those customers to play your games (which we do) then you have to work with them, but I don’t see a problem with that.  A traditional PC publisher that pays you money up front for a game – that’s a different entity and we’d be more wary about working with someone like that – but never say never and every deal is different.

13)   How does it feel to be finally done with Darwinia after almost 8 years?

Ha!  It actually feels great – we are done with the little stickmen now!

14)   Will we be seeing anything happening with Defcon anytime soon?

DEFCON PSN is coming up, but we’re not sure when yet.

15)   What challenges did you face in the designing of Defcon?

DEFCON was actually enjoyed the easiest development process.  Chris came up for the idea of DEFCON and wanted to make it in 24hours.  He missed that target and decided to see if he could finish it in 7 days – he pretty much got the core game in there, but it still took us another year to put in the networking code and other technical areas.

16)   How did Introversion come in to existence?

Well it all began back in 1997 when four of us met at Imperial College in London.  After four years of gruelling study we were about to be released back into the community, when we saw that there was a competition to win 10k for the best written business plan.  Chris had been working on Uplink (our first game) in his spare time and we decided that we would write a plan involving us burning our own CDs printing labels and taking credit card orders over the web.  We submitted the plan, got an “F-“, but did it anyway.  We sold more copies then we could have hoped, brokered a UK retail deal followed by an ill-fated US deal and we just went from strength to strength.  Darwinia, DEFCON, Multiwinia all followed and eventually we were able to sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that we were gaming superstars (if only that last part was true ;)

17)   What were some of the greatest challenges you faced to date regarding your company and its growth and development?

I think that we have over-reached and expected too much of people.  To do a project well you need to focus your minds and get good solid designs up front.  We’ve made the mistake of thinking that things like ports were purely technical challenges that could be delegated to some senior programmers without much help.  We’re trying to work much more as a team now with all of us focussed on all our projects.

18)   The company has grown from strength to strength; do you ever fear that you could become a soulless corporation?

Nah – we’ve got too much personality for that!

19)   Where do you see Introversion going and what games do you want to create?

We don’t really have a particular style or genre of games that we want to work with.  We like to have ideas and then turn those ideas into reality.  We have some ideas for the next game after Subversion, but we wouldn’t ever try to create a whole portfolio of stuff – that’s what’s exciting about working here!

20)   If hypothetically you were given a Modern Warfare 2 sized budget what type of a game would you create?

I’m not sure – Subversion is our current project so we would possibly think about how we could improve it with a bigger budget.

21)   And the last question, will we ever see an Uplink 2?

To be honest, probably not, but we think Subversion will satisfy that particular desire anyway ;)

And thus concludes the end of this interview. Stay tuned for more which should be coming some time soon. You can probably wait with baited breath but you might either die or end up with really really sore lungs.