Orgasms, mistakes and Metacritic: 2015's exclusive interviews

Can't believe the year is nearly over? Feel like it all passed in a blur? Need a quick refresher before the Christmas party punch kills off the last of your braincells? We've got you covered with our round up of the best quotes from 2015's exclusive GamesIndustry.biz interviews.

January

"Hanna Barbera, Looney Tunes - I believe that if those people were creating today, they'd be creating on mobile. It's where you can reach the biggest audience, it's where you can be really creative, and it's where everybody is." - Seriously's CEO Andrew Stalbow

"We needed Ridiculous Fishing to be a creative achievement, to show the industry that if someone clones your game, it's always going to be inferior, because they don't know the game you're making - it's going to be soulless" - Rami Ismail, developer and business guy at Vlambeer

"It did remind me of [Kinect]. You kind of want to scream 'don't over promise these things.' The thing about the concept videos is they feel so seamless and it just looks like everything's working and actually, as we found with Kinect, it works all fine if you've got the perfect environment and the perfect distance away and you're the right shape human being. But it's very challenging if any of those things don't come together perfectly" - The HoloLens verdict from Peter Molyneux, head of 22cans

"The year is 2020. Kickstarter is now the standard funding model for video games. From indie darlings to the next Call of Duty, practically every game is crowdfunded. - Tanya X Short, creative director of Kitfox Games

February

"We wanted to make a phenomenon," Hall says. "That was actually the intention. You might as well shoot for the moon, right? We wanted to make sure that people were not only playing it everyday, but also that it was something people would tell their friends about. Those two concepts multiply one another." - Andy Sum, co-founder of Hipster Whale

"Nobody here ever bothers about Metacritic. We think of it as irrelevant, quite frankly. We only concentrate on what the users think, and every aggregate user score has been significantly higher than the aggregate professional score. We care about the people who are spending their money, and whether we're happy that we've made a good game. The acid test isn't somebody's abstracted number." - Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley

"It's important not just for women but for everybody to have that hero that you can look up to and say I want to be like them and follow the path that they followed to show you that it is possible. Notch has breathed in just such tremendous life into the indie game community because he showed that it was absolutely possible for one guy to just achieve a stratospheric level of success. One guy could literally reboot the entire game industry, and make everybody from the top to the bottom go 'wait, what happened there?'" - Game designer, writer and speaker Brenda Romero

"So we've still got people who don't think that the internet matters, despite the huge impact it has on people's lives. They don't see internet harassment as a big deal because it's this magical alternate universe where your decisions don't matter. That cultural attitude needs to go away, because it stopped being true a long, long time ago." - Zoe Quinn, developer and founder of Crash Override

"They don't see internet harassment as a big deal because it's this magical alternate universe where your decisions don't matter"

Zoe Quinn

March

"It's a model that is a weapon, in some sense. So a weapon can be used for good and a weapon can be used for evil. We wanted to be sure that the world knew that we weren't doing this for the reasons of a business model. Nobody came to Lionhead studios and said 'we want you to make a free-to-play game'" - David Eckelberry, the game director for Fable Legends at Lionhead

"I don't believe the killer app for VR is going to be shooting and that is an amazing step forward, an opportunity for all of us." - Papo & Yo developer Vander Caballero

"No one can look at Crossy Road and say they seriously knew that that was going to be a hit. And so if you don't have that kind of predictability [in the market] it's a really bad investment of your time. So I'm scared as a game developer to think about making a game." - Former president of North Carolina's Epic Games, Mike Capps

"We're kind of in a tech purgatory. We work so much and so hard to make Adrift the best traditional game possible but it's really hard after you see it in VR to be like I just want to go play it on a regular TV again." - Adam Orth, Three One Zero

April

"What we've always said is that we can't talk about the clause, developers should get in touch, but the reality is if a developer gets in touch and there's a situation where they can't sim-ship because they just don't have the resources to do testing across three consoles at the same time? We totally get that. And that's no problem." - Chris Charla, head of ID@Xbox on that controversial clause

"What I'll keep doing, and what I tell developers to do: protect yourself online and in person, and keep focused on making great games." - Kate Edwards, executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA)

"With games like Never Alone, Valiant Hearts, and some others, I think we're seeing there's a new generation of video games that have something to say, and people are really enjoying them. I think we're at the beginning of something." - Yoan Fanise, Digixart Entertainment

"We didn't want to compromise. By the end we stopped paying our VAT, we were blacklisted by the government, the bank called in a loan that we couldn't pay back. All of that happened in the last months [of development], and even then we refused to release the game." - Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke

May

"Being able to start casting comets down from the sky and having dragons breathe fire on 10,000 men at once is a really interesting departure." - Total War brand director Rob Bartholomew

"If you work 17 hours in a day and then you go home and you have to wash the dishes or make dinner or god forbid do laundry then you're wasting that small amount of very precious time that you have to either sleep or have fun. I think people do better work when they're rested and happy... Companies don't build games, people build games. And happy people build better games." - Ignited Artists CEO Danielle Deibler

"We woke up to the news that former Irrational Games team members have announced a game which was more or less the same as ours, so it's been kind of an emotional blow." - Tiny Bull Studios CEO Matteo Lana

June

"VR is a reason to care, and it's going to yield this staggering orgasm of the new. I think the PC makers and the VR companies can rise to the occasion, but nobody ever buys hardware, really. What they buy is a conveyance for software. What's that software experience going to be? I don't know. What I do know is that, in ten years, we'll be doing this interview by hologram."- Unity CEO John Riccitiello

"VR is a 150 million user audience but it's not for the whole world. Whereas AR, if you look out a number of years I bet the majority of mankind will have an AR device - it will redefine interaction with computers and replace computer monitors, tablets, televisions and every kind of play technology" - Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney

"I've been pretty consistent in my belief that VR is a fad. I think it'll generate some interest among the hardcore gamers. And I see amazing possibilities in VR for social media and virtual meetings and training and crazy stuff like dealing with phobias. But for entertainment? I'm just not seeing it. I don't think most humans want to look stupid (everyone looks stupid in a VR headset) and they don't want to isolate themselves from the world." - Industry veteran Warren Spector doesn't want VR headsets messing with his look.

"I've been pretty consistent in my belief that VR is a fad."

Warren Spector

July

"That whole thing was a huge waste of time. The market proved it was doing its job perfectly. The market is dispassionate - rewarding what it likes and punishing what it doesn't. There is an objectivity and fairness in the open market's harsh, firm justice. For every place the market succeeded, the legal system failed as it was being manipulated by what appeared to me to be essentially mafia style extortion tactics." - Gearbox President and CEO Randy Pitchford comments on that awkward civil suit regarding Aliens :Colonial Marines

"I'm timid about bringing something I'm working on to home and if they don't like it I'd be devastated. So I wait until the thing is near final so I'm sure they will... especially I'm talking about my daughters, so I want to make sure that they will have an amazing, great experience. So I'm waiting." - Sony Computer Entertainment's president of Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida hasn't taken PlayStation VR home yet

"I also feel that a part of video games that is becoming less and less prevalent is the direct engagement of the player's imagination. And I think this is key for storytelling." - Sam Barlow, creator of indie hit Her Story

"Android is just a disaster area. It's just a mess. Absolute mess. We've got some product up there, but we, frankly, don't even bother looking at it in our statistics. It's irrelevant." - Slitherine's CTO Ian McNeil

August

"I did the wire transfer for funding the first prototype on my phone. $250K, no contract." - Dean Hall on his deal with Improbable for his game Ion

"You should think about it in the same way that you would a phone or your computer. It does a lot of things. Obviously, gaming is a big part of what you do on those machines as well. But that's what it is: an untethered holographic computer." - Microsoft corporate vice president Kudo Tsunoda

"Maybe good word of mouth is much more important to our marketing because we can't afford TV adverts and we can't afford site takeovers. So our marketing is a little bit more of a snowballing thing." - Indie dev Dan Marshall

"When you're trying to deliver something which will be the first answer to 'what even is this thing', that's hard. With us, we always try to work within very tight constraints. The game is, you're going to walk around this place and some interesting stuff is going to happen." Fullbright's Steve Gaynor on new game Tacoma.

September

"You know what's really scaring me is the prospect of what people could do with ads. I mean, ads aren't evil, but the combination of the immersion... You could be a little trapped when you're in VR." - Advertisers in your eyeballs scares Theresa Duringer, Temple Gates Games

"Had SimCity been really stable and successful we wouldn't have made Cities: Skylines. It wouldn't have been possible." - Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen

"I think one of the major lessons was that we need to pay more attention to what our art style and theme is telling players about our game. The average Steam and PS4 user looks at it, sees something cute, and expects 'casual' play. But Road Not Taken is anything but casual - it will chew you up and spit you out." - Spry Fox CEO David Edery

"Having a project cancelled in such a late state is a catastrophic event on so many different levels"

Timo Ullmann

October

"Having a project cancelled in such a late state is a catastrophic event on so many different levels. It really is the worst possible outcome. Everybody involved loses." - Talking Dead Island 2 with Timo Ullmann, Yager's managing director

"We're in that moment where somebody who cares about long term doing well, this is the education. If you care about next week striking it rich, maybe VR isn't the place for you. You may regret that, because it's hard to catch up." - Jason Rubin, head of worldwide studios, Oculus

"We're going to get my father, we're going to get people who are 40 years old, mothers, children that are eight years old crushing things with Tonka Trucks. I think we cover a broad spectrum." - CastAR founder Jeri Ellsworth on the market for augmented reality

"You're always, as a game designer, trying to figure out what's the thing that causes the right amount of frustration and challenge." - Former Blizzard Entertainment CCO Rob Pardo

November

"I think it's terrible that I haven't been able to ship a game in seven years--or kind of haven't shipped a game in seven years--but at the same time I've had a lot of broader and different experiences than I would have had if I'd just been [at Ubisoft] for the last seven." - Clint Hocking, newly appointed creative director of Ubisoft Toronto

"We had such extraordinary success with Moshi Monsters, but with the switch from web-business to mobile, the commercial engine which drove the business was just no longer there. The amazing revenues which we had have just declined dramatically and we, and a lot of other kids' web properties, haven't been able to build successful businesses on mobile for a whole host of reasons, which I think the industry is pretty aware of." - Mind Candy founder Michael Acton-Smith

"When Star Wars comes calling, you say, 'Yes sir.' How do you turn that down, even with all the inherent challenges I knew there were going to be? I wasn't going to be used to working in a giant company. I wasn't going to be used to working on a franchise IP like that, one we weren't creating. But Star Wars is a thing that shaped my whole life. You get invited to join the team? There's only one answer, 'Yes.'" - Amy Hennig, creative director at Visceral Games

"When Star Wars comes calling, you say, 'Yes sir.'"

Amy Hennig

December

"I've been keeping a Google doc open with ideas for it for like 10 years, just putting in every idea I have for a mental world that would be fun to visit. So it's either make this game or that dam will burst." - Double Fine founder Tim Schafer on the newly announced Psychonauts 2

"Mobile gaming is becoming artisanal. That's a good thing. It started off as just being, like, throw a million things at the wall, for free-to-play. But that artisanal quality is a double-edged sword." - Andrew Sheppard, COO at GREE International