Evolution of an Indie

We've had a really tough year, actually, we've been hit really hard. Multiwinia went on sale last September, and it didn't do as well as we were hoping. I think there were a couple of reasons for that looking back - I think we mismanaged the media with regard to that particular game. We weren't clear on what it was, and as a result the message that got out wasn't as clear as it should have been, so it didn't do hugely well.

But at the same time our long-standing partner Pinnacle Software went into administration in October/November time, and that hit us really hard because they'd been doing licensing deals around the world on our behalf, and all of that revenue just fell away... so we were unable to move forward with that.

Also, we developed a version of Defcon for the DS and that was literally weeks away from launching - but with Pinnacle going under that project was pulled, so that's been sat on my desk for this year as we've tried to find another publisher. But nobody's been interested, a combination probably of the DS market being a tough area to go into, but I'm sure the economic climate has hit that market as well.

We live, basically, on the sales of our previous game together with the back catalogue sales - we sell everything from our website, so we get a relatively healthy stream coming in from that. But it's been a very difficult year for us to make ends meet - our projections included more income from Multiwinia, Defcon DS going out there as well as Darwinia+ launching much earlier in the year... and none of that materialised.

We've really been living on the grant money I mentioned, and while we haven't borrowed yet we're in the process of trying to borrow a little bit just to ease the cashflow and make sure we're okay.

That's what it's all about now. A couple of weeks ago we finally put together a cashflow plan that meant we were going to be okay getting to the end of Darwinia+ with reasonable confidence. So now, although we're hitting these snags, it's kind of in the plan - we weren't expecting to submit the final version and have it cleared through, so there's not too much of a worry here.

But we've always got to be as prudent as we can.

That's absolutely the core of what Introversion does, and it's risky. The alternative is to take work-for-hire projects on, and I think a lot of developers take projects on because they're forced to - and then actually getting your own IP off the ground becomes increasingly difficult.

Because if you look at the numbers, you can carry on with work-for-hire and earn a certain amount of money, or you can take a big punt on your next game. Fundamentally what we want to do is make original videogames, and we don't want our creative freedom to be curtailed by a publisher sat there with a spreadsheet, trying to make the game similar to other games released in the past because they've done well.

That fierce determination has worked so far, and once we get over this final hump it's going to keep working because the way to manage that risk is to get more games in development at one time, or to release more.

So next year we'll have Subversion in development, as well as an unannounced port. That's our next big PC endeavour, and it has all the risk because we don't really know how long it will take to finish, we don't really know what it looks like at the moment - we've just got a load of technology that we're just putting together.

But the port is a much more straightforward process, and that should then generate enough revenue for us to keep us going until Subversion is out there. I'd rather be in a company that risks all on the products, and therefore takes the time to make them as good as they possibly can be, than someone churning out sequels or just doing work-for-hire.