Hello 'Moto

In India, yes - with any success, there will be followers.

I think the business model comes down to the fact that a lot of people started out on this side of things as more of a service company. I think in the economic downturn those people have been feeling the heat. What we're trying to do is stay small, make smaller games and keep the budgets small. To make similar games in Europe, it'll cost you a lot of money.

We've been talking to a few publishers who are based in Germany, and we did the same in the UK too. They're people who have local experience, although they might distribute internationally. We're also talking to a few digital distributors, such as Steam - so different people, with different expertise.

We're looking at some innovative distribution methods, such as maybe partnering with cable broadband suppliers to provide exclusive content for their customers. Or magazine providers - the original Trash game was released by a popular Polish magazine, and that went really well.

It was a games magazine. The full Polish edition was given to everyone who bought the magazine.

Yes, they paid for the localisation.

Everything in life is 'wait and see' - but yes, there's a strong multiplayer component which will need balance and content updates.

Updates via digital distribution is a big part of it, actually, which is why we're looking to work with ISPs - that then become easy.

Yeah... it's a huge task and it's taken a lot of time. There's over 3000 lines of C++, and it has a lot of nice features. It scales to 32 players, with mission scripting support - it's coded very well, and because there are only a few people working on it, it's very consistent code. I've done contract work at Microsoft and EA and I've seen what code bases look like in these bigger teams... they might have 20 people working on something, and even though they're super-talented, it's rushed and can easily become a mess. We took our time, and it's a pleasure to work on.

Absolutely. For a strategy game it's a great idea - it could definitely be used for any sort of RTS-type game. Different engines are good for different things - the Source engine for first-person shooters, for example. Our is good for strategy games.

There aren't many engines available off-the-shelf for RTS games in fact.

That's what we thought - the PC could become a place to play for independent developers. You can make a decent game with a decent budget.

Although there are still big players releasing PC RTS games - Starcraft II is coming out, Company of Heroes sold a couple of million Dollars... there's money to be made.

Well, you have to. For us, we're zooming in a little bit, so there are fewer units and a bit more control over what you can do. And then you can do some things in FPS mode, things like having ammo for your units, or commands. It's fun [smiles]