Wonderland Software's Matthew Wiggins

Over the next five years, I expect a lot of the mid-range games studios to either be acquired or close. If you're in the AAA PS3 and Xbox 360 market you need to be knocking out blockbusters of incredible quality - companies like Lionhead, Naughty Dog and Blizzard will survive and prosper, whereas the teams who are not at the peak of the market will flounder. With development budgets alone stretching to $30m+ you have to be a really big fish to remain competitive.

And at the other end, they'll be more small studios working on platforms or concepts that don't require that amount of investment to be successful. It's going to become much more like the film business, with a very small number of very large studios producing the majority of the big hits - with leaner, perhaps more creatively free, companies having breakout hits amongst the huge blockbusters.

We're aiming to be one of the premier lean developers in the next few years - I want us to be producing games that are really widely appealing to both existing gamers and people who are coming to games purely through the iPhone and the iPad.

I think that we can create experiences that people haven't really seen before, that will act as a great compliment to the mammoth blockbusters that the larger studios out there are creating. An equally important goal for us is to put together a fantastic team, who work brilliantly together and can create these games in a way that just isn't possible with the larger teams out there.

GodFinger is a social god game - we're taking the best features from old-school games such as Populous, marrying that with a great interface and a lot of charm, whilst integrating mechanics based around your friend groups at the core of the game. It's also tailored for the bite-sized drop in/drop out play that works well on the iPhone. We chose it as our first title as it's a great match for our credentials and delivers something very different to the games that are out there, whilst still having wide appeal. We pretty much want to charm your pants off with it and build our reputation up so that you just have to have our next games.

I think big elements of the games industry are in a rut right now, with so many games being produced that are me-too. How many gritty first person shooters or Gears of War clones does the world need? We're just not interested in replicating those sorts of experiences. I think something that Lionhead, and previously Bullfrog, do really well is to constantly try out new ideas and set out to make great experiences that people haven't seen before. Regardless of what is finally delivered, if you haven't at least started trying to create something new, what is the point? And so, much of the industry is fairly creatively bankrupt in my opinion - slightly better particle effects, or slightly grittier characters, are not a good reason to throw millions of dollars and years of the developers lives at.

We're very keen on persistent worlds, with asynchronous online play - this means that when you leave your game, your planet and followers are still working for you, living their lives and evolving your world. Friends who you've connected to are able to see the results of your play and send you messages and in-game resources via the followers, that will be waiting for you when you next come into the game. Connecting to friends is not a zero-sum operation - you'll both gain ongoing benefits for doing so, and we've got ways of maintaining those links that feel playful and fun, rather than arduous.

We've produced GodFinger using a really small team - in fact, we could definitely have used more people. On average it's been three full time, with outsourced art and audio. In the near future we'll be growing the team to include more in-house art talent, more programming and design expertise, but will continue to use freelancers where applicable. Something I've learned is that the efficiency of freelancers has to be traded off against the agility and team-spirit of the full-time team. So I'd like to have a larger, more creatively-aligned, core team with freelancers added to bring their special talents to the table.

Our relationship with them is fantastic - we collaborate very closely with them on most aspects of the design and it's a much more equal and friendly relationship that the more usual publisher/developer mix. They obviously are a big help in marketing the game and getting it into the minds of consumers, but they also have a wealth of knowledge on the market, and success of particular game features, that has been incredibly useful whilst creating the game and starting the company.