Introversion

[Chris]

Introversion’s new office has come a long way since we moved in around six weeks ago, and things are finally starting to look respectable. We’ve managed to find a place that is simultaneously a cool three bedroom Georgian town-house in the South of London, as well as a respectable place of business and work. The idea of this place is not to be a regular office for everyone - Tom and Johnny both spend about 50% of their time in other countries, and I personally live in Cambridge, but instead we wanted a kind of focus point for all the things we do. After our week in Germany we decided it was necessary to find more time together, so every Wednesday once a week we now have the Introversion Mash Up – everyone who is in town works from the Flying Hamster (our codename for the Introversion Office), and I commute in for the day on the train.

It’s an interesting time for me at Introversion right now. In the past I’ve always worked exclusively on the next Introversion game, fulltime, at the expense of pretty much everything else. This time around I’m trying to do two games at once – which may turn out to be a terrible disaster of an idea. The two games are of course Subversion and Multiwinia, both of which are in development at Introversion. Multiwinia will probably be the first game released of those two, and I’m trying to take more of a Creative Director role on this project. What this means is that I spend more time thinking about the game and playing it, and thinking about what should be done next. The other fulltime members of the team, Gary and Johnny, do most of the heavy lifting in terms of coding and implementation. This has been working very well for several months now, and our regular playtests of Multiwinia frequently descend into hilarious stickmen beach landings and calamity on a vast scale. It also means I spend 2 or 3 hours on the phone most days, but I’m willing to accept that.

I spend the rest of my time developing Subversion, which at this stage is still extremely experimental. I’m not going to say much more about it right now, but I’m happy to show some screenshots of the latest version of the city generator. You can see that the scale of the generator has changed a great deal now, with each city block being divided up into allotments and each of those allotments getting their own buildings. Still absolutely loads to do, still no clear idea where it’s going to go next. But extremely exciting stuff, kind of a dream project for me.

Now and then I just need to stop and pinch myself. Three games down and two more in development - we’re actually building a fairly respectable back-catalog now. We had a film crew in our office last Friday, filming our board meeting and our test games of Multiwinia on the big projector, complete with smackdown talk and foul language. Defcon is currently on sale in shops across all of Europe and North America. Our ninth full-time staff member is starting work this week on _another_ new project. Johnny is the first team member to hit 30 years old, but the rest of us aren’t far behind. Myself, Mark and Vic fly to Seattle next week to meet some seriously important people. My girlfriend recently moved jobs and the new company she joined is actually younger than Introversion Software.

Things are moving fast, but it feels right this time around, and I’m sure we’re on the right track.

Last edited by Chris on Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

[shinygerbil]

You spelt 'Gerbil' wrong.

This all looks utterly amazing. Kudos to you guys!

[Ace Rimmer]

I'm certainly glad to see the spirits are up at IV, can't wait to see more...

[illustriouschin]

So did you pick one of my cool names?

[Feud]

Man, with all those DG's going at each other from so many different teams, you guys must be shelling out a fortune to Maddie the Cat in royalties.

[NukeLord]

Glad to see the games are coming along well, keep up the good work guys!

[Xocrates]

ooooohhhhh... Shiny pictures...!

*Drools*

[Rkiver]

As always it's great to see that Introversion if flourishing, and that the lives of all of you are doing fine also out of the direct work enviroment. Congrats to John for breaking out of his 20s. It's all downhill from now on for him .

Also indeed shiney pictures.

[recover]

Are the triangles in the subversion pics supposed to be roundabouts?

[prophile]

I can't wait to see what Chris'll amaze us with this time

[yxxxx]

Chris wrote:

Our ninth full-time staff member is starting work this week on _another_ new project.

Another new Project ohhhh!

[KingAl]

yxxxx wrote:

Another new Project ohhhh!

I'm guessing it relates to this. I might be completely wrong, though. Anyway, all very cool and exciting!

[jelco]

The green beams in the first Multiwinia picture reminded me of those rays of sunlight in Tiberium Wars. It looks pretty awesome, although I still have no clue as to what those beams are actually forming on the ground...

Jelco

[NukeLord]

I reckon it's the Mysterons...

Also, why is the office called the Flying Hamster, other than the fact it sounds cool?

[Artman40]

Holy Submachine! Impressive. And created 2 questions right to my head:
1: Multiwinia has several teams. In this game, do you plan to make it so that every team stays in until the end of the game?
2: Can Subversion still create different-patterned road network like it used to?

Last edited by Artman40 on Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:07 pm; edited 1 time in total