The last of the bedroom programmers

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Chris
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The last of the bedroom programmers

Postby Chris » Sun Dec 02, 2001 1:56 pm

So, month two is out of the way and we are still running. Frankly it still amazes me. I think it's a testament to Mark and Tom (who handle all the biz stuff) that we are still going strong, despite the abundance of swearing matches and abusive phone calls that we enjoy making to each other so much. It's all part of the fun.

Right now we are pushing hard to get the bonus disk finished in time for Christmas - it would make a lovely little present after all. I know lots of people are waiting for bug fixes - they will be coming soon as well, but right now we've promised the bonus disk to a lot of people and we want to get that out of the way.

Once again i'd like to restate our request that you help us out by spreading the word about Uplink to the major gaming websites. Make a list of the top 5 gaming sites and write to each one of them in the most glowing terms you can manage. If you don't know what the major gaming websites are, then may I suggest you visit www.yahoo.com and click on the "Games" button. We've already had one confirmed hit with this method from gamespot.com, who wrote a review of us which was linked on bluesnews. The guys at the office (my day job) finally rumbled me after that link, since my name was posted on bluesnews for all to see. I was kind of enjoying the anonymity until then.

Anyway, if these sites get enough excited emails from people telling them about this new game called Uplink then they will eventually have a look themselves, at which point they will decide they hate the damn game ("its graphics suck!") and will promptly rip us to pieces in a scathing review which will be posted all around the world for everyone to see. All publicity is good publicity ;)
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Re: The last of the bedroom programmers

Postby Ethan Universe » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:19 am

I know this is an old post but I can't help noticing

"The last of the bedroom hackers" this was featured in one of the "riddles" on the secret disavowed screen...



And I can't make any sense of it.
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Re: The last of the bedroom programmers

Postby NeatNit » Sun Jun 14, 2015 7:40 pm

Wow, what an interesting bump (no sarcasm).

I have no idea what you just said, but the blog post is interesting. This was way back when no one has heard of IV yet. Look at it; there isn't even one reply to this post. I wonder if people had actually read this, and if they did - did they follow the instructions? Did they spread the word about Uplink?

Maybe I should go and read some more of the super-old blog posts. Should be fun!



Regarding the title of this blog post, which happened to be the subtitle for IV for a long while - there was a blog post, I'm not sure how to find it. Chris said that they're dropping that title because it was no longer true - IV had grown to be much bigger than the "bedroom programmers" it started out as, whereas the indie scene exploded and actual bedroom programmers actually because abundant. I feel like reading that one again, but haven't been able to find it - if anyone can, please post the link here :)
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Re: The last of the bedroom programmers

Postby RGeezy911 » Wed Jul 15, 2015 4:19 pm

Month bump, but was it this one from Vic? viewtopic.php?t=40503
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Re: The last of the bedroom programmers

Postby NeatNit » Wed Jul 15, 2015 11:02 pm

RGeezy911 wrote:Month bump, but was it this one from Vic? viewtopic.php?t=40503

No, but that's eerily close. The post in question specifically mentions dropping the subtitle, and had some more personal thoughts, and I'm 90% sure it was written by Chris.

Cool find though!

Edit: found it - viewtopic.php?t=41940

Chris wrote:For some time at Introversion we’ve debated our continued use of “The Last of the Bedroom Programmers” as our company slogan. We’ve all been generally in agreement that it doesn’t represent us anymore, but nobody has come up with anything to replace it (Apart from “Videogames from our souls”, but that’s just too funny) and so it’s stayed through inaction more than any desire to hold on to it. That slogan was the PERFECT message to represent us in 2002, when the Indie genre just didn’t exist in any meaningful way, when big Retail was still the dominant way to make money from games, when digital downloads from websites weren’t well established and long before Steam, XBLA or PSN even existed. It was a totally different market, dominated by big corporations and franchises, and we felt very much like it was Us Versus Them. Our launching of Uplink into Retail in 2002 was a guerrilla battle against insurmountable odds. Fast forward to 2009, and all of that has changed, we no longer program in our bedrooms, and more importantly there are now lots of super talented Indie companies doing what we do. Those guys at the Pax Ten are the new bedroom programmers – we’re working on our fifth and sixth games now, and that time is behind us. If I was an Indie starting up now, I’d be offended by that slogan. I’d think Introversion were a bunch of arrogant assholes to keep using it. And most likely many Indies do in fact think just that. It’s a relic from a time in the Games Industry that no longer exists.

So with that in mind, we’ve decided it’s time to rid ourselves of that slogan. It’s coming off the website, it’s coming off everything we do from now onwards. We will never use it again. That time has passed, for us and for the wider Games Industry, and it’s time for us to accept we’re working in a different world now. Still, that slogan has been with us for a while, and there was a time when it was a rallying cry for us. We will miss it, but this has to be done.

And with that, it’s gone.



I also had it a bit mixed up in my head with this one: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=41812

Chris wrote:And that was our experience of 2008. It’s hard for me to look back, because I see Subversion on hold so much of the time, and I see my major time sinks (Chronometer, Defcon DS, Multiwinia) all as failures, not even projects I wanted to work on, and now have to live with them all going sour. To cap all of that off, 2008 was a truly incredible year in gaming and especially in Indie Gaming, with Braid, World of Goo and others rightfully grabbing the attention of the press that we used to command with ease. An Indie Game Revolution has been occurring while this was happening to us, with countless small teams of 2 or 3 guys putting together amazingly cool games and getting genuine commercial success out of it. Indie has become a viable genre of its own, with its own style and quirks. To not be a part of that revolution – to in fact realise that we were the ‘older’ indie, already too big and too slow to effectively compete, was a major slap in the face. This for me is still an unresolved issue – just what kind of company is Introversion, and what kind of games do we make? We’ve had around ten employees for a while now, which is a lot bigger than most Indie’s, and I still consider myself to be Indie Game Developer, but I’m not sure about Introversion itself – we’re something else, something half way in-between.

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