Far from millionaire budgets and multinationals, there is the growing presence of the indie scene and the small development groups, who, in spite of their limitations, have found their small niche in the market. Is the indie world the best to cultivate your ideas with no restraints or isn’t that something incompatible with working with a producer?

Ok, that’s a very good question. I think there are two very different routes; well, first I’ll tell you the one that doesn’t work: an apt student coming out of the university saying “I’m going to write this million pound game and being commissioned by a publisher and being successful”. That never happens. It didn’t even work with Demis Hassabis and Republic: The Revolution, and the point is that it just does not work because you’ve got to have the experience.

So people coming out of the University go to one of two routes; they are to set up cool groups of people who work for nothing and come up with ideas and may be successful; although I can’t think of any that have succeeded, but they will do, they are the emergent talent without a doubt. Or else you join an established developer, and you work from the bottom of it, you don’t jump into the high level, it just doesn’t work that way, because the risk is such… you know the great thing about having worked in the industry for 25 years, is clearly that I don’t have funky ideas in the way that many new people who approach videogames will, but I do have the experience, and the thing is you see the same old puzzle problems going round and round. Actually, what I’ve found really gratifying, is that somebody comes along, you know, a programmer has a problem and, they’re the same problems they had on the spectrum, whether be memory leaks, whether… whatever! Clearly, it’s a completely different outcome, it’s completely different, but the bugs are the same every single time, whether be Spectrum, whether the Commodore 64, the Atari and Amiga, whether be PS1, whether be PS2 or whether be PS3.

Actually, in many ways, everything has changed, but in many ways nothing has changed, and it’s just very, very useful obviously, this continuous circle we can build our expertise goes round and round and round, and I think that any way we can get new blood in the industry is valuable, and as I said either guys going into indies and working for bits come up with the next amazing idea or people coming into companies and bringing courage and urged to contribute new ideas, that’s clearly something we’ve got to do, otherwise the industry would be stuck in it.

BS3 meant an important change in your approach towards the adventure genre. This new conception did not seem to be as effective as it was intended, thus it turned to be a great blow to your company. Could you explain the reasons which lead to such a deep remodelling?

Okay, just to be clear. The change of Revolution was nothing to do with Broken Sword 3. BS3 was commercially successful. What happened is that we were then commissioned to write another game; nothing to do with Broken Sword. The publisher that we worked with, had the opportunity to cancel it at halfway through the production stage, and chose to exercise their right, they did it in a very legally way, they were absolutely entitled and I had no complaints. But then, and it was the point, we had nothing for the rest of the team, so it was then that we cut back. So, just to be clear, it was nothing to do with performance of Broken Sword 3 that created that. It was the second project that I’m not supposed to talk about because it was something the contract very specifically said.

Reviewing Revolution’s course, we can’t help but notice that while your first games (which were pure adventures) where big successes, since In Cold Blood you decided to support genre mixing, getting in no way the same acceptance. What led a company and a reputed author like you to seek for other markets (especially insisting in that idea) when it is obvious that the better results were obtained in the classical genre?

Ah, It might be obvious looking back, but it won’t be obvious at the time! I did a question answer, just yesterday, with somebody and they said “I loved In Cold Blood, Why aren’t you going to do a sequel?” In Cold Blood got some very, very high reviews scores, it had a great story! But people who played it, expecting an action game were visibly disappointed because there was only one gun, and never got any bigger, and frankly it wasn’t ever designed and certainly if you look back to… did you ever play Lure of the Temptress?

Yes.

So Lure of the Temptress was interesting because it had what we called Virtual Theatre where you can give the characters orders and they would obey. And one regret I have is that we never used that system again because it worked really, really well, but it seems slightly incompatible with adventures, because we started off Beneath a Steel Sky, was our second game using it and then it had gotten into the way. So we had innovated.

In Cold Blood was a hybrid, and as I said, some people loved it, some people hated it, but clearly it moved away. BS4 was very much going back to the idea that it is an adventure: it doesn’t pretend to be anything else, it doesn’t get rid of the inventory in the way that so many adventures do, it’s got a classical structure in terms of its puzzles… the only thing that really is different from Broken Sword is the fact that Broken Sword 1 and 2 were in 3d, and as such we used 3D to create three-dimensional puzzles, which I think is an advantage. But, I mean, you are right, we’re not pretending to mix genres, this is no pretending to mix genres at all. You don’t have the action that we have in BS3, which again some people liked, personally I felt a little bit out of pace, what I think is important to put the player into pressure, but in an adventure they should have a time to sort it out rather than having to react, I mean in truth we looked to Shenmue, which I don’t think worked particularly well, I have to be honest, as an adventure game. But for many people, for a lot of people, they herald that Shenmue is the future of adventure games, but actually I think it’s much better to be pure, and say this is what an adventure is and so certainly we come back in BS4 to our roots, and I think that thus we can never be accused of being a mix of anything limited in an adventure game.

BS has always done decently in consoles, so this is not an unknown market for you. Do you see an opportunity for adventure games in the next generation consoles or will that market continue turning them down as with BS3?

BS3 did pretty well on PS2!

I mean, I was disappointed that it had such long loading times, to be honest, so I was a bit disappointed by the PS2 version of BS3, but again it got some very good reviews from people who didn’t worry about loading times. BS4 isn’t available for any consoles, because it got caught in the middle, it got caught In the middle of the fact that when it was being written the PC’s obviously its home and on 360 there wasn’t going to be a stalled base, and you know the stalled base is going to be the only adopters and they’re going to buy the obvious for 360 games. But commercially, an adventure would succeed as it did in BS3’s case in PS2, and on BS1 and BS2 cases in PS1, when there was a mature base and a large and stalled base. So it was felt that actually probably not that many people, not many of the early adopters on PS3, sorry on Xbox 360 would be interested in an adventure game which clearly goes to a broad market. If we were starting to develop BS4 now, then it would certainly be on PS3, sorry, certainly there’ll be a 360 version and almost certainly on PS3. So the reason we hasn’t been on consoles is not because the console owners don’t actually go for that, it’s because it wasn’t going to be a stalled base by the time of its release. Or a significant stalled base.

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