Introversion’s New Clothes

There’s been some buzz recently about Brit developer Introversion winning three prizes at the IGF awards. We read about their success on Gillen’s site and tried to comment on it, but he’s installed some new spam filter that’s so effective it’s stopped twats like us from posting. He said he’d put our comment up then fell unconscious into his nightly drug-induced Oblivion haze and forgot, so here it is:

“What's ironic is that they won an award for a game that needed to be 'fucked with' by publishers. Uplink was a better game that didn't stink of self-indulgence. Defcon looks promising though - be nice if they finish it before releasing it.

'Being likeable is over-rated.'

Good quote Gillen - I'll drink to that.”

First of all, we’ll get the nicey-nicey bit out of the way – we’re genuinely pleased that Introversion has been given some awards, as the guys in the team deserve them for their past achievements. Now for the bit we’re going to be lynched for: Darwinia didn’t deserve those prizes.

The three awards they won were for technical excellence, innovation in visual art, and the “Grand Prize”. Darwinia isn’t a technically excellent game. It doesn’t run as smoothly as games that look much better, and the gesture system was so ridiculous they virtually admitted it was ludicrous and unnecessary by adding in an alternative system in a patch. There’s no AI there either – Lemmings let you set waypoints, and that was 15 years ago.

Ironically, the unreliable Eurogamer’s review of Uplink (where a mysteriously unnamed reviewer gave it an undeservedly low score of 7/10) is more appropriate to Darwinia:

“Sadly graphical glitches, [and] a slightly awkward interface… lets it down somewhat, but it's still well worth a look if you fancy something completely different.”

We’re not arguing with the “innovation in visual design” award, as its style is original and arresting, but the “Grand Prize”? Really? We’ve played better independently developed games over the last year, and so has everyone else.

We don’t mean to sit here tearing into Darwinia. Games that are poorly executed and aren’t properly tested are released all the time. What we’re really getting at is we find it ironic that, despite Introversion’s speech at the awards, they were in desperate need of a publisher “fucking up” Darwinia, assuming by “fucking up” they meant “play-testing and ironing out obvious design flaws before release.”

But why are so many industry names and figures spreading their ejaculate all over Darwinia when it’s not very good? When Uplink was first released, it was ignored by most of the industry.

Uplink is a classic game, but with the exception of PC Gamer’s early review thanks to Gillen noticing its brilliance, it won no awards, and barely registered on most of the industry’s radar. It was left to the gamers and consumers to discover and support. Now it’s too late to sing the praises of Uplink, the industry has entered into a “guilt” phase of trumpeting Introversion as the saviours of gaming. Projecting the success of Uplink onto the inferior Darwinia, and defending any misguided views with the response that Introversion are British independent developers and therefore “cool,” (so that means any shortcomings in their game is excusable, natch) or it’s been designed for higher beings to understand, the industry has shown itself as being about four years out of touch. Worse, it patronises Introversion and cheapens their success.

We’re looking forward to seeing Defcon, as Uplink is proof that Introversion can make good games. If it’s bad though, we hope the industry has the guts to judge it objectively and say so.