DEFCON posts

Want to get a really cool real-time strategy game for free? Of course you do. Now the Green Man Gaming web site is offering the opportunity to get one of the best indie strategy PC games ever made. It's Defcon, the global war game with a WarGames--like art style from developer Introversion Software that first came out in 2006.

From now until December 27, you can download the full version of Defcon from the Green Man Gaming web site by heading to this link and putting in the promo code DEFC0-N4GMG-FUTU4. Then you can start playing your own version of Global Thermonuclear War.

[Via Computer and Video Games]

UK-based Introversion Software is looked upon by many as a leader in the indie games scene but like many small game development companies keeping the lights on is a constant struggle. In a new interview at Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) the company's co-founder Mark Morris states that due to low sales of its Xbox Live Arcade release Darwinia+ earlier this year the company laid off all of its staff, shut down its offices, "and kind of crawled back into the core Introversion team of just myself, Chris, Tom and Johnny... the original four directors, back in our bedrooms again."

However Introversion recently got a big cash infusion thanks to a sale earlier this summer of its world strategy game Defcon on Steam. Morris states, "The sale did in the ball park of $250,000 - so when you're back to being a team of four people, that's a lot of revenue." Morris said the cash flow from the Steam Defcon sale "extends out for two years at our size, which is nice." In fact Morris states that in his opinion, "if you're not on Steam, then you're not an indie game developer of any note. You absolutely have to be on that platform at the moment." Introversion is currently working on its next PC game, the (kind of) spy-themed Subversion.

Download the Defcon demo at Big Download (50 MB)

Introversion Software was one of the first small innovative indie game development teams to emerge in the new digital download era. Games like Uplink, Defcon, and Darwinia showed a preference for simple graphics but terrific gameplay. For some time the company has been working on their next big project called Subversion. Now Rock Paper Shotgun reports on a brief gameplay demo of the title that was shown at a BAFTA event in London.

While the dev team said the demo is very early, the report describes the game as using a procedural system to generate a virtual city. Then the action shift to one floor in one building in the city where the objective is to take out a server room. From what is described, Subversion seems to be about spies, infiltration and sabotage. The game is still a long way off (indeed the developer hints that a proper demo for the game is still a year away) but it certainly seems to fit in what Introversion has done in the past.

UK-based Introversion Software had had a number of major successes for a small indie developer, releasing acclaimed PC games like Darwinia and Defcon. However the year 2008 did not turn out the way the company thought it would. In a rather extensive three part article on the company's blog site, Introversion's Chris Delay goes into detail on what went wrong in 2008.

In summary, Introversion had a number of projects either be delayed or fall by the wayside in 2008, including a planned DS port of Defcon, a game called Chronometer for the UK-based TV network Channel 4 and Darwinia +, a still-unreleased merger of Darwinia and Multiwinia for Xbox Live Arcade. Even the release of Multiwinia for the PC this year generated poor sales.

In the end, Delay states, "By all accounts, 2008 was a disastrous year for Introversion, characterised by an incredibly positive start and a noticeable increase in ambition, but not a single genuine success throughout the whole year." The good news? Introversion managed to stay alive and kept everyone on the team employed even though it had to cut costs considerably to do so. Delay also stated that the beginning of 2009 has seen "alternative funding through grant schemes". Their main project now is to finish Darwinia + and while Delay admits "This is not a situation we would ever deliberately put ourselves in – all eggs in one Microsoft shaped basket," he adds that "the first time in a long while, I'm feeling confident."

Download the Multiwinia demo at Big Download

"Would you like to play a game?" That famous movie quote from the WOPR computer in WarGames is appropriate for this story. Introversion Software released their WarGames inspired PC strategy game Defcon last year and now they are looking to see if people can create an AI that can be entertaining to play with using Defcon

Introversion is working with the Imperial College Department of Computing which created its own Defcon AI that consistantly beat the game's regular AI program. They are also seeking students and anyone else from around the world to create such a program. Introversion has provided a Defcon AI API to download for anyone interested in making the ultimate computer war machine.