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Gamasutra has published a new interview with Introversion Software's Mark Morris and Chris Delay. The developers discussed a variety of topics including the company's relationship with the press, the need to focus on gameplay rather than visuals, and the unique styles used by indie developers.

Where more mainstream developers have continually added to their feature lists, boasting about the best new technology or the most gruesome ways in which you can decapitate an antagonist, Introversion's titles are stripped back: simple yet entirely effective, without sacrificing the core experience of becoming involved in their games.

"Chris and I were talking about this on the train on the way up," Mark tells me. "We were talking about Assassin's Creed, and the effort they put into creating those great animations. But when you've seen that animation for the tenth time, it's kind of like a mobile uncanny valley. You know that someone wouldn't climb up that exact same way ten times. They've missed, they've failed somehow: it looks good but there's something wrong with it. So our aim is not to try to simulate the real world; it's to create a self-consistent game environment that provides massive immersion for the player."

"With Darwinia, it was all about the construction of the world," says Chris. "Everything's blocky and chunky because it's a digital world. They haven't put the shading in yet."

These game environments - be it a fully three-dimensional playing field or a futuristic computer monitor - are certainly novel, and seem to exist in a world where photo-realisim does not equate to the most arresting gaming experience. If you can invest in the fiction, even if it's a fiction driven by technological limitations, you'll have a lot more fun than if you're observing the pixel-perfect realisation of something that is, quite simply, not that interesting.

Gamasutra: Introversion Software Q&A

Introversion Software (add to watch list)

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