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Darwinia devs: Microsoft were "****ing us off"

Thursday 30-Apr-2009 2:02 PM Strong words as Introversion explains why decisions from the bigger company made them mad.

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Introversion, developers behind upcoming Xbox Live Arcade game Darwinia+, has admitted that Microsoft were "****ing us off".

Introversion was ready to push ahead with its Xbox Live Arcade versions of Darwinia and Multiwinia when Microsoft told them to polish the game, from the menus right down to squad control. This caused friction between the two companies.

"The first major problem was Microsoft," says Chris on Introversion's boards. "I want to be clear that in hindsight, we believe Microsoft were absolutely correct in the calls they made, and we were wrong. But at the time, oh my god they were pissing us off. We'd done a massive treatment of the in-game menus for Darwinia and Multiwinia, and the end result is exactly what you see in the PC/Mac versions of Multiwinia now.

We were very happy with that and considered the game ready to go through their certification process, but Microsoft did not agree. They requested we go into an extensive period of redesign and polish on the game, covering everything from the menus to the squaddie control method in Darwinia, to the game modes in Multiwinia. It was the first time a massive company had effectively told Introversion what to do, and we didn't like that at all. It was also months of work, and the concept of open-ended polish and iteration with a company several orders of magnitude larger than our own didn't hugely appeal. We finally resolved this situation in the only way we could - we separated the PC and Xbox versions of the game, pushed ahead with a PC only version of Multiwinia, and put the Xbox project on a back burner."

The end result is a scrubbed up version of Darwinia, imaginatively known as Darwinia+, being primed for Xbox Live Arcade release.

Ryan King