Positech Games is the working name for Cliff Harris, an independent game developer based in England. Positech (Cliff) is responsible for half a dozen great indie games, but is best known for the turn-based simulations Kudos and Democracy. He took some time to tell us what it is like building games for the “Hardcore Casual” market, and what it is like to be a one man game development studio.

CR: Can you tell us a little bit about your background: Who are you, and why are you making casual games?

Cliff: My background is long and complex. I’m an English ex-musician, ex-boatbuilder, ex-IT guy who started writing games in 1981 as a hobby (age 12) but didn’t really get going till about 6 years ago. I had a brief stint making small indie games, then worked at Elixir and then Lionhead on big budget retail games, before finally leaving all that behind to run my own little company full time about a year and a half ago. I love designing and coding games, and was extremely frustrated with the mainstream industry, plus I hate working for other people, so doing the lone-developer thing was an obvious choice for me.

CR: You worked for big studios like Maxis and Lionhead. Why change from the “bright lights big city” of big AAA retail games to casual games?

Cliff: Lot of stuff. Money is one. Maxis paid me well, but that was a short contract where I worked from home, on my own game design, so that was like paradise. Having creative control was another, and just being able to ‘do something’ rather than wait for meetings, discussions, scheduling, budgeting, planning, and everything else that comes between a cool idea, and anyone actually doing any work in a major games company. I also wanted to be closer to the marketing and the actual interacting with gamers side of thing. Knowing exactly how some code works, but being told that you’re not allowed to tell a modder how to do something drove me insane. It’s also frustrating to be on such long timescale games. Waiting 3 years to see what the rewards are like from making one game (both critical and financial) is just silly.

CR: You are pretty much a one-man company, doing code, art, marketing, testing. well, everything. Tell us about how you manage such a huge challenge.

Cliff: I hate to say it, but I don’t work anywhere near as hard as some people think. I’m quite a slacker. If I was really hard working and motivated I’d get a scary amount done. In terms of what I achieve, I reckon I’m 4-8 times more productive than I was when I worked for someone else. I really enjoy the business side and the marketing bits, so I don’t see those as a chore like some people in my situation do. Also, I make things easy by having a nice stable library of code I’ve built up, and coding practices that I know like the back of my hand. I don’t really watch TV, and I’m not a party animal so there’s lots of time for me to dabble with code. The only weak link time-wise is design. Once I know what I want the game to do, it’s pretty trivial to code it. Art is another matter. I try to do a lot of my own art, for budget reasons, but I’m just not any good. Increasingly, I buy stock images or even pay artists to do stuff.

CR: Tell us about Democracy: in a world of casual games about virtual flowershops and sparkly gems, what inspired you to make a hard-core political simulation? What has the response been like?

Cliff: It wasn’t designed as a casual game at all. It’s not casual, it’s inherently hardcore. Democracy is a game that when people first look at it, they go “oh my god”, but if you stick with it for 10 minutes, it becomes really intuitive, and you get very wrapped up in. The game was me trying to answer the question to myself of “can you simulate an entire country using a neural network”. I was reading a book by Steve Grand on making cybernetic brains at the time, and I got fascinated with how versatile a neural network would be, so I started coding one. The response has been staggering; it basically made enough money purely in direct sales to pay my salary for a year, and I could still just about live off it now. It also went on sale in a few retail markets, and it’s been purchased by a few schools and universities as teaching material. Reviews of it have been very good indeed, and some people get very into the game, especially people who study politics, or who teach politics. In the long run, Kudos will make me more money, but I suspect a lot of people know me as ‘the guy who made Democracy’.

CR: The comparisons between Kudos and The Sims are often mentioned. Tell us about the game, and what makes it special, different, and cool.

Cliff: Kudos is a life sim, but it’s similarity with the sims ends there. It’s so unlike the sims that it just amuses me when they are compared. Kudos is 2D, text-heavy, strategic and turn-based. It’s like the ‘anti-sims’. I love the sims, but I think it suffers from a flaw in that it’s very much a race against time. You are always reacting, rather than acting in the sims, there is never enough time to get things done, so you don’t get to sit back and ask the question “what should I do with this persons life”. Kudos does that, it’s like a very pretty flowchart of someones life, where there are these hundreds of decisions on time management, that all come together to effect how life turns out for you. The other thing about Kudos is that, because its not a 3D game, there is no art ‘cost’ to adding stuff, so all kinds of things went into it. Basically whenever there was a cool idea, it went in, without having to think about it. It was my wifes idea for the pet cat to eat your pet fish if you didn’t feed it. I love that, because when it happens, people don’t really expect it. I love suprises in games. The chinese restaurant gives you fortune cookies, and that was another random, fun idea that went in one afternoon.

CR: Lately we have seen games like Kudos on some of the major portals. This is a shift from your more “pure indie” pedigree. What made you make this shift, and how is it working out for you?

Cliff: I was hawking Kudos to various people, and a well known journalist showed it to one of the main guys at Yahoo. They loved it, but wanted to work through an agent. I was really wary of it all, but the agent eventually understood my suspicion of the portals and the way they worked, and was able to calm my ‘fears’ about some of that stuff. It’s now on a lot of portals, but not all of them. I have a few base level conditions for selling the game, and I’m happy to keep it to just those portals that are happy with that. It seems to be working extremely well, especially as Kudos isn’t designed to be a portal-audience friendly game at all. My next game will maybe fit the market better, but you can never tell. I still sell a lot of games direct, which is how I like it. People keep making suggestions for Kudos, and I keep tweaking it. we are currently on patch number 22, and as a direct-seller, you can do that. With multiple portals, that becomes tricky.

CR: Can you tell us a little bit about the world as indie game developers see it? What are the biggest challenges for the indie game developers - and what big changes do you see for them in the near future?

Cliff: Indie developers are pretty idealistic. We just want to make fun games. We are generally much closer to the attitude of the ordinary gamer than the big companies are, because we talk to our customers much more often. The challenges are mainly exposure. I can send out as many press releases and review copies as I like, but it doesn’t compare to 10,000 billboard ads and full page ads in every games magazine on earth. Change-wise, I think there will be a lot more of these big budget ‘indie’ games costing over $500k, but I’m not sure that will do that much harm. It’s the same story, that when you invest more money, you take safer bets. Nobody would give me $500k to do Democracy, or Kudos, which is exactly why those games have no competition, and why they sell well. There will always be a market for the dedicated and passionate lone developer. I think we will see some kind of backlash against all the bland puzzle game clones that fill the casual market. Even the people playing diner dash will get bored with it one day, and it’s like pass-the-parcel, whoever is investing in the current batch of those clones then will get stung. The big change I would *like* to see is the emergence of a developer-friendly games portal that puts pressure on the existing ones to raise the developer royalty rates. Something like GameTunnel or GameTrove might do it eventually. I think that would be a big positive change for the industry. The big portals do what they do well, but they do collectively squeeze those darned royalty rates.

CR: How do you feel about the recent drive to include advertising in demos and game downloads? It seems like a “free lunch” for developers who could use the extra revenue, but we imagine you have an opinion about filling casual game demos with Toyota and Pepto-Bismol ads. Is this trend a good thing, and is it here to stay?

Cliff: I haven’t really seen this, but anyone who knows me will know how passionately I oppose such things. I oppose unskippable splash screens, let alone pepsi being hawked at my customers. I’m not aware of this being done with my games, but if it is, I’m certainly not happy about it. I frankly do NOT want to earn money from such rubbish, I just have a higher level of respect for my customers than that. If a portal puts this in place and has an option to opt out of it, I’m certainly opting out. This is 100% a bad thing and I dread it being here to stay. The big retail games are cramming ads into their titles in the most unsuitable places, I’ve seen it happen first hand. Surely we are meant to be different to them? One thing that really gets on my nerves is these wrappers that some portals use, that when you start the game it asks you if you want to buy it now, try other games, or play the demo? Well, I haven’t even played the demo once yet! so just shut up and let me play! When you download my demos direct, and run the game, the first screen you see is the game menu, no hard sell, no silly logo screens to bore you to death. Gamers want to interact, we should make it easy for them to do so.

CR: What is one thing most casual game players don’t know about casual game developers that they really ought to?

Cliff: These games are made by very very small companies. Often just 1 or 2 people. That means two things: First, there are real human beings at the end of it, so you can email them and ask them about the game, make suggestions, offer feedback, and the guy who designed the game genuinely will actually read it. Sometimes we even reply! I love hearing about what’s good and bad about my games, please tell me. Even if I don’t reply, I definitely read your thoughts and considered them. Second, the other thing is these companies generally only make a single game at a time which means it can hurt the developer catastrophically if those games are pirated. Increasingly I’ve seen people trying to get pirated copies of casual games, which drives me mad. You aren’t hurting big wall street shareholders when you pirate these games, but your hurting the lone game designers who make them. Casual games are pretty cheap to buy, so there’s no excuse for trying to get pirated copies. Buying the game is safer and easier, and it’s the way you get to tell that developer “we want more games like this”.

CR: So what are you working on now? What’s the next big thing from Positech?

Cliff: It’ a game that’s structurally a bit like Kudos, in that it’s a turn-based sim game. Basically its like a ‘rock-star’ simulation game. You are a singer who gets a band together, writes songs, plays gigs and tries to get a record deal. It should appeal to the same audience who liked Kudos, and to anyone who has ever been in a band. I was a gigging musician, guitar teacher and even a session guitar player for a while, with the long hair and the ‘I’m going to be famous’ attitude, so I’m ‘writing what I know’. I’m hoping for a game that’s part life-sim, part mini business sim, and that doesn’t take itself too seriously. If it was the game of a movie, that movie would be Spinal Tap, although I haven’t yet put in any miniature stone-henge sets for you to buy. The game is up and running, but still very unfinished, and needs lots more doing to it.

CR: Well, we’re looking forward to seeing it. Thanks again for talking to us today, Cliff!

You can see more of Cliff’s work and Positech products at his website, http://www.positech.co.uk/. Check back soon for more reviews, interviews, and features!