DEFCON: Global Thermonuclear War Preview

DEFCON will be released over Steam and can be bought on the official website

Pro-G: It's unique selling point time! Exactly what makes DEFCON different from anything else out there and why so?

CD: Perhaps the two most obvious things that make DEFCON unique are its treatment of the whole nuclear war theme and also its look. Warfare games tend to be too heavily strategic (e.g. turn-base and stat heavy) and DEFCON was created as a departure from that - we hope that people will agree it's an entirely novel look at nuclear war.

Meanwhile, we didn't try to do anything crazy with the interface - it's a mouse driven strategy game and players will be immediately familiar with it. Instead with DEFCON we've tried really hard to create a mood - a feeling of deep detachment, of being hidden underground in a bunker, slowly bringing the world to an end. The abstract simplicity of DEFCON adds to this mood - it's a cruel, wholly detached take on nuclear war.

In many ways DEFCON's simplicity is born out of need - the current game industry's obsession with real-life graphics is not a viable route for a small dev team like us to undertake. Introversion has a very small dev team so we've had to learn to use our weaknesses as strengths - we only have a handful of people which means we can't spend ages trying to make things look realistic, but it does mean we can experiment with off the wall concepts and ideas that the bigger companies wouldn't be able to go near.

Making games with unique art styles like DEFCON has another big advantage: your game instantly stands out from the crowd and can be recognised from a single screenshot. Nobody ever confused Darwinia, our second game, for any other game; its stylised graphics became its trademark. Some companies spend millions of dollars trying to get that exact effect by making their games extremely realistic - but there's only so far you can go with that. DEFCON will contain the kind of information we think it needs to make it an immersive and addictive experience, but it won't be swamped with extraneous information that detracts from the main experience. We don't need real time physics or bump mapping or any of that stuff to make it enjoyable.

Pro-G: What can players expect from DEFCON's multiplayer game modes?

The world map is your battlefield

CD: DEFCON is an online competitive multiplayer game primarily although there is a single player mode where you can play against computer bots. In a multiplayer game you can play with up to five other players and we hope that DEFCON will become a real communal game, with lots of friends and strangers getting together and joining in the thermonuclear fun!

It was essentially this concept which brought about the Office Player Mode, a variation on a normal multiplayer game which allows you to ease the boredom of the working day by firing up a game of DEFCON with up to 5 other colleagues. The great thing about this is that the game takes place in real-time, so a full office game takes about 8 hours, and there are lots of little features which make it work-friendly; so, for example, you can hit the panic button (double ESC) to immediately remove the game from the screen, placing a discreet icon in the system tray. This icon will change when important things happen so you don't miss them. For example, if you detect some nuclear launches the icon will flash the Nuclear launch symbol for a few seconds and because everything's taking place in real-time, you've got at least 30 minutes to respond before a nuke lands on your territory, allowing you time to finish work before you retaliate.

The alliances system was also designed specifically to enliven the multiplayer games and also because if six players fight each other it tends to end up a bit of a shambles. With alliances each individual player is still playing to win - their score is independent of their allies' progress, and players can betray their alliances and switch to the opponent's team if they chose to and are able to convince the enemy to permit it (this is determined by a vote of all the players in the destination alliance). Things can get pretty ugly, with players attempting to line up the perfect attack on a teammate before betraying them and striking at a key moment. There's certainly going to be a lot of paranoia in alliance games - we've got in-game irc between players (public and private) and we've noticed lots of 'wheeling and dealing' in the games we've played, with players desperately trying to secure their alliances. We've seen alliance members shooting overhead friendly planes down because they believed the planes were scouting the area for targets in preparation for a strike. This results in arguments in the chat channels, followed by skirmishes at sea, followed by retaliation, before finally the whole alliance collapses and everyone starts nuking the hell out of each other. It's awesome.

Could the game come to Xbox Live Arcade?

Pro-G: Xbox Live Arcade seems perfect for Uplink, and possibly DEFCON. Would you ever think of bringing any titles to Microsoft's download service?

CD: Sure - we're definitely keeping our minds and options open to new projects like these. We will have to wait and see what offers come knocking!

Pro-G: Finally, what are you hoping to achieve with Defcon in terms of success. If it sells 10,000 copies, are you ok, or are you hoping for a multi-million seller to line the pockets?

CD: We would be lying if we said we weren't hoping for a big success with DEFCON - who wouldn't! Of course one has to be realistic, but it would be nice to think that Introversion was safe for another few years yet. In fact this is probably the way we'd rate our achievement - if DEFCON gave us the financial security to come back further on down the line with a new game and had saved us from having to sell all our stuff on E-Bay (again)!

DEFCON will be available later this month via Steam and the game's official website.