Cliff Harris is a veteran game designer, with a fine pedigree of time at British gems Elixr, Lionhead and Maxis (when it had UK offices). It's not surprising, for those who know these companies' outputs, that his indie games have a taste of the god sim to them. Take DemocracyGame, a politics game that's been used in classrooms and - as he told me - was even considered for use by the US Department of Defense.
Kudos 2, his latest indie release as Positech, is a lighter offering. We put him through the game pitch process to find out more. Keep reading for his take on why Spore didn't work, and why he hopes indie games developers will never rule the world.
Explain your game to my mum in 140 words.
Kudos 2 is about how you choose to live your life from age twenty to thirty. You start off with a bad job and not much education, and depending how you choose to spend your time each day, you get a better job, meet new people, have a relationship, and change your personality and mood. You can end up being happy and sociable with an average job, or career minded and wealthy but perhaps a bit lonely. The game asks you what to do each day after work, and you can either go to evening classes, socialise, spend time alone or do things like read a book. How you spend each day, and what you aim to achieve in those ten years is entirely up to you, and the game is basically about balancing the pressures of life.
How do players control the game?
The game is in 2D, and you have some indicators which show you how your characters currently feeling about everything. During the day, a diary shows you how your days has gone, and in the evening you select different menu options to pick how you spend that evening, so there are buttons for you to select from a list of solo activities, and a mobile phone that will flash when people invite you out or have a message for you. The interface for the game is a bit unusual because there isn't really a normal genre for games like this.
What is your background?
I started coding age 11 on the Sinclair ZX81, but never got to finish a decent sellable game back then. I did a succession of weird jobs (guitar teacher, boat builder, stock market computer engineer...) before eventually working at Elixir studios as a game programmer, than at Lionhead doing AI for the movies. I then did a brief bit of work for Maxis and since then I've worked from home making indie games out of a bedroom. I'm a real bedroom coder, none of this having a separate office malarkey.
Name your competitors.
Everyone and everything. Many people would say Maxis, because of the Sims and maybe I compete with Stardock over 'The Political machine', but my games appeal to a lot of non gamers. I think people who study politics and economics are people who would play Democracy and anyone who reads those self-help and motivational psychology books would love Kudos. games don't just compete with each other, we compete with TV, Books and pubs. I'm lucky in that my games are a new '2D turn based strategy-sim' genre, so I don't have any absolutely clear competition.
How many players do you have now and what's your target in 12 months?
My games tend to sell a few thousand copies each, but a lot of people who buy one of my games buy all of them. I'd like to do a game that sells ten thousand copies direct from me, but I've never achieved that. Maybe this time? A lot more people buy my games through online portals, but they don't even tell you how many, which is a bit annoying.
What's your biggest challenge?
Getting people to try the demo. I do 2D games that are more about the gameplay than the graphics. Most people who start playing them really get into them, but I have to overcome the fact that when you see screenshots of Kudos next to Crysis, people try out the shiny looking thing first. It's also a problem to get much coverage of an indie game, because you are just one person doing everything, including the code, most of the artwork, the business side and the testing, so marketing and PR is just a tiny part of a long working day.
What's the weirdest development experience you've had thus far?
Feeling empathic for Tony Blair. I'm not a huge Blair fan, so it was very weird. When I coded Democracy I was trying to make as accurate a model of political systems and choices as I could, and it led to tons of emergent gameplay I hadn't even considered. I found myself making false promises to the electorate, making huge compromises and cutting spending on stuff I wanted to increase, all whilst pandering to extremist groups purely because they were swing voters. All the kind of stuff you hate in politicians. It was weird because I didn't code any of that into the game, it just emerges from accurate modeling of how and why people vote.
The other weird thing was arranging for Julianne Regan (All About Eve) to record some music for Kudos: Rock legend. This was someone whose first album is in my car, and whom I went to see play live as a teenager, and suddenly she was contributing music to one of my games. I was a bit star struck by that, and it still seems a bit weird.
What's your distribution/publishing plan?
I sell my games direct from my website, and also through online portals such as Yahoo and Stardocks Impulse. I think in future I'll likely continue as I am, because I like having direct contact with the gamers rather than sticking a layer between us (the publisher). People who buy games like being able to contact the actual designer, rather than just ranting on a forum the designer will never read. I know that limits the extent to which my business can scale, but I'd hate to think that Positech became just like any other big games company with no connection to it's customers. I would like to get my games on Steam, but apart from that, I'm happy with how things are.
Are indie games the latest killer app?
Indie games are the secret weapon the consoles can never, ever beat, because they exist outside the confines of what console approval committees think are cool. All new genres and classic games tend to be those that all the people in suits at publishers thought would flop. The ability for just anyone to sit down and make a game they think is cool is a wonderful thing. Imagine a world where books had to be approved by one of three companies before being written. I'd hate to live in a world where gaming was defined purely by Microsoft or Nintendo. Plus indie gaming keeps niche genres alive. The only hardcore hex strategy games, 2D shooters and classic RPGs are being done by small indie teams. The big publishers have abandoned those genres entirely, so more power to indies for catering to those of us who don't just like Halo and Gears Of War.
Are you the next big thing?
No. And that's a good thing. The next big thing by definition will appeal to everyone, which waters stuff down and caters to the average. I'd much rather have 2% of the market and be making exactly what they want, and earning a nice living, than giving the other 98% something they thing is just ok, and owning a private yacht. I could make my games more mass market by simplifying them, but that would kill off the spark in them that makes them what they are. Good games only happen when people ignore the marketing department and make something they think is cool, and I'm going to keep doing that. If you have really cool idea, but suddenly you need millions of people to like it, you end up with Spore, a potentially great game that got more and more dumbed down.
