Sensible Software have blazed a trail through videogaming with smash hits such as Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder and WizBall. As leader of this inspirational and brilliant British developer, head honcho Jon Hare is a battle-scarred industry veteran. In this exclusive interview with Future Gamer, he offers insights into what Sensible's been up to of late, and how he feels the videogame business needs to buck its ideas up...
Neil West

FG: Sensible Soccer waves a flag for 2D gameplay when everyone else is pushing 3D. Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll would have forged a new frontier in gaming, but publishers refused to release it. It seems that you often find yourself working against the grain, butting heads with the system. Is this a fair comment?

John: It has appeared that way for the last three years or so. Before then there was no real system to have to butt your head up against; we as creative people were left to do our own job and trusted to do it well.

FG: So how have things changed?

John: What's started to filter into the industry in the last four years or so is a new kind of underlying corporate control. As the big boys have moved in and started investing larger amounts of money than ever before in computer games, they are more concerned with being in control of, or at least in touch with, the development process.

This had some good effects. The timing of marketing and the co-ordination of development completions, for example. But it also had some bad effects. A bi-product of all this corporate control is that marketing, sales and other people within these companies now have more say as to which kind of games the publisher should be buying. The old consensus that certain developers are good enough at what they do to be left to get on with it - having more vision and being better at trend-setting than the publishers - is no longer prevalent.

The system we've found ourselves fighting is one made up of people, with no or limited vision and creative power, having a lack of faith in people who are used to trusting their own vision and creative power implicitly in their everyday work.