Computing alumni win Best Persistent Game at the 2016 BAFTA Game Awards

Watch Chris Delay and Mark Morris receive their BAFTA for Best Persistent Game.

Alumni from the Department of Computing at Imperial and Directors of Introversion Software won a BAFTA Game Award with Prison Architect.

Who are Introversion Software?

Introversion Software is an independent game developer and publisher. It was founded by Chris Delay, Mark Morris and Thomas Arundel after they met as undergraduates at Imperial. They were later joined by John Knottenbelt following the completion of his PhD.

Imperial not only provided a solid technical foundation for the software engineering [but also] encouraged the development of other important skills. John Knottenbelt Technical Director

John reveals that "Imperial not only provided a solid technical foundation for the software engineering [but also] encouraged the development of other important skills such as logical thinking, project management and entrepreneurship." The social aspect was important too: Introversion's founders all shared the same halls of residence in the first year!

Introversion have released numerous games since it was founded, including Uplink, Darwinia and Multiwinia, as well as their BAFTA award winning Prison Architect. They were "unbelievably thrilled and honoured to win the Persistent Game category", which John considers to be about games receiving "substantial updates after initial release."

The key to their success

In a backstage interview at the BAFTAs Mark provides some insight into the cause of their success. He explained that it resulted from "listening directly to the player-base, trying to understand what they are enjoying in what you think is your game. It's not, it's their game."

Utilising the development of early access and pre-release sales Introversion released Prison Architect as an alpha build in September 2012. This was followed by incremental enhancements to the simulation month on month, enabling them to gain vital feedback from players whilst also getting the necessary income to continue development.

The practise of releasing games you intend to continuously update is "quite a recent invention" explains Chris. By releasing Prison Architect in its alpha Introversion received invaluable feedback which helped morph the game, but also made over $270,000 in the first two weeks of the alpha release.

In March 2013 Prison Architect was also one of the first early access games to be released on Steam, a popular entertainment software for purchasing and downloading games. John described how early access helped Introversion reduce risk as "releasing an early version of the product [made it possible to] gauge whether it is likely to be successful."

One to watch

Staying true to their player-first ethos Introversion recently released demos of two new games during the UK's biggest game event EGZ 'Rezzed'. Players had the chance to try both games and vote on which game should be released first. The two new games: Scanner Sombre and Wrong Wire, can still be viewed and voted for online.

Often developers make use of tools like Kickstarter to help raise the funds for development, whereas Introversion Software initially decided to release their games independently. To discover how they were able to do this I suggest watching Mark and Chris discussing this topic at Minecon 2012.