Interview:
One Man Game Development - An Interview with Positech's Cliffski

With the growth of indi games over the past few years, and a resurgence in retro titles through mediums like Xbox Live Arcade, and WiiWare; the usual methods of game development aren’t considered the only route anymore. Sure a studio can spend millions producing AAA titles with mutli-million dollar marketing budgets, but it isn’t always necessary. Success can be found with smaller teams, or in some cases with a single lone developer.

Case in point, Positech games, a one man company that has produced some very interesting titles, often with complex simulation elements rarely seen in the more arcade or puzzle centric indi-development world. To get an insight into what it’s like being a bedroom developer, alltern8 had a sit down with Mr. Positech, cliffski himself, and asked him what it’s like being a one man band in the gaming industry.

For those that arn’t aware of your past, please state who you are, how long have you been in the games industry, and what is your position at Positech?

My name is Cliff Harris, I'm generally known as cliffski, and I've worked in the games industry for about 13 years, partly for other companies, and partly for my own company, which is Positech Games. I started it in 1997, but I've been doing it full time for the last four years.

This type of game production harkens back to the early days of game development. How did you end up working solo?

I started doing one-man games as a hobby when working in the IT industry, and from that I ended up working for two large games companies, Elixir (who did Evil Genius) and on a game called 'The Movies' for Lionhead, where I worked for three years. I left Lionhead to work for myself because I wanted to work on games where I was the designer, rather than working on other people's ideas.

What kind of advantages and challenges do you face as a lone developer, vs being part of a larger company/team?

The main disadvantage is that you have very little publicity or press attention. There is no way that an indie developer gets their game on the front page of the biggest games websites, regardless of how good they are, because you are just outgunned by million dollar marketing budgets. The other problem is the workload, because you have to do everything yourself.