Some texts from Introversion Software's Uplink game's bonus CD. I just wanted to have them somewhere on the net, as they vibe with me. I do not have a goal to re-create their website or anything.
Inspire
Inspiration comes from many places. You might be interested in reading about some of the things Introversion Software were into while Uplink was in production. In any case, we would highly recommend all of the things we've listed here to anyone. Some of these things are direct inspiration (read: places we've stolen ideas from) but others are things that just motivated us to carry on. We're pretty sure you'll enjoy them.
Films
We always said that Uplink was based on the Hollywood vision of hacking. It's suprising that there aren't that many films about this topic - but here are the ones we enjoyed watching while we were supposed to be working on Uplink.
Johnny Mnemonic
It's quite a cool film if you can suspend disbelief for a couple of hours. The script was apparently written by William Gibson - the same guy that wrote Neuromancer (which appears in our "Books" section). It's worth watching this film just to see the 3d vision of cyberspace - the best i've ever seen in a movie. I actually intended for Uplink to look like this origionally. Hehe.
Sneakers
As far as i'm aware, this is the only movie about hacking that I would consider "a good film". It's sort of like Mission Impossible, in that they have a man inside the building during the hack. It's a great story with some cool gadgets, and it's more about classical hacking than the futuristic view of Johnny Mnemonic.
Books
Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson
If I could recommend only one book to the people who play Uplink, then it would be Snow Crash. This is ESSENTIAL reading for any fan of the high-tech future. Myself and the other members of Introversion Software have spent hours debating the technical side of this book, in which Neil Stephenson describes a complete "Metaverse" - essentially a huge clump of cyberspace real-estate populated by "Avatars" from the real world (ie people with VR gear on). Most of the book takes place in this Metaverse in fact. It's a fascinating idea - undoubtadly heavily inspired by Neuromancer but (in my opinion) brought to life in a much more vivid way - the description of this high-tech future is more grounded in reality and somehow seems more real. The programmer/geek side of me sees this Metaverse as the Ultimate computer project - and I firmly believe somebody will make a great deal of money from implementing it one day.
Cryptonomicon By Neil stephenson
Same author, very different book. Cryptonomicon is a sodding huge book in both scope and page-count, and it regularly flicks between present-day and World-War-II. Things can get confusing as the same families are involved - giving a couple of the characters the same name even though they are seperated by 50 years. I would admit that the overall story (concerning some lost gold) does not entirely hold together (it ends up quite disjoint and fractured), but this book is packed with fantastic mini-stories and ideas. As the name suggests the book is heavily involved with cryptography - it's another book that rings bells with my geeky side, and the inventions and devices employed in the book are imaginative and amusing. This book was an inspiring read from start to finish.
Neuromancer By William Gibson
The book that started it all - the term "Cyberspace" was invented with this book, leading on to many different interpretations and ideas that became Virtual Reality. It is perhaps interesting to note that the cover art for the copy of Neuromancer that I owned for years is entirely blue. Neuromancer has a reasonable story and some good characters, but its main appeal (apart from the VR technology) lies in the atmosphere it creates - a brooding, dark vision of a dysfunctional future. This used to be "the bible" of Silicon Valley start ups - companies would give this book to all their new recruits to give them ideas. Rumour has it that Snow Crash has now taken over in that role.
Music
RADIOHEAD
OK Computer. What can be said about this album - other than perhaps that it is one of the greatest albums ever recorded by anyone. No other album has the same power to pull you down to the deepest depths of despair, or to raise you back out to the greatest moments of euphoria. Filled with deeply moving and thought provoking music from the start, every single track pushes you into a different state of mind. I have spent hours crouched in the corner of a pitch black room listening to this music, and equally I have spent hours leaping around that same room like a manic on speed as the intensity of the guitars washes over me. It contains perhaps Radiohead's finest piece of work - the epic Paranoid Android - an eight minute roller coaster ride through despair, pain, misery, loneliness, suffering, doubt, and anger.
It is fair to say that every moment of this album is imprinted on my heart. To say that Radiohead have had an effect on the inspiration behind Uplink is a profound understatement. I would estimate that the music played while working on Uplink has been a pretty even mix between Radiohead and Pink Floyd at most times. This music is a different form of inspiration than books like Neuromancer or films like Sneakers - a less direct inspiration, more of a creative push. We were never trying to recreate any element of Radiohead music in Uplink (that would be impossible) but different things motivate different people. Perhaps more of their touch can be seen in the company name and ethos - Introversion Software.
PORTISHEAD
Yeah so its more deeply depressing music, but it means a lot to me. I once made an album called "Music to slit your wrists to", which was a collection of all the darkest, most depressing tunes I could get my hands on. Then I realised that Portishead had already beaten me to it with both their studio albums. The thing that makes their music so good (in my opinion) is Beth Gibbons' voice. I've never heard a singer that can emote so much misery in such a fractured voice. Radiohead are bad, but at least they bring you out of it at the end. At least there is a glimmer of hope in there somewhere. Portishead music offers no escape - it is so uncompromising that I find I have to be careful when I listen to it, because it frequently destroys any motivation I might have. It is quite simply spirit crushing. Perfect for those days when everything is going wrong and you just want it to get worse.
PINK FLOYD
I grew up with this band. My Dad introduced me to Dark Side of the Moon when I was 14, and i've been listening to them ever since. With the possible exception of OK Computer, I don't believe there is any other album that I have listened to so many times or will continue to listen to for so long. I can't even remember a time when I wasn't into Pink Floyd in a big way. Sometimes it seems like their music is written directly for me - a personal message which describes everything I have ever felt at any time in my life. Each of their key albums (Dark Side of the Moon, Wish you were here, and The Wall) has a different feel to it - all are highly experimental and perfectly mixed, all contain breathtaking moments of lyrical elogence and guitaring prowess.
But it was never just about the music - Pink Floyd had this on-going idea that each of their albums should gell together into a cohesive unit. Each track on the album would revolve around the theme of the album, the lyrics would be intertwined, even the packaging and cover artwork would link together. Even the videos would continue to explore the themes and feelings of the music. No other band has ever achieved this level of cohesive genius with their material.
Truly, one of the most influential and ground breaking groups that ever existed.
Manifesto
This is the bit where we get all serious and start talking about games as a serious art form. We've had a manifesto in production for a couple of months now. It's very hard to write these things properly - and it's very easy to write a manifesto which limits what you can do in the future. Somebody wrote a document called "Dogma games", which first denounced the work of the games industry, then set out ten "commandments" to help make better games in the future. This hopelessly misguided attempt at cultivating creative freedom spent most of its time ruling out all the things you must never do. Their document was so restrictive that in the end, half of your creative choices were made for you as soon as you adopted this method. We don't want to limit ourselves - this is a document which states what we believe, rather than what we plan to do about it.
Click on the html link below to read it. We've also included a .doc version, which can be printed easily. Go ahead, print it out, frame it, put it up on your wall, read it every day. Show it to all your friends. This is the first time we've shown this to the public. It's an important document for us. And we hope you like it.
What is wrong with our industry?
The games industry is ruled by the ego of the programmer
This is fundamentally a bad thing. Programmers are engineers - which is why we see every games company making their own engine, every company spending 90% of their time writing engine code when they should be writing games. Game design is done by these engineers, or people with this engineering background ("so they can understand what is possible and impossible") - which goes some way to explaining the glut of copies that the industry is suffering. It also explains the domination of established themes - space Sci-fi, sword/sorcery fantasy etc, since the programmers grew up with these niche genres. With the programmers responsible for establishing what is possible and what is not, the artist is immediately restricted in the worst possible way.
The programmer is ruled by the money of the publisher
Game developers often have good intentions but require the financial assistance of publishers, and have no protection against them. The majority of this money is used simply to re-invent technology that already exists. This also puts the game design in the hands of Corporate opportunists who are considerably more interested in profit than artistic expression. This unfortunate fact leads to the destruction of the last elements of creativity.
The publisher's primary aim is to produce an endless stream of revenue generators
Their interest in creating a good game is insignificant in comparison. All that money spent creating another generic copy while a more creative company is "consolidated" for daring to do something new.
The Games Industry stands on the verge of becoming an established artistic medium - one day maybe the greatest, yet at the same time it is in terrible danger of being swallowed by the Corporate world that supports it.
What is wrong with our games?
Fundamentally, Games do not need jaw dropping graphics.
Graphics that WORK are much more important - graphics that fit the theme or concept. We are not here to show off our skills at 3d engine programming. Again, the programmers ego has pushed the Games industry in the wrong direction.
90% Technology, 10% gameplay
It takes two years to write a game, and in most cases about 10% of that time is spent on game design, usually at the start and end. This is the wrong way around, since the game engines are fundamentally all the same and the games themselves are what is supposed to be different. The fact that every games company under the sun has written their own particle engine, or their own skeletal animation system, or their own physics library is symptomatic of the problem. THEY ALL DO THE SAME THING. They also all cost a fortune and take months to implement.
The common assumption "Above all else, a game must be fun" is FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED
It is also one of the reasons why the current "cutting-edge" games are still viewed as children's entertainment by the popular media. To say that any creative art form "must be fun" immediately limits the scope of any project attempted, and removes the possibility of games that have any real emotional depth or resonance - since this depth stems from conflict and drama, which are inherently negative emotions.
95% of the games available today could have been implemented using a very small number of established technologies and engines, requiring considerably less programmer time. They might not have looked quite as good, but they would have cost half as much and taken half as long to produce, freeing up time to concentrate on less trivial issues such as creativity and gameplay.
This is not a statement of intent
It is a statement of belief
It is a statement of our philosophy
This is our manifesto
There is also a write on how to decipher uplink's game bible:
http://uplinkfan.blogspot.com/2011/10/getting-book-3-of-uplink-game-bible.html