After installing Steam I had easy access to the latest versions of every game I'd bought over the system. I recently reached the end of my patience with Vista and wiped the hard disk, and installed XP from scratch. “Of course we'd say that, since all three of our games are now available to buy on Steam. Introversion came away from the IGF as stars, but are now somewhat distancing themselves from their indie roots, with increased commercial success thanks to their exposure on Valve's Steam sales platform: “We're big fans,” says Delay. I think people's interest in indie gaming has been slowly rising and this is definitely a good thing.” It's worth keeping up with events like the IGF - a lot of teams that do well show up later as serious game developers. So how does Introversion's central programmer, the superbly-named Chris Delay, feel about independent game development in 2007? “Alive and well! PCs are still the best place to play genuinely indie games made by very small teams. These titles do what indie games do best: surprise, entertain, and challenge. Uplink, Darwinia and DefCon each have their own encapsulated, deliberately self-contained idea, and each sits just outside the commercial comfort zones. It's not a Retro appeal, so much as timeless. One such home-grown PC team are the British IGF winners, Introversion, who have been something of an inspiration in their attitude towards game development: the kinds of games they have decided to develop appeal to something basic about gaming. The spirit of the bedroom programmers of the '80s is just about living on PCs across the world.

One of the PC's finest features is its ability to allow small, eccentric development teams to create great games without constraints.

Introversion multiwinia