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Pushing on all Frontiers

• Darren Waters
• 21 Feb 08, 16:41 GMT

You would think that that the promise of a next generation game that will change the way people play and perceive gaming would be enough to keep David Braben and his team at Frontier busy.

But the company continues to work along several fronts - on six projects in total - and alongside continuing development of , the firm has produced a Nintendo Wii game, called , which is part of the console's WiiWare online offerings.

I sat down with Braben and fellow Frontier exec David Walsh, to talk about the game, and get their thoughts on a number of issues in the industry.

LostWinds is a classic platform title but has a novel control system: it uses the Wii's Wiimote and Nunchuck in tandem to control the main character and your sidekick, a wind spirit.

"It's an intuitive control mechanism. No one's really tried this before," says Walsh.

"The game came out of a process we have at Frontier called Game of the Week, a forum we have to discuss game ideas."

I make the mistake of calling the game a "casual" title and Braben visibly winces.

"This compartmentalisation (of games) is risky because it brings assumptions. Is it because of the subject matter? Is it the difficulty? Is Bioshock a casual game?

"People would shout from the rooftops if you say it is a casual game. The term can be interpreted as 'casual development' - and that is the wring mindset. You still have to do a good game and just because it's aimed at a different audience doesn't mean you can't do a good game.

"It doesn't mean they are lesser games and my worry is that people who use the term don't respect the fact that the audience still need to be given a quality game."

So how can Frontier afford to devote resources to games like LostWinds when there is so much riding on The Outsider?

"The process we use is common across all projects, so it's easy to plug and play," explains Walsh. "12 people worked on this game in all. Teams ramp up and ramp down at various stages of projects."

Frontier has expanded to 160 people and the firm is continuing its trawl for high quality staff.

Braben and Walsh aren't in San Francisco to talk about The Outsider but Braben will say that "development is coming along nicely".

A publisher deal has been made, he says, but he is not in a position to divulge details.

With such a high profile, and presumably expensive, game in development I ask Braben if he would sell the studio to Microsoft if they came knocking. Would he do as Peter Molyneux did at Lionhead.

His answer is revealing.

"On the face of it no; there may be things we could do together... and in some cases clearly the answer has to be yes.

"Retaining the freedom is the key thing. I would not want to be bought by a company and go in with good intentions and feel after the event things were not right."

He adds: "To give more meat to the answer: 'not now' because now our value is not appreciated.

"In two years time our value will be very very apparent."

He says the company is under appreciated because "there are things we can't talk about" .

"I think The Outsider will make a very big difference to how people perceive games; there will be other games as well which do this.

"We are being valued based on where we were two years ago because that is what is being shown publicly."

Roll on December 2009 when The Outsider is expected to be released.