Tweet
Last night Ryan Payton worked late. He and his team at independent developer Camouflaj were trying to work out how to get Republique, the £2.99 iOS stealth game, into the hands of the thousands who backed its successful (just!) Kickstarter. Payton discovered, as others have before him, that there's no easy way to do this. Eventually it dawned on him: the only solution is to manually send out codes. To thousands of expectant players. Some at Camouflaj cursed the Republique Kickstarter. "I don't know where we'd be without the Kickstarter, seriously," Payton countered.Eventually, at 3am, Payton went to bed. Now, just three hours later, at half past two in the afternoon in the UK and half past six in Seattle, Payton is up, talking to me over Skype as Republique is emerging from the shadows to launch on the App Store. He tells me he's late, in fact. Normally he rises around 5am. He slept through his alarm, but he doesn't sound tired at all. He sounds excited.
And so he should. Payton's journey to this point has been long and, at times, troubled, While living in Japan and working for Kojima Productions, Payton was western gamers' link to the development of the impossibly-hyped PlayStation 3 exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4. All this responsibility for someone only in their twenties. And then, in 2008, he left, saying he'd achieved all he wanted to, for rainy Seattle, Microsoft and the enticing prospect of leading design on the story of the first non-Bungie-made Halo shooter.
Read more…
More...