Krome's Steve Stamatiadis

We couldn't have done it if we didn't have Robert Walsh as a CEO. He's been super supportive of the whole project. He was like, "Steve, what do you want to get back to doing?" And I was like, "I want to do more fun small games." So he said, for a year and a half we could do that - we thought it was too good to be true, there's no way we can keep doing this, but he stayed committed.

Anything we needed doing, like voice recording, PR stuff, he said that if we're spending it we've got to do it properly. He trusts what we're doing and is supportive. You don't get that with a lot of people. That's the other reason we could get this done - I might have had the driving force for the creative side of it, but if you've got the money side saying, "yes, be creative, try this stuff," it's pretty cool.

Yeah, unfortunately we didn't have enough to keep everyone going. We were quite large after Clone Wars which had three studios doing stuff, after that there wasn't much for those guys to do. We have another two unannounced projects going, but that's not enough to keep everyone going. It really tough to say, "sorry, we just don't have the work for you at the moment."

Some we've actually been able to hire back, so it's not like they've all gone. A lot of the guys we're still on good terms with - they know we didn't screw them over and they understand the situation. We got people back as soon as we could get work for them. It was a really tough period but the guys were really good about it and we helped them out the best we could - we didn't just dump them in the shit. But it was tough, these were guys I'd worked with for 4-5 years - we've never done that in ten years. But we had to do it because, frankly, stuff is pretty tough at the moment.

Well yeah and that's it. We knew if we do this we can keep things going, and people understood that.

But when things pick up in the industry, which I believe they will, and when people realise they have to get games out again - they can't make money without making games - there'll be a lot more stuff going on. It's not the first time this has happened, this one's taking a bit longer to get back to people saying, "let's make some games." And it's hard to keep it going for, at the time it was 400 people. That's a big drain in cash.

We've done a lot of work for them previously. We did Scene It? Box Office Smash and that did very well for them. And we've been talking about different projects for a while. Then Game Room came about and it was like, "well you guys did a decent job on Scene It so do you want to try this?"

We put our bid in for it because old school arcade games and all that stuff, there's a bit of a passion there, a lot of old timers were keen on doing it, so there was a lot of excitement when that came up. The guys just really put their hearts into making it good.

Yeah, all the emulation's being done at Krome. We've got a roomful of game motherboards from arcade machines that they've actually been grabbing the ROMs for and doing it properly. The guys really love doing it - we've got some that are real arcade heads working on the project.

Well, it's grown a little. They had this idea they wanted it to be like your own private arcade and then the whole avatar thing - because obviously we were the first people to do avatars in a game in Scene It, we had experience doing that. I think that was another contributing factor. But it grew and they said we could do this, and that - they've been really supportive.

Every week there'll be like seven more games coming out, different areas and stuff. It'll be an ongoing thing, which is quite a scary thing because you've got to keep putting out games. I think a lot of people are actually going to really like it when they have it. There's been a bit of, "oh we're not sure about it," then when they see it in action they're like, "oh, I get it. That's actually really cool."

I think the thing is that you've got a whole range of stuff that people can't get any more. It's a way of getting these arcade games legally and authentically - that's a big plus. It's like having iTunes - you've got music that you can't find albums for, but you can now go and buy it. This is just a different version of that for games.

I have no idea how far they're planning on taking it, but on the arcade front you have a lot of games that you can have in your arcade room that you may have seen once or twice, or you may never have seen in an arcade - there's a compilation. And I know Microsoft is going out there just talking to everyone. They're looking at lots of different classic games. It's going to be a big library when it's finished that's for sure. I know they're saying over a thousand, but I'm sure that's conservative.

I'm glad something has happened with it. The silliest thing is that games are being cut down to be MA rated, which really shouldn't be seen by kids falling into that rating. Just put the rating in, these guys can't see it, adults can have access to this stuff and you're not muddying the waters. At the moment you're making a mess of the ratings system by doing that. With the adult rating there, kids shouldn't get hold of this stuff, simple as that.

But we'll work it out eventually. We're not that bad a country, we're pretty smart, we'll click eventually.