Gather around kids, and let Grandpa tell you stories about Pascal programming, forcing a program to fit inside 640KB of RAM, and direct access to memory to plot pixel colors in VGA…
Or, to be more on topic, SuperPower 1 was released in North America 20 years ago this month! After the success of it, more markets opened up for us, and our then-publisher, Dreamcatcher, ended up selling about a quarter of a million copies. This was a fun time indeed. But before SuperPower became the little game that could, not many people could have predicted that it would not only be a success story, but also generate two sequels. And we couldn’t be more proud of that achievement!
It all started, now infamously for everyone who works at GolemLabs, with a 1983 movie called "WarGames". A Cold War thriller about the threat of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction did not only serve as a grave warning, but it also featured a very interesting video game. Very often, like some of us do with humor, putting horrific things in games instead of in real life can be cathartic. So in the early 1990s, Jean-René Couture started working on his version of a similar game he called "Defcon". Two of his friends, Luc and Sébastien, joined in the effort and, slowly but surely, the project started to take shape and become something interesting.
At the time, we didn’t plan on starting a company or even releasing the game to anyone. The making of "Defcon" started out as a passion project between friends, just for fun, much like many indie and mobile games today. But in the days of yore of the mid to late 1990s, the internet was booming, and everyone and their dog had a website, generating traffic and money. Sensing an opportunity to earn a living by making video games, the small team got more "professional" and set up an actual company with a plan to turn the game into a commercial product.
Then, we met Dude. And the military got involved.
Dude was (is?) a fan. He stumbled upon our website, and started chatting with us (as was the habit in the pre-era of organized trolls and death threats). Dude seemed to know stuff. And we didn't, most of the time. So he would answer our questions. How does NBC armor really work? Is there information available about this new Chinese plane? And how far exactly can a torpedo go? We would exchange ideas, pleasantries and recipes. But one day, Dude wasn't on ICQ anymore (). Where was he? We found out when we got a phone call from a very irritated captain of the US military. It seems that Dude had forgotten to specify that he was a Junior Analyst in a Washington think tank that had access to some classified information. And he forgot to tell his bosses that he was talking to us about that stuff. Turned out that the range of a torpedo was kinda not something we were supposed to know.
So Dude was sadly shipped far, far away, without any internet access. And we were sort of in trouble with the US military, which is not a group you want to have problems with.
We also had to explain our game to very important people. They expected it to be a traditional war game (it definitely wasn't). In these kind of games, the idea is generally to destroy the enemy units, and conquer their territories. But from the very beginning, SuperPower and its sequels have always been a geopolitical simulation. Ours is not a war game, even if military conflicts can be part of the deal.
Simply destroying everything doesn't mean you will win in the end - quite often, it makes things even more difficult because the game continues. Economic issues, diplomatic fallout, … Dealing with the consequences of your aggression can often prove extremely challenging... SuperPower was always made to reflect anti-military values. For example, in the first installment, triggering too many nuclear explosions also meant triggering the end of the game.
After SuperPower was released, we learned that it was used by the US military in some training and simulation capacity, which was scary to us. But it was also a huge departure from where we were just a few months before. The military people were the ones who pinpointed our liberal tendencies. For instance, we would reward the player for doing liberal things like expanding contributions to the International Monetary Fund. Stuff we hadn't ever considered (our own political inclinations shining through) was making the game less realistic in some cases. And we hadn’t been aware of that.
But, hey! If SuperPower was good enough for the military, it means the game couldn't be so bad. A Colonel we once met (after all these years, it still feels surreal to say something like that) even said that we probably were more knowledgeable of geopolitical issues than they were, just because we had modeled it completely. Which was scary, and quite insane, considering we were just three guys from Sherbrooke, Quebec, with absolutely no military experience at all!
SuperPower at the time was described as a "war game". Which, of course, it wasn't but that's how it was sold to the retail chains (yes, believe it or not kids: before Steam and digital sales, we had to get out of the house, go to a store and buy a box :D !). Back then, we also learned that the people from Dreamcatcher thought SuperPower was too niche to warrant extensive marketing activities. Marketing was quite limited back then. But guess what: we managed to prove even the most skeptical wrong! We are niche, but there is a really big niche for people interested in a geopolitical simulator out there. With SuperPower, everyone could model what was happening in the world, directly in the game. And our timing ever since, with making a new superpower, would always seem to follow a period of general world unrest. This is purely coincidental. But the interest was there. And still is, apparently, from all your comments! We still have to struggle with some issues (it's a geopolitical simulator, people!), but that seems to be the Groundhog Day part of our job.
The most important part, though, is that we can't believe, after 20 years, that we're still here making games, especially a SuperPower game. We're extremely thankful for you, the fans, for this community that is so passionate. It's really oxygen around the office to see you all here with us. Scary oxygen, sometimes. Some of you probably need counselling. But, hey! You're family!