ON THE BUBBLE

Pinchbeck sees the period between 2011 and 2013 as a kind of “indie bubble” when a lot of shifts in the industry took root. It was a heady mix of debutants, such as him, whose first games were being catapulted to success thanks to a thirst for experimental titles, and industry veterans who had moved towards indie development. “It would be you and a bunch of other people all going, ‘What do we do now?’” he says. “Then you’re rubbing shoulders with Tim Schafer and Amy Hennig and people you’ve been idolising since you started playing games.” Perhaps because the territory was so uncharted, he thinks, a lot of newcomers either burnt out or soon moved on. “It kind of bowled people over a bit,” he says. “It was a very exciting but quite chaotic time.”