Hooligans: Storm across Europe. Exclusive Interview

There is a PC game about to be launched that is set to cause one of the biggest scandals in European gaming history.

Hooligans: A Storm Across Europe, is a real-time strategy game following the fortunes of a gang of football hooligans from pre-season warm-up games to European Cup games.

You are the leader of the gang and have to keep the loyalty of your minions by leading them on a spree of looting and drinking before and after the match.

Jason D Garber, CEO of Darxabre and Thirteenth Productions, was at his now annual drinking den at ECTS over the weekend, in the form of the free bar he sets up to promote his game.

Question: What’s new since we saw the game last year?

Jason D Garber: Well, we have talked to zillions of publishers and zillions of distributors and in the end we realised that these conversations take months. After long talks it seemed that everyone said: “We love the game but the retail sector will not stock it.” That went on for six months or so until we got to May when we decided to publish it ourselves. For the past three months we have been getting our new company Darxabre ready to publish the game and getting a distribution deal sorted out.

We have also been beta-testing all the time which has given us the opportunity for more elements we initially wanted to include. The beta testers fed back the fact that you, as the player, need to have more influence on what you are doing. Last year we had a pretty straightforward game, but seeing as we didn’t have a publisher, we decided to take it back, rehash it and get certain things in there and remove others.

If you now look at the game, it has turned into something very bizarre. It’s not exactly an RTS in the conventional sense. We have the singularity of Commandos mixed with the plurality of games like Starcraft. We lie somewhere in the middle.

Q: What are your opinions on the publishing world after the past year?

JDB: Nyearhaah!

Q: What do you think of the reaction to the game so far?

JDG: It’s been a lot of fun to see. The audience accepts the title and the publishers accept the title. It’s just the shop chains that think they can’t stock it. So far I’m not displeased at all, I’m happy with the response and I think that if we can keep this momentum going we will be able to get Hooligans into all the shops we need to.

Q: You must have spent a lot of money. How are you funded?

JDG: We have funded ourselves with investors and we have done bits of work for other games companies, just to ease the cash flow situation. From now on we will be doing no more projects for other people and are just going to focus on getting this product to the market.

Q: What’s the next move? What does the future hold?

JDG: We are going to see how far this carries and we have several other titles lined up.

Q: Similar titles?

JDG: What’s that saying? A donkey never hits the same stone twice? It’s a Dutch saying. All I mean is that the next title will be, erm, easier to publish and will be more breathtaking with respect to gameplay and everything.

Q: Any console version of Hooligans planned?

JDG: For this game? I don’t think anyone will give us the license.

Garber was genuinely optimistic about the game’s chances, confidently predicting it will be on sale before the end of the year.

He seemed a little wiser than when we last met at last year’s ECTS. All the Hooligans team seemed a little baffled by the reaction with which the game was met. Videogames involving war, violence and killing are the norm. Why should this be any different?

Darxabre has also suffered at the hands of publishers. Garber insists he has been badly ripped-off by several companies and is now determined to bring his game to the market.

We will bring you more updates on the progress of Hooligans, straight from the horse’s mouth.