After years as a developer, Rage Games PLC recently launched itself into the publishing arena with the ever-so-lovely Incoming. We had the chance to catch up with Trevor Williams, producer of Incoming, and deputy managing director of Rage. He's really great, and he concludes his chat with us here. Look:

WHICH DEVELOPMENT STUDIOS DO YOU ADMIRE?
Westwood - for the obvious reasons ..... Rare - for some of the coolest N64 games on the planet and for being the only European studio who can compete in Japan and win. I guess ..... Blizzard - Warcraft was cool, Diablo was different and Starcraft is even better ..... it's much easier to create a single hit than produce a number of very successful games in succession.

It's very cliche to mention the Bullfrog of old with Peter Molyneux, but they did create some fantastic games which kept me hooked for hours - Syndicate, Theme Park etc. And of course Eugene - for writing Defender, my all-time number one! Oh and Tammy Wynette.

To be honest, I have great respect for any developer who can create a game which ends up on the shelf at retail. There are so many people who come up with concepts, but it takes a huge amount of drive to actually complete a game which is good enough to make it into the stores.

WHEN YOU'RE NOT WORKING, DO YOU STILL PLAY GAMES?
Oh yes ..... I guess I play for at least 3 or 4 hours a day. I think I would find it very difficult to do my job without being able to pick up the controller myself. It's hard to understand immersive gameplay without actually experiencing it .... you know, that '4am in the morning but you just need to start the next level' experience.

At the moment I'm playing GT (obviously) and I've just finished Starcraft. I'm also playing through all of the football titles but that's mainly for business rather than for pleasure. I love Teken 3, but the guys in the office have banned me for being too cheap! I also play board games - chess, backgammon etc. - over the Internet when I have time, but I usually get whacked.

CONSOLE OR PC - WHICH FORMAT DO YOU PREFER DEVELOPING FOR?
If you had asked me 6 months ago, it would definitely have been PlayStation (console). However, we're doing some really cool stuff on the PC at the moment and it is VERY exciting. I do not think I have a strong preference.

WHERE IS THE GAMES MARKET HEADING?
I think the quality of software is getting better and better and I think this trend will continue. Development teams are getting bigger, as are the budgets, and there is no room for lame products at retail.

Internet gaming, whilst being in its infancy, is certainly something which I am sure will feature heavily in the future. I believe PlayStation has helped the games marketplace enormously, so I'm really looking forward to working on PlayStation 2.