IGN: In the game - you feel elated to be winning but it's lined with considerable guilt as the population death count runs into the millions. Was this meant to be a deliberate moral conflict for the player, or do you feel that we're distanced enough from the Cold War to see this as ironic/humorous?

Chris Delay: It's been interesting - we've had a fair number of questions along this vein about the potential ethical dilemmas that a game like DEFCON presents. The games industry is a safe target for the newly-elected politician with a social agenda - it's easy to find a correlation between increased crime rates and violent computer games. The fact that developers are being made to feel culpable is evident; only last week we had a interview sent over asking our thoughts on the rise of extreme violence in videogames and how it's used almost as a default method nowadays. On the other hand when we first tried to rate DEFCON with PEGI there was no option for implied violence, so DEFCON, a game where you can instigate and observe with complete detachment the murder of millions, would have been issued with a 3+! The oversight in the rating system was quickly rectified but I think it merely serves to highlight the complexity of the issue and the current confusion surrounding it.

Certainly part of the power of DEFCON, and the discomfort you can feel playing it, is its cold, calculated, understated reporting of the horrors behind global warfare. You launch a nuke, it decimates your opponent's city and all you see is a small pop-up indicating the number of dead in one full sweep. You are entirely removed from the horrific reality of the situation - you simply press a button and the deed is done but you are not there to witness, and in this respect, take responsibility for the heinousness of your actions.

Nuclear war is such an abstract concept, that it's actually better suited to being abstracted in a game. It requires a focus on game play and a presentation that players can become immersed in, without trying to distract them with flashy graphics.