An Interview with Jean-René Couture
The Creator and Project Manager of Defcon

Victor Feltes:     Tell us about yourself.  What's your background?

Jean-René Couture:     Er... I wouldn't want to bore everyone with my resume. In short: studied literature and communications, never took a course in computers (some would say it shows...). Well, yes, I had a programming course while in College, but I taught it.

       I never worked any real (non-student) job. I started playing with computers in 1985. My friend had a IBM PC (only a business machine then) because his father worked for IBM. The company wanted to see if people would play games on their machine, so they sent to every worker an advance copy of King Quest 1. I was hooked.

       I programmed the C64, the TSR80 from Radio-Shack, and then moved to the PC when my parents bought a Tandy 1000. I always learned by reading books and trying, and I'm lucky to have started early when computers were small and simple. Today they seem huge, but in many ways the same basic principles apply.

       I've been married for 5 years, and have a 2 1/2 year old son. I met
Sébastien while in College and we played White Wolf games a lot (Vampires, Werewolf). We even designed our own game based on the White Wolf rules, but in the D&D universe. By then, I was coding a first version of Defcon using Borland 3.0. He seemed interested. I asked him if he could help me with the world map (he knew graphics software more than me). He stayed ever since.

       I founded Anonymes Informatique [now known as GolemLabs] November 11th 1997. Sébastien is now also an owner.
 

What was it like to create and manage your own company?

       We started Defcon way before I created the actual company. It started small, a couple of times a week, then it moved up. When more and more people said to us that we could make money out of it, we started to believe it, and we moved on, gradually. It seems natural today, but back then, we had no idea where we were going. We just did what seemed right, and went on from there. Creating the company itself was the most ridiculous, easiest thing in the world. It took about 20 minutes, and I was off. Since we don't make any money, managing the company is easy. I'm more of a motivator than an actual "boss". I guess I'm the project manager, in the most basic and actual description of the job. We do this just like if it was a hobby. It's just a hobby that's also the center of our lives, a hobby we devote around 45 hours a week to. Today, the company is getting bigger and bigger (I mentioned the long-term plans for it), but our goal remains the same. We started this, and continue it, for three reasons:

• We would run on the walls if we could make a decent living creating computer games.

• We want to do our games.

• We believe we have good ideas and enough talent to pull it off.

 

 
 
 

Where did the inspiration for Defcon come from?

       The first time I had the idea is when I saw WarGames with Matthew Broderick.  I wasn't afraid at all at the WOPR, I wanted to play with it! It's about at that time that I saw a small game called Balance of Power. It had the basic idea of Defcon, except that it was a cold-war game (US vs USSR) and you lost if war broke out. Ever since, I searched for this type of conquer-the-real-world game and never saw it. I programmed my first version using Pascal. I quickly saw the limitations and moved to C. The game grew as my ability to code grew, and when Sébastien moved in about two years ago, it grew even more.

       We borrowed a little bit of inspiration from other games, even though not many games look like ours. The research-design-build features are inspired after the system in Masters of Orion. For the rest, it's either very ordinary (menus, buttons, etc.) or is unique (like the WarArt).
 

Walk us through your average day at work.

       It depends. I work somewhere else to pay the bills around 25 hours per week. I also am a contract programmer for research groups in my College (University of Sherbrooke). These are very specific, one or two day deals, but they pay very much. The rest of the time, I work on Defcon.

       These days, I'm usually meeting with financiers, consultants, scientific experts and other very administrative people two or three times a week.  We're preparing the ground to work full time. I usually then code or research the rest of the day until dinner. Then I play with my son until he falls asleep  (around 9PM) and go back to coding until 2 or 3 in the morning. My wife tries to force me to a 1AM curfew (because of health reasons: I'm starting to be really messed up) but she has a hard time making me follow it. I usually sleep 6 or 7 hours and start again, seven days a week. My last vacation of more than 3 days dates back to our honeymoon, 5 years ago this summer (we went to New York).

       Most of my work revolves around coding something. It could be the editor, a small app to convert something, to build WAD files, it could be in HTML or Javascript or Perl. There aren't many more coding left to be done for Defcon itself. Our problem is in entering and managing this huge pile of data. When we say "more than 300 stats per country", it's usually way more than that.
 

That's a pretty grueling schedule.  What motivates you to keep it up?

       These days, we work a little bit like zombies. Defcon became bigger than us, bigger than everything else. We always think about it, we're always doing something concerning it. Our girlfriends are truly great to put up with us. Last week, Sébastien's computer broke, and he lost it for two days. He actually went to college to the computer room to check the net. We couldn't think about taking a day off. The project, and the end goal, is just too big and too near.

       There's also the monetary factor. We're getting more and more broke. We need to get it out. And the response of the web community has been so great that we believe we'll make enough money to continue.

       But, I guess more than everything, Defcon has always been my baby, my dream.  Now, it's also become Sébastien's. We want to see it, go out and have a life on it's own. We've been making it for so long, we're a little bit like Doctor Frankeinsteins, wanting our creature to live. I don't know if either one of us will actually play an entire game. Maybe later, in a couple of years. But we'll take immense pride and satisfaction when I hit the "compile" option for the last time.
 

In closing, is there anything else you would like to say to the Defcon fans everywhere?

       Just be patient, I guess. We've been making you wait for a long time. I truly believe, however, that the final product will be worth the wait. You will never have seen something like that, promise!