In its seven years, Free Radical has already worked with numerous publishers--Eidos, Codemasters, EA, and now Ubisoft and LucasArts. Doak stressed how important it is for developers to own their own intellectual property rather than let the publisher take control.

If we hadn't owned our own IP we would have gone out of business, because there have been times when big publishers come along and you're midway in the development of something and development is often troubled. If a property isn't owned by the developer or the developer doesn't have a stake in the ownership, one option [for a publisher] is to get someone else to finish it off. And that just destroys a company. Maybe at some stage in a development there's a struggle because you're doing something new - particularly when you're coupling new technology with the development - where's the certitude there?

Speaking on his company's experiences with EA, which Doak compared to Oddworld Inhabitatants' experiences as an independent studio working with EA on an offbeat FPS during the same time frame, Doak reflected on the industry's frequent inability to effectively market games outside of preset expectations. "You can market it but you need to realise that the audience is more sophisticated than your prejudices might be about them. That's the horrible curse of the big title game industry," he said. "We were also in a position with EA where they were going to market with TimeSplitters and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, and it could spend its money on Bond or Future Perfect. EA knew which one it had the better return on because it had a formula."

Doak also mentioned the difficulties of independent development continuing to intensify as development costs rise into next-gen, but has no regrets as to Free Radical's business mdoel. Said Doak, "Don't ever doubt the insecure existence you can sometimes have as an independent developer."