As these names might suggest, NARC was never meant to be The Wire. Typically for Jarvis, the game would be deliriously violent, with RPGs blowing enemies into wet red chunks, and killer clowns slicing people up with machetes. Featuring driving sections, bosses and dozens of onscreen characters, it was a huge project, and the exotic 32bit processors and HD monitors meant the team was taking a lot of pricey risks with unproven hardware. “The technology was expensive,” deadpans Jarvis, “but Williams was willing to roll the dice. Their videogame business had gone to zero; this was their shot at getting back in.”

Jarvis led a team of about seven. “They were young and inexperienced. But with that you get the passion and desire to do something cool. They’re like the rock band who’ve just formed and will play anywhere.” Naturally, they made mistakes, particularly where the HD visuals were concerned. “We did some pretty stupid things,” says Jarvis. “We used 256 colours per character, and we found out later 64 would have been fine: you couldn’t tell the difference. We fell in love with the technology and got carried away.”

Capturing digital footage was trickier than expected. “We built the digitising equipment ourselves, and the technology was kind of balky. Some days it looked great and some days you got nothing.” Even with the cameras rolling, there was a learning curve ahead, particularly for a group of designers who had never worked in the film industry.



“We learnt all the lessons of Hollywood. Lighting was the big one: light a character from the front and he’s flat and white. Put him in a videogame and he looked like a pancake.” Eventually, the team resorted to raiding the kitchen. “We ended up putting white flour on the fronts of the pants so the top of the wrinkle would be white. All of sudden the dimensionality was really cool. Once you worked everything out – light from the side, put the actors on treadmills – it started working.”

The shooting took place in the team’s studio, which for a month became home to junkies, murderers and, of course, the pit bulls. “We used everybody, from the guy working down the hallway to professional actors and models,” laughs Jarvis. “Dancers were the best people because they had control. The worst were weightlifters: you get Rambo in and he’s stiff as a board.” Throughout all the problems, it was the knowledge that they were on to something special that drove the team forwards. “You could just see this business of using liveactors and animals was going to be really cool,” enthuses Jarvis.