Development
The development of I-War was led by Particle Systems co-founders Glyn Williams (whose previous games include Warhead for Amiga and Atari ST) and Michael Powell (whose previous games include Subwar 2050 for PC/DOS). With Williams and Powell included, Independence War had a development team of six men, which was the full personnel of Particle Systems at the time.
The game had some naming troubles. I-War was originally signed to Philips Interactive Media, Inc., who were moving into PC-games. At the time the game had merely a working title, 'big ships'. The first suggested name was Dreadnaught, per the player ship, but it was considered to be meaningless to French and German audiences. The next name candidate was Infinity War, which was found to be also a name of Marvel Comics comic book miniseries. Therefore the name was shortened to I-War. At this time Philips Media was taken over by Infogrames, who became the publisher of the game.
I-War was first released in Europe in November 1997, under the label of Ocean Software. Ocean was acquired by Infogrames earlier that year. This version, having no 3D hardware support, had only software rendered graphics. The game was released in English, French and German languages. I-War was a critical success, but wasn't selling as well as expected.
In late August, 1998, the game was released in North America, but as Independence War. The reason for the name change was that 'I-War' was already trademarked in the US by Atari for an Atari Jaguar game of that name.
Support for 3Dfx's Glide, at the time the dominant and best supported 3D-hardware accelerated graphics API for computer games, was added for the American release. The upgrade included support for the higher 800x600 resolution that the new graphics card from 3Dfx, Voodoo2, was capable of rendering. Additionally, some of the in-game 3D models were re-created with a higher number of polygons, making them more detailed. The graphics upgrade was made available as a separate Internet download for the owners of the original I-War. This patch also changed the game's title into Independence War on the loading screen. Due to the specialized use of out-dated hardware, the game can be problematic to run on modern hardware and operating systems, although installing all patches and a glide wrapper solves most issues.
The American version was successful and won 'Space-Sim of the year' awards from many magazines and websites. Encouraged by this, an expanded edition was designed. I-War / Independence War sold around 250 000 copies worldwide. Including the special editions the total sales were about 300 000. Despite the relative success, I-War stayed merely a cult classic and was an underdog in comparison to such space simulation games as FreeSpace or Wing Commander series.
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