But Spector admits there were interactions between Ion Storm and the authorities. “We did get some secret services guy contacting Ion at one point – I’m not sure what that was all about. And we were contacted by one government agency after we put up unatco.com [a teaser deliberately designed to look like an authentic government website, but now defunct]. We linked to some totally innocuous government agencies from the site and the day we went live one of them got so many hits we brought their server down. We got calls from their lawyers…”

Along with Washington, further locations were purged. A visit to Russia, an abandoned space station, a moon base – all, according to Spector, jettisoned as the design tightened. “We redid much of the plot mid-way through development, when the designers realised our original story, in its totality, was inexpressible given our technology.” Other late changes would follow. “After blindtesting by some other studios, we redesigned the skill and augmentation systems fairly dramatically. And I think we were early in beta when we realised that we hadn’t planned things so players encountered NPCs several times – players weren’t establishing relationships with the characters so the story lacked resonance. We made a major pass at the plot so folks from early missions showed up again and again. That was a critical moment in the game’s development and it came very late.”