You guys have been very vocal in your feedback (thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to e-mail!), and we’ve heard you: you want more War Stories extended interviews, and we’re gonna give them to you. So we’re happy to present our extended multi-hour chat with Relic’s (and now Blackbird Interactive’s) Rob Cunningham, co-designer of Homeworld, the great granddaddy of space-based RTS games.

Even if you’re not a huge Homeworld fan, Rob’s interview contains some wonderful hidden gems—there are lessons here for contemporary game designers, but also for historical observers interested in how game design worked in the late 1990s. Like so many genre-defining titles, it’s a game that nearly didn’t happen because it was almost too hard to create; the challenge of 3D navigation almost sunk the entire project.