Leak din mai:
Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak | VGCOriginally Posted by Video Games Chronicle
THE NINTENDO CONSOLE LEAK IS SAID TO INCLUDE:
- N64, GameCube and Wii source code
- Diagrams and datasheets for every system component
- Documents describing feature planning and implementation
- Full Wii operating system SDK
- Planning docs for implementation of the Wii from 2004-2006
- Spaceworld ’99 demos
Leak de acum, din iulie:
An alleged Nintendo leak has reportedly unearthed early game prototypes | VGCThe early demos are said to be part of an alleged leak of Nintendo source code, which could be linked to a larger breach of legacy Nintendo data which was first reported in May.
So far videos showing early prototypes of Super Mario Kart and Super Mario World 2 (Yoshi’s Island) have appeared online, supposedly repurposed from the leaked source code. Early sprites for Super Mario World are also said to have appeared online.
The videos showing prototype versions of Yoshi’s Island are the most significant, showcasing entirely new UI and levels. One prototype for Mario World 2 shows an entirely new character in a forest environment.
According to an anonymous post on the 4chan forum, the leak also includes the source code for F-Zero, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario RPG, Super Mario All-Stars, Link’s Awakening DX, Star Fox 2, Wild Trax and Pokémon Diamond and Pearl.
The leak is also said to include data for the Wii Shop Channel, a Wii Game Boy emulator, iQUE and more.
Mai multe videos gasiti pe acest YouTube channel.
Si pe Twitter posteaza lumea cu ce au gasit:
Ubisoft’s Planned King Arthur Game Was Nixed by Ex-Creative Head - BloombergWhen Ubisoft Entertainment SA hired Mike Laidlaw, the well-respected designer of the Dragon Age video game series, in late 2018, expectations were high. Fans were excited to see what kind of game he might be dreaming up next.
In fact, Laidlaw was directing development of a role-playing game code-named Avalon, according to people familiar with the project. It was a big-budget adventure involving stories of King Arthur and his Round Table in a sword-and-sorcery fantasy world full of knights and legends. But just over a year later, before releasing any games, Laidlaw quit.
According to current and former employees, Avalon was canceled by Ubisoft’s powerful chief creative officer, Serge Hascoët. Wielding an unusual amount of control over content at the French publishing powerhouse, Hascoët was credited for blockbuster franchises like Far Cry, a first-person shooter series, and Assassin’s Creed, a series of action games based on historical events like the Crusades and in settings such as ancient Egypt. But Hascoët wasn’t a fan of the fantasy genre and set a high bar for the Avalon team in Quebec City, Canada. If they were going to make a fantasy game, it had to be “better than Tolkien,” he told them, according to people familiar with the project.
Hascoët resigned earlier this month after multiple allegations of sexual misconduct at the company, including accusations that he enabled and facilitated a frat house-like culture. His grip on power also stifled creativity at Ubisoft, according to people familiar with the company’s internal procedures. Current and former Ubisoft developers said Hascoët rejected some ideas with great potential and alienated high-profile employees, limiting the company’s potential.
Laidlaw and an Ubisoft spokesperson declined to comment. Hascoët did not respond to requests for comment.
Last year, Ubisoft released two big flops: The Division 2, which was critically acclaimed but commercially underwhelming; and Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which was panned by critics and fans. By the end of the year, Ubisoft’s stock had fallen 40% from its high a year earlier. As a result, Ubisoft reorganized its editorial division in an attempt to diversify its games. Two of the people promoted at the time, Maxime Béland and Tommy François, are the subject of a company investigation for sexual misconduct claims. Beland has resigned; Francois’s employment status remains unclear.
In the wake of the harassment scandal Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot has promised big cultural changes. Some Ubisoft employees are wondering if the company’s creative structure will change too, diversifying the leadership ranks and creating an opportunity for a more expansive and potentially lucrative list of titles.
Ubisoft has sometimes been criticized by fans and pundits for using similar tropes and ideas for many of its games. Its biggest franchises, including Watch Dogs, Far Cry and the Tom Clancy games, are all vast open worlds with realistic settings, which was no coincidence. Before Avalon, Hascoët rejected pitches for several other fantasy-style games, according to people familiar with Ubisoft’s development processes." Hascoët, and Ubisoft's marketing department, also prevented the developers of the last three Assassin's Creed games from writing larger roles for their female protagonists, Bloomberg Businessweek has reported.
Within Ubisoft’s management, Hascoët was seen as responsible for the success of the open-world formula that turned the publisher’s franchises into blockbusters. But his level of power was unique in the industry. Most other game publishers have multiple creative decision-makers rather than a single person, a setup that Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz said may be more effective.
“I think it is a good thing to have a ‘brain trust’ of a relatively small number of highly experienced, creative, and diverse people,” Creutz said. “But vesting all that power in a single person is risky.”
The people who worked on Avalon said the project had been progressing well. It featured a cooperative multiplayer world similar to Capcom Co.’s popular Monster Hunter series. The game’s developers were shocked to see the project impeded simply because the chief creative officer didn’t like its setting, they said.
In an effort to salvage the project throughout 2019, Laidlaw and his team pitched new themes. They switched the setting, trying one that was more science fiction and one based on Greek mythology. But Hascoët shot down all of these ideas, and by last fall, the game was canceled, the people familiar with the project said. Laidlaw left in January.
Now, Ubisoft has an opportunity to rethink its reliance on a single creative decision-maker. The company has said Guillemot will temporarily fill the role of chief creative officer, and there is speculation that one of Hascoët’s former disciples may eventually take the title.
But some observers both inside and out of Ubisoft say that diffusing power at the company instead may lead to stronger and more successful games.
“If you look at Ubisoft’s history, they have had a lot of good games, but not a lot of truly great ones,” Creutz said. “They’ve never had that breakout hit that defines a company like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft. I don’t think that absence is due to a talent gap in their rank and file versus other studios.”
Ce s-a intamplat cu Gameloft dupa ce a fost cumparata de Vivendi (franceza):
Comment Vincent Bolloré a coulé Gameloft - Capital.frAu terme d’une bataille homérique avec la famille Guillemot, Vincent Bolloré a racheté cet éditeur de jeux vidéo en 2016. Depuis, tout va mal.
Enumera putinele jocuri ce vor fi in 120fps, dar explica avantajele si recomanda monitoare si televizoare 4K cu port HDMI 2.1 pentru cele mai bune rezultate.
It won't be a feature on every game - in fact, it'll be a tiny minority. But both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have the ability to run games at 120fps. We'll be telling you about all the announced titles, explaining why 120Hz is a big deal for certain game types and revealing our recommended 4K HDMI 2.1 displays capable of the best results.
Our full list of display recommendations: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...-xbox-series-x
30-Day Game Music Challenge - 2 Lists, 60 Songs, NO REPEATS! :: MLiG Ad-Lib / MY LIFE IN GAMING
Unsolved Mortal Kombat Mysteries With Director Dominic Cianciolo | Ars Technica
How did Resident Evil 2 manage to fit on a single Nintendo 64 Cart ? | MVG
Spielberg's Crazy 90s FMV Game is UNHINGED! - Easy Update:
Ian and Omar play the Steven Spielberg FMV game from 1996 starring Jennifer Anniston, Quentin Tarantino, and Penn and Teller and it's NUTS.
Un clip interesant <3 si re-analizat: How the ET Video Game Ended Atari
#ET #Atari2600 #WeirdHistory
How One Gameplay Decision Changed Diablo Forever - Ars Technica War Stories:
A aparut pe netflix un documentar interesant, "High score" se numeste.
Are thread special aici.
Am vazut si eu primul episod aseara
How cartridges worked on the Nintendo Game Boy:
The origins of the 3D graphics card:
Inca o analiza din partea lui Schreier, despre exploatare in industria jocurilor video.
Atentia este asupra temporary workers, cu Activision-Blizzard si Microsoft faptasi:
Video Game Contractors Receive Poor Treatment and Low Salary as Business Booms - BloombergThe gaming industry employs more than 220,000 people, many of them permatemps who don't share in the spoils.
As Christmas 2018 approached, workers at Activision Blizzard Inc. were busy doing what they always do—writing code, modeling characters, and designing landscapes for the next Call of Duty games. At the company’s campus in Santa Monica, Calif., everyone got hand-delivered invitations to the annual holiday bash, where staff could drink, unwind, and celebrate the year. Some recipients, though, were soon told they’d received the invitations by mistake and wouldn’t be welcome at the party, according to three people familiar with the incident. The reason: They were temporary contractors officially employed by a staffing agency, Volt Workforce Solutions.
That treatment isn’t unusual in the gaming industry. While executives rake in millions of dollars and some full-time employees can expect Porsche-size bonuses when a hot new title drops, many people working alongside them get nothing but a salary that barely keeps them above the poverty line.
Their employee badges typically come in a different color. They rarely get paid vacations. Their names sometimes aren’t included in the credits. And when full-time co-workers get pricey swag such as statuettes of game characters, they’re often left out. At one studio, a contractor says they were given cheaper, less comfortable chairs. “Temps will be told that there will be opportunities to prove themselves and possibly transition to full time,” says Emma Kinema, a Communications Workers of America organizer seeking to unionize video game makers. “In reality, the vast majority of people in ‘temp’ roles in the game industry get trapped there forever with terrible conditions, no benefits, low pay, and no ladder for career progression.”
“Contracting should not be used as a method to avoid employment expenses”
The video game industry employs more than 220,000 people worldwide, according to the Entertainment Software Association. These are backed up by thousands of freelancers who write scripts or draw concept art for studios when needed. Somewhere in the middle are contractors employed by agencies such as Volt, Keywords, and Yoh, who work full-time hours but are frequently treated as lesser employees.
The industry’s prestige—what kid doesn’t grow up wanting to make games for a living?—makes it particularly ripe for labor exploitation. Interviews with more than a dozen contractors, none of whom wanted to be identified for fear of retribution by employers, suggest they’re often essential members of game development teams. These skilled artists, designers, and producers maintain the same long hours as staffers. Sometimes their employment has a specific end date, but their contracts are frequently extended, allowing them to keep their jobs but offering no path to full-time employment. “There are many roles applicable only during a certain point of a project, so contracts are well-suited for these positions,” says Renee Gittins, executive director of the nonprofit International Game Developers Association. “But contracting should not be used as a method to avoid employment expenses.”
Legally, these permatemps occupy a murky space. In 2000, Microsoft Corp. settled a class*-action lawsuit brought by contractors for failing to provide them with benefits, but the case didn’t result in a clear precedent. “This is the Wild West,” says William Gould IV, an emeritus law professor at Stanford Law School and a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. A pair of congressmen in July introduced a bill to boost protections for contractors, but the measure hasn’t yet made it out of committee.
The path from the headline owner of a title to the people who write the code and draw the characters can be convoluted. The next Call of Duty, expected this fall, will likely break sales records; the 2018 version, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, grossed more than $500 million in its first three days alone, according to Activision. Most of the work on the game is done by separate studios owned by Activision, including a Santa Monica company called Treyarch, which hires contractors from Volt. Several current and former Volt employees with Treyarch say their pay is below $20 per hour, forcing them to work nights and weekends to make ends meet.
Their Volt contracts stipulate that they have no right to their host company’s perks. “I acknowledge and agree that I am not eligible to participate in or receive any benefits under the terms of the Company Group’s retirement plans, health plans, vision plans, disability plans, life insurance plans, stock option plans, or any other employee benefit plan, policy, or procedure sponsored or maintained by any member of the Company Group,” reads one contract, reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek.
Volt didn’t respond to requests for comment. Activision says that its staffing needs fluctuate as games are developed and that it does its best to include agency workers in as many studio activities as it can. (After dismay over the 2018 holiday party, Activision contractors were invited to the 2019 event, according to people familiar with the incident.) The company says that it investigates all complaints about unfair treatment and that fewer than 10% of the 10,000 workers at Activision’s studios come from contracting agencies.
Efforts to shrink the role of temps have had mixed results. In 2014, as Microsoft sought to reduce its reliance on contractors, it instituted an 18-month limit for contract workers to “better protect our Microsoft IP and confidential information,” the company said in a memo at the time. Because it can take years to develop a video game—the latest installment of Microsoft’s Halo franchise has been in the works for more than four years—progress has been disrupted by the departure of contractors at the end of their 18 months, according to people familiar with development. Microsoft says that it encourages external staffers to raise any concerns about their treatment and that it will take action as needed.
The industry’s structure makes it difficult to break out of contractor status. To get a job with a top company requires a portfolio of contributions to finished games, but in Japan some workers say their agencies keep their names out of the credits so other companies can’t poach them. One contractor who’s served as a lead for a major console game says his agency forced him to use a different pseudonym in the credits of every game he worked on. And while there are nascent efforts to forge a sense of solidarity among workers, there are no unions in the U.S. or Japanese video game industry—and legions of eager people are waiting in the wings.
For Chet Faliszek, a founder of independent studio Stray Bombay Co., which is working on cooperative shooter games, there’s a simple solution: Don’t use temps. As Stray Bombay has grown, he’s resisted hiring via agencies even though it would’ve saved him time and money. “While staffers work for middling pay and long hours, they have the promise of bonuses and perks, many of which don’t go to contractors,” Faliszek says. “They get a raw deal.” —With Takashi Mochizuki
BOTTOM LINE - Video game industry contractors frequently work full-time hours but are denied perks such as paid holidays, parties, and company swag offered to permanent staffers.
Nvidia’s RTX 3080 and 3090 graphics cards are leaked with pics and reported specs
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 have witnessed some major leakage, with images from two manufacturers spilled online – plus the purported final specs of the graphics cards – and pics of the RTX 3070 too.
Gainward and Zotac are the subject of these leaks, with images of the former’s Phoenix graphics cards coming complete with spec details on the RTX 3080 and 3090, as highlighted by Videocardz.
As well as confirming the names, which are clearly on the packaging, the leak lets us know that the GPUs are built on 7nm and Gainward’s 3080 and 3090 have a 2.7-slot design with three fans (so unsurprisingly, the third-party cards aren’t small, either – but they aren’t on the same scale as Nvidia’s purported giant Founders Edition which we glimpsed recently).
As for those specs, the RTX 3090 is loaded up with 5,248 CUDA cores (as was previously rumored), with a massive 24GB of GDDR6X video memory (ditto) featuring a speed of 19.5Gbps, with power consumption pegged at 350W (again as rumored before).
With the RTX 3080, you’re looking at 4,352 CUDA cores, 10GB of GDDR6X VRAM (at 19Gbps) and 320W on the power front (a version with more video memory may be launched further down the line).
Gainward will run the RTX 3090 at a boost clock of 1,725MHz with the RTX 3080 reaching 1,740MHz. Remember, we can’t take this as a cast-iron certainty, as with any leak, but at this point, the spec sheet looks pretty convincing (and marries with previous speculation, and the fresh spillage from Zotac as well).
Zotac’s leaked images (again via Videocardz) of its RTX 3080 and 3090 models, as well as 3070 boards, also shows Trinity HoLo models of the 3080 and 3090 (alongside plain Trinity – which ditches the RGB lighting – as well as AMP Extreme versions) which are triple slot graphics cards with three fans like Gainward’s GPUs.
Zotac’s RTX 3070 GPU will be a smaller graphics card with a dual-fan configuration (with an RGB version, and one without any fancy lighting).
Further note that the leaks reveal that Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 will supposedly benefit from NVLink SLI, meaning you can pair up two of these GPUs for monster performance (although the cost of two cards will doubtless reach a truly astronomical level).
These Ampere graphics cards will support PCIe 4.0, and come with second-gen ray tracing cores – a massive uplift in performance has been previously rumored when it comes to the RT cores. At any rate, the launch of these GPUs is almost upon us now, and we’ll soon know the full official details: Nvidia is expected to conduct the big reveal on September 1, in just two days
The secret Avengers video game the world never got to play - CNETThe secret Avengers video game the world never got to play
THQ spent years working on an Avengers video game. This is the story of how it was torn apart.
First there was a bang. The sort of noise that comes from steel-on-steel impact. An unfamiliar sound in an office used to the peaceful clatter of mechanical keyboards. Still, no one batted an eyelid.
Then came the second bang. A third. A fourth.
People began to take notice. One ear at a time, the headphones peeled off. Hordes of men and women, peering over office dividers like confused meerkats. What was that noise? Where was it coming from?
Slowly, it became clear. A full-grown game designer, enraged. He'd picked up the nearest blunt instrument, an umbrella, and began rhythmically battering it on a filing cabinet.
For Charles Henden, who witnessed the incident, this wasn't out of the ordinary. This was game development.
"You know, we've all been there," says Henden. "We've all beaten up a filing cabinet with an umbrella at some point in our careers."
Henden, like everyone else watching, was a game developer, working at the now defunct THQ Studio Australia in Brisbane. In high-pressure environments like this, with incredibly tight deadlines and huge financial stakes, meltdowns were almost common.
"I could probably, from each of the projects that I worked on, give you a story that would just blow your mind," says Rex Dickson, who also worked at the studio around that time.
But in a universe where crushing work hours are normalized and outrageous behavior is commonplace, this time the stakes were even higher than usual. This was no normal project. No normal video game.
The year was 2011. The THQ Studio Australia team had a reputation for creating licensed video games within tight time frames. This time it had landed a big one. In 2012, Marvel and Disney were set to release the first Avengers movie, launching a franchise that would change cinema forever. Avengers would ultimately become bigger than Star Wars, bigger than Harry Potter, bigger than anything. This was a huge deal, and everyone on the team knew it. They worked as though their careers and livelihoods depended on it.
But despite being an innovative, high-quality video game that wowed almost everyone who played it, the Avengers project would never see the light of day. Everyone working on the game would ultimately lose their jobs.
A global financial crisis, a surging Australian dollar, a licensing deal that all but guaranteed it would never return a profit: The Avengers was a video game caught at the center of a dozen competing hurricanes.
And despite the best efforts of everyone involved, it was ultimately torn apart.
Execute crisply"So what's this Avengers thing?"
After being told he was working on an Avengers video game during a Christmas meeting in 2009, that was Charles Henden's first question.
In the cold light of 2020 the question seems quaint, but in 2009 the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as we now understand it, didn't really exist. Iron Man had hit cinemas, but Marvel hadn't yet sold the public on the broader concept of the MCU. Henden understood a video game based on an Avengers license could be big. But how big? The scale was unclear.
After shipping a number of video games based on the Avatar TV show, and another based on the movie MegaMind, THQ Studio Australia was on a roll. It was a collective that helped execute one of THQ's most straightforward missions as a company: high-quality, quickly made video games based on licensed properties.
Henden's second question: "What comic books should I buy?"
Details were sparse. THQ wanted to make a video game that would launch alongside the Avengers movie, but no-one really knew much about the movie itself. "There were pockets of people who sort of knew," says Henden, "but they weren't really allowed to say."
The team decided to create a movie that would focus on The Ultimates comic books, a series the movies themselves would heavily draw upon.
So Henden bought those.
"I wanted to become an expert," he says.
In 2009, the benchmark for comic book video games was Batman: Arkham Asylum, a polished third-person action game with slickly integrated puzzles and exploration elements. But it was the exception that proved the rule: Most video games based on comic books or movies were bad.
Like Iron Man, a Sega title rushed through production to hit the movie's release date in 2008. Iron Man scored an abysmal 45% on Metacritic and won GameSpot's "Worst Game Everyone Played" award that year.
THQ Studio Australia didn't want to make an Iron Man, it wanted to make a Batman: Arkham Asylum, and, in the beginning, much of the design work reflected that. That meant single-player, third-person action featuring weighty, close-quarters combat.
It was six months of "solid work," remembers Henden. The core design was mostly figured out. Levels were beginning to take shape with the help of some beautiful environment art.
Then everything changed.
Ships that pass in the nightIt was common knowledge that the then-general manager of THQ Studio Australia, Steve Middleton, was often at odds with THQ corporate. But those sorts of conflicts rarely filtered down the chain.
"With THQ," Henden explains, "you never really knew whether you were in the good books or the bad books as a studio."
You could keep your boss (or even your boss' boss) happy by doing good work, but the larger machinations of how your studio fit into the macro THQ picture were mostly obscured.
At one point the THQ Studio Australia team was taken into a room and informed that a host of new developers -- a new lead designer and some production leads -- were being recruited to help with the Avengers project. That felt relatively normal. Less normal was the meeting that followed.
Steve Middleton, the man largely responsible for running THQ Studio Australia as an entity, was being let go.
"It was a huge shock," remembers Henden. "It was crazy. It was like, 'what are we gonna do?'" He believes Middleton was a scapegoat for any potential delays that could occur with the Avengers game. Steve Middleton didn't return a request for comment.
Alongside Middleton, a core group of the art team was also let go. Some were key to the development of Avengers. One sound designer, hired by the outgoing general manager, had packed up his entire life in the UK and headed to Australia for a job that no longer existed.
"This guy had paid to relocate to Australia," says Henden. "He had all of his personal stuff in a shipping container, all of his things were on a ship.
"He arrived in Brisbane and was told he didn't have a job anymore."
Left 4 AvengersChristian Dailey's time in Australia was something of a roller coaster.
He arrived from San Diego to Pandemic Studios in Brisbane in 2007, to work on Batman: The Dark Knight, a canceled video game based on the then-upcoming Christopher Nolan movie. Dailey then worked alongside George Miller, the creative genius behind Mad Max, at his Kennedy Miller Mitchell game studio.
But when Dailey was offered the job of game director on the Avengers project, he signed on almost immediately. Having spent time at THQ in San Diego in a past life, he was already well aware of the team's technical acumen. He was also a huge Marvel fan.
Upon arriving, Dailey spent his first month at THQ Studio Australia getting an idea of where the game was headed and how he could contribute. But one thing kept nagging at him.
The Avengers game looked familiar. Too familiar.
"I was looking at what was out there," remembers Dailey. "Every Marvel movie tie that had come and gone at that point was like this third-person kind of cookie-cutter clone."
There were some good games, admits Dailey, like Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, but third-person action games directly tied to Marvel movies had traditionally been rushed out the door to hit release dates. Games like this, relying on brand name over quality, rarely got the time or attention required to create a truly polished superhero experience.
Dailey wanted to do something different. So he made a big call with huge ramifications for the Avengers project.
"I said, '**** it', let's make it first-person."
It wasn't quite as abrupt as that, Dailey says, but regardless: It wasn't a popular decision at first.
"It was like a bomb going off," says Henden.
A first-person superhero game. It was a unique idea. The traditional thinking back then -- and even today -- was that licensed video games should be third-person. The prevailing wisdom: Players who bought a superhero game would want to see the superhero they were playing as. A first-person game does the opposite, hiding the licensed character from view, forcing players to watch and play through their eyes.
Dailey was heavily inspired by Left 4 Dead, a 2008 cooperative first-person shooter that had players teaming up to fight off hordes of zombies. Featuring an AI-driven "director" that made each playthrough completely unique, Left 4 Dead was hugely influential at the time.
Much like Left 4 Dead, which allowed players to pick one of four distinct characters, Dailey wanted to take the Avengers -- Captain America, The Hulk, Thor and Iron Man -- and create a game where players had to team up, like the Avengers tend to do, and tear through hordes of bad guys.
For people like Henden, who'd just lost multiple senior members of their team and had already worked through tumultuous change, the perspective shift was a direct shot to the solar plexus. Dailey absolutely understood.
"Some new guy had come in and flipped everybody's world upside down," says Dailey. "But I knew it was the right thing for this particular game."
It was a bold move. Dailey wanted to create a first-person, four-player online co-op game at a time when online gaming -- particularly on consoles -- was in its infancy. But he knew it would work. If the game was four-player, then you could see the other Avengers -- be they Hulk, Captain America, Thor or Iron Man -- playing alongside you.
"Now, of course, it makes sense," Henden admits, "But at the time I was one of the people saying 'what the ****?'"
"I thought it was just nuts."
Dailey knew he had his work cut out for him. On a number of levels.
"The biggest thing was the terrifying thought of trying to sell this to Marvel."
Avengers AssembleDailey knew he had the support of THQ on the publishing side and, in time, the development team would firmly get behind the move to first-person. But if Marvel didn't support the decision, none of that would matter.
"It was really Marvel that worried me."
Dailey and the bigwigs at THQ Studio Australia invited Marvel out to Brisbane to sell them on the idea of a first-person Avengers game, cobbling together a presentation that included an early prototype of what the team was hoping to achieve with this bold new vision.
"It really took them by surprise," remembers Dailey. "But in a good way."
"They were like, 'This is great, this is different. It's unlike anything we've done before.' And once we got Marvel they were a huge ally."
Marvel and Disney didn't respond to requests for comment.
Despite early reservations regarding the move to first-person, everyone I spoke to agreed: There was a point at which the entire team came together on the Avengers project and went full speed ahead as a cohesive unit.
"It was a dream team," said one designer, who asked not to be named. "The absolute cream of the crop."
The studio split into small squads, each working on one specific Avenger. There was Iron Man, who could fly and shoot enemies from a distance. Hulk was all about close-quarters combat. Thor had lightning abilities, and Captain America had range attacks with his shield.
The team was most stressed about Captain America. You have to remember: This was before Chris Evans had even been cast as Cap.
"I remember thinking, Captain America? What a reject," laughs Henden. "I couldn't imagine a world where Captain America would have his own movies and be a lead character."
Danny Bilson, then executive vice president of THQ and head of THQ's core games division, remembered arguing about Cap with TQ Jefferson, a vice president of production at Marvel.
"I was like, Iron Man can fly, he's got the rays. The Hulk can smash. Thor has the hammer. But Captain America just had this... shield. And it was like a frisbee? It's not gonna cut it."
What about a gun, Bilson asked.
Marvel did not want Cap to have a gun.
"I was like, what do you mean? Cap was in World War II running around with a gun. That was a tension that I remember being really passionate about."
As the game progressed through development, a few stars emerged. Like Chris Palu.
He anchored the team working on The Hulk. Three separate people we interviewed referred to Palu as the best designer they'd ever seen. "I've worked with a lot of combat designers in my day," said Rex Dickson, a 20-year-plus industry veteran, "but he was something special."
Palu was in charge of making sure the Avengers combat felt weighty and meaningful. First-person, close quarters combat was traditionally tricky in first-person games, but by all accounts Palu pulled it off with aplomb. Hulk could rip enemies apart, he could catch bad guys in midair and slam them to the ground seamlessly.
The team was razor-focused on finding opportunities for the Avengers to team up during combat. Considering how action sequences evolved in the Avengers movie, the team was on the right track.
The team also secured Brian Bendis -- the award-winning writer referred to as the architect behind the Ultimate Marvel Universe comic book series -- to write the story.
"The game was really coming together, really starting to look good," says Henden.
He remembers playing as Iron Man and attacking an enemy in midair, then watching as Hulk jumped up, double-teaming the same enemy with spectacular special moves.
"That sort of stuff would get the combat designers amped up. Like, 'now we've gotta figure out ways for all four Avengers to team up'. There was just this massive momentum behind the game."
But once again, things were about to change.
'We were the Americans'Dailey still maintains the shift to first-person was the right choice, but it put the team under enormous pressure.
"We were always behind, schedule-wise," he says.
That's where Rex Dickson came in.
Rex Dickson had a reputation as being a closer. He'd just finished working on THQ's Homefront, a game with a development period so tortured it was referred to as a "death march." Some within THQ believed he could help THQ Studio Australia get the Avengers project finished in time for the movie.
In early 2011, Dickson played an early build of the game and liked what he saw. It was enough to inspire him to leave New York City and fly halfway across the world to Brisbane, Australia.
"I thought they had something really special," he says.
Following him was Lance Powell, an art director. He'd worked with Dickson on tough projects in the past. "We made a pact to go together and bring stability to the IP," says Powell.
Initially the new arrivals clashed with a very Australian Avengers team. "I'm sure people felt like their toes were being stepped on," says Dickson. "We were the Americans."
Henden remembers butting heads with the new arrivals.
"These new guys come in and they're wearing Yankees caps in Brisbane," says Henden. "One guy was jacked, wearing these tight V-necks. He had like a liter bottle of rum on his desk, and was always like, 'Bro you wanna drink? Let's do shots and do overtime!'"
But "The Americans" believed overtime would be necessary, particularly if Avengers was to hit shelves in time for the movie release in 2011. THQ Studio Australia, Powell estimated, had a year's worth of work to do in six months.
"That's a difficult pill to swallow if you live by a 38-hour workweek," he remembers." But everyone knew what was at stake."
Dickson says things never got to the stage where they were "hitting it hard." But there were casualties.
As a result of the way certain pipelines had been established, one designer ultimately became solely responsible for a sizable part of production. It was this heightened level of pressure and stress that resulted in him beating up a filing cabinet with an umbrella.
"He'd have meetings with team leads, and they'd say, 'You're not pulling your weight', but they didn't understand how much stress he was under," explains Henden.
Things escalated. In addition to his gigantic workload, the designer was also a high-level World of Warcraft player. As production ramped up, Henden remembers him mentioning he was scaling his WoW time back -- to 70 hours a week. To him, a 70-hour World of Warcraft week was "casual".
One day it all became too much to handle. He imploded.
Most remember hearing a loud bang, but the first thing Henden heard was a shout. He saw one producer, in a defensive stance, looking like he was about to disarm someone.
"Mate, just put the knife down, OK? It's gonna be alright mate, just put the knife down."
The designer -- the high-level WoW player -- had gone into the kitchen, grabbed the biggest knife he could find and had been stabbing it rhythmically into his desk. Allegedly, one woman asked if he was OK, and in response he'd swiped the knife toward her. Thankfully, no one was injured.
"Just put the knife down. We'll go outside and figure this out."
The producer confronting the designer was an ex-bar bouncer, he had experience dealing with situations like this. He wasn't able to convince the designer to put down the knife, but managed to escort him outside, away from the rest of the team at THQ Studio Australia. Soon afterward, the police arrived.
"We had no idea he could become so unhinged," says Henden.
THQ got the designer help, paying for counseling and treatment, but he lost his job for that outburst. Later, Henden remembers, he attempted to come back to work as if nothing had ever happened.
"He really did rock up, press the doorbell and say, 'Hey I'm back, ready to work'."
The legacy deal"I didn't make that deal."
Danny Bilson already knew that video games based on movie licenses were on the decline. He'd seen as much at EA, where he'd worked on licenses like Harry Potter. He loved the Avengers game, but he didn't like the deal.
"There was a massive guarantee against that game," explains Bilson. "You had to pay Marvel double-digit millions no matter what."
From 2008 until 2012, Bilson was the executive vice president of THQ's core games business unit. His role represented a transition for THQ. Back then THQ's bread and butter was children's games based on movie and TV licenses. In 2006, for example, THQ made a game based on Pixar's Cars that sold a ridiculous 8 million units.
But that business model was on the outs. In response, THQ had become obsessed with developing its own intellectual property. Video games like Saints Row, an open-world game designed to compete with Grand Theft Auto. Or Homefront, a first-person shooter built to take on Call of Duty.
With his Hollywood chops (Bilson wrote The Rocketeer and is the father of actress Rachel Bilson), Bilson's job was to manage the transition from licensed properties like Cars to original games like Red Faction: Guerrilla, a story-driven sci-fi game set on Mars. The Avengers project sat at the center of those two worlds. It was a game based on an expensive license that also needed to hit the same quality bar as Saints Row or Homefront.
In many ways, Avengers was doomed from the start.
"Avengers was an expensive game," says Bilson.
There were a lot of moving parts. Bilson guessed that THQ needed to sell 6 million units of Avengers to break even. Back then, he believed the best they could do was 3 million. At best.
The cost of the license was the deal breaker. Some joked that Marvel, having been burned by Sega's Iron Man, spiked the cost of the license to make sure THQ invested time and money into making a quality game worthy of recouping the initial costs. Many we spoke to thought there was truth in the joke.
But the odds were stacked against the Avengers project on multiple fronts. The world was in the process of recovering from the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. THQ felt the full weight of the crash. It had made mistakes. Big, costly mistakes like launching a tablet for the Xbox 360 and PS3 at a time when consumers were all tapped out on expensive peripherals.
In 2007 THQ shares traded at $30. Six years later, in 2013, those same shares traded for 11 cents.
Bizarrely, the resilience of Australia's economy, relative to the rest of the world, also made life difficult for THQ Studio Australia. In November 2001, the Australian dollar was worth 51 US cents. Ten years later the Australian dollar cost over one US dollar. Over the course of a decade, operating costs for an Australian studio like THQ Studio Australia had effectively doubled. That sea change had been the root cause of almost every major studio closure in Australia.
Soon THQ Studio Australia would succumb to the same fate.
EndgameThe Avengers cancellation, when it came, was a surprise to some. Others saw it as an inevitability.
"As a gamer, I wish we could have shipped Avengers," says Bilson. "But as a business person? No."
For Christian Dailey, the Avengers cancellation was a slow-moving train.
"It wasn't like one day you go into work, and the next day it's 'Surprise, the game's canceled'."
Dailey watched as the competing storms surrounding the video game he'd become invested in conspired to tear it apart. The economy, THQ's mismanagement, an untenable licensing deal. Dailey saw where Avengers ranked alongside the other projects THQ desperately needed to succeed and knew the writing was on the wall.
"My spidey senses were tingling," he remembers.
In August 2011, the Avengers project was canceled and THQ Studio Australia was to be shut down as part of a companywide restructuring effort.
Chris Wright. who worked in THQ's Melbourne office and was tasked with helping to build marketing around the game, was one of the first to hear. He remembers the "awful" pain of knowing that developers in Brisbane, feverishly working on a game that would never be released, were oblivious to the fact they would soon lose their jobs.
Rex Dickson was also told ahead of time. Having moved his entire life from New York to work on this game, he was disappointed. But the "worst day" he says, was the following Monday, when Dickson and upper management informed the whole team that THQ Studio Australia was being closed and Avengers was being canceled.
Dickson was used to seeing these sorts of closures play out, but this felt different.
In the US, if a studio was closed, those left behind would have options. Within hours they'd be discussing next moves. But this was Australia in 2011. The surging dollar had left the Australian games industry in ruins. In 2009, EA closed Pandemic Studios. Krome Studios shut its doors in 2010. There were no other options. For some of the younger members of the team, this was a "fairytale" job, says Dickson. Many would never work in the games industry ever again.
"It just tugged on my heartstrings to see so much talent just thrown away in an instant."
Charles Henden found out via the phone. He'd taken leave, and was on a snowboarding trip with some friends. He was sitting in a cramped camper van playing drinking games when he got the call.
He hung up the phone, immediately grabbed the bottle of vodka resting on the table, withdrew to the corner of the van and polished it off in one tremendous, sorrowful gulp.
A sweet memoryChristian Dailey has a resume few can match. He's worked at EA and Blizzard, and is currently a studio director at BioWare. But few games mean as much to him as the Avengers project that never was.
It's inextricably tied to his time spent living in Australia. His daughter's first days at elementary school, armed with sunscreen and the mandatory floppy blue hats school children are forced to wear in Australia's scorching summer heat.
"It's such a sweet memory for me."
He still talks to many who worked on Avengers, almost 10 years later.
Rex Dickson was engaged when he first flew from New York to Brisbane, and flew back three months later to get married. Three weeks after arriving to start a new life in Australia, they had a baby on the way.
"I remember having to tell my pregnant wife, who'd just moved her whole life to Australia, that we were gonna have to move back to the US again."
Avengers was a special game for the entire team. Some still reminisce about the project to this day. Developers, even in sister studios in the US, kept debug consoles with the game still installed, so they could continue playing on their lunch break after its cancellation.
Christian Dailey believes that if they were given the time and the resources to finish it according to the team's vision, THQ Studio Australia's Avengers would have been a massive success.
"It was a simple game," he says, "but it was very sticky and very fun."
Dickson agrees, but given the time constraints the Avengers project would have almost certainly come up against, he believes the game might have sacrificed on depth and story. "I think it would have probably ended up shipping as an arcade brawler with a lot of potential in the core mechanic, but not fleshed out enough to be a AAA 90 rated title."
Like Doctor Strange contemplating multiple different realities, Chris Wright struggles to imagine a timeline where the Avengers project could have made it to store shelves. Marvel could have reduced the licensing fees, and THQ could have used those savings to fund the remaining development of the game, but THQ filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just over a year later in 2012, and began systematically liquidating its assets immediately afterward.
Ultimately it was a project caught in transition, a game caught at the center of several competing hurricanes. Avengers never got the chance to become the masterpiece Christian Dailey envisioned, but Avengers will also never disappoint us.
"Part of me is happy it was never released," says Chris.
"It got to remain frozen at its ideal point. All the potential yet to be realized."
Sid Meier's Memoir Recounts the Life of Legendary Civilization Creator - BloombergSid Meier has spent a lot of time thinking about major world events. The video game series he created, Civilization, is a grand tour through thousands of years of history, complete with war, famine and climate change. But the one thing Meier never predicted was Covid-19.
“I'm not sure we've ever had a pandemic in a Civilization game,” Meier says in a recent interview. “We're all in the midst of this experiment. We're not the scientists; we're the guinea pigs.”
Meier, 66, is one of gaming’s living legends — a pioneer of the form who has been developing games for almost 40 years. His first book, Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games, hits the shelves Tuesday and recounts his life and career as the Godfather of strategy video games.
“It really struck me that this next generation doesn’t remember a time when there were no video games,” Meier says. “It's in this one generation we've lived the whole history of video games. It's a little bit of our origin story almost. So that was one of the motivations” behind writing the book.
Meier founded game developer MicroProse Software Inc. with Bill Stealey in 1982, when the video game industry was still in its infancy. He spent his early career designing games about a wide variety of subjects including airplanes, railroads, and pirates. Then Meier came up with an idea for a game about the progress of humanity. He called it Civilization.
The first Civilization game debuted in 1991 and became Meier’s biggest series. A strategy game about the rise and fall of nations, Civilization puts you in charge of a country and asks you to lead it to glory: You can build cities, harvest resources, battle neighbors for territory and watch your people advance from the Stone Age to launching rockets to the moon. It has spawned a dozen sequels and spinoffs. The series has sold more than 33 million copies, according to its publisher, Take-Two Interactive Inc. The game is studied in universities and considered one of the most influential ever made.
Meier left MicroProse in 1996 and launched a new company, Firaxis Games Inc. It was purchased by Take-Two in 2004 and continues to operate independently. Meier remains at the company to this day, continuing to program and prototype all his own projects and serving as a mentor to younger employees.
The memoir is a fascinating look at the legendary designer’s career. It’s full of anecdotes and design principles that Meier has learned over the years. During the development of a spy game called Covert Action, for example, Meier struggled with a common problem: two sections of the game were each fun to play on their own, but together, they were giving players whiplash. “Combining two great games had somehow left me with zero good ones,” he writes. “One good game is better than two great games.”
One of the memoir’s best chapters is all about dinosaurs. For decades Meier wanted to create a video game about prehistoric creatures but he’s never been able to find the right angle. In the book, Meier writes that in the early 2000s he built four different video game prototypes with dinosaurs in them, including strategy games and card games, but none of them was fun to play. After months of frustration, he put the dinos aside and spent a few weeks designing a drastically different prototype, which became SimGolf, a game in which players can build their own courses and then go putting.
Meier says he hasn’t given up on making a dinosaur game. “It's a journey,” Meier says. “It’s not like we know from day one how the game is going to turn out. It's really a process of exploration, which is a big part of the fun, when it comes to designing. But it is kind of my white whale.”
Meier also reveals a scoop, dedicating a few pages to the internet legend of Nuclear Gandhi. In Civilization, Mahatma Gandhi, whose campaign of nonviolent resistance led to the independence of India from colonial rule, seemed to be more aggressive than other leaders in the game. Gandhi was portrayed as hungry for war and prone to firing nuclear missiles at nations in his way. In 2014, an internet analysis suggested that this was the result of a bug in the game. The perception of the famously peaceful Gandhi as war monger inspired countless jokes and memes.
The story isn’t actually true. Meier writes in his memoir that there was no such bug in the game and while he enjoys the joke, the legend is based on an incorrect premise. “It's one of those mysteries that it's almost fun to keep mysterious,” Meier says.
He never much cared for the business side of the industry. But Meier made a savvy move in the 1980s when Stealey, his partner at MicroProse, suggested that he put his name on top of all the video game boxes. His direct association with the game helped give Meier legendary status among his peers and helped provide a level of stability that’s elusive for many developers. Most game designers remain anonymous, their names relegated to little-seen credits sections, but everyone knows who Sid Meier is; after all, his name is on the box.
Meier is also unique in that he has stayed at one company, Firaxis, for 24 years, while many other video game industry pioneers have bounced around. Meier says the move is “part strategy and part luck.”
Meier doesn’t want to talk about what’s next. Since his days trying to make a dinosaur game, which he had documented on a blog, he’s been wary of announcing projects until he’s sure they’ll be finished. But he knows he doesn’t want to retire. “Even though my memoir is coming out, I'm still enjoying what I'm doing,” Meier says. “I’m looking forward to doing it for a long time.”
Video games like Civilization are a lot of fun. But for his next big adventure, Meier has loftier goals in mind. “We've seen a lot of this kind of world-shrinking effect, where I think games have played a significant part,” Meier says. “There's a worldwide community of gamers that didn't exist 30 years ago. But we're still disconnected in many ways, and lacking in empathy. I think there may be some ways that games can address that.”
How Forza Uses Neural Networks To Evolve Its Racing AI | War Stories | Ars Technica:
‘Interactive entertainment is the standard bearer of the entertainment business’‘Interactive entertainment is the standard bearer of the entertainment business’
Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick on cloud gaming, subscription models and why Red Dead Redemption is like an '80s boy band.
Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, has an ambitious goal for his company.
"[The] mission of the company is to be the most creative, the most innovative and the most efficient entertainment company — not interactive entertainment company, entertainment company — on earth," he said in a recent interview with Protocol.
Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. Before taking over Take-Two in 2007, Zelnick ran the music giant BMG Entertainment, was president of 20th Century Fox and was vice president for international television at Columbia Pictures. Even while managing Take-Two, one of the world's largest independent video game publishers, as chairman and chief executive, he stepped in as interim chairman of CBS in 2018 as that company was grappling with a difficult set of legal and business problems. (He stepped down after CBS merged with Viacom last year.) Oh, and he also runs a separate private equity firm focused on media and entertainment called ZMC.
The breadth of experience across media and entertainment gives Zelnick a pointed perspective as he navigates Take-Two through yet another major shift in the video game business, just as it's also being fueled by mass quarantines around the world. Take-Two's stock is up almost 28% this year, a bit less than Activision Blizzard's 33% but ahead of Electronic Arts's roughly 18%.
Much of Take-Two's recent success can be attributed to the company's almost uncanny ability to continue to sell copies of Grand Theft Auto V, developed and published by Take-Two label Rockstar Games, a full seven years after its 2013 debut. The company will release yet another version of GTA V next year that is optimized for the new Sony and Microsoft consoles.
"There is definitely a method to Strauss' madness," said veteran game industry analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. "Several years ago I asked him, 'Why don't you make GTA Online free?' and he said, 'We have a lot of copies left to sell.' I thought he was nuts, but since then they've sold another 30 million copies, and I'm like, 'Whoa, that was the truth.' "
In a wide-ranging interview last week, Zelnick said that video games are now "the standard bearer of the entertainment business," expressed considerable skepticism about the prospects for cloud gaming, urged caution on Microsoft's new subscription and installment pricing plans, and explained why Red Dead Redemption is like an '80s boy band.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Now that we're at the tail end of this last console cycle, what do you see in particular over this generation that has really changed the industry?
The biggest change in the industry over the last seven years is the evolution or — one could argue — revolution reflecting a shift away from a business that used to involve creating something, releasing it, having people like it or not like it. If they liked it, having them experience it for three, four, five, six months and then moving on to the next product. Now we're in a world where we put something out with the ability to do updates much more easily and make adjustments to meet consumers' needs and keep consumers engaged for much longer. And, in certain instances, what appears to be forever.
In the case of GTA IV, one would argue that was a couple-year experience. And in the case of GTA V, now that's been a seven-year experience and it's still going strong. In fact, GTA Online will have another record year this fiscal year for us. And this is obviously not true only for Take-Two; it's true for the entire industry.
You've also seen a transition that's been emphasized by this period during the pandemic. Previously, video games were seen — despite the magnitude of the marketplace — as sort of adjacent to the entertainment business. And now I think people realize that interactive entertainment is the standard bearer of the entertainment business. It is the most important entertainment business. It is the largest, it is the most rapidly growing, and it appeals to a very broad audience. It's become America's pastime and the world's pastime.
So there is this transition to live services, with its longer tail of engagement and monetization. And then we see gaming arriving at the center of the global entertainment ecosystem. To what do you attribute these different changes, which perhaps go together?
So I think it's two things. On the one hand it's the technical quality of what our creative teams have been enabled to do: make these living, breathing experiences that people can not only experience but inhabit.
I think people have also realized it's not just that the graphics are great. It's not just that they're wonderful stories. It's not just that we can get excited about the characters. It's not just that you have this added element of gameplay. They are realizing that through games we also can have a social experience while we're having an entertainment experience. We can talk to our friends. We can talk to communities. And we can do that in real time all around the world.
This industry is particularly interesting because it's become a laboratory for different business models ranging from a packaged goods business selling a product for $60 or $70 up-front all the way to various sorts of freemium and free-to-play forms of monetization. What is it about this industry that has made it so fertile in terms of experimentation on different kinds of business models?
Look, we established what a motion picture is in the 1920s and '30s, and it hasn't changed. Technology has changed and special effects have changed but really a motion picture hasn't changed. It's 90 minutes to two hours. As of 1936, it's in color. It has a soundtrack; it has people talking, and it has special effects in certain instances.
But ever since that time, the last true innovation was color. 3D wasn't an innovation that mattered. And I wouldn't argue that special effects are really an innovation. I'd sort of argue that it's a feature more than anything else.
Television shows haven't really changed much, either. They're effectively a half an hour or an hour including commercial breaks or 22 minutes and 44 minutes without. Perhaps longer. But even as cable television came along and even as Netflix, Amazon and Apple came along, the form factor is more or less the same. That's not criticism. I think that's what this linear noninteractive medium allows.
And I think people have fiddled around with, you know, choose-your-adventure but that's not how linear entertainment works. It's not what compels people.
But in gaming the actual narrative engagement model changes.
Exactly. So the biggest change in motion pictures and television has been distribution models or the ability to time-shift or subscription models. But the actual creativity hasn't changed. In the case of interactive entertainment, it's a nascent industry still. It's only 35 years old, and we haven't hit our stride yet.
The success of gaming generally has clearly attracted a new group of competitors to this business: the large global technology companies. Let's start with Google Stadia and cloud gaming. As a third party-publisher, everyone wants your content on their platforms, and you get to pick and choose which models work for you. What's your overall perspective on Google's entry into this business specifically with Stadia and then cloud gaming more generally?
Any new distribution vehicle that offers high-quality, efficiency and a reasonable price is good for our business because broader distribution is always better in the entertainment business.
That said, there was all this hype for years about VR, and I wasn't very compelled by that. Thankfully, as a result, we didn't waste any money on it. Equally, there was an enormous amount of hype around movement to the cloud for interactive entertainment distribution. There were some parties who were saying there are 130 [million] to 140 million current-gen consoles out there. There are billions of PCs out there. You know, if you can make in a frictionless way console video games available to everyone who has a PC or a tablet or a phone, then your market size automatically would be 20x just mathematically.
Of course that doesn't make any sense at all. Because the implication is you are super interested in video games but you were just unwilling to buy a console. I mean, I'm sure there were people like that, but if they are so interested that they want to pay $60 or $70 for a front-line title, it's hard for me to believe they were unwilling to spend $250 on a console to be able to do it ever in their life.
The second problem is you still have to get into the hands of the consumer. They're beholden to whatever technology exists wherever they live. You may be out on the cloud, but if they're on a phone line, they won't be able to avail themselves of what you're distributing.
So I suspect it will not be transformative. I'm speaking against my own interests, right? We're supposed to paint this picture of nirvana; however, I just don't think it's nirvana. Nirvana is making great hits, and then people will find them.
We've sold 135 million units of Grand Theft Auto V, 32 million units of Red Dead Redemption. I wish I could tell you that there will come a point where various cloud gaming services will mean those numbers are doubled or tripled, but I don't really see it.
Why was your 2K basketball game the right product for making the leap to a $70 price point on the next generation after $60 has long been the norm?
The bottom line is that we haven't seen a front-line price increase for nearly 15 years, and production costs have gone up 200 to 300%. But more to the point since no one really cares what your production costs are, what consumers are able to do with the product has completely changed.
We deliver a much, much bigger game for $60 or $70 than we delivered for $60 10 years ago. The opportunity to spend money online is completely optional, and it's not a free-to-play title. It's a complete, incredibly robust experience even if you never spend another penny after your initial purchase.
Talking about different monetization methods and changing price points over time, is the goal ultimately just to not leave any money on the table?
I know it sounds unlikely, but our goal primarily is not to maximize our revenues. Thankfully things are really good with our revenue. But our goal is to provide the best entertainment experiences on earth. [The] mission of the company is to be the most creative, the most innovative and the most efficient entertainment company — not interactive entertainment company, entertainment company — on earth.
We have a long way to go before we're going to pat ourselves on the back for achieving that, but that's our goal.
So how do you do that?
The quick answer is quality. Unfortunately, it's easy to say, very hard both to define and to do.
And hard to systematize, right?
Well no, actually interestingly, quality is relatively easy to systematize, but it doesn't necessarily mean you'll get hits out of it.
So for example, the first deal we did at ZMC [his private equity firm] was we took over — of all things — a Japanese record company. I don't speak Japanese. While I was a musician as a kid, I'm not an A&R person and never was.
The company had been failing for a really long time. It was a turnaround company called Columbia Music. Well, the Japanese Columbia Music. So the first thing I did, despite the fact that I'm not an A&R person, was obviously listen to all the music. It was terrible. It was objectively terrible. It didn't matter that it was Japanese music. It was terrible. The production quality was horrible.
I asked about what was going on, and the answer was, "We have to cut our costs, and we have to be reasonable here." I said, "Listen, the quality of the production has to be A-plus. We're going to start with that." And we did. We transformed the quality. Now did that mean everything I put out was a hit? No. But as it turns out, within 12 months, we signed and released two massive artists because we had become known for our quality once again. And guess what? Managers were prepared to bring these artists to Columbia, and we turned around the company based on that.
So quality can put a floor on the business.
Yes. You can systematize quality. But you can't systematize hit-creation. When the team and I took over Take-Two in '07, and I was asked what our strategy was, it was boringly consistent: Be the most creative and the most innovative and the most efficient. I remember being asked by an analyst if that was that different than our strategy at BMG and at Fox and at Columbia Pictures. I said, "No, absolutely the same. Totally the same. Unchanged."
So what does make hits if quality isn't enough? The answer is in addition to sort of creative magic and a moment in time, if you look at the history of the entertainment business, the biggest hits are typically the ones you never expected.
As an example, in the motion picture business, one of the biggest hits that the company I ran was involved with was "Home Alone." "Home Alone" was not only unexpected, it was so unexpected that the only reason we had it at Fox is because Warner Bros. put it into turnaround three days into physical production. Never happens, of course.
BMG enjoyed all these hits in boy bands. Boy bands were completely anathema, and then Clive Calder and Clive Davis brought boy bands back to the table and they created enormous hits for BMG.
So at the same time, at Take-Two more recently, before the launch of the first Red Dead Redemption, the perception was Western-theme video games always fail because the only one anyone had ever heard of was called Gun, and it failed.
Of course, everyone was worried about it. Rockstar Games brought out Red Dead, and it was a massive hit. So if you can take the baseline of quality, and then you can encourage your creative teams to pursue their passions — truly to pursue their passions wherever those passions lead them — that seems to be the recipe for generating a disproportionate share of hits.
Well then in that vein, we now see Amazon trying to get into the game business not only at the AWS level but at the content level, with mixed results. As a longtime Hollywood guy who then came into the video game business, do you have any advice to Amazon on how to make a good video game?
Given that Amazon is run by the richest guy on earth, I just have a funny feeling he's not waiting around for my advice. I, however, would be very grateful for any advice he would like to give me.
Look, all kidding to the side, unlimited resources are a great thing to have in pursuing a costly and challenging business like entertainment. Unfortunately, it's not enough.
Their challenge is the same as ours: Make hit titles. Their distribution actually doesn't give them much of a competitive advantage. Because if distribution did give you that vast competitive advantage, then Take-Two wouldn't have [in Grand Theft Auto] the highest-grossing entertainment property ever made of any type ever since entertainment was created.
You mention distribution, which brings us to Apple. What's your overall perspective on the Epic lawsuit and on Apple's overall approach to the App Store?
We're a friend to all. We cooperate with everyone, and we believe in broad distribution. We're in business with Apple, and, by the way, we're in business with Epic and happily so with both.
I have made no secret of the fact that I believe that distribution costs will have to decline. But I do believe there's a role for a third-party distribution. It's appropriate to charge a fee for that third-party distribution. Now we can just argue about what that cost is. The more market dominance one has, the more judicious one has to be about pricing in those circumstances.
Having discussed Google, Amazon, Apple, what's your overall perspective on how Microsoft and Sony are approaching this new console generation and launch?
So far it looks to me as though they're both approaching this launch very aggressively. We've always worked happily with both parties. We would like to see both be very successful. In certain parts of the world, as you know, Sony had a preferred position last time around. I think Microsoft is working very, very hard to see that that's not repeated. I think it will be a challenge in Asia, where Sony's dominated.
But if I had to guess, I think Microsoft is going to do very well.
How is Sony being aggressive at the moment when it seems like they're saying very little?
I think you're going to see that they will be very aggressive on the content side and on the marketing side. They are going to focus, as they always do, on aiming at an advantage on the content side. But Microsoft's trying to do the same thing; as you know, Microsoft has bought some studios. There's a lot of stuff that they own and control. Perhaps they'll do more of that. They have a great balance sheet.
How important is the installment pricing that Microsoft is going to be allowing at either $25 or $35 where you get not only a new box but also a subscription to Xbox Game Pass?
Let's put it this way: I would say I know pretty much for a fact that there will be certain important front-line titles that will not be available on a subscription basis. Those are very much the titles that people buy these platforms for.
Front-line products are incredibly valuable, and Take-Two's front-line products are frankly and actually the most valuable in the business. We have the highest hit ratio in the business. We have the best-performing titles in the business, and we will be selective about what business models work for us.
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