TE: It's a fascinating subject to me ... I'm curious, if I can ask you to expand a little bit on that, what do you see as the driver of that? Obviously with something like Heroes it's the Heroes storyline or perhaps the characters or perhaps the universe, or perhaps, you know, a combination of all of those. But what do you think is that one single thread that runs through all of that even if we don't ever see that kind of amalgamated game/movie/television show?
JM: If I may kind of tackle the meta-point, I'm not sure it's a single thread. I think it's a perfect storm of different factors coming together. So there's the creative element like Jesse Alexander, like Flint Dille, like Brett Freedman who is creating Afterworld, so there's this creative element, but there's also a technological capability of, for example, Flash being able to be used for linear content as well as interactive content. There's the use of game engines, for example the Unreal Engine 3 is being used to create commercials, television shows as well as complete feature animation, and we have a couple of sessions on that. Digital Domain is doing a talk on that at GDC.
And also, there's a lot more opportunity to create if you have an idea for a game. We're going to be seeing a lot more of gamer-created content at GDC. And so there's the ability for people to - clearly I'm talking about consumers, but also there's kind of this middle level of developers and also filmmakers that have an opportunity to come together and create something on a mid-level scale. In the past, it's been about creating your $60 shrink-wrapped game, and you need $20 million to do it. And in the last couple years we're seeing a lot more steps up to that giant step, so that people have the ability to create indie games on PC and distribute over Steam or over Xbox Live Arcade and so forth.
So there's a lot more of these business, technology and creative options that are coming together to enable people to be very creative on what they're ultimately producing. I'm sort of losing my voice here ... but Brett Freedman spoke at our "Hollywood and Games" summit last year, and he's someone who has a lot of insight into this particular area. Jesse Alexander is working on something along these lines as well. He's speaking at the show this year, and I would definitely try to nail him down if you could.
TE: I'm actually going to his presentation so I will definitely try to corner him. Well, before you completely lose your voice, let me ask you another question. Actually, to tie back to what you were saying about the life cycle of the industry and the people working in it, would the continuous rapid evolution of the industry, the industry's tools and methodology ... what do you see as the main contribution from someone who has perhaps been through the ringer, or even retired ... let's project to future years when we have all these retirees from the game industry ... what can they really say to folks just getting into the industry that is going to be relevant?
JM: They'd have a lot to say. These are guys that have the ability to capture millions of eyeballs. The person who created Pong ... these are guys that are pioneers in our industry. They're speaking at GDC, this year. For the first time ever, we have the creator of the videogame industry, Ralph Bayer, talking at the show. And how did he capture all of these people's interest?
The thing that the game industry has had locked, and has had practice over decades, is the user interface, and the ability to promote fun through leveling up ... through the game experience, people are essentially learning new skills, and they're inclined to do it because it's fun to do it.
So we have people that are experts in creating a world that is easy to get into and fun to live in. Take a look at Raph Koster: he's someone that developed Star Wars: Galaxies, and now he's gone off to do his own indie thing based on that understanding of what a player finds interesting. So, no matter how old you are, if you have successfully captured eyeballs, that's going to be the bomb to a young developer, to a venture capitalist, to a film producer, anyone looking to kind of bootstrap their way into creating a game that will capture the hearts and minds of millions.
