We recently chatted with the team behind the Medal of Honor "reboot," which is just one game in EA's growing portfolio of shooters. This certainly didn't happen by accident, as EA Games has been gunning for its main rival Activision in this genre for some time now. To get some more perspective on the shooter market and the evolving business surrounding free-to-play titles as well as the upcoming motion controllers, we got on the phone with EA Games label president Frank Gibeau, who sounded more confident than ever.
IndustryGamers: With all the recent developments going on in the past couple of weeks with the Infinity Ward situation and Bungie signing with Activision, it seems like the shooter market continues to be an incredibly competitive landscape – even internally at EA, you guys have many shooters. What is your overall take on the shooter genre and now attempting to make Medal of Honor stand out again?
Frank Gibeau: I completely agree with you, the shooter category is easily the most competitive genre in interactive. I think you have probably the greatest collection of talent in that genre of any of them out there. It certainly has been a very busy and exciting couple of weeks or months, but you know, to be honest with you, we’ve been working on a strategy for the last two years to really take back the shooter category and put EA in a position where we’re making some spectacular products and we’re the leader in that category. It combines both internal teams like Medal of Honor and Battlefield, but it also includes signing Epic, with Bulletstorm, and having a great relationship with Crytek on Crysis. I mean, Crysis is really a product that goes squarely after what Bungie built. So, we kind of felt that our relationship with Crytek and Epic really sets us apart and sets up nicely in the category over multiple years.
The same thing goes with Medal of Honor and Battlefield; we’ve been very carefully building those franchises, and in the case of Battlefield going from Bad Company 1 to Bad Company 2, expanding the audience, getting it on consoles for Battlefield 2. And with Medal of Honor, looking at where we were at with Airborne, which launched about a month into my job as Label Head, we looked at it and we felt like that there was a lot more we could do with that franchise, but it needed to be rebooted, it needed to have a world-class development team put on it. It needed to have a lot of innovation in online, and I think talking with the guys today, you get a sense of where we’re going with the franchise I hope, and it’s something that we aim to put into the charts this fall. But we’ve been crafting a ‘take back the shooter category’ plan now for a couple of years and the strategy that’s been unfolding has been heating up over the last six or eight months, but we’ve been underway for a while now.
But the last piece that adds to it is the Respawn opportunity that came our way and we went for it once those guys were free and we couldn’t be happier with Jason [West] and Vince [Zampella] being partners with us through our EAP team. I mean those two guys have done things in the interactive category and the overall entertainment category that have never been done before. And to get that type of talent, the way that it fell our way, was awesome. We couldn’t be happier with it.
IG: Yeah, you must’ve been ecstatic to hear about the Infinity Ward team kind of coming apart, because that was without a doubt the number one competitor for any EA shooter titles. They had such a lock with Modern Warfare 2 being the record holder for entertainment sales and everything. Jeff Brown said to me in an e-mail that Activision “shot its race horse,” so I’m just guessing that you guys were very, very happy to kind of get this golden opportunity, especially with the ability to sign those guys at Respawn, right?
FG: Yeah, I think it’s about being prepared and when your opponent makes a mistake or stumbles, you’re right there to step in and take advantage of that situation. And that’s kind of the way this category has shaped up with the competition and the developers out there. So absolutely, I was flabbergasted that it was unfolding the way it was, but I had a big grin on my face when I saw that we had an opportunity with them and we went for it. And we're very fortunate that Respawn and EA we able to come together on the deal and I couldn’t be more excited.
IG: And speaking of signing deals, I’m assuming – correct me if I’m wrong – you probably went after the Bungie folks pretty hard as well, right? I mean that would’ve been awesome for EA if you could’ve signed Bungie. Did you have conversations with them?
FG: You know, I think we talk to everybody; I think that much is apparent and obvious. I can’t really go into any commentary on what we talked about when and how, but you know I think when we looked at our portfolio, and we looked at the LA team and how we were going to be investing long-term in the Medal of Honor franchise with them and how DICE was building Battlefield, and then like I said before, we were trying to craft a Halo-killer, you know a product that would squarely go after what Bungie built with our partners at Crytek. So the Crysis 2 product is spectacular, very high-end, and is going to be a multi-year franchise, so at some point in the portfolio plan you’ve got, when you look at Crytek, DICE, Epic, the LA team building MoH, and then Respawn, you know we got a pretty damn killer team. There’s not a lot of opening positions left on that roster and so that was definitely something that played into how we’ve looked at opportunities out there. But, we’re going for it and I‘ve gotten to know the Bungie guys over the years and they’re a terrific bunch of people, but we’re very pleased and confident with what we got and the franchises in our portfolio.
IG: In terms of the overall strategy at EA, John Riccitiello has been talking for a long while about games as services and making the transition to digital. I guess part of plan at EA LA then would be with all of these shooter titles to really heavily support them with DLC, map packs, and that sort of thing, to really get that incremental revenue, right?
FG: You know, absolutely, I think we have to beef up the online features in our shooters to be competitive, like Battlefield Bad Company 2 has set a new standard for online gameplay quality, so what you see there is what we’re going to continue to do more on and emphasize, but you know obviously whenever you launch a service you get feedback from the fans and figure out what’s working, and what’s not and make modifications accordingly. In the shooter genre, you’re going to see innovation from us in that content delivery model going more digital, more online. I think a good example of that is Battlefield Heroes and the free-to-play model there; it doesn’t get as much headlines as the big console games, but there’s a lot of room to grow the shooter genre into different price points, different ways and new business models. I think with Battlefield Heroes you see us pushing hard there, but in addition to that it’s really coming up with the content plans that 24/7, 365 days a year, you’re really feeding that community of fans you’ve built with great content, new gameplay, new community features, making it really super social. That’s the plan.
IG: Right, and I guess potentially any of the franchises could be taken in that direction; the free-to-play, more social type of direction. I mean even Medal of Honor, right? You could potentially do a “Medal of Honor Heroes” or whatever you want to call it...
FG: Yeah, once you get an IP established you can do lots of variations on it and bring it to new customers in new ways. I mean, you definitely want to be doing it in a way that is high-value and high-quality, so that customers don’t feel like you’re gouging them by annualizing something every year and kind of driving it into the ground. You have to be really sharp and smart about that and I think that’s one of the key things that Riccitiello did when he came back and when we structured the labels was getting our mojo back with regards to quality and really staying attuned to what’s happening in the marketplace and pushing for quality as opposed to overly annualized franchise plans.
IG: Do you feel that the free-to-play market is a really big growth market for the industry and for EA in general? I’ve seen a lot of big opportunities in Asia and not quite as much here in North America, but it seems like it’s starting to maybe take hold a little bit more in North America now too.
FG: Yeah, I actually spent a lot of time in Asia and I believe that that business model will be and is showing success in the West. And I think it takes the form of browser-based games as well as light client-based games, and within my label you have obviously things like Lords of Ultima, Battlefield Heroes, Battleforge, and we’re working on several other designs that use the free-to-play model, but frankly leverages EA’s IP that have big fanbases, that might’ve lapsed, might’ve been doing something else. And it’s a way to bring them back into the franchise, it’s a way to bring new users into the franchise, and do it in a way that for them, they can come and play for free and they can pay as they go. And it’s not cannibalistic to the core, HD big console game business. And so, we see it as complementary, we see it as a feeder, a way to bring people into the franchises... but at the end of the day, it’s also a very profitable standalone business that I believe will continue to grow and I think it’s shown itself to be something that can work its scale in Asia and I believe that the buyer behavior and the customer behavior in the West will prove to be a nice fit.
IG: When you look at the motion control devices coming out later this year with Move and Natal, and you kind of look at the wealth of IP that you have at EA games, and especially with the shooter category, are you sort of licking your chops at getting all these things adapted to Move or Natal? Sony themselves are trying to show how the shooter genre would work well with something like SOCOM on PlayStation Move. How do you size up the motion controllers that are coming out?
FG: We’re really excited about them. I think that anything that extends the life cycle of the current hardware generation is a good thing and I think that what they’re doing are very differentiated. Natal’s very different than Move, so I like the fact that they’re starting to enhance the competitiveness of their two platforms. I think customers are going to love them. So we’re excited about them. The key issue for us is making sure that it doesn’t feel like just a port. You got to have a legitimate, high-quality game experience attached to Natal or Move in order for it to work; otherwise it feels like a gimmick. And so, we’re doing a lot of research and prototyping right now on those platforms to figure out what the right fit is for which franchise and how and… We don’t have anything to announce at this point, but I’m a big fan of what they’re doing and I think it’ll broaden the market, bring new users in, and I think it’ll extend the lifecycle of the hardware, which is a good thing for a software company like ourselves.
IG: So I guess it’s safe to assume that these motion controller-related announcements from EA are going to be coming at E3 right?
FG: We haven’t really decided on that. I mean, we’ll give you more sense of it definitely, when we’ve got something tangible to announce, but again these controllers are going to be with the platforms for multiple years and they’re going to build their installed bases over multiple years. And I think the way to think about it is that there will be launch titles, and then there will be titles that come in after that and right now we’re not in the position to announce anything from Games Label in terms of launch titles; that’s going to be part of a larger message about EA coming from Jeff Brown and the corporate teams.
IG: In terms of the just the overall thinking about the motion controllers, I guess there are a lot of hardcore gamers out there who feel very satisfied with traditional controls and it seems like the platform holders, Sony and Microsoft, are kind of doing this in a way to get more of that casual audience. Do you feel that these controllers are suitable for the hardcore? Can you create really good hardcore experiences with them? Or is it more like the Wii-style, casual, mini-games, because that’s sort of where the publishers and developers seem to be kind of trying to figure it all out and can get caught in between.
FG: It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. I think that you can build core gamer experiences for both the Move and Natal, so I’m not necessarily worried about that as much. I think the core strategy though, that they want to broaden the market of their platforms by opening up the user interfaces to make them more accessible, I think that’s smart. And I think that’s sound. I don’t think it means though that you can’t build a core game experience with those devices; I think the fact that, core gamers typically look at their primary platform like 360 and PS3 to play their core, big, epic experiences and the fact that those peripherals will be there is, to me, a much easier bridge to cross than getting them to flip over to another platform that might not have the same horsepower...
IG: Right, like the Wii...
FG: It does very different things incredibly well, and I’m a huge Nintendo fan, but at the same time, you look at the two experiences and they’re very different from an HD standpoint, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that it’s an easier leap to make, for a core gamer to go to a Natal experience or a Move experience, in my opinion.
IG: Thanks for the time today, Frank.
