IG: Considering that InstantAction will be a publishing platform moving forward, what breakdown do you anticipate between 'first-party' InstantAction titles and games from third-party publishing partners. Is there a goal in mind?
LC: We hope to have many publishing partner channels and InstantAction developed games would hopefully be a minority of the content you could find on the site.
IG: What kind of marketing efforts will InstantAction take to spread the word with consumers? Certainly with the backing of IAC budget shouldn't be a problem. Will you perhaps get publishing partners to mention "now available on InstantAction" in their TV spots?
LC: We are working through the issues with the individual partners but yes, I'm certain we will market select titles with our platform to help them out and to give consumers a clear idea of what they can find on InstantAction.
IG: Looking at the future of this industry, I've sort of noticed a trend lately with big name industry people leaving the traditional console space for other opportunities, whether on the iPhone, social gaming, browser-based gaming, etc. A number of people would say the traditional console business is broken. What's your take? Do you think that's why we've seen more departures recently?
LC: I don't want to speak for other people – everyone makes their own decision for where they want to go with their career. I think a lot of these people just saw an opportunity to do some fun, new stuff, and in the particular places we were it was just a challenge to get those kinds of ideas. I don't believe the system is 'broken,' but what I do believe is that the monetizing or the ability to make great entertainment products that appeal to all these different people in broad ways is challenged by the current models on consoles. To give you a finer point, right now if you want to create a great console game and be competitive in the triple-A space it's tens of millions of dollars. What you're really creating is content that's extraordinarily expensive and it's a very bad mapping of dollars to minutes of entertainment, especially when you consider that so many of your consumers will never get to the end of the content you provide.
Part of the reason for that is the opinion leaders that drive console sales or even high-end PC sales are oftentimes very core opinion drivers that want a 60, 80 or even 90-hour experience of incredibly rich content. And frankly, if you make a game that doesn't deliver that you're relegated to the 'not as important' [category]. Nevermind the fact that 80% of your people are not going to get past 10% of your game. What that means is you're spending 80% of your money, or maybe more when you consider all the costs of assets, on an ever decreasingly small part of your market that happens to be the opinion leaders. And so the inefficiency of dollars spent toward entertainment minutes delivered is really painful, and I think everybody kind of recognizes that. Will Wright did when he was building things like Spore. It's also why games that use a lot of user content are so much more intelligent when it comes to the dollars to entertainment minutes conversion. And that's what I like about the platforms we're working with on InstantAction; here's this great platform where we can deliver content in a way that's digestible and we can monetize against the actual consumption of the content, and we can build according to that consumption and not have to worry about building massive experiences.
IG: Right, the high cost is what I'm talking about. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said a little while back that he thought games might cost $60 million on average in the next generation. It's spiraling out of control, and how can the publishers in the traditional space even survive if they have to spend that much and then charge a ridiculous amount to consumers? It just doesn't seem feasible anymore...
LC: Well I hope you're wrong – I like playing games, and I like playing really good games! [laughs] I wouldn't want to be prosthelytizing the death of high budget games. What I hope happens, and what I'm hoping to help make happen, is the ability to get to more consumers and deliver that same quality in a way that allows a better economic fit of dollars to play. Without getting into gory details about how I plan to do that, I do think what you're saying is right. As an industry we're on a bad spiral, but because of the pressures we're under right now and the way it's going, I think you're going to find some really innovative solutions to those problems. And frankly, it's not just about all the things we just discussed; it's also about the rental [and used] markets. When retailers are taking the lion's share of the cash because the game gets sold 5 or 6 times, that might seem like an advantage to the consumer, but what they're really doing is driving up the price of the games or driving away the opportunity to have those kinds of experiences. Because once it becomes economically unfeasible, the well will dry, there's no doubt. So you have to sort of look at it as a holistic thing; I don't know if you compare the minutes of entertainment in a game like Gears of War 2 to the price that there's anything wrong with that value proposition. The problem is you have to fork over 60 bucks even if you only want an hour or two.
