John Davison, Part II: 'On the Brink of a Console Shift'Continuing our conversation with John Davison, Vice President, Programming - Games & Metacritic at CBS Interactive, Part II covers the types of ways GameSpot is changing, the indie game scene, and the coming console shift and what it means to the industry.
IndustryGamers: There's a lot of discontent over game reviews being superficial. Some games you won't know for hours what's in them, and how can reviewers possibly see everything in all games?
John Davison: Our guys have played Dark Souls, played 120, 130 hours of it and still haven't seen everything. A game like Star Wars: The Old Republic is a tough one, because again, it's shifting all the time, and we were all playing it, so we were all talking about it. We were aware that even though we could see some mechanical flaws we had an emotional bond with it because it was Star Wars. We came back from the holiday break and all anyone talked about the first day back was Star Wars: The Old Republic. That led to the conversation where we said “This is significant. We may find bugs in it, we may find things that aren't that ground-breaking, but the fact that all of us, all we wanted to talk about our first day back was this game, that's an important piece of the puzzle, when we're talking about the coverage for it.” I think it's recognizing and also conveying to our audience that we're gamers too; we're not trying to be this thing that you think is separate, we care about this stuff deeply.
IG: It looks like it's going to be a very interesting year for you.
JD: Video is massive, obviously, and I think it's where the audience is shifting, and it's also part of where we're looking in terms of growth not just trying to bring people to gamespot.com; it's having the GameSpot watermark or brand or talent associated with content and pushing that content to where the audience is. So like IGN we're looking at YouTube very seriously, we've grown massively on YouTube, I think we're going to do a lot more in 2012. Social is really important, finding the right media for delivering the message is really important. Sometimes the best way to convey the information is a tweet.
Anecdotally, from our audience during BlizzCon last year, when we asked them where were you getting your information, most of them were like “I was just on Twitter.” Because if you think about the stuff that people were really talking about from BlizzCon it was “You could get Diablo III free if you sign up for 12 months of WoW.” I don't need a story, that's it right there! That's all I need to know.
IG: When there's so much happening like at BlizzCon, people want to feel like they're hearing the buzz, like they're standing there.
JD: This is something kind of cool, it can be a photo, it can be a tweet, it can be starting a conversation in our Facebook channel. Maybe it'll grow into a story, but it doesn't have to necessarily start as a story or a video, it can evolve into it if the audience is going to go for it.
IG: Part of it is, as you said, the interactive nature of it. You can put something out there and see the response to it, and then you can do more or not do more.
JD: The response is twofold. I don't think it's unique to gamers but I think they're more extreme than most. sometimes in what they say and what they do.... (chuckles). The declarative part of it will be “Ah, that's totally bullshit, I wouldn't do that at all.” But then when you look at what they're consuming... We saw this over the holiday period we had our Best of the Year, and we were looking at what was performing really well, and looking at the comments, and obviously Overall Game Of the Year, lot of interest, lot of buzz, PC Game of the Year, Xbox Game of the Year, also a lot of buzz, but then Mobile Game of the Year also, a lot of traffic, a lot of social energy. The comments were all from hardcore gamers, which were very protective, and it was almost a religious response, right? It was like “There's no place for this in here, mobile games are bullshit.” Meanwhile it was a huge source of interest for everybody, it was a massive source of discussion. We chose Superbrothers, it was a game that I think crossed over into the more sort of hardcore mindset in a big way. So it was like what they were saying and what they were doing were kind of different. We also have to be very good at interpreting those messages.
IG: A lot of those voices are not necessarily representative voices.
JD: Sometimes the majority, increasingly, is sort of silent. They're lurking, at best. “I kind of liked it but I don't want to go in there and say that!”
IG: I've noticed that there's some deep hatred for mobile games out there.
JD: And casual, and free-to-play... I think this year is the year when we're going to see a big shift in that. It's clear we're on the brink of a console shift, and every time there's one of those the PC surges, the indie scene gets a lot of energy around it, and I think there are some big PC games coming this year. There are some really interesting things in the free-to-play space coming.
I think when you shine a light on indie talent in general, there's no better platform for a sustainable indie scene than iOS and Android. You know, they're great environments, they're not expensive to develop for, the platform holder doesn't interfere. It's like gamers need to adapt, and they are, but it's a different group of people potentially, and it's new people coming in.
IG: They feel threatened, they feel that somehow these other games will take away from the production of games that they love. Maybe there's a reason for that, with some publishers diverting resources to mobile and social, but I can't see any publisher not doing more of titles like Call of Duty.
JD: Some of the quirkier stuff, or the really specialized stuff. I think there's a lot of gamers that look to the Japanese publishers and they have a certain set of expectations out of those games. Meanwhile those publishers are trying to globalize.
IG: Konami's getting more money from mobile than from console games.
JD: Yeah, exactly, Konami's going to go through a shift this year. They have this rich catalog that they can tap into. Trying to create a 25, 35 million dollar game off that is maybe not the smartest thing for them to do. Maybe the best thing for Konami to do is go redo Metal Gear I for iOS.
IG: When we interviewed Chris Grant, one of the things he said was to knock your and IGN's CMS (Content Management System). Is there something to what he says?
JD: Yeah. I mean, I've only been there a year, but GameSpot's been around for 15 years, and it's been revised multiple times over those years, but you don't have the luxury of rebuilding from scratch every couple of years. We are at the moment going through, much like IGN (I read Peer's interview with you as well), some similar things to them where we are looking at our platform and saying “What do we need to do differently?” How you would build a web site 10 years ago and how you would build a web site today are very, very different. The technology that The Verge has is really nice, The Verge is a really nice web site. We're looking at what our audience needs and what our editors need, and adapting and building what we need. He's not wrong.
Anyone with a site that's older than a few years is going to be like, “Oh my God I wish I had the new thing!” In web technology you have these sort of surges in the tech every now and then, and we just went through one where there's a lot of stuff you can do now that you couldn't do two years ago. I had a startup three years ago and we built it fresh, from the ground up, and even looking back to that, that looks old now. There's so much that you want to do with social integration and bringing the audience into it and providing the tools that you have back to the audience. It used to be that you'd have a CMS and it will be what the editors have and you'd closely guard it, and then what you'd give the reader is just a box to write in. I think more and more you need to give the readers like “You want to contribute? Off you go!”
IG: That can be very difficult to build.
JD: We're looking at everything, particularly with video and what we can do with bringing the audience into it, and adapting what we have.
IG: Do you see the mobile platforms as important?
JD: Yeah. I mean, again, the audience has a stigma about it, but more and more we're seeing a lot of energy there, we're seeing the talent move there. You've got guys leaving big studios and doing mobile startups, and doing really imaginative and creative things. Again, I think it's getting away from that old way of everything living in a bucket and having a particular grind that you would go through to cover it. Our job now is more “look at what's happening and find the stories.” In a lot of ways it's more a traditional journalism kind of role, but just recast for a modern way. We're not in the catalog business any more.
IG: It echoes to me what I've heard from Electronic Arts and other companies. “We're not doing an Xbox title or a PS3 title, we have a concept that will be expressed on different platforms.” What I hear you saying sounds similar, that journalism needs to be the same way, don't focus on the platforms so much as on the ideas.
JD: It's the commodity idea, we should get out of the commodity business. “I've gotta write my preview for the Xbox 360 version of this game!” It's more like “OK, I just spent an hour with this game, what's the story there?” Because it's not just telling you the bullet points that they gave me, it's finding the story, it's finding the “What is the guy who made this game trying to say? Is he trying to say anything?” Where does it fit contextually with everything else, with what the audience is responding to.
IG: My son's been playing a lot of Skyrim, and he's been showing me a lot of “Fus Ro Dah!” videos that people have been making. That's a whole phenomenon that's obviously not something the designers thought of or planned.
JD: What it shows you is there's a need for a different kind of curation layer in the media now. All that stuff's on YouTube, but you gotta know it exists.
IG: You have to be plugged in somehow to know about that. That's a different kind of story that you're not going to get out of a press release.
JD: It's like the arrow in the knee meme over the holidays. There were a lot of people who were like “What the hell is this?”
IG: These have become cultural phenomena, and covering that requires a different approach.
JD: Definitely.
