IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

THQ Aiming For Core Games Metacritic Above 85

Posted June 30, 2010 by James Brightman

IG: Is that part of the new THQ partners program?

DB: No, not at all. It has nothing to do with that. It’s all about THQ Core. At THQ Core, our marketing and product development team is one team completely blended and partnered, and in an incredibly, a robust creative environment because the team is run by a creative. So that is the most inviting place for artists to work. We have absolutely hands down the best pitch in the world, the easiest place for artists to come, and you’re going to see a series of announcements of some very serious game talent coming our way. 

IG: Are you sort of driven by the competition in a way? When you see, for example, Activision signing Bungie to a ten-year deal, or you see EA signing somebody like Ted Price and Insomniac for whatever his next IP is going to be, do you feel like you kind of missed out on an opportunity or were you right there at the negotiating table and just couldn’t match with EA or Activision?

DB: None of that. (Laughter) You didn’t mention the biggest one.

IG: Ah, Respawn.

DB: Yes, you didn’t mention that. I probably shouldn’t talk about that publicly, but Jason [West] and Vince [Zampella] and I had a lot of very serious conversations during that time when they were “shopping around.” The guys you mentioned, the guys that we’re going to announce, are of that caliber coming our way. So as far as competing with the other guys, that’s not an issue at all, because what we have is an absolutely better place to work... because those guys, the creatives, aren’t driven by the marketers. The marketers are driven by the creatives in our shop. I have a feeling we’re one of the only shops in the entertainment business that’s run that way these days. And what that means to a developer is invaluable. I’m about to leave this meeting to go greet one of these pieces of talent I’m suggesting and over the next six months you’re going to understand exactly what I was saying, but to your question of, “can we compete for this talent with EA or Activision?” … I actually believe that, if we want to, we will have them in a deal based on certain things. The only thing we have to have and insist on is ownership of the intellectual property. That’s sort of the deal breaker for me. So, we have to own the IP, but I believe in the Hollywood model, which is that, the bigger the artist, the more important, the more successful they are, the bigger share they get. Just like in Hollywood. But you know, most of the biggest talents in Hollywood don’t own their IPs. It doesn’t work that way. My job coming to this company was to build an IP library, which builds value in THQ. So that means having a developer own the IP becomes a deal-breaker.

IG: That’s very interesting that you say that, though, because obviously, as you know, that’s, in some ways, a deal-breaker for them on the other side, because for the guys at Respawn or for Ted Price and Insomniac, for Bungie, they insist on owning their IP; that’s why they had their deal structured like they did.

DB: That is fantastic for them if they can get away with it. They can’t come here with that. And I don’t need them if that’s the deal, and they’re not a business I want to be in.

IG: You don’t feel at all that you’re limiting THQ’s opportunities by having that mindset?

DB: Wait till you see our announcements! You’re going to go, “oh my God.” And we’re going to own all that IP, and the talent that we’re bringing in is of that stature. And you can go home and you can go, “wow I wonder who Danny was talking about.”

IG: I know another one of your biggest initiatives over the past couple of years has been the transmedia approach. And I’m wondering if you can give me any update on some of the properties that you’re working on extending to mediums beside video games.

DB: We don’t do transmedia deals without a green light. I don’t put anything into movie development. I lived there for 20 years; I don’t want to go back. It means you get a license fee and your properties, like the guys next door, just wind up on someone’s shelf. And they get a nice announcement in Variety, but I haven’t seen any movies made on anybody’s property. So what we’re doing is we have a deal on the TV side with the Syfy channel. Red Faction is going to be a two-hour pilot, of Galactica quality, that airs the week the game comes out. It’s a pilot; that means it could go on to series and success, and that pilot is fiction that my partner and I wrote. It sits between the last game and the new game. We use a generational story there. This is a zero-cost deal to us. Zero; its just partnership. de Blob is another one; as we’re going to help them build their Syfy Kids Network, de Blob becomes a key property. And so starting around January you’re going to see all kinds of activity around de Blob everywhere Syfy can reach, globally on the web, on television, leading up to our launch of de Blob in HD 3D.

The biggest one that which we can’t announce completely – it will be fully announced in December – is Saints Row 3. Saints Row 3 is going to be the first time I’ve fully realized the transmedia dream, and I say “I” only because I’ve had this personal dream since 1997, brought it to this company with my partner Lenny Brown. With Saints Row, you’re going to see a movie that is intricately tied to our fiction with hooks in both; stuff passes back and forth. You’re going to see a collectable card game, you’re going to see novelizations, you’re going to see merchandise, you’re going to see clothing. And all this is to build a big Saints Row universe with the game sitting in the center of it. I’ve been in the film business; I’ve made my 170 hours of TV. I made a bunch of movies. I love games. That’s what I really care about, but I still have a lot of friends out in the other media, so we partner up and we’re able to do real creative partnerships, and I keep saying this because these are not movie games. These are not game movies. They’re nothing like that. The Saints Row product is going to be something you haven’t seen before... As with Red Faction they both have Xbox Live and PSN games. They have Facebook games, PC games. They all connect together, and they all expand the fiction and our partners all work together on the film side with all of this stuff. So, for instance, on the Xbox Live Red Faction game there’s going to be a whole downloadable section of content around a faction in the TV show, which I’ll leak to you right now, a first exclusive: the White Faction.

I’m just using that as an example. And a big surprising thing: an element of the TV show gets first introduced in our Xbox Live game that actually comes out three months before Red Faction: Armageddon, and we use all kinds of tie-ups with retail and unlockable codes and things to drive people to the big game through giveaways and the smaller games.

IG: I started out this conversation by mentioning the 3DS, but in terms of how you’re looking at the portable space, how do you feel about Sony’s PSP business, which has really been struggling? I personally was surprised that they didn’t have a lot to say about it at their press conference. A lot of rumor and speculation pointed to a PSP2 announcement or something, and all they did was show off a couple of new games and introduce a new marketing kid for a commercial.

DB: Obviously, that’s going to come when they decide to let that out. But as far as the handheld business goes, I’m passionately interested in the iPad and the iPhone, and the 3DS is really cool. So, I believe that Nintendo announced that we have as part of the Saints Row 3 transmedia play, we’re going to have a Saints Row. It’s called Saints Row Drive By. We’re going to have that on the 3DS. We’re also going to put de Blob on the 3DS so it’ll be in 3D; it’s perfect for that. So we’ve committed in my group, we’ve committed two properties to that. I believe the kids and family group has two or three properties on there, something like that. It looks really neat.

IG: I think of the reaction when my colleagues and I saw the Saints Row announcement for the 3DS was that we were a little bit surprised, because if you look at something similar like the GTA Chinatown Wars on DS, there was a feeling that that kind of property can’t really succeed. It doesn’t seem to fit the audience. Do you feel that audience has shifted a little bit because it’s the 3DS it’ll have to go more to the hardcore?

DB: Nintendo really wants to launch with a very balanced portfolio. They really don’t want it to feel like a kiddie platform. They were very clear: they really wanted Saints Row on it. Now, we know how those go sometimes: sure, the first party wants it, but is it really going to work? The interesting thing about the game is we were already making it. We were already making it as our Xbox Live game and in 3D also. It’s designed for 3D already. So the 3DS version is an incremental cost. It’s not a big startup cost. Anything in a transmedia play has a column called marketing in it. It’s also a marketing tool. So how does that game model for us? I believe it will do great, especially if Nintendo is going to go mature and really do a big mature campaign on it. It’s a killer game. It’s got all the weird humor of Saints Row, and also its existence is part of the marketing plan to sell Saints Row 3. Also, all these games have hooks where, if you play it, it unlocks things in Saints Row 3. If you play Saints Row 3, it will unlock things in the 3DS game or the Xbox Live game. I don’t know if I was clear about that, but all of our extension properties all connect and unlock things in each other.

IG: That’s cool.

DB: To give motivation to play.

IG: Right. That’s a good idea. It’s interesting when you talk about Nintendo “going mature,” I almost wonder, though, if they can successfully pull that off. Even if they want to do that, they’ve been so focused on that casual, kiddie, whatever-you-want-to-call-it audience for such a long time, especially in the handheld market, going back to the Game Boy way, way back. And even now with the Wii, they’ve sort of been pigeonholed into that market. I’m wondering if they can sort of break out of that and attract that more mature audience.

DB: I kind of think that if those guys set their minds to it, they can do it. I mean, they’ve done some amazing things over the years.

IG: That’s true.

DB: A lot of times people thought, “oh, Nintendo’s dead.” And they’re just really smart. You know what I love about them? Innovation. They’re just not afraid to innovate and if they can apply some of that innovation to attracting mature gamers that would be great. I mean, they really want mature games on there, but of course we all say it, you’ve got to support it. They’re saying they’re committed, but what I’ve got on there is no risk, because that Saints Row thing is a really cool game; again it’s a marketing tool for us. If it helps them launch the platform, I’m sure it’s going to look fantastic on the 3DS, so I think we’re going to be good.

IG: Thanks Danny.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.