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Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Longbow Games, an interview with an indie dev

May 18th, 2010

Brad McGraw

LongbowLogo

Yes, I know what you’re thinking, ‘Another game centered interview?’. Well, can I help it if the US Justice Department and President Obama don’t want to be interviewed by me? (I know, this shocks me too.) However, I don’t think you’ll mind too much. Longbow Games is an indie developer that just released Hegemony: Philip of Macedon which is being compared to Total War, R.U.S.E. and Age of Empires by many on the net.

Longbow Games is no stranger to success, having won awards for Best Game, Best Design, and Best Programming at the Independent Games Festival for the game Tread Marks in 2000. Sadly, on the heels of this early success, the founder Seumas McNally passed away very shortly afterwards. However, his family has continued on in his absence. They’ve grown the company and spent the last 6 years creating their latest game. With such a small team, what they have been able to achieve is pretty damned impressive.

This interview, which was jointly answered by Jim McNally, President and Game Designer and also Rick Yorgason, Programmer and Webmaster gives you a bit of an inside look at Longbow Games.

How did Longbow Games come about? It seems quite the family affair, is that how it originally started?

Jim: Longbow Games was founded by the late Seumas McNally. Seumas recruited his younger brother Philippe and his parents, Jim and Wendy, to help with game development. Seumas died of cancer in March 2000, shortly after his game “Tread Marks” had won the IGF Grand Prize, which was renamed in his honour. As a consequence, we moved the family/company from rural Northern Ontario into downtown Toronto.

What aspect of getting Longbow Games together did you find the most frustrating and what part did you find the most satisfying?

Jim: Apart from the ultimate frustration of losing Seumas, the most frustrating part of rebuilding Longbow after Seumas was finding the right team members to add to the family core. The most satisfying part of rebuilding Longbow has been having the pleasure of working with Rob, Rick and most recently Clarissa.

You are quite vocal on your website about your feelings about DRM. Has that always been your opinion of DRM, or was there an incident that perhaps led to that?

Rick: That was mostly my doing; the rest of the guys seem to agree with me, but I’m the loud-mouth around the office when it comes to these things.

For a long time, games have been using the “CD in the drive” trick, and I always found it annoying. There was a sort of ritual to buying a game: as soon as I got it home, I had to visit some illicit website to download a “NOCD” crack. The really frustrating part was that, listed right next to the crack I was looking for, I could find a ZIP file with the full game, and the crack pre-applied. I got better service if I didn’t pay for the game.

It was when developers started imposing installation limits that I got really fed up with the whole thing. I think the game that pushed me over the edge was Dreamfall. I bought it straight from FunCom, and I felt pretty betrayed when I bought that and later realized that I was only allowed to install the game on one machine at a time, and I was only allowed to transfer my license once.

Imagine if DVDs were like that! People would raise hell! I wrote a pretty angry email to FunCom after that.

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Posted in Interviews

Tags: DRM, Hegemony: Philip of Macedon, Longbow Games

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Interview with Pete Smith (Antiqcool)

April 24th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

Our site tries to cover topics across the entertainment spectrum, but every interview we’ve done thus far has been game centered. Hey, wouldn’t it be a great idea to try to talk to someone starting out in another part of the entertainment industry, see what they think of the way things are and what they plan to do? If only such a person would just appear…

He seemed pretty outspoken in his comments, and that always tends to make for a more interesting conversation than attempting to discuss issues with a mime-like introvert, so I sent an introductory email to Pete Smith of Antiqcool.

Our discussion follows.

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Posted in Interviews, Music

Tags: Antiqcool, Creative Commons, Pete Smith, Sicknote Publishing

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A chat with Fredrik Wester

April 13th, 2010

Brad McGraw

Paradox Interactive is best known for its Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis series of games, both deep historical strategy games and this is an area where Paradox shines. When I have described the Hearts of Iron series to people its very easy to do, it’s Axis & Allies on crack. It is as addicting too, ‘just one more turn’ turns into an all night affair. If you are a strategy gamer and you haven’t picked up a Paradox game, you are definitely missing out.

Paradox is a company of gamers who are in the business of making games, not businessmen running a game company. This shows up in the amount of interaction they have with their fans. This is one of the things that sets Paradox apart from other game companies; the time they spend on their own forums.

Recently the Paradox forums passed their 200,000 user mark and to celebrate they offered discounts, had contests to win free games and an ‘Ask Paradox (almost) anything’ thread. In fact even though the 200k celebration is over, they are still answering questions, and it seems they intend to keep this as an active thread. While I never asked for an interview in the thread itself, I did see it as an opportunity to approach them and see if we could grab an interview. Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox, was kind enough to answer our questions.

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Posted in Games, Interviews

Tags: DRM, Eurpoa Universalis, Fredrik Wester, Hearts of Iron, Paradox Interactive, piracy, Victoria 2

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Interview with SwitchGames co-founders

April 7th, 2010

Cliff Riseborough

A short while ago, I wrote an article about SwitchGames, a website that allows people to exchange, buy and sell used games with each other. Their service has taken off quickly, with over one hundred thousand games available for trade or sale between the thousands of members on their site. And all of that while still in Beta status. It’s definitely come a long way from the early days as a simple non-commercial database for those tired of feeling ripped off when trading in games in stores.

I was able to speak with co-founders Jason Crawford and Kai Bond about how the system works, how they got to this point, and where they see it going from here.

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Posted in Games, Interviews

Tags: interview, SwitchGames

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An interview with GamersGate’s CEO (Part 2)

March 11th, 2010

Brad McGraw

Just a quick recap: GamersGate is a digital distribution platform that carries over 1800 games. How they started off was responding to fans who had difficulty getting their games, so they started a digital download service to cater to those fans, then they expanded that to include more publishers and developers. So that’s the base recap, if you want to read more of our previous interview it can be found here.

These are the follow-up questions we had after GamersGate’s CEO Theo Bergquist so kindly answered our previous questions.

Recently Steve Perlman, of OnLive, talked about the anatomy of a $60 video game, which focused on retail versions of video games. With your comment that developers get 70% of the revenue from digital game sales, could you perhaps break that down into an anatomy of a digital distribution $60 video game?

- 70% of $60 is $42, so if a publisher sells a game at GamersGate for $60, they get $42 right in their pocket, before returns, reserves, mark downs, etc. GamersGate gets $18 dollars. In roughly 90% of all cases publishers pay separately for DRM which usually is a small percentage of revenue.

All of your major competitors are either directly owned by a software developer (Steam, Impulse, Good Old Games) or a major gaming media conglomerate (Direct2Drive). Do you feel being more independent gives GamersGate any distinct advantages/disadvantages?

- I can only see advantages. Being tied into a publishing house or a major developer only presents questions and potential conflicts. Take Steam’s 20 million users for instance, I mean, how many of those users do you think are registered counterstrike and half-life users, and how many are really 3rd party customers using Steam as a marketplace? We’ve experienced tremendous growth through 3rd party partnerships and we really think that being independent helped us in such growth.

At one point in time, a system called ByteShield was chosen as GamersGate’s preferred DRM system. If that agreement is still in place (or one with a different vendor), what specifically does an agreement like that mean?

- At that time we were looking for a top tier DRM partner that could provide a security solution should any of our publishing partners ask for one, however, currently we recommend that they go DRM-free. As far as I know not a single game at GamersGate carries ByteShield, currently. We know those guys and have had a few discussions with them to be able to handle their system should publishers decide to use it. Usually we let the publishers decide what kind of DRM system they want, if they want any. For developers and publishers that don’t have any idea we recommend them to go DRM free!

You stated that you believed that account-based DRM is something that should be on the part of the distribution portal. Would this involve something more substantial than GamersGate’s current accounts system?

- Our philosophy is to keep it as simple as possible. We will always tweak and bend so that our solution is as easy to use as possible. An account-based service enables additional features such as reselling, “used games,” which will be the next step for us to solve.

What do you feel GamersGate needs to do to close some of the gap between Steam and yourselves in terms of market share in digital distribution?

- Our perspective is that Steam focuses on appealing to a hardcore gaming audience while we focus simply on retailing. Our mission is to offer gamers a place to, “buy your game anytime anywhere, it’s easy, fast and client-free.” Also, from a consumer survey we did, we know that 30% of our customers use GamersGate because they acknowledge the benefits of a client-free system, and the hassles of Steam’s “walled garden,” concept. In addition GamersGate has the world’s largest catalogue of downloadable games; and when you combine that with our reward/loyalty program we feel that we will be in a very competitive position as digitally distributed games become more popular.

How did the relationship between GamersGate and PlayExpert come about? What do you think it brings to the GamersGate platform from the point of view of your customers?

- It’s pretty simple. PlayExpert has done something that helps us directly compete with Steam’s in-client services like chat-overlay, web browsing, etc. without requiring a burdensome client solution. For us it was a perfect match and we know many of our customers just love it. Same features but client-free!

Well, now that the interview questions are over I can come out and say that I am a huge fan of GamersGate. The way they cater to their fans shows how their main concern has always been their customers, and from my experience with them this has been true as well. I get the feeling that not every decision is about money, it’s about making sure their customers are happy and keep coming back (which of course makes them more money). After having our questions answered I have to say I am very pleased with their stance on DRM, and the hint that in the future we may actually be able to trade our digital purchases (which is a huge one for me).

Plus GamersGate just put Mount & Blade, which is a great game, on sale for $5. They are wily those guys they are…

Posted in Games, Interviews

Tags: DRM, Gamersgate, PlayExpert, Theo Bergquist

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An interview with GamersGate’s CEO

March 10th, 2010

Brad McGraw

GamersGate is a digital distribution platform that enables people from around the world to purchase and download games online, without having to leave their own home. I recently wrote an article about how GamersGate and Steam proved that by dropping prices actually increases their profits. Since that article I was able to have an interview with Theo Bergquist, GamersGate’s CEO.

How did GamersGate come about?

- It all started with Paradox Interactive and their PC titles. As they struggled to find retail shelf space for their titles, fans began asking if they could download the games straight from the Paradox FTP. Eventually it became so popular that we created a separate brand, GamersGate, and spun it off from Paradox so we could host games from other publishers.

Coming from an independent background of Paradox, how many Independent developers are you currently working with and do you have plans to reach out to more?

- Currently we have more than 200 partners and over 1800 games for sale. Independent developers are an important factor for us and we’ve always seen them as our kin. The more games we can add, even if it’s from small independent developers, the better. Also, it’s a good source of revenues for them. I mean, they get 70% of the revenues within 30 days! That’s way higher than what they would get if they were to go through physical retail.

GamersGate mentions what DRM is on some games, but not all, in the future are you planning on listing what DRM is on all games (if its present)? Or is that up to the publishers? Do you feel that DRM should be disclosed prior to purchase?

- Absolutely. The type of DRM a game carries should be clear in the description. For many gamers this is an essential factor in whether they make the decision to buy the game or not. We try to state that as clear as we can and we’re updating the product pages constantly. From our end this should be no secret.

Do you think DLC accessed through systems like EA’s Cerberus will come to stores like GamersGate, Direct2Drive Steam, etc? Or will that stay with the publishers?

- Yes I think some of them will be accessed thru such systems, but not all. There will be many hybrids of how to deliver a game and gaming content in the future. I don’t think there will ever be one singular way of distributing a game.

Companies are planning account based DRM systems for their games; do you think this will have an effect on game sales?

- We believe account-based DRM is a much better way to go than the DRM’s we see out there today that are embedded in the games and can sometimes mess things up for the gamer. We feel that account-based DRM should be the distribution portal’s responsibility, not the publisher’s. We don’t believe in the concept of having multiple log-ins for different publishers.

* I have to note here that this question was asked before Ubisoft’s fiasco with their authentication servers.

Who decides when sales come about? Is it a deal you make with publishers before hand or how does that work?

- Sales are generated on an ad-hoc basis, typically. We’re happy to work with publishers when they want to have a sale to promote a certain game or games. We can also offer discounts at our discretion if we want to, for example, drive interest in a certain genre to build visibility for a specific upcoming title.

Do you think that, since specific games being marked down resulted in massive sales increases on both Steam and GamersGate, publishers might see those results as an argument for lowering initial game prices?

- Yes, I think many games are over priced today, and that price point could be much more flexible than most care to imagine. It’s so much easier to skew down the price with digital distribution – as compared to physical retail. if you see that the price point is too high and that more and more publishers are aware of this. We’ve also seen quite a few interesting phenomena whereas we have a higher price point, then lower the price over the weekend as a “good offer”, then skew it up again without having a drop in sales.

Considering that Vernor v. Autodesk is a fight between licensing verses ownership how do you think the First Sale Doctrine effects GamersGate? Are there any plans to allow people to transfer games from account to account (second hand sales)?

- We’ll it’s a very interesting question, perhaps the most interesting in the landscape of digital distribution. For us the ONLY reason to carry a good DRM would be the fact that it allows a gamer to resell their game to someone else, and to be able to track that. I think we will see these kind of features on the portals in the future, and of course this is something we want to solve for the gamers.

Now that you’ve added new US servers and added a chat feature, are there any other big plans in the works for GamersGate?

- We’re constantly working on improving the service. For example we just released the in-game chat overlay feature from PlayExpert, our reward program has been a great hit and we will continue to develop that. Within soon we will also release the news about our improved technology to deliver games. Since a year back we’ve taken the “client free” approach and with this upgrade we take it even one step further, but more about this later on. We have some great things in the work for 2010, but first and foremost it’s about deliver games anytime, anywhere to the right price to the gamers.

Overall some very interesting answers to our questions. I can’t wait to see what is in the future for Gamersgate.

Part 2 of the interview can be read here.

Posted in Games, Interviews

Tags: DRM, Gamersgate, Theo Bergquist

2 Comments »