interviews posts

It's sort of a fact of life that the gaming business has a huge flood of licensed games that nobody ever really plays seriously. Most gamers live with it. EA, however, is stamping their foot down on this cultural phenomenon of bad licensed games. In a recent interview with MTV Multiplayer, it was revealed that EA is moving away from licenses and more to intellectual properties. Here's what their always vocal CEO John Riccitello had to say:

"I don't actually believe EA is in the business of exploiting other people's licenses with bad quality games. We've been there. Most of our competitors are there or have been there. That's not what we do. We're not really after that market. Now Metacritic isn't always the best quality measure for some licensed games, but I know a good game when I see it. My team and our developers know a good game when we see it."

If true, this bodes well for EA. They have never had the best of licensed games. For the full interview, as well as more thoughts on EA in general, head on over to MTV Multiplayer.

Take-Two just recently signed the MMO developer Cryptic Studios to publish their new MMO Champions Online. It seems like they aren't going to stop there, though. Talking to GameDaily.biz, Take-Two CEO Ben Feder revealed the company's plans to push aggressively into that area, mentioning such things as a Grand Theft Auto MMO. An excerpt:

"It's important, or imperative, that we participate in that [market], but we have to be judicious on how we enter into the business. We need to be disciplined about our partners and our territories and path to growth. While it's an important part of the business, it's also a risky area. It's not an area that we have a lot of experience in."

You can take a look at the full interview on GameDaily. For more on Champions Online, check out the gameplay trailer here on Big Download or the previews on Massively, our sister site..

We here at Big Download love indie games. From telling you about them, playing them, or offering downloads for them, we are all about helping lesser-known developers get their name out into the world. Each week on Saturday, we'll give you the Indie Wrap-up, a collection of all the indie news stories and features during the previous week.

It was a busy week in the realm of indie gaming, with the coverage of the major entries of TIGSource's Procedural Generation Competition dominating most of the indie news. We also got an interview with Vic Davis of Armageddon Empires, among other things. A great week to play indie games, that's for sure.

Features and Downloads

	Freeware Friday: Dwarf Fortress Our resident indie player James Murff takes a look at a free ASCII RTS with all the makings of greatness.
	Interview: Vic Davis of Armageddon Empires Vic Davis sat down with Big Download recently to talk about his games, his business, and his life.
	MODvelous Monday: 6/9/08 David Craddock takes his weekly gaze at mods to the ever-popular Starcraft custom maps scene, and shares two gems with us.

There's a new strategy game taking the internet by storm, and it's called Armageddon Empires. Fusing turn-based strategy, traditional board game methodology, and collectible card games, it's an extremely deep and amazingly fun game. Vic Davis recently sat down with Big Download to discuss his game and what it is like being an indie developer making a living off his work.

BD: Just for the record, who are you and what is your current job?

Vic D: My name is Vic Davis and I'm currently a full time indie game developer. Up until just recently I was also doing occasional contract work but since the launch and success of my first game Armageddon Empires, I've been focusing full time on indie work.

Imagine the game industry as a schoolyard, with all of the major companies as little kids. Activision, haughty because of its new friends and growing popularity, decides to pick on one of the older kids, EA. What does EA do? Let loose with an ice cold burn, possibly making Activision cry to its friends. They console and comfort, but little can remove the daggers EA has thrust into Activision's heart.

Speaking to Portfolio, Activision's CEO let loose with a jab at EA, stating, "We built a model that celebrates entrepreneurial, opportunistic, independent values. It's almost the opposite of Electronic Arts, which has commoditized development. It did a very good job of taking the soul out of a lot of the studios it acquired."

Firing back (eventually), EA's Jeff Brown fired back with the following statement after being asked about their response to the slam from Activision: "The truth is, everyone laughed. In the past year EA has made radical changes to decentralize the company and put creative control back in the hands of development teams. It's too early to declare victory but if you talk to people like Patrick Soderlund at dice in Stockholm, Mark Jacobs at Mythic in Virginia or Josh Resnick at Pandemic--they'll probably tell you that it's working."

Ball's in your court, Activision.

Develop's interview with the folks at GarageGames and InstantAction first discussed how the platform was more oriented to appeal to hardcore gamers. Now, in the second part of the interview, they have revealed that they believe that online development is the future for games.

"It's about taking a more web development type mentality to game development, which is about getting it out there," said Yang. "The biggest successes on the web - Yahoo, Google - all started with something really simple and expanded it over time, they let their users tell them what was and wasn't working."

This is really just an expansion of what freeware developers have been doing for years. Regardless, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, and the much more community-oriented, feedback-accepting InstantAction is rapidly grabbing my interest and holding it.

Develop recently snagged an interview with the guys over at GarageGames about their new "InstantAction" platform. Among the nuggets of interesting information came out something sweet. Something hardcore.

"If you look at web games, they're pretty much all casual games with a wide audience - which is good - but this kind of middle-aged woman demographic. There are a bunch of teenage virtual worlds too, like RuneScape and Habbo Hotel, but nobody is really going after core gamers on the web yet," said CEO Josh Williams. Looks like the hardcore demographics is still going strong. For the full story, check out Develop's excellent interview.

cactus, who we have mentioned before, is an extremely prolific developer, and has an incredible design and graphics aesthetic. GamingWorld recently sat down with him and had a chat, covering everything from current to past projects, and what it is like to be an indie developer who writes simple freeware games. It's an excellent read, and a must for anybody wanting to break into the industry, especially those trying to do it through freeware games. Give it a look, and then head on over to his site and play some of his indescribable games.

thatgamecompany, co-founded by Jenova Chen, is one of the better known "games-as-art" companies. Both fl0w and Cloud are experiments in what can be considered a game, and the artistic impact a game can have on a person. While these were started on PC, thatgamecompany has been making games on the PS3 recently. Where does that leave us PC gamers?

"Once we are there, we might be working on PC games again, because most of our fans are from the PC game; they played flOw on a web browser, and they want to play more games on the PC," Jenova said to Gamasutra at the most recent GDC. This hints at the possibility of a PC project further down the line for thatgamecompany, although at the moment it's a solid "maybe".

For the full interview, which touches upon everything from PC to console specifics, to founding a game company, to games-as-art, to working as an independent developer, head on over to Gamasutra.