VG247 had a massive interview with THQ's "Core" boss Bilson.
On significant changes to the company:
Phew, there is more stuff at the link.
He goes in about Homefront too:
On significant changes to the company:
On franchising:Q: Your sales are up, but youve extended your losses because theres been a lot of restructuring. I know you personally favour the long-term approach to development, where you make a considerable investment over time in an effort to pull back the highest possible quality, when do you think this investment will really pay off? Are you able to keep the release schedule full enough to off-set these losses?
A: Were absolutely a company in transition. Were transitioning from what the company was, in terms of kids licensed games and a few interesting core games, to really the only place left in the world for console games: event entertainment. Anything in the mid-range doesnt seem to work, and the world is changing rapidly. Its really come to that, and I think we all understand that here: to go forward, we have to create events, just like EA, Activision and Ubi do. Theres no place for a mid-range game. Will we always succeed? Thats really hard to do in any entertainment business, but with a couple of large successes it could turn us around.
On gutting franchises like Red Faction:Q: It reminds me of something Bobby Kotick would come out with. He built his company on these large pillar franchises: is that how you intend to move forward with THQ?
A: Yeah, I think thats all we can really do. Its not just Activision or us; look at what EAs doing on consoles. Outside of sports youre only really hearing about one title, basically, which is Battlefield. Im personally excited about.
Apart from that I think they have Need for Speed, and they have an RPG and, of course, the MMO, but its not like the old days where you look at a catalogue of everything coming. There are really few games, and those games have to be really high quality events to get gamers to go out and spend their $60.
Theres a lot more interactive entertainment around, and I think the core gamer is careful. There are a lot of great titles this fall probably six or eight that I personally want to buy, that core gamers are excited about but theyre all what Id call triple-A events: anything in the middle were not talking about.
We have to really shift our strategy to less games and bigger investment on every level; on resource, time, talent, cash and marketing. Thats where youre going to see us headed, on focusing and, of course, learning from our mistakes.
On social gaming:Q: If were talking about THQ becoming more focused, the natural progression is to move onto Red Faction. When titles or series start to underperform, will you continue to be just as ruthless in making sure they dont carry on?
A: We only have so much capital to invest, and were going to invest in the ones that work. Personally, I worked really hard on trying to bring Red Faction from Guerrilla to a larger success state, and it went in the opposite direction. Even though the critics like Guerrilla, it didnt really sell at the levels we needed it to.
Armageddon was already well into production when Guerrilla shipped, and theyd already made the decision to go underground to improve the visual quality. We really did everything we could to make a great game in response to the other one. I think its really a pretty good game, but look at the big games, the really big events: how many features and modes do you get in the box for $60? You can have a 10, 12, 14-hour single-player game with some minimal online modes, and I dont think thats going to cut it. I think you have to go bigger and give the gamers really a lot of value for their money. Thats all part of the formula for creating an event, not just great IP and great production.
Like, great value, in terms of whats in the package can mean more production, more modes and more variety. Look at the amount of modes in Halo, or even Call of Duty now: youre going to see that kind of robust value in Saints Row for sure.
On the Turtle Rock project:Q: Are you seeing similar levels of growth in the social ecosystems surrounding your games?
A: You have to put that in context. For instance, our UFC game on Facebook, UFC Fight Nation, has more monthly average users than either Madden or Peter Moores baseball game. I think his FIFA one has more. He may be talking about them seeing an average of people spending $50, but hes not saying how many people are spending $50. If its a million people, thats really exciting, but his monthly average user figure is under a million on the two games I mentioned. Its all about context around that. Our fanbase on the UFC game monetizes a little more on average.
To get back to your point, which was about other modes of gaming such as Facebook gaming and mobile gaming: I think that stuff is really important. I find myself spending a lot of time playing those, and whether youre playing for free or youre spending any money, youre investing your hours in places other than console games. How many hours does the individual have for gaming entertainment? If half of it is free to play, where youre spending nothing or very little, thats half the console games you used to buy. Look at it that way.
I dont know if concerned is the right word, but I think Im aware of the fact that theres lots of ways to play besides consoles, which takes us back to the idea that only events are going to work as must-plays. Its like blockbuster movies: I think those are the only ones that make all the money these days, and I think its very similar in the games business. Were focusing our console strategy around that.
We are putting a lot more focus on those other platforms, and well be talking more about that in the coming months. You cant avoid them. Theyre a big part of the gaming ecosystem.
On new consoles:Q:Is the Turtle Rock game an FPS?
A: I dont think Im supposed to say anything about it. Marketing will kill me.
PR: No.
Q: Youre talking about plans for the next three years. A lots been announced for calendar 13, and so on: is this the barrier against which youre expecting to see new hardware come in from Microsoft and Sony? Around 2014?
I mean, I dont know. And Im being honest with you. I keep asking, and I keep not getting clear answers.
The new hardware will just put less restrictions on the games, on mostly graphics and memory. Were already building them with more online features, trying to bring in concepts of more social functionality in our console games, which I think is really interesting. Things like, the more of your friends are playing the more stuff unlocks for you. Some of those things are really neat and important innovations in gaming that weve seen in the Facebook world, and I want to bring some of that to the consoles, just as some of my partners are at the other companies.
But the answer the question about new hardware? As soon as we hear well make the call about what games are on the fence, and theyll either be exclusive to the new hardware or theyll cross the line and be on current hardware and enhanced for the new hardware. Thats not really a big challenge, because these games are very ambitious anyway.
Phew, there is more stuff at the link.
He goes in about Homefront too:
Q: You personally bigged that game up a great deal, and you backed it heavily with marketing. It would be fair to say that it didnt perform very well critically, and eventually you had to close Kaos. Were you personally disappointed with the way all that turned out?
A: Yes. I knew some aspects of the game werent 100 percent competitive with the best in class, but there were other places where I thought it was better. As far as the reviews go, I have to really say that the reviews were mixed. Metacritic takes all your good reviews and trashes them. Thats what it does. We had 40 reviews over 80 percent: 40 of them. If some heavily-weighted sites trash you, that becomes the whole story.
More important is the game and peoples experience with it. There were two things about Homefront: yes, the single-player should have been longer, and we kind of got wind of that too late to affect it. People were banging through it faster than we thought.
But It was never really about that as a foremost thing; I was always really big on the multiplayer, which I think is a terrific game, but we had issues in our network code which gave us a very rough launch. That was incredibly disappointing to me. Youll never see us do a game without a live beta again. No matter what date we have to crush, as long as Im here we wont put out an online-centric game without a live beta, so we can work out those bugs in advance.
It took longer than I would have liked to fix it. Obviously, its all really well-fixed and cleaned up now, and its terrific. I still maintain its a really fun online battlefield, but it took too long to correct some of those errors in the network code and we lost a lot of our groundswell.
And yes, it was incredibly disappointing for me. I learned a lot from it, because there were a lot of really good things in it. It appealed to a wide variety of people and fans. I wasnt unaware that if we were going into the world of the Call of Duties and the Battlefields we werent going to be compared to them; you dont get a pass because its your first one, and you dont get a pass because youre THQ, or anything like that, and the team knew that. I was always telling them that, if they werent always telling themselves that. And I think we were 80 percent of where we needed to be. I think we were criticsed as if we were 50 percent of where we needed to be. There was all kinds of learning that went on with that.
