Q&A: Ted Price CEO Insomniac on online gaming
- December 26, 2006 00:00 AM PST
GP: How important do you think somebody's first experience with a particular game is online?
PRICE: Well, it's very important, obviously. You have one shot to convince people to come back and with matchmaking and all the other community features that we put into Resistance we are doing our best to make sure that that first experience is fun.
GP: What do you think online games will look like in 10 years?
PRICE: That's a very good question because I think most people's answer would be 'Well, you're going to have 200 online players instead of 40.' But, there's a point where having a lot more players doesn't necessarily make the game more fun. Making online games are about balance and making sure you as a singleplayer and the mass of other players are having a good time.
GP: Do you think they'll all be MMOs?
PRICE: No, I think there will always be a place for the fast action games. Actually, I imagine that there will still be very few successful MMOs mostly because they are such a time investment. Very few people have the time to play two or three MMOs, fully. Whereas with a game like Resistance or any other fast-action game which gives you relatively short matches, you can get in have a great time, build you stats, and be out to have another life.
[Insomniac's marketing director, Ryan Schneider, adds more detail]: Customizable matches might be the key really. Referring to what we do in Resistance in adding to the fast-paced comment where we are all busy and I don't have time to get locked in a Breach match that go on in a stalemate until who knows when. To limit a match to a certain frag count, minute count, that's important to someone like me where I still get my gaming fix, but it's on my terms. As far as extrapolating what it means in the future, all you can do is look at the crystal ball of where online is going in addition to the gaming world. Think about what we all want as consumers? We want to be able to manage our own experience. So what does that mean for gaming? Well, it all depends what developers can do in terms of downloadable content and being able to manage a property for the long term. I think that distributing something short term and saying goodbye to it, those days are rapidly going away. So I think that consumers are going to have a relationship with their favorite franchise and characters for a lot longer. So it will probably change the development dynamic, I know it's changing for us.
GP: Are you guys planning on getting behind the micro transaction and downloadable content?
PRICE: We definitely believe it is an excellent place for the industry to go. Mostly because it gives the developer the opportunity to go straight to the consumer, and that's something as console developers we have not been able to do before. Whether it's going to them and saying 'Hey, here's a concept, check it out,' or providing additional content from an existing game, it's all a fantastic way to change the development process for the better.
GP: What is your philosophy/stance towards hacking and cheating? What is your commitment towards that?
PRICE: We have a huge commitment in looking for cheating or people trying to break the game and preventing it. We mentioned downloadable content, so we will be patching the game in the future, when necessary. So that is certainly something we can do to help offset any attempts at cheating in the game. And what we also like is that we have an active community at InsomiacGames.com, and we expect to have an active community at myreistance.net who will help us police that as well and mention issues. Now, certainly that happened for us in Ratchet where people were very vocal about any problems that they saw with the game. The difference now is that we can patch much more easily if there are problems that come up.
