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MCV 11/06/10 75 MCV INTERVIEW
Something like half the people we have at THQ now were here before the change and they are smiling a lot these days. We also changed the organisation completely a year ago. Brian [Farrell, CEO] restructured us into business units and gave us independence and focus. The big thing for me was being able to handle marketing and product development together as one team. We have seen tremendous uptake in productivity and creativity as a result. We have motivated people who had scary experiences in the past, but everybody pulled together and gathered around quality and good creativity. All of my team are all gamers. That is one big difference between us and some of the competition, even at the highest levels we are playing games – not watching TV. Gamers make great games and gamers make great game companies.
What is THQ’s strategy in digital? We converted two of our developers in January into digital studios. One of them is taking one of our biggest brands – MX vs ATV – and turning it into a digital
title. It will have a lower price-point but the ability to buy as much of it as you want. Also the studio in Warrington is a digital developer and they are going to be building a series of games for Xbox Live and PSN. Our Facebook games are happening externally right now. In the future what you will see is us building games and digital content and giving a lot of it away to our consumers, that way we can get them more involved in the brand in-between the big launches. We will have a lot of involvement for the community both before and after a game comes out.
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Everyone seems to be rushing towards digital at the moment. Are you worried there’s not enough room for everybody?
I am really concerned about that. Our strategy is based on the fact that Taco Bell has games on Facebook. It seems every commercial venture has a game on Facebook now. We are not where Zynga was two years ago and therefore we are being very selective about the brands we
break out in digital and making sure they are super high quality games. The only way we can compete coming in now is with a brand we believe in and that helps us with marketing and driving revenue. But like everything else in our group it is about quality. If when we put a game out it is a very high quality then we stay out of the exploitation business.
What about iPod and iPad. How are they influencing your digital strategy? What you are going to see with us is our ‘connect everything’ strategy. You might see an iPod/iPad game based on one of our biggest brands that when you play it will unlock things in the other games based on that brand. I cannot emphasise how important the ‘connect everything’ strategy is to our digital plans. Even our biggest console games are going to unlock things in smaller iPad games.
What’s the thinking behind your deal with SyFy, which will see Red Faction and De Blob come to TV? Some of us in the business have been
I think engaging people with your content in fun and exciting ways across different media is the way to sell games in the future.
Danny Bilson, THQ
working on the transmedia dream for almost 15 years. At THQ we have the support, ability and creative partnerships to realise that vision. We are going to be rolling out some huge announcements this summer around transmedia. They will be the most substantive transmedia plans seen from a games company. It is not just a licensing deal or ‘brand X’ is in development. These announcements will have dates and products and details on how the roll out goes. Some of the transmedia pieces we will announce will have talent attached to them that will open some eyes. We are only beginning to talk about it and you are probably the first person I’ve told this much too.
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Is it that important to THQ’s future? It’s a brave new world out there, and I think engaging people with your content in exciting ways across different media is the way to sell games in the future. I believe in that and our team is becoming more dedicated towards that. When we fully announce this stuff it will be eye- opening and it goes beyond SyFy.
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