2012: We Only Do Everything

But Bluetooth is a completely separate standard and cars have that built into their stereos and your phone will connect to it, which is great. I think the real point is, yes it's a bit too much of a walled garden, but it's in Apple's interest to be more open-minded. We can put anything up on the App Store, even things that aren't up to the highest standards, and they are allowed to fail, which I absolutely applaud. Because that means some gems will get through that might not have otherwise made it through approval. Yes, there's an approval process but it's not as strict as some of the console players.

I think that's one of the thing that appealed so much when the walls came down initially that there was no risk associated with developing for it. Apple openly said if you make a game that only you like just to get your content out there, people will play it. There is that outlet, but if you're developing a controller-based game there might not be that distribution that's guaranteed with the iPhone. That democratisation of distribution is great.

And that anarchic quality to it is very attractive. Thinking back to when I was a kid trying to get into the industry - and it was very easy to get into compared to now. Nowadays its impossible on so many fronts like the programming barriers, even a lot of the new talent coming into iOS are not necessarily the bright young things, and I mean that in the best possible way. We're not talking 17 and 18 year olds, we're talking about people who are at least ten years older. That's an important distinction. If there were a few more 18 year old rock stars coming into the industry the terms 'geek' and 'nerd' would evaporate quite quickly.

Look at the Johnny Two Shoes guys that did Plunderland on iOS - a massive success, self-published, and the games they are working on now are phenomenal.

That's something BAFTA is doing very strongly, trying to promote the individuals.

But most of the time it's a team effort.

I feel guilty as it's often my name on the awards but I'm there as a representative of the team. Clearly Johnny Depp is doing the role that he's doing in Pirates of the Caribbean but a CG equivalent might not be just one person.

It's a good point. The gaming heroes that everybody quotes have come from an era when an individual or a small team could create a mould-breaking game. Over the past ten years with the PS2 and PS3 generations we started with 25 to 30 people making a game and now we're on 100-plus with this generation. It would be hard and unfair to focus on any one person. There are a few people that stand out.

I don't think anyone outside of the games industry knows Cliffy B. The thing is, although it's an entertainment industry it's not based around single people. The characters in your video game will get more recognition than the people who made it, but that's just like any other product or engineering feat. You know a few people in construction like Norman Foster but there are plenty of buildings out there that really enrich an environment but you won't know the creators. And who made the Ford Escort? There's Chris Bangle who worked for BMW who people loved and hated but because he divided opinion he was quite well known.

There's a rock star approach to Japanese game designers but that's much more to do with Japanese culture. I find it weird to see Japanese games heroes at events with an entourage, all dressed in black.

You see individuals standing out, especially in the indie games sector. At IGF you'll recognise Jonathan Blow, Chris Hecker, Notch. So I think there it's very much happening because the team size is so small you'll only have one guy in charge of design, one in charge of visuals, so the recognition is there.

I don't think social gaming has stolen any consumers from consoles. But I think those kind of mechanics and business models probably will, therefore the console business and console manufacturers should embrace that.

I don't think it would have stolen staff if we hadn't had high quality games work in the UK. I can only think of one really big triple-A game that's been developed in the UK in the last year.

And that would be Dirt 3or F1 or Disneyland Adventures...

Okay, Disneyland is going to be big but Dirt 3 - how many units did it sell? Is it up there with Uncharted? Is it up there with Need for Speed?

No, but Dirt 3 is much more of a hardcore game than both of those, and within its genre it's absolutely triple-A.

But you're not talking 3 to 4 million units, and that's what it takes to get the visuals and the quality of experience up to the same kind of level in terms of justifying development budgets. The development budgets wouldn't be anywhere as big as Call of Duty or anything from EA, and it's those kinds of experiences that people will buy two or three of a year on games consoles - and that's it. You were saying there is no middle ground anymore.

But it's about genre, and the racing genre in terms of the percentage of the market hasn't really changed over the years. It fluctuates depending on whether there's a Gran Turismo out that year but it's quite a stable market. Clearly it grows as the installed base increases, and it's not as big as the first-person shooter market or the action market so they can sustain larger budgets. Within the racing genre that we're in we can turn around a good profit on those number of units we sell. Part of our strategy is to move away from doing purely hardcore racing games and going into a space with broader appeal. The death of the console market has been exaggerated. Although there are these huge blockbusters, I firmly believe if you can create really high quality experiences in an area that is appealing you can still make money there.

The console market is still continuing to grow, especially if you consider pre-owned figures in that even though it doesn't come to us developers. EA said that half its revenue was coming from digital for console games because some of their games have a digital component.