Heide and Speak

I don't know the details, I don't know what the tax breaks were like or what was promised. You hear stories about how Canada is providing all these tax breaks - but I don't know the ins and outs sufficiently to really answer that.

I would say that standing on your own two feet and seeing if you survive, that's the ultimate kind of capitalism. I don't know, it's a fledgling industry, it's still growing. I think we've seen a lot of growth over the last couple of years. I think we'll continue to grow, we just need to get smarter about what we do.

Same with the music industry, and even further back, books. Everything goes through transitions and having to grow their own way. I'm not sure what the best way is to take things forward, to be honest. Whether it's seeing what works and let evolution work things out, or whether we should be supporting some of these things...

I think what you'll see is a wider spread. With things like PSN or XBLA, it's more accessible for smaller companies or even a single person to make a game again, like it was back in the day.

You can be a breakout success still, there are stories there with very few people. I think the range of budgets that people can work with, that's growing wider. With less money you can be successful and make more money.

With the bigger budget games, like in the movie industry there's a lot of pressure - because they have to make their money back. But there'll certainly always be big budget titles because audiences will always want to see these over-the-top kind of no-holds-barred titles.

I don't know where the budgets are going but they'll probably continue to rise for the next couple of years because the amount of stuff that you need to put into games, the stuff that the audience is expecting, that's still growing as well. I don't see it levelling out - both spectrums are going to continue to grow, from top to bottom.

Absolutely. I think what you see now is that the FPS genre is turning into the action genre. Take a title like Red Dead Redemption. I wouldn't call it an out and out shooter per se, but that's your primary interaction with most things in it.

I think the genre is becoming broader, I think it's leaning more towards what movies do, where you've got your buddy cop movie, but that fits within the action genre. I think you'll see those sorts of things. It'll expand, start borrowing things from other genres - like Borderlands did by bringing RPG elements into it, more open world elements. Rage is another example - incorporating a lot of vehicle gameplay.

Things will broaden and people will have to find their own niche. Killzone's always been about this sort of over-the-top Hollywood action, where things just blow up in spectacular fashion - that's kind of our own niche. But I think we'll try and incorporate elements from other titles, there's still a lot of room for innovation there.

Think big. Think about what it is that you want to accomplish and basically go for it. It's very tempting to start small, and work on smaller games and slowly grow, but you have to have an end-goal in sight and say 'how do I get there, what steps do I have to take, how do I build my engine, how do I make my technology positions, what's my artistic vision, what kind of talent do I need to attract?'

You have know what it is you want to be and absolutely go for it. I know it's risky, but I don't think there's any other way. Playing it safe doesn't hack it, you have to be able to take risks. It's easier said than done, and it's easier for me to say when I'm working with a big publisher and having that support, but I think for an indie developer it's really important to aim high and take that risk.

Go for the title you really want to make rather than trying to work your way up.