Jesse Schell: Top Of The Class

Right. Could I make a funny serious game? Is that allowed? It doesn't seem you can. The phrase I use is transformational games, because in every case the games are designed to transform people in some way - whether to make them smarter or healthier or more enlightened. I like to use it, partly because it's clearer, but also because it's the first question you should always ask: how do I want people to be different at the end of this experience?

There was a great movie about the whole sweatshop, from the 1970s, about a guy trying to run a clothing shop in New York City. And it's just going badly. And he could treat his people worse, but he can't bring himself to. So finally he resorts to burning one of his own buildings down for the insurance. And he goes through all this bother trying to get a consultant - there are people who consult in such matters, experts - and the expert is like "you've already let this thing go so badly, if this thing burns down you're going to be held liable." It's one of the most depressing movies.

Yes, a business can go to court and have a bank account, but it won't go to heaven.

Our mission statement is to create things we're proud of with people we like and if we find we're not doing those two things, we're off track. It implies lots of things. You have to treat each other respectfully, otherwise you won't like each other. For the games industry, you can't have high personnel turnover, because so much institutional memory is in the people. You can't [teach] the lessons you've learned and encode them in anything but the culture, and if the people turnover too much you don't have a consistent culture. If they're leaving, it's a culture of dissatisfaction.

Which is why we've stayed an independent studio for ten years.

We do everything from interactive theme park attractions to interactive toys. We like doing things that are new and different and make a difference to people. We've done a lot of stuff with kids and family, partly because we're good at that. There's something special about it too; I don't know, I feel like they appreciate it more. One of the things I like working on most is things that bring kids and parents together. Technology is often like an axe that chops families into pieces; everyone gets their own screen and customised programming, and pretty soon no-one's interacting.

It's one thing to talk about games gathered around in the living room, but when dad's on his Blackberry, mum's on Facebook, the teenage boys are on Xbox Live - they have very different interaction patterns. Why can't you have experiences that span those platforms? Allow each of us to be in the interaction pattern that's most convenient and comfortable for us, but allow us to connect nonetheless. It's especially powerful for family groups.

I think there are tremendous opportunities there and we have a few initiatives where we're trying to get that going. It's tricky because studios tend to be good at one thing; Facebook or mobile or Android. But in order to do, what we call connective multi-platform, you do have to be able to span these various experiences and get the economics to work out, get past the issues of proprietary networks. And once you've got past all that, I think that'll be a big trend in the coming decade, as these platforms start to settle down.

Microsoft, unfortunately, has a bad time co-ordinating internally, is my impression. The most successful network console is the Xbox. They've nailed that. Xbox Live is awesome. If only they had an operating system for laptops that they could integrate games onto! But, what a shame, they can't make that work. It's down to internal, political elements.

I'm very skeptical that's the case. I don't think they're saying, "Well, there could be legal hassles. Let's not even go there. Let's let someone else take all the money." I think they are thinking about it, I think that the way that company is structured is not conducive to cross-departmental co-operation. You know the word 'co-operatition' was created by Bill Gates.

The notion is that, within your company, you want to do this as well as possible. This department, you do it, this department, you do it too. Whichever of you does it better keeps getting budget next year; whichever doesn't, gets the chop. Internal markets. So the departments are supposedly competing with each other, but it doesn't work. You do get them battling, with one rising to the top, but it also embitters them and prevents them sharing information.

I saw the same thing with Michael Eisner at the Disney company, and you had these situations where Disney Interactive and Disney Online wouldn't communicate. If that's the case, how on the earth do you co-ordinate across your divisions in a way that's meaningful?

If they're working on a tablet or phone, oof, they're late. Maybe they have, but so far the evidence is that their network is... disappointing. Remember when the Game Boy Advance was going to be a phone? This is one of the things I love about companies. The things that big companies seem to do, and this is a traditional Microsoft strategy, is that they'll come out with a press release about what they're going to do that's a total fiction, And it's designed to make you seem futuristic and to mislead your competition.

The Game Boy Advance press release was "it will be a phone" and everyone else started running off saying, "oh, my god, we've got to compete, we have to make handheld consoles." I believe the N-Gage was totally a result of that press release. It seems Nintendo had no goal of making that phone.

Because people forget, we have the memory of goldfish.

Well, I like making games. I've been making them for coming up on thirty years now. I'll probably still be making games.