OneBigGame's Martin de Ronde

It's all going to start in a couple of weeks' time with the release of Chime by Zoe Mode. This first game is going to be coming out on XLA. So it's going to be a very high profile release. But there's also going to be a flash version, which will launch alongside it.

The entire Zoe Mode team embraced it - because of the charity angle they loved it. Chime is a block busting game and music game at the same time. You have a grid and Tetris shaped blocks which you can move around - they're not falling, there's no gravity - and when the sequencer beam passes there is music created by the blocks. Your objective is to get 100 per cent coverage. We had a number of famous artists contribute as well. Nimrod Productions arranged all the artists - we've got Moby and Paul Hartnoll on board. They're the only ones we can talk about right now, but there are others we will announce once the contracts are signed.

They've all done a really great job and feedback we've been getting is extremely good. We're doing everything we can to promote it, I did a press tour last week in the US, now this week in the UK. We need the media's help though - this could be a win/win/win situation for everybody - for the charities obviously, but also for the industry as a whole.

I would say that the more people that know about this, and all the other charitable work that's being done, the better. But also for game customers, because if Chime is a success then other developers will jump on board and they will be seeing a number of famous developers, year in and year out, delivering funky and innovative games.

We are the most lenient publisher in the world. The only thing we're concerned with is publishing platform. So if people come to us and say 'we have the option between platform A and B' and platform A is really well established and platform B isn't, then we're going to go for platform A because we want to make as much revenue as possible.

But other than that, whatever you want to do you can do and people just like that. And some people come to us with ideas they've had for years and they go, 'finally I can do that'. And others come to us and say 'I'm working on this, what do you think?' As long as it's exclusive for us we'll take it. But what we don't want is someone that says 'I've got an old game, you can release it'. Because that's like a bundling package, that's not someone giving us creativity - it's giving us a SKU on a shelf, we don't want that.

What we have said is that we want it to be, as I said, a win/win/win situation for everybody, and we're asking a lot. Instead of asking for GBP 1000 and giving it straight to charity, what we're doing is asking for ten days of their time and creativity and we'll turn it into GBP 10,000 - that's the proposition. But you shouldn't underestimate the limited hours that people have - so we want to make sure that, if people put in their hours, we want to make sure that they get achievement out of it, so if it does really well they know they've done something good for charity.

But since we are not a full fledged publisher, there's no reason for us to own the IPs. We said to all of the developers, 'you come to us, you give us your game, we'll do the distribution and publishing, but we don't own the IP'. And after a certain period, we'll give you the game back and you can do with it whatever you want. And I think that's one of the key aspects of this initiative because if your game becomes a hit under the OneBigGame umbrella, developers can actually then do a sequel, an enhanced version or whatever afterwards. So OneBigGame, and this is I think vital, could become a launch platform for new innovative IP that is initially not constrained by commercial issues. And I say that a little paradoxically, because it needs to sell well in order to generate money for charity. But we're able to take a little bit more risk because we're not investing money into the title, the developers themselves are investing their creativity.

We obviously need to make sure it's not a game for three people - that it reaches out to a lot of people. One of the other aspects that's important for OneBigGame that it's a collaborate effort and we've said to many developers out there 'let's try and see if we can find you a partner'. Because Charles [Cecil] for instance, is a one man band. He doesn't have a team of people working for him so it's very difficult for him to say 'okay I can spare two juniors working at my company to work on my venture in their spare time'. So we've actually hooked him up with an indie developer. Matsuura-san the same thing - he has a very small company and we've hooked him up with an indie developer. So we're saying to the indie developer 'what about the opportunity to work with a really established designer?' Aterwards if the game gets commercialised you could easily set up some kind of agreement so you both benefit.

It's network building, relationship building and, in some cases, investing a year ahead before you get some potential royalties. Some developers do it because they want to do it, but some I'm sure in the back of their minds think, okay well this is an opportunity, we'll invest some resource into it and we can still get something out of it at the end. This is not a black hole you're pouring your time and creativity into. They know that somewhere down the line there is a pretty good opportunity if they do well and we do well that they'll be getting something back for their charitable effort.