Seismic Waves

We're definitely going to be talking more about the specific game that we'll be launching. What I should say though is really what we're launching is a platform. It's more than one game. We've got plans for the next three or four games we're going to be building.

And the thing that we're focused on in terms of the game and how we think the next generation of the games are going to evolve is a couple of things. Number one, we think it's going to be more focused on character, that's what happened in the traditional game space, we think it will happen. You starting to see it a little bit with games like The Sims Social, where as we get closer to the characters the games become a little bit more compelling. You have more of connection to your character, as opposed to a direct connection to a place or a location. So we think that focusing more on characters and getting closer to the characters is going to be incredibly important.

Number two, we think that focusing on customisation is critical. And this is something we've learned a lot from our partners at Bioware and the Pandemic days, allowing players that freedom to customise their characters and to have their own unique experience is really important. Especially as you get closer to characters, I want my character to be mine and mine alone, just like I want yours to be like your and yours alone. And to have entirely different characters but then different experiences, so the way the game plays out will be completely different and completely unique for every person and we think that's absolutely critical and important as we think about the next gen of games.

We want something to happen in the real world and someone says "hey, I wonder how they're handling this in the game."

The third thing that we think about is user generated content. How can we create effectively a playground with all these tools and all these toys that allows players to take those with their own customised characters and generate something that they want to share with other players? So that's something that we're focused quite a bit on, that user generated content side. Because it's really just an expression, just like Facebook is an expression of who you are as a person, we want this game to also be an expression and something you can share with other players.

Lastly there's something that I touched on a little bit already, which is the real time content aspect, which is how can we draw from everything that's happening in the real world, how can we draw an almost from the headlines element and pull that into the game so that it feels very fresh, very real, and very relevant.

We want something to happen in the real world and someone says "hey, I wonder how they're handling this in the game" and they'll jump into the game.

So those are the four elements that we're focusing on, a lot of different companies can focus on different things, but those are the four elements that we're focusing on that we think that can really help move the genre forward in 2012.

I think you can get an idea a little bit with what the Zyngas of the world are doing when they start to bring celebrity in, they start to tap in a little bit to the pop culture of what's happening, and Enrique Iglesias all of a sudden shows up in your game, it's working well for them, it's really popular. But it's also really odd, that Lady Gaga is in Farmville.

Can you take those same concepts though of taking the real world and integrating them into the virtual world and make it work? Make it actually enrich the experience and make it a better thing rather than just feeling like an interesting marketing hook.

We're based in Los Angeles and that's an important thing for us, we've always had big ties to Los Angeles and ties to the Hollywood community here, and a number of our investors come from the entertainment business. And so I think it will be a focus for us as we drive forward, how can we blend, or take full advantage of our location and take full advantage of the industry. But it goes beyond just those kind of one off entertainment aspects, it really goes into the ripped from the headline deal.

I think a lot more will be apparent once we start talking about our first game. But it's something that as we talk about our games and we talk about all our franchises and its something that's really important to us because its something that's we believe is going to be a real differentiator of social games as it relates to traditional box products.

Absolutely, and I saw that first hand working at EA. John Riccitiello, to his credit, has been talking about this move to social gaming, to free-to-play ever since he started as the CEo of EA. That's been a big part of what he's been talking about. The reality is though that you're tryng to move a multi-billion dollar company that's charted it's course for the next five years and re-steer it in some other direction. With a 20 person company we can just say "tomorrow, this is where we need to be" and we're there. And we don't have shareholders that we need to be accountable to, we don't have quarterly reports we need to be measured against, so it's absolutely much easier for a smaller company to be nimble and to be agile and to respond to the market.

The reality is though that you're tryng to move a multi-billion dollar company that's charted it's course for the next five years and re-steer it in some other direction.

I think that's the Zynga success. Zynga has been able to, starting as a small company, has been able to grow and shape itself very quickly and respond to what's happening in the market because they had no past to muddy up what they were doing. The truth of the matter is they've now just done an IPO, we'll see what this means for their future, they now have quarterly reporting to do. They now have shareholders, they're not listed on the exchange. How is this going to affect them in 2012? I know absolutely they're going to be pushing to be at the forefront of this change in social games - are they going to be in a position to be nimble though? Have they grown too big or can they continue to be nimble?

So it'll be really interesting and I think that's what excites us about 2012, is that I think we're just at the beginning of what social games can be, absolutely. And the Zynga IPO is kind of the end of the first wave, and now we're looking at the second wave, which is this audience is now established, what are we going to do with them?