Sign of the Hines

Absolutely. It would be wholly irresponsible for us to build towards a company that released three or four big games a year and then have our well being fall apart if any one of those doesn't do well. That would be poor management on our part. So obviously we expect big things and we're planning big things, but we haven't mortgaged our future such that the next game that comes out has to hit certain numbers or else we're in big trouble. We've been built smarter and better than that.

I don't think it's planned, but I also don't think it's a coincidence that we have found developers with similar design and development philosophies. It's not a case where a developer comes in and we say 'well, unless you have a lot of player choice it's not a project we can get behind', but we've found guys like Human Head, like iD, and what they were doing had similar ideas. That's the reason we're working together - we like the things that they thought, we liked the things that they were working on, and the way they were approaching it.

For example, Prey 2 - it could have very easily been another game about Tommy, with more portal stuff, and another Sphere doing the same old crap, which is probably what other people told them to do. We said, having gone through the experience for example of Fallout, 'you guys have to figure out what Prey means to you. Is it about that character, is about that technology, or is it a bigger thing, a bigger story?'

From a similar philosophy, we don't go and say 'why aren't you doing multiplayer?' We're always saying 'why are you doing multiplayer?' If you come to us and say you're doing a game with multiplayer, we challenge you and say 'why do you need it?' Whereas most folks come to us and say 'well, we have to have it because it needs to be on the box.'

We believe the opposite, which is if you're coming up with a feature, unless you can convince us that that thing makes the game better, don't do it. We don't need you to check boxes for us. Make the best game - if the best game includes multiplayer and it has to be in there, great. If not, in the example of Prey 2, they said 'well, we're planning on doing a singleplayer thing but we could do multiplayer' we said 'does it add to the experience, is it a key part of what you're trying to deliver?

If no, then don't do it. It's a big distraction, it's a giant waste of resources. Focus on making this better - what could you do with this team if you weren't working on multiplayer?

So, whether it's player choice or whether games are singleplayer or multiplayer, or whatever combination, we try and find the projects that resonate with us that we think will resonate with everybody else. I think so far that has served us well.

Well, look at Oblivion. Everybody said 'there's no chance you're going to sell Oblivion into a console audience; it's too big, it's too complicated, it's too much of a PC thing. They won't get it. Console gamers don't like that kind of stuff.' And then they bought it by truckloads, and it was like 'well, there goes that theory. What other theories do you have?' And then they're 'you can't take an old-school PC isometric turn-based role-playing game and turn it into something that's relevant on next-generation consoles.'

So we did Fallout 3, and that won game of the year and sold a gazillion copies. It turns out that people just like good stuff, and if you market it well and you get people into what the game is about people like it. People want to play good stuff, they want to get value for they're paying for these games. So I think we do a pretty good job of delivering on that, making sure that when you buy a game from us that it's gonna be fun and different and unique from what you played last week, last month, last year.

It does. But what affects the budget more than anything is just the nature of making a game on a 360 or a PS3 - you can't afford to have the same number of artists that you had eight years ago when you were making it for the Xbox, because it takes a lot more work, a lot more effort, a lot more time to put that level of detail in. It's more a function of that than how great do you want the game to be, if that makes any sense.