Third-Party Politics

Each year, THQ holds a Gamers' Day in the US to showcase the publisher's forthcoming products. At the 2007 event many developers were on hand to talk journalists through THQ's latest flagship titles, which include Frontlines: Fuel of War, Stuntman: Ignition and Juiced 2.

Also present was company CEO Brian Farrell, who sat down with GamesIndustry.biz to talk about the product line-up and THQ's current standing in the market. Here, in part one of our interview, he also discusses the lessons to be learned from rival Electronic Arts - and what EA could learn in return.

Visit GamesIndustry.biz next week to read part two, where Farrell talks about the importance of setting and following trends and how he believes the next-gen console battle is shaping up.

Brian Farrell: The big theme is where we're going with our core strategy, with games like Frontlines. I love to hear what the games press are actually saying about our products. The consistent theme for Frontlines is, 'It looks like you've got something here, it looks like you're nailing the product.'

For Stuntman: Ignition, there's an incredible amount of buzz. You might remember Stuntman for PS2 - great concept, I'd give the execution a middling grade. So the idea is take that concept, that really unique gameplay, and really blow it out. Just in the last 30 days, that game has come a tremendous way in look, feel, and it's just fun to play.

With Juiced we've added a lot for next-gen, the whole Hot Import Nights look and feel. You've still got the customisation, but the look and feel of a real street racing product.

So Frontlines is brand new, Stuntman is a reincarnation of what could have been from last generation, and Juiced 2 is taking that franchise to the next level.

It's a little broader. We've got some of our core franchises out there like Ratatouille, which is our next Pixar title, and that's always been a big cornerstone of our business. WWE and Nickelodeon are huge cornerstones. Our strategy is still very much built on being a big player in the mass market with those core franchises.

Then with intellectual properties, you can either reinvent something that the gamers already know or we can bring something completely new and then keep developing the franchise. As you probably know, you probably even write some of these things, sequelling games can be a profitable strategy for publishers but you have to do it in a way that allows you to keep the brand fresh and you're giving the gamer a reason to buy your game.

If you don't do that, you can ruin a franchise. We've seen what can happen with some franchises over the years, so we're very mindful. We will do sequels, but it's not about flogging the same horse every year.

In a sense, they're catching up to us. We've been talking about doing this for a long time and if you look at the way we've sequelled products - take WWE. There's a natural way to sequel that product, almost like a sports franchise.

There's something new to bring the gamer - a new mode, tables and chairs, bra and panty mode - there's something new that the WWE is doing that we can put in a game. That's why a game sequel works and that's why the game sequels sell, for WWE and EA Sports.

But with our big franchises - for Destroy All Humans 2, we brought in a new setting, which brought the franchise something new. We're not doing an annual sequel; I think there was almost two years between the first two games. If it's a sequel it may not be an annual sequel, and probably shouldn't be.

I think the challenge for other companies... Our studios were built with the idea that that's where the creative process resides. I'm not sure our competitor's studio system was architected the same way, so in a sense they will have to catch up with us.

I have a lot of respect for EA. It's hard to criticise the number one publisher in the industry.

That being said, part of our job is to look at the opportunities in the market that they create. The ability to attract great development talent, to speak about THQ as a creative hub - that's something that I think has been unique to us in the last few years.

Look at Chris Taylor - he's one of the rock stars of the industry, and he's working with THQ now. If you ask him why, it's because we believe in his products - 'You build what your vision of Supreme Commander is. You do what you do well, we'll do what we do well. Let's co-operate, let's not do the developer-publisher head butt.'

I think there are a lot of developers, including Chris, who'd say, 'THQ gets it.' We're not selling soap or bleach or chocolate, we're providing entertainment. And I don't think we hear that enough in the games business.

I'd love to have an annualisable sports business; it's a unique franchise that they have. That's tough to duplicate. What we're not going to do is go directly at them. Over the years, many games publishers have tried to go into the sports business, and it's really Electronic Arts and first-party. It's a business that's hyper-competitive.

But we did look at EA and say, what opportunities are they not in? They haven't really done much with real-time strategy, and that's why things like Supreme Commander and Company of Heroes are good for us.

Role-playing games - what have they done there recently? So we did Titan Quest and we'll be talking about some other role-playing games we're working on pretty soon. There's the action category, games like Saints Row and Stuntman - there's opportunity where EA isn't.

We don't have a sports franchise, but we have the Pixar franchise, WWE and Nickelodeon - they're annualisable, and they're also renewable. When we looked at EA as a great model, we said, 'We can't have a sports business. But what can we have that's annualisable, but you don't get sequelitis?'