Brian Fargo Interview

inXile Entertainment’s Brian Fargo is a popular guy lately, though where Matt Chat talked past, Gamasutra interviews him on the current state of the industry and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.

You can kind of see where that’s going because that’s what Zynga’s doing. They’re hiring people like Brian Reynolds and more of the more “traditional” designers so they can inject these games with that expertise.

BF: I try not to dwell on the past too much. It’s not too helpful. One thing that I find interesting is that 10 years ago, you could make retail games for $2 or $3 million. Four million dollars wasn’t a big deal. Now with these goods, these things can [cost] $100 million. It’s made publishers crazy. Whole careers are on the line. Whole companies are on the line. Creating products creates this intense pressure.

And so with the smaller stuff, you get kind a return to the roots. One of the things I do like is that part of the industry reminds me of the late ’80s — Small, creative teams trying to figure out how to make a buck. You didn’t have these huge costs and risks.

The costs and risks turn down because you’re kind of able to creatively try some different things. We’ve had huge success on the iPhone and just for a fraction of the cost of what we had to spend on these other things.

And so that is the downside of the triple-A. There’s a need to feel like there’s this science [game makers] need to apply. There’s so much money at stake, the investors better hear about the science of how you’re going to make a success.

The truth is, it’s same old entertainment business it used to be. The same old instincts apply. Everything else, the way you develop games, is pretty much the same.

But the truth is developers don’t want to hear that. No one wants to devote hundreds of millions of dollars and say, “It normally comes down to instinct.” If you think about the film business, let’s talk about the ’70s. I just read an interview with [former Apple CEO] John Sculley — [current Apple CEO] Steve Jobs doesn’t believe in focus groups, okay. He doesn’t believe that consumers are going to tell him what people need. He’s going to tell people what they need. He says they can’t imagine these things that he sees.

So, in the ’70s, the people like [film producer] Bob Evans who ran Paramount, whether they release movies like Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown or Godfather, or whatever the movies were during that time, these were guys who ran these groups and said, “That’s a good idea. That’s a good idea. That’s a good idea,” And they did it, and their batting averages were what they were.

Now you have the “science of Hollywood,” and its batting average is no better than what they were back then. But who wants to hear that? Again, I don’t dwell in the past, but I do miss that part of the business where you had the early EA, for example. It was Bing Gordon, it was Trip [Hawkins]. It was all these guys. You could go and have these conversations, and they say, “That’s a good idea.”

[InXile is] fortunate because we did get a little bit of that with Bethesda. Todd Vaughn [VP of Bethesda] and these guys are hardcore, and so, I can pitch them a concept, and they can go, “We get it. We love it.” Boom, off we go. Love that. But that’s becoming harder and harder.

So to sum it up you think the industry relies too much on focus groups?

BF: Absolutely it’s more rare [to rely on instincts]. What stinks about it is that if they have success, then everybody is going to go “That’s the way to go. We need more instinctual guys.” If it doesn’t work, everybody’s going to say, “Told you so.”

But the truth is that it’s just the randomness of the entertainment business. The approach isn’t the only reason why a product succeeds. How hard is it to pick a product out in this business? They killed Steven Spielberg’s game! We’ll kill the Steven Spielberg project. It’s just that tough.