The Escapist Bulletin: Voyage to the poles

Bobby Kotick and Peter Molyneux both had things to say this week. Molyneux was warning against releasing new IPs during the bloated Christmas period, while Kotick was defending his company’s position on sequels, with a statement eerily similar to a Bulletin from a few weeks back.

The only thing that the two men have in common is that when they speak they garner a lot of scorn from gamers. Aside from that, they couldn’t be more different. People don’t even bash them for the same reasons: Molyneux gets it because of his constant hyperbole and his habit of promising things he has no hope of delivering, while Kotick is seen as only caring about money.

They’re essentially polar opposites, but guess what: we need them both.

The entire gaming industry has two opposing poles, those of money and creativity, and Peter Molyneux and Bobby Kotick are possibly the finest representatives of the two conflicting interests that we have in the industry today.

We might roll our eyes whenever Molyneux makes some self-important, grandiose statement about a game where you seduce people with farts, but if you look at the comments he has made in his role as Microsoft Game Studio’s creative director, he becomes a very coherent and almost nurturing figure. Molyneux is a man with a deep passion for games and game-making and you can hear it when he speaks about them.

By the same token, Bobby Kotick might be an infuriating man, but as much as we might rage about price hikes during a recession, he is absolutely a vital part of the industry, because without the money-men we don’t get games. Kotick sits at the head of the largest videogame publisher in the world and as much as we might not like what he has to say, that doesn’t mean that he isn’t right.

There are many different skills that go into making a game, but one that people often forget about is the skill of balancing corporate and creative interests. It’s a sad state of affairs, but even the most creative game will not sell itself. Take Psychonauts, for example: a wonderfully imaginative game lauded by critics - PC Gamer UK loved it so much that it reviewed it twice - that nobody bought, because the money wasn’t there to market the game properly

On the other hand, despite what Bobby Kotick might say, it's possible for gamers to get worn out by a franchise. Tomb Raider: Underworld cost Eidos millions of dollars because not enough people bought it. There was nothing wrong with the game - it got decent review scores and it had an established brand - but it’s not many games that can get to their ninth iteration and still capture the interest of the gaming audience.

The videogame industry needs people like Molyneux, with his boundless enthusiasm for the medium, and it needs people like Kotick, who always have their eye on bottom line. And to that end, the industry is best served by designers who can temper their creativity with an appreciation for the importance that capital plays in making a quality title and by executives that understand that they need to give their creative people a little room to roam every now and then.