Piracy and World of Warcraft
Tom's Games: MStar is an interactive avatar like a game for MySpace or Facebook. Have there been a lot of companies approach you for that or was that the first?
Mark Rein: Unfortunately most companies, because of the media [Rein motions at me]... the media taints us as a shooter engine so people think of us as shooter technology. That's our goal: to break down those barriers and expand people's imagination for what they can use our technology for.
Tom's Games: The demo of the new soft-body physics in Unreal Engine 3 was impressive. Has anyone showed you how they are going to implement that into gameplay?
Mark Rein: Yes. [long pause]
Tom's Games: Yes?
Mark Rein: Yes. That's all I'm going to say. A really good way to use it. A REALLY good way to use it.
Tom's Games: Is Epic Games going to give up on PC gaming?
Mark Rein: Nope. I don't see that happening.
Early artwork from Gears of War 2.
Tom's Games: People at the show seem to think that piracy will kill PC gaming before anything else. I see people comparing it to the music industry a lot but I don't think they're the same thing. We're talking about the box the music/games are played on, not the music itself. If there were only...
Mark Rein: There's a lot of piracy in the music industry and it's hurt that business a huge amount, too.
Tom's Games: Right, but if there were only four boxes you could play music on and one out of the four has a high rate of piracy while the other three don't, the publishers would just say, "Let's not publish on that box."
Mark Rein: I see what you're saying. You're absolutely right there. It's a good point. We have other avenues as game makers. It's the same thing in movies. They could only show them in theaters and that would reduce piracy, although people do go in with cameras. I'm sure there's some piracy on consoles too, but we're lucky that we have some alternatives where piracy is much less prevalent.
The publishers really determine what happens with the PC, not us. Publishers ultimately finance the development of our games so they determine the platforms of choice. They have to spend all the resources testing on the PC and examine the different configurations to make sure the game works well. The PC's got other issues, too. It's not just piracy. The fact that every single one is slightly different is a huge problem. That creates a huge expense for the publishers and if they don't feel they can recover the money or if they think they'll lose business to PC gaming then why would they bother.
Tom's Games: So you think that if the hardware requirements were standardized a bit it would help?
Mark Rein: That's just one of the problems. It's not going to help with piracy but maybe having a larger market to sell to could offset the fact that so many people are stealing the content. That might be what makes it worth the effort.
Tom's Games: On the other side of the coin you've got 2K games that put something new in place to fight piracy with BioShock and in the end they get all kinds of fan blowback because of it.
Mark Rein: Yeah it's bad. The other option is to do like Steam did: tether your games to an online system. I hate the arguments that say we should change the entertainment we provide or make it episodic. People say we should only make online or MMO games. That's one my fears. That's an argument for abandoning what we do. There's a business model here that works. If you're saying the only way to make money on the PC is to change the business model publishers are just going to say, "Forget about it."
Tom's Games: Do you think World of Warcraft's success is hurting PC game development?
Mark Rein: I think it's very hard to replicate that kind of success. They spent a huge amount of money on World of Warcraft. What do you think they spent to build and launch that game? How many years did you see demos at E3 for it?
Tom's Games: I think I saw it at least three times at E3.
Mark Rein: 60, 70, 80 million dollars I think they spent on that game. The risk profile for making that kind of a game is so ridiculously high.
Tom's Games: World of Warcaft is the exception, not the rule. It's an aberration.
Mark Rein: And it's such a good game. I saw someone say, "It sucks the oxygen out of the market for MMOs." Maybe it does, who knows.
Tom's Games: I don't know. I've talked to a lot of MMO developers here at GDC and every one of them has said, "World of Warcraft has opened up avenues for us. It brings the MMO experience and the idea of a pay-per-month game to a broader audience and that audience eventually comes over to us."
Mark Rein: Hey, I'm pretty bullish on APB. It's like GTA meets World of Warcraft using our engine. It's from Dave Jones and Real Time Worlds. Maybe we just need something like that that's so mainstream and uses that model for people to say, "I get it. I'm in there."
Tom's Games: Well thanks for taking time out to talk with us today, Mark.
Mark Rein: No problem. Thanks for coming by.
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