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The Miller's Tale: 3D Realms' Scott Miller
SM: It’s not in our game plan to develop a service like that. It’s a really big distraction. GS: That’s a lot to take on. SM: Yeah it is. I would rather there emerge a leader in the market that isn’t associated with a game company. I’m not a big fan of using Steam, because I’m not a fan of a strong competitor of ours having access to our download stats and revenue totals. I’d rather keep that private. Not only that, but we’re lining their pockets as well. I’d love to see Steam spin off as their own company. That would be a smart move. That removes the conflict of interest issue and it would give Steam focus as a separate company. Since they’re buried in Valve, if Valve doesn’t do well for a game or two, Steam will get cut before their internal game development. They have to consider Steam secondary. I don’t know why they hang on to Steam as an internal thing. They’d probably rule the game industry if they did. A truly independent company is going to come along, and I know of a couple of start-ups. I think one of these companies will emerge as the product leader and they should be able to take Steam’s spot. My overall impression is that digital distribution is definitely going to be a huge force in the future. I’ve said for quite a while that the next generation consoles will have this built in from the start. Day one releases will be available online. I think brick and mortar places will lose a lot of business this way. Microsoft and Sony have to be saying “if we cut out the retailers, we get a bigger piece of the pie.” There’s no issue with it, you just need to get people bigger hard drives. Digital delivery is going to be a key part of console revenue. GS: It’s strange that there isn’t a company that is really independent. You have Valve with Steam and Stardock with Total Gaming. SM: From the ashes of Triton, there’s a company starting up that will do things much better. Triton had some internal problems that hurt them from the beginning. They were a dead man walking situation from the start. GS: Speaking of digital distribution, how would you feel about older 3D Realms products, like Duke Nukem 3D, appearing on Xbox Live Arcade. SM: Yeah, we’d love to see that happen. Microsoft has a pretty tight lid about what they’re putting on the system now. They’re trying to not hit the same genres over and over again, and since Doom just came out on Live, they probably won’t want Duke 3D on Live anytime soon. I’ve had some casual talks about this, but you never know. We’d like to see that happen, it’s just a matter of making it happen.
GS: Epic's Mark Rein has been criticized sharply for his issues with episodic SM: Waiting eight or twelve months between releases is a long time. For episodic content to work, the release windows need to be much shorter. One of the biggest problems that it has is that if you miss out on the first one or two, it’s harder to jump in later. By that time, the technology of the third or fourth one is so far ahead of the first two that you don’t want to play them or it’s a lot of money to catch up. I also think that it’s a bad idea to have each episode end with a cliffhanger. I can see why you’d want to do that so that you can encourage people to get the next one. I think they work well on a weekly TV show, but for something that comes out ten months later it’s not the way to go. It’s more disappointing to not have a wrapped up ending. You make a much bigger splash when you make a complete game. It’s a major event. With episodes, you water it down. You probably won’t get game of the year honors with an episode. You know, three episodes probably make a full game. You make more money off of a full game release. GS: Kind of like a glorified expansion? SM: They’re like expansion packs. It’s just not as much to get excited about. |
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