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Something I'm particularly actually interested in, in the Eidos organization, is the Montreal studio. Obviously, it's been said that they're working on a Deus Ex title.
PR: It's announced. And Thief.
We haven't seen anything much out of the studio, right? Since it was founded. I hear it's a beautiful facility; I know we did a tour. I feel like right around when it came to fruition, maybe that's when things started going south a little bit. So I see a tremendous potential there. Do you think that this relationship will help you actually bring out the potential in that studio?
PR: Well, I think we've had truly ambitious plans for Montreal. I think, actually, when I look at the potential there today-- I think if we set that out as our plan, I think we may not even have started on it, because we might have actually realized, "Can we really achieve this?"
We were almost two years to the day -- I think it was in June 2007 -- when forming an ancillary studio, and it was really being started, with the first, second, third employee. We've had very ambitious goals, to really find a quality team, and create a new vision for a studio structure in Montreal.
So, we've got two titles in development. We feel very much on track. When we go and visit the teams there, and see the sort of skill sets, the passion, and the energy that is in the studio -- it fills me with tremendous excitement.
We'll start seeing things now on Deus Ex; we have announced that as a title. Clearly it's an outrageously popular game in the past, so it has a lot of community interest. But I think now we'll start seeing content come through.
But it is a great place; I think Montreal has this great fusion of creative talent, production talent, and the incentives there; the media, entertainment heart of Montreal is a great place to work.
Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex 3
Something that interests me very much right now is seeing Front Mission: Evolved announced at E3, because it's being developed by Double Helix in North America. Before I jump to conclusions, is there a possibility that one of the Eidos development teams could work with what was originally Square Enix IP, or vice versa?
YW: I think that's possible. But what's more important is that the two companies, for example, are going to be creating a new IP together.
What's going to be important is to be able to get a mutual understanding of each of the quarters so that we will be able [to create it], and what is going to be born from this new unity.
But I believe that there is also going to be the mutual exchange of the IPs between the two parties as well. That can happen in areas outside of games as well; for example, Square Enix not only has IP for games, but there's also IP for animation or manga, as well. So those IPs might be leveraged, for example, by Eidos -- in order to turn them into a game.
Or it can be vice versa as well: the game IP that the Eidos team has might be transferred over to the Square Enix team to turn it into a comic book, for example, or animation, or figures as well. And so those are some of the areas that this question concerns, as well.
Do you have any reaction to the idea of potentially collaborating in that way? Or any of these ways?
PR: I think the short term opportunities and ideas that we're already thinking about... Certainly, we look at the broad exploitation and management of IP expertise at Square Enix, so the potential to further IPs in that direction is quite clear.
So, figurines, or comics... We have tried this in the past, and had some success, and had some challenges as well, but we should keep working on that direction. I think I'd be disappointed having the same discussion in five or 10 years' time, and we haven't seen that IP exchange. I see that within Eidos today.
And it's an interesting trend, too: three years ago, a certain studio may never have thought about working on someone else's IP, or actually having the confidence to say, "I wonder what this studio within the same group could do with this IP." We're trying to create a very strong studio structure now within Eidos, and have a lot of good exchange and great competition, and I think with that trust we'll see that information on IP exchange. So, you know, I hope we do. I hope we do.
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As someone who just finished his MA in women's and gender studies, I found it interesting that diversity is being stressed on both sides, but it seems that the concept is only being considered for internal personnel at the companies. However, the fact is that culture is diffused amongst consumers, too, and that diversity applies to their tastes just as it applies to company employees.
Many Western consumers prefer Japanese games precisely because of the various Japanese cultural elements, philosophies, viewpoints, etc that are found within them, and I believe that the same is true for Japanese (or East Asian in general) consumers who enjoy Western offerings. This has become more apparent as East Asian entertainment has become more widely available in the West during the past 15 years or so. Furthermore, the growth of the WWW and Internet has caused much faster, broader diffusion of cultural values and communications. On the other hand, this trend has also created many instances of miscommunication and misperception because people receive information through their own ethnocentric filters.
I am very concerned that companies, particularly East Asian companies, would focus on attempting to create products that appeal to Western consumers, or that appeal to specific regional demographics in the overall global marketplace. The ever-increasing pace of communications and cultural exchange indicates that this type of approach runs against the actual real life experiences of people in the various regional markets. I do not think that this is a positive approach to take as far as the potential of popular entertainment media is concerned. I do not think that employees of a company, regardless of their level or position, can truly ascertain the diverse tastes of any particular region of the world. I don't think this is possible because the state of diversity is in constant flux, and the rate of change is constantly increasing or is too variable to be accurately analyzed by any company or institution.
I think it would be much better for businesses and consumers if the "uncertainty principle of markets" (to borrow from physics theories) was simply accepted and creative efforts were offered with a basic understanding that some will fail and some will succeed, but that no one can offer any sort of accurate predictions about which ones will be the former and which will be the latter.
Editors: Is there a reason why there are numerous missing spaces throughout the interview? It makes reading it a bit of a challenge.
Personally, I can't wait to see how they balance stealth gameplay with the Bahamut summon in the next Thief game. (I kid, I kid)