OK, post GodGames: You left for a while...

MW: Well, I left with my middle finger in the air, ten feet high, because we really felt like our company was sort of torn from us; you know, we were kind of powerless to stop it, and we knew we had all these great games coming down the pike. So it was very painful, you know; we were very emotionally involved in the whole thing. We felt like our grand crusade had failed.

At the same time, we could see the writing on the wall, that we were now inside of what was becoming a very big public company, after GTA, and it's just, like, it was no place for us. All the things that we're good at were being snuffed out, you know, it was being turned into a bureaucracy, which renders guys like us basically useless. Or we want to stab our eyes out every day. So, we left. We negotiated a separation which was very fair. It was a fine separation -- as much as it could've been. And we all did fine.

Unfortunately, we lost one of our key guys right at that same time, so we were a little devastated... A lot devastated. Like, shaken to our core, the whole group of us. So we just left the industry. I had no passion for it -- in fact I had a genuine disdain for it. And went off to do other things -- independent film making... Largely because right at the time, I felt this whole, all the creativity being sucked out of games, and being turned into big, monstrous -- to me -- monstrous-sized teams. Dev schedules, and all this; going out of the fun "garage band" days.

Right at that same time, the whole revolution was happening in the indie film scene. They were a little ahead of us, they were already breaking away from the big studio system, and getting funding from elsewhere, and all this creativity was happening, so I was like: "I'm going to hop over here." But it was like, kind of an education, going from "big man on campus in games, with all the connections in the world," to "little guy with a DVD and no connections" in that world.

But it, that's a wonderful experience, and I think this industry would be a very different place if other gaming executives went through that. You know, went and actually created something, and had to hand it off to somebody, and hope that they market it, and do all that stuff, like.... You can't pay for that. You don't get that from a seminar, or a book, 'til you go through it. Until every bad review breaks your heart, or every handshake turns into bullshit, you know? Creating kinda -- puts you back on the side of the artist, you know.

And even though Harry and Rick and I all came from managing those guys making games, we weren't really the guys making 'em. Sure, I got to throw in an idea here and there, when I was at id, and some of 'em made it into the game -- but it wasn't, I wasn't doing the coding, or the art, or whatever. I was doing the shilling. When you're looking in somebody's eyes, and you're negotiating, the way of the world is that you take everything that you can get -- but if you can really empathize with that other side, I think you go: "You know, what I think I want, what I really, really want to get is a partnership, and for these guys to look forward to meeting with me." And when Alex is worried about: "OK, I'm making a weird game." You know? But... "I know in Austin, Mike is just as worried about it." That. That's me; it's what I want more than I want your royalty points, or I want creative control, or...

So that time I did a couple of documentaries, and a lot of short film stuff, and really used that "hiding behind the lens" to explore a lot of different things -- because I had really only been exposed to games -- the best thing that that led me to is realizing how cool the games world really was. You know, the grass is always greener until you cross over. And hiding behind that lens and the microphone, you get a lot of insight from a lot of people, about what their lives are really like.

Like, you know, the game thing. A lot of it sucks, but a lot of it's really cool. And again, you get back to the notion of, "Do I leave it because it's being taken over by country club guys, or do I go back in there and try to make a fight for the indie side?" And there's room, you know, it's fine. It seems to be the way of the world, that these guys are going to control a big bunch of business. That's fine. But there's definitely a lot of room for a company like ours, in between the little indie guys and the behemoth Wall Street companies, there's this giant gap that I'm so glad to be in.

It isn't exactly like you elbowed your way back into the country club -- they invited you back into the foursome. The three guys are like: "Hey! That guy scores pretty well! He hits pretty good drives!"

MW: It was right after this other venture, called Substance TV, that was a video magazine, that was, really, that was a tool for exploration of other ways of being. I was just winding that down; unable to make a commercially viable DVD magazine; maybe a little bit ahead of its time in 2002.

But with a lot of your GodGames partners as well.

MW: Yeah, and that was a lot of it: Was just keeping the tribe together, and you know, and everybody not being out of work just because I was bummed out on games. And right as we were winding that down, you know, the phone rang, and it was Take 2, and I was like: "What? Really? Am I being sued?" They actually wanted me to come to New York and run the whole PC division of their company. Which by that time, you know, is a half a billion dollar business. "OK. Really? You want me to come back?" It's like: "NO. NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO."

And then finally we talked into some middle-ground, where I was going to run my shop out of Austin, and do what I do. And it was a bit of a façade -- you can't be Captain Indie inside the machine. It's not honest. But what it did was really afford me that retrospect, and the insider information on how well our stuff did. Which was a big kick in the pants, you know? When you think you went out, not the way you wanted to, and then you're like: "Everything you did made money. We'd really like you back. And we'll pay you whatever it takes to get you."

So that was fantastic that that happened. I'm a lucky guy. A lot of this was about being in the right place at the right time, and the fact that those guys called me back, even though I called them every name in the book, and burned the Take 2 cross at E3... That was big of them, you know; to their credit, they were like: "He might hate us, and we might hate him, but what he did worked, and we'll see if it'll work again."

It didn't. But, again... Retrospect. Getting older is not always so bad.

But it got you back in.

MW: It got us back in. Not immediately. First of all, it was an executive job, that they paid me at the end of the day to not work, for most of two years. Because it wasn't working out, so they just kind of paid me to stay on the sidelines for a while.