So you were interested in bringing Audition to the US?

DP: Yeah, but the thing with Audition is that it uses a new control system that Americans are not used to. The Chinese title Super Dancer Online uses Dance Dance Revolution style arrows, which Americans understand. You can plug a DDR pad into a PC and actually dance with it, for example. So we took Super Dancer Online and we did all the localization and all the westernization, redoing all the songs and so on, to create Dance! Online.

So after localizing Super Dancer Online you ended up leading some studios in China, correct?

DP: Well, I made some suggestions that they liked and they said to me, "We want to make games that succeed worldwide." So they gave me three teams and told me to make the games I wanted to make. So since then I made some game proposals and those are the games that are being worked on right now.

Can you talk about them?

DP: No, none of the games are announced. But we will announce them.

You can't even talk genre?

DP: MMOs! They're PC free-to-play MMOs. One is a music game and one is a sports game.

Can you talk about the teams?

DP: Not specifically, but in they're very scalable teams. They're normally about 30-60 people but there are about 200-300 people who are available at any time to pull onto a project. They're pretty normal.

In Asia they now tend to license engines from the west. They didn't do that before, they used to make their own, but now they're starting to say, "Why don't we just use Unreal?"

You're going to see that more and more. The visual look of the games over there is starting to get really stunning. When I go across and see the studios I think, "Woah, that looks fantastic." For an example, there's a game called Mabinogi Heroes from Nexon that you should see. It uses the Source engine and is really beautiful. They're really stepping up graphically.

What's the market for free-to-play MMOs? The casual market?

DP: We're talking about the people who love games but can't afford to keep tossing down 60 dollars each time. There's a middle ground with people who consider themselves gamers. We're not going for the Sudoku market at all. We're going for the people who consider themselves gamers who also love the idea of not having to pay for them.