How are you working to change consumer habits here, though? We're used to plunking down all the money at the start, not buying items with real cash.

DP: You know the company Netflix?

Well, what happened? They came along with a disruptive model. I was used to buying DVDs and I had racks full of DVDs until Netflix came along and now I have that I want, whenever I want, for a low subscription fee. It's killing Blockbuster.

It's just disruption. I'm actually of the opinion that with all media, the concept of ownership is going to go away. Owning a film isn't going to matter anymore. I have a three year-old daughter, and when she's grown up, when you think about the connection speeds and networks, she's just going to think about wanting to watch a film, any film, and it's going to be on her television. That's just how the world is going to be.

Music is going to be the same. People are already working on it. I can't possibly imagine what is going to make games not work the same way, even with the huge amount of data that is required.

The days of waiting for the distributor to deliver the games to the store and then waiting for the doors to open are numbered. You'll have a game within an hour of its release.

So you're impressed by distribution systems such as Steam, even though you're purchasing the titles outright?

DP: I think it's pure genius. Gabe Newell is going to make billions. If he doesn't sell it, and just keeps improving the service and increasing the infrastructure, getting more developers and publishers to sign up with him, it's going to be worth a fortune.

Another Korean MMO that you're localizing [via Acclaim] for Western audiences is Dekaron, now known as 2Moons. How was that?

DP: We got a writer in Hollywood, Henry Jones, who had a gap in his schedule and we asked him if he wanted to do some writing for an MMO. He was a huge fan of World of Warcraft so he said sure. We didn't realize how big the job was going to be -– he had thousands of pages to write. He nearly killed himself writing it all, but he got it all done and we've put it all in the game.

We're still catching up with the developers in Korea. This is something that developers here need to be aware of, how fast they develop there. They generally release a new version every three months! That's a very aggressive schedule. So there's constantly new content coming out. It makes it very hard for us to keep up and get it all ready in three months and then see the next thing that's coming out. We're still in beta, though.

Do you think you'll catch up?

DP: I think we're going to catch up in January. I had a meeting with the developers and found out about all the new features that they're adding in 2008 though and there's a lot. If you never played the game, and tried it in September 2008 you'll be amazed at how much stuff there was -– and for free.

How are you monetizing 2Moons in the US?

DP: It's all through item sales. We are going to add some in game advertising, optional advertising that people can turn off. We did put it in earlier but turning it on slowed down the game.

People were turning it off not because of the advertising but because it was slowing down the game. And we like to know why people turn off the advertising, so we can understand where we can go with it. If 95% turn it off when we put it in and it doesn't affect the game in any way, we'll know there's no future in in-game advertising for us.

There's another trend in MMOs now, user generated content, such as in Second Life. What do you think of that angle?

DP: Love it. I'm going to do a lot of that, and some of my future games are going to be all about that.

And hey, the Top Secret project is that on steroids, right? Thousands of people making a game -– managed by users, designed by users, made by users, voted on by users and then will be played by users when it's done. We're learning so much from that. It's controlled chaos: like herding cats. It's fascinating to see what works, what doesn't work.

Do you think you'll return to big budget, triple-A titles?

DP: Yes, actually. I will. Acclaim is already funding some games, experimenting. That's really our goal, to test different ideas, and we're going to be really careful, but we're going to keep investing, and trying to grow our own technologies, and all we need is one hit. if we get that one hit, we're going to use that money to fund some big projects.