That's the challenge for me: can I get some kind of result without really hard, active involvement? It seems to be that it's possible. I finished Hexic, and Hexic is a really good game, I enjoyed it. I finished another small game in Moscow, just for an advertisement.

Which was that?

AP: I call it Facial Constructor. I did it for a company that created face technology for the internet.

Unfortunately, the technology seems to be gone, and the team is gone. Disbanded. But, I needed to finish my job, and I did. I finished the game. Probably it will be forgotten about in a couple of weeks. [Laughs.]

Are you still an active gamer yourself?

AP: I do play games. From time to time I try to look at my to-do list. I have a long to-do list in terms of the concepts. Once I'd wanted to do a certain game but something stopped me -- it's time to come back to this concept and try to realize it.

I think the time has come for two-player games. I've always had lots of ideas for that but they were never realized because it was always a pain in the neck with the networking and whatever.

Now it's such a simple thing. The messengers can take most of the problem, you just place the game on top of it and there it is. Two-player games are a very rich area and there are lots of things that might be done.

Are you mostly interested in competitive games or cooperative two-player?

AP: That's another thing -- usually cooperative thinkers are much more creative and interesting and constructive, but competitive play is much more motivational. If you put together competitive and cooperative, then cooperative will lose, but it's still a challenge to come up with a very good cooperative game. It should be very asymmetric. I'm fine with it.

If one player is good with a certain kind of feature, and the other with another set of features, then cooperation makes sense. If they both do the same thing, then they'd better compete.

But everybody doesn't feel comfortable with this kind of asymmetric set up, they might feel discriminated or something like that. So that's the other stuff that I want to work on at some point.

Are you going to continue to focus on consoles? Are you happy with how they're evolving?

AP: Normally when I have the concept, I don't think about the platform. If I'll work for Microsoft, I'll definitely keep in mind the Xbox, because that's what they're interested in.

Would you be interested in working on the Wii?

AP: If I had an idea, I would approach them, but it doesn't seem that I do at this point. I honestly haven't played it that much, I've only tried it a handful of times.