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Sony's Tretton: 'People Don’t Respect Confidentiality In This Industry'
by Kris Graft [PC, Console/PC]
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June 12, 2009
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At Sony Computer Entertainment America's E3 briefing last week, SCEA CEO Jack Tretton poked fun at how much of the company's big announcements were leaked weeks prior, as he proclaimed Sony was not only a gaming leader, but a "leader in leaks."
Leaks are common in the games industry, but in an interview with CNBC, Tretton was more perturbed than he was on the E3 stage. "People don’t respect confidentiality in this industry," he lamented. "It’s tough enough to keep a secret within your own company, much less when you speak to third parties."
Sony's big announcements included a motion-sensing controller (a patent for such tech surfaced last year and circulated the web), the disc-free PSPgo (the final design leaked onto the web days before E3 began), and Team Ico's highly-anticipated next game, The Last Guardian (early footage of the game also surfaced in the weeks leading up to E3).
Tretton added, "This is an industry that has trouble focusing on today. We want to constantly talk about tomorrow.… You have to prepare for people to know things in advance."
In the end, leaked information takes much of the wind out of the sails of big announcements.
"The frustrating thing is they only know a part of the story and that opens up a lot of conjecture and misinformation that ultimately waters down the reality when you roll it out."
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"Game companies leak from the top."
The implication is that the confidentiality-issue isn't one of individual contributors on a chat room saying something they shouldn't... the problem lies with the desire of executive staffs to trumpet their latest-and-greatest to their peers, or to get their face on the cover of an industry magazine. How many of these "leaks" are not accidents, and originate with someone with a door on their office? And if that's the case, how is ANY message of "we have to keep this secret", or a signed NDA, supposed to be taken seriously? Indeed, is the enforcability of an NDA harmed when a company's officers can't keep their own mouths shut?
If that's the case, if it's the leadership that can't keep confidentiality, there won't be a lot of sympathy. You don't get to disclose something intentionally then complain/sue about it later.
1. People underestimate the seriousness of the information they're leaking. In their minds that they're just leaking "frilly gaming details" instead of "important company trade secrets." As a result, NDA's are not taken as seriously as they should.
2. The gaming industry requires a lot of collaboration across company borders, country borders, etc. People are less protective of "someone else's" information than their own.
3. In companies of hundreds and thousands of employees, it only takes one lousy person to screw up the collective efforts of the good majority.
4. Leaks breed leaks. Leaks get top billing on gaming "news" sites on a daily basis. This has created a mentality that leaking information isn't really that bad if "everyone else is doing it."
Who cares about leaks.
INSIDER TRADING IS WHERE IT'S AT !!
We all know what movies are being made basically as soon as production starts, if not before. The announcements that matter are the first trailer and things like that, rather than the existence of the movie itself.
Is there really a reason why the existence of most games is kept secret? Would knowing that Halo 4 is being worked on really undercut the release of the first trailer?
MS for example, only told people about Age III when the game was nearly done, they could show exactly how the game was, and noone was disapointed.
Now we have the extreme case of John Romero, he said a lot before launch that he was making Daikatana... When the game was released people were expecting a LOT of the game... The game is not REALLY bad as people claim it to be, but the frustation was massacring.
So, to avoid those hype stunts that may wreck your reputation, is better to avoid it.
John Romero learned it well, it took him 3 years to announce that he was already working (for 3 years) with a new company.
Did people REALLY go "hm... Blizzard have been quiet for a while. I wonder what they've been working on... OMG IT'S DIABLO 3!!!". I highly doubt it. People may have been happy to hear that it was being worked on, but I doubt it was a surprise to anyone.
The issues is with how people present that their games are in development, not the fact that they are in development.
Blizzard isn't really great at keeping secrets. They are much more paranoid than your average developer, but Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 were not big surprises, and I've heard rumors about their other unannounced projects...