Seismic Waves

Recently it might feel as if a new social gaming focused studio is being launched every week. And maybe they are, but not all of them are set up by serious industry players with a strong vision that will make their products unique.

Enter Greg Borrud, one of the founders of Seismic Games, a new studio that launches today and aims to create social games that draw on events in the real world, incorporating them into game play. Before starting Seismic about a year ago, Borrud co-founded Pandemic Studios, as well as working at Activision and as a VP for Electronic Arts, who bought Pandemic in 2007.

At Seismic he's joined by Eric "Giz" Gewirtz, a designer with credits like Star Wars: Battlefront, and Chris Miller, the company president and a man with serious publishing experience with Vivendi. Borrud spoke exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz to explain a little more about why the three decided social was the path to follow, and what would stop there game being just another Farmville rip off.

Q: How did Seismic start?

Greg Borrud: We started the company about a year ago, I teamed up with a couple of partners from the traditional games space. So we've got the industry experience, we all started at Activision around the same time about 16 or 17 years ago and we've seen this incredible growth in the traditional game space when it started as this very small, niche industry. We've seen that whole growth from PC to consoles to what it is today.

It was Chris, Eric, who we call Giz, and myself, and we were talking about what we wanted to do next, and we were looking at do we want to go back into the traditional game space where we spent our careers? Where are we, where do we want to go? And we looked at the social space, and it was such an incredible exciting place and it reminded us a lot of what the gaming industry used to be like 15 years ago Smaller development teams that could be much more inventive, lower costs for development so you can be a bit more experimental and really try some fun stuff, and it just absolutely had that appeal.

This is the wild west, this is an area where we can really make our mark, and we felt like we had an opportunity to do something very unique and really compelling. So that was about a year ago and we went out and started raising money.

Q: You mentioned your background in the industry?

Greg Borrud: We're three equal partners here, but my background is I was one of the co-founders, with Josh Resnick and Andrew Goldman, of Pandemic Studios. And we started in '98, and it was a very similar story to this. We had 13 people when we started Pandemic, I think we had about 12 when we started Seismic Games.

And that experience depending on studios over the 12 years, we grew quite a bit, we did a lot of games with traditional games developers, like Star Wars Battlefront, the Mercenaries series, Destroy All Humans, Full Spectrum Warrior, we really tried blending great action games that were very mass market and had a very broad appeal.

We grew the company up, and we were merged with Bioware in 2005 and bought by a private equity company, we were then purchased by EA in 2007. And then the company was effectively shut down in 2009 after the economy tanked in 2008. So it was a very interesting ride and we learned a lot through that experience of developing games, and we wanted to draw on that experience of developing very high end, very consumer friendly mass market type games.

And I'd worked with Eric Wartz, Giz, at Pandemic Studios where he was probably our best creative director there, in terms of sales for sure., He was behind Star Wars Battlefront I and II which were two of our best selling games, and certainly two of our most popular games.

And we'd also known Chris Miller, he had been at Activision back in the day, but Chris went a different route, he stayed on the publishing side. So Chris had done a stint at Fox, and then he was at Vivendi, No One Lives Forever was one of his big franchises and FEAR was one of his big franchises, and so what we loved about working with Chris was that he brought this whole publishing side. Giz and I had the development aspect of the project development, Chris brought this whole publishing side to the table and really rounded out the three of us pretty well.

Q: And how have things been since then?

Greg Borrud: So about a year ago we started raising funds, and we were focusing on making technically what we saw as an opportunity for next gen social games, where is the future going to go? And we raised our money in about April, about $2 million to date, and we started hiring the team. We're just over 20 people now and we're located in Los Angeles, and working on our first title which will be launching in the first quarter. So we're pretty excited about what 2012 holds, about getting our first game out there, how can we help move the incredible industries of social games forward? What's our contribution going to be?

Q: You mentioned that free-to-play development was a lot like core games used to be, but were there other elements that made it attractive to you? It seems a bit of a gold rush.

Greg Borrud: I think that might be the case for some people, but we've done very well. We can kind of work in any business we wanted to work in, and I think that's important thing. We chose social games because that's whats new, that's what fresh and interesting. Anyone who's a game developer, you ask any of the guys, they don't want to be stuck doing the same thing year after year and doing version three or doing version four, five or six, there's that creative spark that all great developers have and they want to be able to constantly refine and hone their craft, and take it to the next level.

So what attracted us to social games is not only that opportunity to be a little more... to take a few more risks. You can take more of a risk in this industry because the variables are much more reasonable, with traditional games... believe me, I've sat in so many meetings where everyone is completely risk averse, and you can see that is you look at the top ten. You have to go for what you know is going to hit it.

So as a developer, as a designer, as a creative team here we feel like we can really express our creative chops much more.

Another thing that was really exciting to us was actually reaching different demographics. We've been making games for 25 year old guys for 15 years because that's who we were, and its very to make a game for yourself, but now we're all married, we've got kids, we see that wow, there's all these other people out here! And the opportunity to make games that have a really broad appeal, way beyond that core demographic that we've been making games for for the last 15 years is something that's really exciting for us.

We love thinking about how we can take these things that we've learnt about how to make really compelling games, how can we take that and combine it with what the Zyngas of the world have done, like the analytic approach to designing games, and how can we take our more creative, entertainment focused background in console games and combine that with a more analytic approach to game design that Zyngas been doing, and create something that's really new and fresh.

Q: It does seem that's the thing that's missing, a game that is based around metrics and can deliver revenue but is also compelling to play?

Greg Borrud: Yes, and I think that's the opportunity. I think a lot of people can knock Zynga for their analytic approach to games but they've done an incredible job of creating something that is new and obviously has millions and millions of users who love playing. They've done something that's right, and honestly, something that traditional console and PC developers can learn a lot from. I'll tell you I've learned more in this last year of really diving into the whole idea of this analytical approach. But I think if you only approach it from analytics you end up with something that at the end of the day, people aren't really sure why they're playing it. They're playing it, they're addicted to playing it, but they don't know why. And there's that entertainment side, that soul, that needs to be infused. So we're hoping that we can learn from the great things that Zynga has done but then also draw really deeply on our experience and our entertainment and creative past and blend those two together to create something that's really really special.

Q: What are some of the challenges, and some of the positives, you've encountered in making the change from big budget AAA titles to a smaller social project that's constantly changing? I mean you can update a Facebook game overnight...

Greg Borrud: I think that's what we're excited about, what are the things that you can do? What is it that this new platform allows us to do, and I think what you mentioned there is something that's really great which is, that kind of real time involvement and conversation you have with your game.

Gabe Newell at Valve has been talking about this quite a bit and games as a service in the traditional space, this isn't new, this has been part of the conversation for the last couple of years. And I think that the real time conversation with consumers is really exciting and we think we can actually incorporate that into the game play. Whether it's ripped from the headlines or actually drawing real time things that are happening in the world and pulling them into the game. It's using the advantage of having it always connected, to not be like "oh we can just keep tweaking this until we perfect the model" but actually use it as a game design feature. How can we take this idea that we're constantly connected to actually make the game a better game from a qualitative, entertainment perspective rather than just focus on constantly noodling little numbers here and there?

So that's one of the things that we're pretty excited about. It's interesting to think about how do we develop a product in 9 years, when you're developing products that take two or three years it's a different mindset, and it's about moving very fast, it's about getting something out there and testing it quite a bit, and trying it, and trying new things, and taking risks, and there's not necessarily the proven formula.

I should say one of the challenges is there is a proven formula. You can just do exactly what Zynga does, you can have it all about farming, and you can have it all about baked goods, and there's that formula that I think a lot of people fall into because Zynga's perfected a formula. That's why you have so many "me too" products.

So one of the challenges is what are the elements that are great about those? What are the familiar elements that you grab on to, what are those things that you ditch? To try and find that balancing act of making the game familiar to players, but something that's new and fresh.

Q: So how much can you tell me about the game?

Greg Borrud: We're definitely going to be talking more about the specific game that we'll be launching. What I should say though is really what we're launching is a platform. It's more than one game. We've got plans for the next three or four games we're going to be building.

And the thing that we're focused on in terms of the game and how we think the next generation of the games are going to evolve is a couple of things. Number one, we think it's going to be more focused on character, that's what happened in the traditional game space, we think it will happen. You starting to see it a little bit with games like The Sims Social, where as we get closer to the characters the games become a little bit more compelling. You have more of connection to your character, as opposed to a direct connection to a place or a location. So we think that focusing more on characters and getting closer to the characters is going to be incredibly important.

Number two, we think that focusing on customisation is critical. And this is something we've learned a lot from our partners at Bioware and the Pandemic days, allowing players that freedom to customise their characters and to have their own unique experience is really important. Especially as you get closer to characters, I want my character to be mine and mine alone, just like I want yours to be like your and yours alone. And to have entirely different characters but then different experiences, so the way the game plays out will be completely different and completely unique for every person and we think that's absolutely critical and important as we think about the next gen of games.

The third thing that we think about is user generated content. How can we create effectively a playground with all these tools and all these toys that allows players to take those with their own customised characters and generate something that they want to share with other players? So that's something that we're focused quite a bit on, that user generated content side. Because it's really just an expression, just like Facebook is an expression of who you are as a person, we want this game to also be an expression and something you can share with other players.

Lastly there's something that I touched on a little bit already, which is the real time content aspect, which is how can we draw from everything that's happening in the real world, how can we draw an almost from the headlines element and pull that into the game so that it feels very fresh, very real, and very relevant.

We want something to happen in the real world and someone says "hey, I wonder how they're handling this in the game" and they'll jump into the game.

So those are the four elements that we're focusing on, a lot of different companies can focus on different things, but those are the four elements that we're focusing on that we think that can really help move the genre forward in 2012.

Q: I can't think of a game that has done that yet, connecting with real world events. At least not successfully...

Greg Borrud: I think you can get an idea a little bit with what the Zyngas of the world are doing when they start to bring celebrity in, they start to tap in a little bit to the pop culture of what's happening, and Enrique Iglesias all of a sudden shows up in your game, it's working well for them, it's really popular. But it's also really odd, that Lady Gaga is in Farmville.

Can you take those same concepts though of taking the real world and integrating them into the virtual world and make it work? Make it actually enrich the experience and make it a better thing rather than just feeling like an interesting marketing hook.

Q: I was reading that you planned to work with entertainment partners, is that part of that real world connection or a revenue thing?

Greg Borrud: We're based in Los Angeles and that's an important thing for us, we've always had big ties to Los Angeles and ties to the Hollywood community here, and a number of our investors come from the entertainment business. And so I think it will be a focus for us as we drive forward, how can we blend, or take full advantage of our location and take full advantage of the industry. But it goes beyond just those kind of one off entertainment aspects, it really goes into the ripped from the headline deal.

I think a lot more will be apparent once we start talking about our first game. But it's something that as we talk about our games and we talk about all our franchises and its something that's really important to us because its something that's we believe is going to be a real differentiator of social games as it relates to traditional box products.

Q: It seems the bigger publishers are just now starting to move into the free-to-play market, do you think it's easier for you as a smaller company to work in that area?

Greg Borrud: Absolutely, and I saw that first hand working at EA. John Riccitiello, to his credit, has been talking about this move to social gaming, to free-to-play ever since he started as the CEo of EA. That's been a big part of what he's been talking about. The reality is though that you're tryng to move a multi-billion dollar company that's charted it's course for the next five years and re-steer it in some other direction. With a 20 person company we can just say "tomorrow, this is where we need to be" and we're there. And we don't have shareholders that we need to be accountable to, we don't have quarterly reports we need to be measured against, so it's absolutely much easier for a smaller company to be nimble and to be agile and to respond to the market.

I think that's the Zynga success. Zynga has been able to, starting as a small company, has been able to grow and shape itself very quickly and respond to what's happening in the market because they had no past to muddy up what they were doing. The truth of the matter is they've now just done an IPO, we'll see what this means for their future, they now have quarterly reporting to do. They now have shareholders, they're not listed on the exchange. How is this going to affect them in 2012? I know absolutely they're going to be pushing to be at the forefront of this change in social games - are they going to be in a position to be nimble though? Have they grown too big or can they continue to be nimble?

So it'll be really interesting and I think that's what excites us about 2012, is that I think we're just at the beginning of what social games can be, absolutely. And the Zynga IPO is kind of the end of the first wave, and now we're looking at the second wave, which is this audience is now established, what are we going to do with them?