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Telltale Games' Dan Connors

CEO discusses his company's decision to go digital ahead of the crowd and why episodic has worked so well

GamesIndustry.biz You've expressed an interested in working on iPhone and DSiWare platforms, so PSPgo is another one you're also considering?
Dan Connors

I definitely think there's huge potential there and right now we're working on getting our content over to some more channels, over to new consoles and the Mac. And after that's done, we're going to be looking at handhelds. I think we have to consider the PSPgo for sure.

GamesIndustry.biz All of these emerging distribution platforms – DSiWare, WiiWare, iPhone, PSN and so on, they're making it much more possible for smaller, possibly more creative individuals and teams to get their games to market. Is that a shift you welcome?
Dan Connors

Oh, I think the way distribution has diversified and has opened up new channels has created, already, many different new genres and styles of play that I don't think we would have seen. And I think, in the big picture, the Wii has really rocked things. It's really rocked people's perceptions and what type of gameplay experience people are expecting and who's a gamer. I think that Rock Band and Guitar Hero have really changed the face of things, and then I think the third big thing is the fact that digital distribution has made it possible for people to create games that don't need to reach a huge audience, they just need to reach a big enough audience that can support the product and support the companies so they can continue to go back and reinvest and push from an innovation standpoint.

So I really think it has made it possible for an idea to become a game and it's possible for that person with that idea for that game to create a business around it. Anything that was happening before was all amateur and now it's becoming professional and therefore there's more energy being invested in it and a higher level of commitment because obviously if you're doing something for a living, it's something you put all your time into.

GamesIndustry.biz Do you think that prior to digital finally coming to the distribution fore, game companies were becoming a bit guilty of, like the music industry, getting stuck in their ways and not thinking outside of the box?
Dan Connors

You know, it's hard to say because the games industry has moved so fast. It's hard to compare it to some of the other industries like the music industry because the music industry took 20 years to develop different ways of doing things whereas the games industry seems to be turning a lot faster. World of WarCraft – the transition from MMOs to Everquest to WoW - has seen a huge evolution and that's taken place since the late '80s or so.

I think games have always been evolving aggressively, I think they never stagnated too much. One area in which they have stagnated, from around 2000 to 2004, they seemed to be really trending towards just serving a specific audience and demographic. The games had to appeal to a certain group of people, so you started to see more and more shooters and driving games and sports games, and other games weren't being explored. And I think that's certainly changed.

GamesIndustry.biz What innovations are happening now that you're particularly excited to see the outcomes of?
Dan Connors

I think Natal's interesting and that's going to be fun to watch and see how people continue to evolve products in that way, and what people can do with it and how it drives the next generation of games. I think you're going to see a lot of people putting a lot of energy into creating new things around it and it should be interesting to see what comes out. I think that seeing what the iPhone has been able to do and seeing how many people you can reach through the app store and how many people are on iPhones and how savvy that audience is - I think it'll be interesting to see what sort of games are built there.

I think the next big step is going to be a connection between full blown retail quality or downloadable quality games, core games, with social networks and with handheld devices so that the game is becoming connected on multiple levels. I think that's going to be a very interesting area where people are going to start moving to where there's going to be some type of game that's going to be able to connect people, through multiple ways, through their Facebook account and through their iPhone and however people want to do it. I can't say what it will be, but I think it's going to be an exciting area.

Dan Connors is CEO of Telltale Games. Interview by Kath Brice.

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