Sign of the Hines

Honestly, I still feel like we're the same company. We may be doing more games, more often but it still feels like the same company because we haven't changed our philosophy about how we talk to consumers, how we market, doing things for the right reasons, holding a product if it's not ready, not throwing in features just for features' sake. I think continue to be smart about the way that we do it, and as a result we continue to be successful, and hopefully that will continue.

Absolutely. I definitely think the right game done the right way can still find a very large audience in that market. That's our belief, it continues to be our belief, and I think that the project those guys are working on fits that description well.

I don't know if there's been a definite answer on that yet. I don't know if the successes and failures of anybody else necessarily translates to the next game, the next product. What works for one game might not work for one game and vice versa - what didn't work for one game might work very well for another. It just depends on how good your game is, what is your game, how big an audience do you have for it, your feature set or any of that stuff.

There really isn't one, if I'm being perfectly blunt. And there really hasn't ever been one, at least since I started in 1999. ZeniMax and Bethesda for the most part are kinda, sorta the same thing. It's not like there's a ZeniMax headquarters somewhere with a bunch of people who are doing one thing and a bunch of people who are doing another.

I talk directly to the chairman and CEO of ZeniMax all the time, because they're right across the hall from me. We have meetings together all the time - biz-dev meetings and development meetings to get an update on all the products. It's not the Bethesda people and the ZeniMax people, it's just all of us, one team working together to run the business and do a good job. In terms of the line, there really isn't one. This is a group of folks who are primarily focused on one thing, which is making great games and doing that the best way possible.

Exactly. I technically work for Bethesda Softworks, but all the people I work with in finance and legal technically work for ZeniMax. But we all work for ZeniMax and we all work for Bethesda. The name on my cheque is probably ZeniMax, but it's just semantics - and that is, I think, a very good and healthy thing because there's no competing interest. It's all just whatever we gotta do to do the best.

Yeah, technically you're right. Technically ZeniMax is the company that owns Bethesda and iD and Arkane and all those folks, but at the end of the day, for practical purposes all that matters is Bethesda are the guys who are publishing all of these. Who owns them is a corporate matter; Arkane is working with Bethesda, Machine Games are working with Bethesda, Bethesda Games is working with Bethesda.

I think we continue to look for opportunities. We don't think 'we're looking to acquire X.' Like the iD thing, it was just 'we want to work with you guys -we like your games, we like what you do, how can we work together?'

And it sort of evolved over time to the point where both sides were saying 'maybe it makes better sense for us to just forces?' So whether it plays out one way or another down the road, and we work together like we're doing with Human Head or we acquire them like we did Arkane, who in the world knows? We continue to look for smart developers that make cool games that we respect, or are smart people that we want to work with. If we acquire them because that makes the best business sense, okay.

I think, again, the way we have gone about it and approached it is very different than those other folks, all of whom tend to be publicly-traded companies, which is just a whole different kettle of fish.