Generating Resistance

Absolutely - that was part of the discussion we had on our session at Nordic Game - community building, and just the landscape of how games development has changed over the past five years. It's pretty remarkable when you consider we were talking about PlayStation 2 as the dominant console just five years ago, but now there are so many types of players in the space, as a result more people have greater entertainment options.

Now I think people won't necessarily classify themselves as 'gamers' any more than they will 'movie-goers' or 'book-readers' - it'll become as ubiquitous a term as being mindful about recycling. Everybody cares about the environment, everybody is a gamer, everybody watches movies - it's just to what degree you engage in that.

Everybody's talking about it now - part of that discussion about community was how it can act as somewhat of a buffer in terms of in effect creating free advertising by empowering them to evangelise your titles.

In terms of Insomniac it's a time of growth. We just opened our North Carolina studio, and we're growing overall in the wake of uncertain economic times. That's humbling, and exciting, and a little scary - all at the same time.

It's hard to say. You look at the latest sales forecasts, and some of the numbers were down year-on-year, but it just depends on what titles came out last year versus this year. I'm sure that you'll see headlines of people panicking, thinking that the games industry isn't recession-proof...

But I can only speak to how we're doing at Insomniac - we're mindful of the economy, and it would be insensitive not to be so. But to celebrate our 15th anniversary we all went on an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Bahamas; we opened up a studio in North Carolina; we're preparing for the launch of Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time.

So fortunately for us - knock on wood - times are good. All you can do is keep your head down and try and make a great game, and be mindful of the outside circumstances that might be beyond your control.

It's good to have a long-term, stable relationship like we do with Sony. It's nice not to be worrying about the state of a publisher's vitality or success, and know that the kind of partnership you have is open, that the dialogue you have back and forth is very honest and trustworthy, and filled with respect both ways.

It allows you to focus on making a great game, and less so on the outside conditions you can't control.