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Creativity first, business second, says Rockstar
Neil Long Apr 21 2008, 9:50am
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Dan Houser hits out at the men in suits as EA takeover saga rumbles on
Vice president of creativity at Rockstar Games Dan Houser also took a swipe at the way his competitors market their games, while also stressing the increasing cultural relevance of video games in an extensive interview on Variety’s games blog.
“A lot of our competitors in the game sphere – all they want to talk about is business," he told Variety. "Because they have creative guys making the games but they run it like, “how can we compete?” We want to kill that stuff in some ways. We want to have very successful launches. We’ve had successful launches before but our angle is always creativity.”
“Mainly because we’re in a position where we see games slowly gaining credibility as an art form as a medium. A lot of other people want to purely look at that from a business angle.
For those of us who spend years slaving over making the thing, the thing isn’t “We make this much money.” That isn’t interesting. The thing is, “Does it resonate with people and take an interesting place in their cultural fabric?" That’s an interesting story to us.”
“I often - without mentioning any names - think some of our big competitor titles, their marketing campaign is, “Look at our great marketing campaign!” Ours is, “Look at the game, experience the game hopefully.” Then we want to have further conversations with people once they play the game properly. But the two things we want to avoid are talking purely about this as a business -- its not, this is a creative activity.”
Take a look at the full interview here.
Comments
“Always Creativity Will win the day!”
Posted by: Dan - Apr 21, 11:31am
I have been in the meeting room when the big marketing man shows off how they are going to push the Tu$d game up the charts LOL
You only have to see a game for 5 mins to know its a winner maybe its a gift i have?
Like my old mate Tom said its hard polishing a turd! (cant be done)
I see many games that had the gift and need more time and love but the big boys need the game out for xmas...
I say Dan Houser and team is the Gem and EA is the Tu£d.
When you play a great game the little touch here and there are like a dream. COD4 has them Army of Two not even close!
I think we all have to remember the roots of games. Not the bottom line for share holders but the DREAM!
3 cheers for Rockstar!
“Re: Always Creativity Will win the day!”
Posted by: matty - Apr 21, 12:24pm
Just take a look at the movie and music industries and you can see where this is all going...
Some of the best films and songs ever were mainly because there was a story to tell, not money to make. Artists don't create works purely for profit, they express themselves and take the viewer somewhere - in a painting, a book, a song, a film or a game!
Some games studios have been following a very slippery path recently, churning out sequel after sequel, stifling creativity, encouraging developers to stick to the same formula... It's going to happen, let's just hope that some studios continue to break from the norm and keep things fresh and fun