Interview with Glenn Entis

[alanschu]

Love them or hate them, Electronic Arts is THE big name player in today's video game world. Gamespy has an interview with him about his take on the video game market as it makes the transition into the upcoming consoles.

 

Check it out

 

 

I couple of things that I noticed:

 

The next thing that I personally think is going to be huge is high definition. We know that more pixels will make people want to buy more games. It's the resolution. It's the color fidelity. It's the contrast. It's also the peripheral vision: 16x9

 

While I like nice new graphics as much as the next person, I'm a little cautious about this statement. He states matter-of-factly that "more pixels will make more people want to buy more games." I fear this supports my suspicions that games are going to have even more graphical focus, which is going to require huge art teams and require big bux! Hopefully the smaller developers don't get left in the dust.

 

As a boon to the PC side, I think niche markets are easily exploited in the PC market, which is where I see smaller developers allocated more of their resources.

 

We're looking forward to working on all of the next gen systems. There's interesting things we'll be able to do with all of them. From my perspective, I'm a graphics guy, so anything that's going to get better graphics and higher presentation of graphics I'm looking forward to.

 

Again, I see "I'm a graphics guy." As someone that greatly values gameplay over graphics, this worries me. With increased focus on graphics, production values are going to climb even higher.

 

 

 

And here's some interesting stuff that I bet Epiphany would enjoy, given a previous discussion. It relates more towards the PS3 and the XBOX 360.

 

Sony will have more processing power. There's no question about that. Then the arguments are about how easy it will be for people to get to and use it. The extra processing power will help.

 

Now I'm sure some people will go on about conspiracies and how EA is in bed with Sony, but I honestly cannot see why EA would have any vested interest in playing Sony's marketing hype game for them. But then you could say "Entis is just a suit, he doesn't know anything." But I would assume that given his position at the largest video game entity on the planet, the man is probably a little smart. I would suspect that his opinions about the power of the processor would be reflective of the people that report him's opinion.

 

I think a lot of what we've been talking about in terms of dynamics is that physical simulations, fluid dynamics and to a certain extent AI. Some of the AI may actually end up using floating points, especially when you're using statistical AI and processing. Floating point is going to help all that.

 

This line is actually part of the same paragraph as the above, and actually immediately follows my previous quote.

 

I guess this is a bit of a "payback" of sorts, but I just thought I'd mention that floating point can help with AI. It's not just logic, especially when a robust AI is going to be utilizing statistical measures of its probability distributions to help determine a likely, yet dynamic course of action. The distributions are utilized to determine the probabily of n events, and the dynamic nature of this means that given the exact same situation, the AI is not going to be bound by the same decision. As the game state changes, the distibution function is going to have to fluctuate to accomodate the changes. This is all a stastical analysis and will require floating point calculations. Given a large amount of units that all have independent AIs, it's possible that it might even take a sizeable chunk of progressing power.

 

 

Anyways, rant over.

 

Discuss what you think about the interview, or if you don't care to read it, just your views about the evolution of video gaming into the next 5 years.

 

 

 

EDIT: In related news, there's mention that EA will be distributing Half-Life 2 for the XBox.

[Mordrian]

Hrm... yeah, well, of all the quotes, only the last one seemed kinda interesting. Man, that guy is all about graphics, no wonder I haven't been interested in a EA game since Fifa98! :D I'm interested though, in how well the developers will manage to handle the multi-threaded processors. Sure, no doubt the graphics will look astounding and all, but within a month of playing those new games, you'll already be used to it. It will be fun to see what they will make of the new power for physics. Certainly there will be several new gameplays created.

[Guest Fishboot]

Again, I see "I'm a graphics guy."  As someone that greatly values gameplay over graphics, this worries me.  With increased focus on graphics, production values are going to climb even higher.

 

Well, he is the "Chief Visual Officer" (Geordi la Forge?). I would suspect that to be a position held in the main by graphics guys.

[Volourn]

Geez. Like Fishboot stated, why are you guys harping on this fellow's graphic love. He is - once again - the Chief Visuals Officer. It's not his job to be concerned with story, controls, or anything else. It's all about graphics for him as it should be. Geez.

[SteveThaiBinh]

If better graphics persuades the designers that they can have more realistic characters with emotions and depth, then I'm all for it. In a sense, better graphics should force the designers to up their game, as they will find it harder to get away with poorly-written and unbelievable characters and stories. I think this is what the guy is getting at in the interview.

[metadigital]

I think it is an obvious position for the largest producer/developer in the market to press their advantage, namely: graphics. You said it yourself, better graphics costs BIG BUX. That is their discriminating feature in the market, their size gets them the leverage to add super-graphics, cheaper than anyone else.

 

So he is just towing the company line, using the Microsoft Propaganda technique: hoping that if EA say it long and often enough, people will believe it and be forced to spend more than they can afford on an area of the game that EA has a natural advantage.

 

I think you are forgeting to use your marketing filter to dsicriminate the boatloads of BS he his heaping on top of the reader ...

[Morgoth]

No surprise you always hear the big publishers lately bragging around with big words like "Next Generation", "$20-30 million development costs", "Hollywood actors" and that kind of BS... Money's certainly not the limitation factor for EA, so no wonder he's bragging around with "High Definition" and "More Pixels, more sale". However, I think that's just a cheap attempt to scare the not-so-rich publishers/developers out of the market. Many unreasonable publishers/devs who jump onto that bandwagon have mostly to deal with finacial difficulties, which makes them poorer, but not necessarily smarter for future endeavors.

Anyway, when I just look at what Piranha Bytes (with those 15 people they are) are doing with Gothic 3, I really have to scratch my head about what's all about this "OMG it takes $20-30 million or it will suck!!!" nonsense. Gothic3, for comparison, does not look worse than any other Triple-A games coming out for Next Gen hardware, is even 3 times bigger than Gothic2 (so much for 20 hours games a must today...tsk), and doesn't need a motion picture license to be a commercial success. Gothic2, for comparison, only sold over 100k units worldwide, but was declared as a commercial success and motivated PB to work on Gothic 3.

Many publishers/devs still need to be enlightened that not everything must be produced

[alanschu]

I didn't consider Chief Visual Officer to be the "graphics dude," but to be someone that helps coordinate the overall "vision" of the companies goals.

 

I could be wrong though.

[6 Foot Invisible Rabbit]

Its EA therefore irrelevant.

[mkreku]

Gothic 3 for teh win!!1!

[EnderAndrew]

This guy is in charge of visuals. Ofcourse he is going to be interested in graphics.

[alanschu]

Is that what Chief Visual Officer means?

 

 

Like I said, I figured it'd be the dude that creates the "company vision" for the future and whatnot.

[EnderAndrew]

I don't know for sure, but that is my guess.

 

And it's not like I'm ever wrong. :darque:

[alanschu]

You surely must mean :volourn:

[metadigital]

Is that what Chief Visual Officer means?

 

 

Like I said, I figured it'd be the dude that creates the "company vision" for the future and whatnot.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do they even have a dude in charge of "company vision" outside of hippy-wierdo-organic-tree-hugging firms?

[SteveThaiBinh]

Do they even have a dude in charge of "company vision" outside of hippy-wierdo-organic-tree-hugging firms?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I don't know about a person in charge, but most modern companies have a 'vision statement', garbled nonsense excreted by management and given to long-suffering employees. Hey, I wonder what Obsidian's vision statement is.

[EnderAndrew]

"To make Bioware sequels"

[metadigital]

Oh, yeah: it helps to know the Vision of the company your applying for a job with (they normally take quite a bit of practise to remember, as they are all businesspeak occluded clauses with no relation to each other, like someone in marketing was trying to write haiku on acid ...