Broken Sword legend speaks!

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VideoGamer.com: You've mentioned digital distribution as something that's becoming more important.

CC: But I've also said that probably more important is the fact that it's disrupting the status quo, the value chain that has existed for 20 years. That in many ways is more interesting because publishers offer services that developers don't have, they have access to funds. I'm not anti publisher in the least. I'm working with Ubisoft at the moment on a title. It's great. They bring an awful lot of knowledge. They bring expertise to judge the game. They give very good feedback. It's great to have a good partner. But in many ways because the games that we write could be sold in digital format there is that uncertainty.

VideoGamer.com: Do you see a future where digital distribution leads to no more publishers, maybe no more retailers?

CC: I think it's going to be an awfully long time before there's no more retailers. Certainly those games selling for £40 that cost $100 million to develop, they're going to go through retail aren't they? Part of the problem is a retailer, they talk about Best Buy or whoever, the fact that you have X number of slots, I think they've got 40 slots on DS. So what happens to that 41st game and the 42nd and the 43rd? Clearly these big retailers say we don't care. But they're always going to go for Kung Fu Panda aren't they? They're always going to go for the obvious ones because that is what they know they will sell and they can rely on and is no risk. So it cuts out a lot of innovative products. What digital distribution allows, as well as bypassing retailers which is a different matter, is the ability to offer choice. What's really exciting is it creates an indie scene among consumers who are very happy to go and buy their games digitally. Then they expect to do it for the fraction of the price, they expect to pay £5 or $5 rather than £40 or $40. But if you look at the maths the retailer's taking 40%, the publisher gives a percentage so in the end the developer's getting a percentage of a percentage. They can afford to sell an awful lot less if they go directly.

But more exciting than that, cheaper games that are targeting a specific demographic that could never have been produced. Skins, what a great programme. I'm sure you're never going to produce a game that sells for £40, £30 that is based on the Skins franchise but there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to produce a very targeted game, targeted at that audience but quite clearly teenagers and, is it even early 20s? I don't know. I think that Skins is probably 14 to 18 to 19. A small demographic. They are ripe for that sort of indie scene where it's cutting edge, it's about sex, drugs, relationships, really fun that could never be mainstream. And that's what I think is particularly exciting about what can happen with digital downloads now.

VideoGamer.com: It's interesting that you say people expect games to be cheaper through digital distribution. We've seen that games are the same price as in the shop when you buy them on Steam and through EA's Download Store for example. Shouldn't they be cheaper?

CC: I would find that a very difficult question to answer to be quite honest, particularly since if you buy it at a retailer you can sell it on or part exchange it, whereas if you get it through digital distribution you can't. I can't answer that. I have no idea.

VideoGamer.com: Is digital distribution something you, from a Revolution Software point of view, are most interested in going forward? Does it make things easier?

CC: It's a mix. At the moment we're working with Ubisoft on a project and I'm delighted. I've really enjoyed the relationship and it adds an awful lot. I have worked with certain publishers who frankly have taken the lion share of the revenue and offered no value to the project whatsoever. They have been in it purely for the money. Purely they've been in that position because they've produced the funds and beyond that it's actually been a very negative relationship. So I would say that it's disruption and the fact that there isn't an absolute route that you have to follow that I think is of enormous benefit and it means that publishers probably are taking the fact that developers have a choice to redefine how the relationship works. Make it a much more equitable one. I think you'd have to be a very brave person to say it was not highly inequitable and has been for a good number of years. Developers shouldn't whinge about it; it's just the facts, market economics. The economic landscape has now changed. There's no reason why it shouldn't be much more of a partnership.

VideoGamer.com: For you personally the Broken Sword series is the one that everyone is looking to the next iteration. There is a petition online for a return to the series. How's that worked out?

CC: The petition for the DS was extraordinarily flattering. I was rather a little bit miffed because somebody wrote about it and said we'd organised it.

VideoGamer.com: That's the impression I got.

CC: Where did that come from?

VideoGamer.com: I saw it on the Broken Sword Wikipedia page.

CC: (Laughs). That's right it was. It's considered very rude to go in and actually change your own entry isn't it? It was absolutely not anything to do with me and the first I heard of it was when my friend Simon Byron sent me an email saying you really ought to be doing this, look. It was something that was brought to my attention well after it had gone up and it was absolutely nothing to do with us whatsoever. One of the great things actually is we have a very vibrant forum, we allow people to say what they want. They're often very rude about our games. And it's very interesting to read through but we do not in any way ever rig these things, ever. And the funny thing is that people aren't stupid. If you do go and rig these things and plant people to go in, people know. They know. And what's really valuable is I read through these forums and obviously it's great when people are nice but actually it's when people are rude that you learn a lot more, so actually you really do want forums where people are both positive and negative because you learn a lot more from the negative comments. They're not necessarily right and you don't necessarily agree with them and you don't take any notice if you disagree but at least you're being offered an opinion by somebody who cares enough to go on to the forum and actually write this stuff. I always find that really flattering.

Ultimately from my perspective the most exciting thing is not money, it's the fact that actually we produce games that people really care about, and you could never ask for more than that. That's fantastically flattering. So we do take our fans very seriously. But we don't interfere with them whatsoever. That's probably because we don't have the resource to but it's actually worked out very well.

You talk about Broken Sword. Beneath a Steel Sky we gave away for free. Lure of the Temptress we gave away for free. Somebody suggested it was a brilliant piece of marketing because it was given free it became one of the biggest downloads on the Linux systems. I wish I could say that actually it was premeditated. It wasn't premeditated at all. It was on the basis that the ScummVM people had written their emulator and a game that you simply couldn't play any more was actually now available in the public domain. It just seemed really churlish to then go and try and charge for it or to try and stop people playing. So we gave it away. And those brands are really well known know because so many people played them. So we're actually in a great position to be honest, not through planning necessarily.

We've got Broken Sword 2.5 which is being produced by this German group of guys. We're giving them a little support but not very much. But the only thing I've turned around and said is they can't sell it. Because if they sell it that crosses a line. But beyond that they're welcome to use the IP, use our characters etc. That's probably quite a contrast to other publishers, but you can understand that. There's a very small group of us and we all make a decision. We'll sit there, I'll have a coffee and say how do we do this and we'll make a decision. Obviously if you're LucasArts then you've got lawyers, shareholders, George Lucas to talk to and it all becomes very complicated. The fact that we're a little bit hippyish and laid back and don't really care provided a line hasn't been crossed, has probably stood us in fairly good stead.

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