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Cool, okay.  The tape is going.  So could you tell us your name and spell it and – yeah.  
My name is [anon] [anon]; surname spelt [anon]. 
Cool.  And just to confirm for the recording, you have consented to this recording? 
I have consented to this recording and this interview. 
Thank you very much, okay.  So can you tell me a little bit about kind of what you’ve done as a profession and what you’re doing now? 
I’m currently teaching games design and production at the [ANON], the University of Applied Sciences, Breda.  Previous to that I’d worked in the games industry for 15, 16 years and including many high profile console titles such as the GTA and pretty well worked on some MMO games, some mobile free to play games as the producer and mostly generally design is the field I work in. 
Which sort of genre have you spent the most time with? 
It’d be the Third Person Action game. 
Yeah.  So that’s the GTA titles again? 
Yeah.  
Cool.  How do you think game use is affecting kind of people’s leisure time; do you think it’s changing in how it has been in those 15 years? 
The potential audience is growing from the very niche audience of young male to – especially within the mobile, we’re seeing a lot more older players and female players who are getting involved with the games and the games industry and consuming the content, so. 
Do you think that’s shifting the amount of time people are spending with television from—
Yes, definitely.  You can see the television viewing dropping off a cliff statistic wise (laughs) and it’s probably connected to the internet as well, with sort of published magazines and all that industry that has sort of been decimated over the last 10, 15 years. 
Yeah.  What do you think of serious and applied games?
I think the budgets for a lot of these make the end result quite poor from the ones I’ve seen, whereas compared to entertainment games they’re not as polished, not as entertaining. (laughs) I think there is definitely a market or economic value to them.  There is a lot of companies trying to use them effectively.  I’m not too current on applied games because obviously I’m an entertainment games developer.  It’s not a field that particularly interests me because of this (laughs) because of the quality.  I’ve worked with a company making educational games actually, to be used in the classrooms; sort of math games, [0:03:07] web pages, would that be applied, and serious games? 
That would be probably considered serious games because you’re kind of teaching new stuff. 
Yeah.  
Yeah.  How was that experience compared to the entertainment industry? 
These were very small projects for a US client who was selling them onto the schools.  And the games were used as a primer in the classrooms for the first five minutes, playing a little entertaining game around a maths subject, but each little individual game was then to get them interested in the subject and then proceeding to a normal lesson. 
Do you think it was effective at teaching? 
It wasn’t designed to be – to teach strongly.  They were more designed as a primer to get them interested in the subject in a fun, colourful way.  And then the actual main teaching would then happen in the lesson. 
Yeah.  Do you play many games yourself? 
Sometimes, when I get time. (laughs) 
What sort of things do you play? 
Well, I’m playing the latest GTA [0:04.16] a bunch of games with my kids like a particular game called Winward.  It’s a pirate game where you are driving little ships around, all multi-player I’m playing that with the kids as well. 
How is the multi-player experience?
It’s nice. 
Yeah.  Is it all sort of – are they set up for kind of a young audience as well, is that—
No, not really.  It’s a bit like [0:04.38] pirates for a more sort of procedural generated and more ship focused. 
Yeah.  What – well, we’ve got a statement here which says: games are powerful tools to change behaviours and attitudes for the better.  Do you agree with that, or not?  So games are powerful tools to change behaviours and attitudes for the better. 
Well, I have some anecdotal evidence towards that but during the release for GTA the crime wave – the crime levels in LA dropped significantly. (laughs) So. 
(laughs) Do you think that – well, there’s less people on the streets as opposed to kind of a certain age group. 
Yeah.  
But do you think that’s changed the people for the better or just distracted people? 
Well, there’s something to be said about giving people an outlet and especially like Grand Theft Auto, very realistic city environment, very violent, so it is giving an outlet for players to experiment with those sort of themes in a safe environment.  So I think having an outlet like that can be helpful. 
So is that changing behaviours and attitudes, or is that moderating impulses I suppose? 
I think the end result is yes, it is changing behaviours because those impulses are channelled into a safe environment rather than into society as a whole. 
Do you think they also – since they can change behaviour for the better, do you think they can also change games – behaviour for the worse?
Well, there’s also the other argument that children playing games aren’t getting exercise, they aren’t getting out in the fresh air and all that side of things.  So that’s a concern, that’s certainly an area that’s concerning.  Some VR games now are actually a lot more active so there are positive improvements there as well. 
Yeah.  Do you think serious and applied games are better at achieving kind of positive outlets for people for—
I don’t think serious and applied games have enough cultural impact to really have a huge effect.  And very much the serious and applied games are built for a corporate goal, so as a marketing product or for training, for internal training, all that sort of thing.  So I don’t see them actually having a wider cultural impact because they’re not consumed by the wider community. 
Yeah.  You mentioned earlier that you find their quality quite often poor.  Is that also part of what you’re talking about there? 
No, that’s purely just due to the budgets and that side of things.  No, I think their target is a very small number of people quite a lot of the time so it’d be training people in the companies about this new system or used as a marketing tool for an insurance company.  It’s very focused and it’s not having a wider impact. 
Okay.  What are kind of the most distinctive kind of new things that you’ve added to the games industry do you think, in your time? 
So one thing with the original GTA series when we moved from the top down 2D GTAs into 3D GTAs, we retained the open world sandbox in our game play but we also brought in a lot of narrative structures and narrative content into that, quite narrative like.  And then a lot of entertainment games have copied and built on those successes of that approach. 
Okay, so built a lot more kind of story into it?  
Within open world games. 
Yeah.  And are kind of the mechanical things within this that are kind of quite psychologically – well, designed to compel people to play more and to get involved with that?  Is that something you think is done kind of intuitively by designers or do you think there’s a deliberate action of like ah, we’ll make this more compelling through doing x, y, z? 
I think with the AAA industry a lot of it is led by what their developers think is fun, so what they enjoy playing.  But if you look at the mobile industry that is very much designed around the psychology of the player and how to make it more engaging for that players using real world analytical data and the AB testing. 
Do you think the serious and applied games are trying to do the same sort of thing with their work; trying to apply the same kind of principles?  Or do you think there’s different things they’re aiming for? 
I don’t have enough experience to really know what they’re trying to aim with but it would make sense if they were using a lot of the tools that the mobile gamers – the mobile games are using with the analytics and data gathering and optimisation from that point of view. 
Okay.  Talking about kind of games development as a career, as a job, as a thing to do; what are kind of the main expectations and pressures on the games developer, do you think? 
In the entertainment games industry there’s a huge pressure on workload in a lot of companies; a lot of overtime so a lot of kind of stress and overwork, burn out.  So they’re one of the bigger pressures that you find in the AAA industry, definitely.  Sort of at a personal level. 
So this is something also that you’ve experienced as well? 
Yeah.  
And would you say that’s quite typical across most of?
Yes, it used to be very typical but companies are actually starting to try and maintain a 40 hour work week and a lot of the bigger companies are moving away from that model. 
Yeah.  Do you think that sort of points towards a better future for the students that we’re teaching here? 
Yeah.  There’s also – I think it’s a fact of – that the people that were doing that in the bigger companies back then were young, single, free and single and those – as those people have grown up through – and worked in those companies they’ve then got families, so they’re no longer able to work in that way.  So obviously those people running the companies are those people so they look for more family-friendly—
Yeah.  And with your kids, do you try and control the amount of time that they play? 
Yes, definitely. 
Yeah.  Do you think – do you see your sort of friends who are parents doing the same sort of thing, or are you much stricter than others, do you think? 
I don’t really have that much experience.  So we based it on my son, if he plays too long he gets a bit grumpy and that kind of thing so, you know, it’s just based on how we see the results of them playing too long. 
But is that different with different games, do you think, or is just all games? 
Yeah.  It’s generally all games.  If he plays in the afternoon for too long he gets a bit grumpy. 
(laughs) How old is he? 
Five. 
Five?  Cool.  When you were working games do you recall intentionally addressing issues such as gender, minority representation, political culture or other serious or socially educational topics in your work? 
The Grand Auto Series is very much a parody of – and you do touch on a lot of those issues, purely as an entertainment parody and commentary on those things rather than actually with an intention of improving any of those situations.  But on some level, just making these things – people more aware of these things can have a positive impact. 
Do you think that GTA succeeded in making people more aware and having a positive impact? 
Well, it wasn’t the goal. (laughs) But it was purely as an entertainment, a parody, comedy.  And I think it succeeded on that goal. 
I think you’re probably right.  (laughs) Have you ever deliberately been anti-social in your games themes? 
Every single player game is inherently anti-social. (laughs) 
Hmm.  Interesting theory; why do you say that? 
Because you’re on your own. 
That’s the thing, as an activity, that single player thing.  Do you think the thematic structure of it, the content of it, do you think it’s - have you ever deliberately gone, this will make people more aggressive or whatever?  Or is that something that is a concern when making the games, do you think? 
No. 
So people don’t think about that? 
Think about it, and it’s – the evidence, obviously I’ve looked into it, the evidence shows it might have a short spike on aggression.  But actually on a longer term basis violent games generally reduce aggression. 
And is that something that was looked at when making it, or is that something that you kind of looked at afterwards? 
The GTA series particularly was – had a lot of controversy around it, so it was more of a – after the fact that when there’s controversy and the media are saying one thing and then you look at the research and it actually says something else, so. 
Yeah.   I mean all the research have said is – seen as inconclusive.  The thing is it hasn’t been disproven either but it hasn’t been proven. 
But you can’t disprove it. (laughs) 
Yeah.  Exactly, so we’ll see what happens in the future with that.  So, yeah.  When we sort of look at the future what do you think are kind of the possibilities and challenges of games?  Or what do you see expanding in the future?
Obviously the settings, the characters, the environments are becoming a lot more realistic; combine that with VR it’s becoming very much more immersive.  So that will bring its own challenges, not least from a development budget point of view but also from how much effect these experiences will have on the individual.  Some horror games for example on VR are a lot scarier. (laughs) 
Yeah.  I mean do you think that – and as you said the kind of social concerns weren’t a key topic while developing.  Do you think they will have to be in the future, if horror games are too scary in VR?  And do you think people are going to try and work with that? 
At the end of the day the market will decide and so obviously an economic goal is to make these successful entertainment products. So something that is harming a player or is uncomfortable for a player will not maximise its commercial success.  So the market forces are at play here in many ways. 
Yeah.  And if, when it gets into that difficult cycle though of like if something is very compelling but the compulsion is harmful in itself, you could see that a game could still be successful and then still harmful. 
Yes.  Well, there’s a lot of these elements in mobile games.  It’s very – the compulsion loop and the similar emotional response that gambling has and so obviously these things are always going to be present and some people are more susceptible to these things than others.  And like any addiction it needs to be dealt with.  Blaming a casino for somebody’s addiction, it’s not the casino’s fault that person is addicted because many people go into a casino and gamble and not be addicted to it.  So it’s very much on an individual basis. 
Yeah.  And you mentioned that kind of the realism and the accuracy of games; the characters, the settings and stuff like that, is probably going to increase.  Is that something that – do you think that’s also going to have like an impact on how people think about the social awareness or the way that culture responds to games? 
If we talk – specifically say, the topic of violence, if it’s cartoony and make believe and not very realistic then it would have less impact than if that violence is very realistic looking. Obviously it would have a much, much higher emotional impact the more realistic it gets, so. 
Well, sorry to go back to GTA again but obviously that one has gone a lot more realistic.  Do you think there’s a point where it would be sensible for it to kind of go less realistic again?
It depends on the market.  Obviously GTA is a title aimed at adults.  If you wanted to do a similar sort of game play for a younger market then it would have to be less visually real, it’d be more cartoony to make it more palatable for that market.  
So I mean the Simpsons for example did a sort of version of GTA, didn’t they?  Yeah.  
Yeah.  
And I think that’s obviously an important distinction really, is that GTA is made for adults.  But how much thought was there about thinking of a younger audience or is it always kind of 18 plus all the way? 
It was always 18 plus, yeah.  
Okay, cool. Yeah.  We kind of covered that.  We’ve actually covered quite a lot. (laughs) As a sort of sideline there, we talked about kind of mobile games and compulsion.  But what are your opinions as to things like free to play? 
Free games is great. (laughs) And there is – free to play, so you’re playing a game for free and then you’re purchasing additional things within the game, can be a very rewarding experience if those things that you’re purchasing in the game are things that you generally want and it’s a viable business model.  The problem is a lot of the games do use the gambling style mechanics to generate an addiction to try and maximise the revenue from those players.  So done well with the right game, I don’t think free to play is a problem at all.  But like anything it can be used irresponsibly. 
So do you think free to play kind of encourages that use of addictive mechanics to – because of the nature of needing to get money out of the players? 
There are many successful games that don’t use those mechanics but they actually – they’ve made quality games, entertaining games in their own right.  And you’ll find that the games which are less entertaining use those mechanics to engage an audience rather than making an entertaining game in its own right. 
In your time developing games did you ever look at kind of academic theories or academic papers or anything like that while you were making them, or is that something you’ve only really engaged with a bit more when you’ve come to university to teach? 
Not necessarily academic papers but generally at least towards the start of a project, there’s a big research phase so we’d be finding about the setting or see what’s similar – similar settings, situations that could add to the experience of the games.  So very much at a research stage.  But it’s never been – historically never been that much directly useful, academic literature, relating to games.  As I say, I think it’s a newer phenomenon.  When we were working on GTA there was very little useful information from the academic field. 
Yeah.  What needs to change to improve that, do you think, in your opinion? 
There are a lot of interesting fields that could be explored; obviously psychology is one big area that is useful and can be applied to games; if that research is focused on the psychology within games, entertainment games, that could really enhance that because previously the psychology side of things is taking unrelated to games, psychology research papers and trying to apply those theories to games.  So something that connects those two too would be very useful.  
There’s obviously a lot of technical research that could be used to enhance games which, you know, like ways of doing algorithms or (laughs) rendering, so. 
The clever things that the programmes do for us, yeah.  
Yeah.  
The last kind of thing here, as you say games have kind of increased in the number of players.  I mean how much do you think that games are becoming relevant to understanding a culture or society? 
Well, economically the games industry is bigger than the movie industry and the print industry so obviously it’s a massive cultural influence and there are more and more people playing games, the market’s getting bigger and bigger.  And it’s also cross borders, cross culturally and worldwide products.  
Yeah.  And obviously we see that there is – I think there’s only one sort of set up developer properly in Africa at the moment in the entire continent.  I think there were a few little indie ones starting up, but do you think we’re going to see more of that in the upcoming decades? 
Definitely.  Obviously China is very big.  There’s lots of developers in say, Eastern Europe and Russia and India, mainly because the cost of making games is so high, you need to find more economically efficient ways of developing games using the countries that historically perhaps didn’t make games.  Especially outsourcing companies, they’re gonna be huge in those countries. 
Do you think with those companies, they’re going to start producing games which are more culturally referencing their own grouping and their own kind of ethnic background? 
Yes – well, up to a point.  You’ve got to remember that developing games is very expensive, so developing a game for a country such as Russia and targeting Russia wouldn’t be beneficial from an economic point of view because there’s just not a big enough market there to generate the revenues needed to create a AAA game for example.  But currently in China, and especially in the mobile market and the online gaming, there’s a massive industry of Chinese companies making games for the Chinese market and generating billions in revenue. 
Do you – do those games ever kind of translate across well to the West, do you think? 
The companies aren’t really focusing on the West on the whole so they are making them for their own audience.  So a lot of western companies who try to penetrate that market have not had the level of success that the Chinese companies have had.  But the thing about China is it’s a massive market so it’s capable of sustaining that many developers that are targeting their home market. 
So I suppose with the kind of increasing living standards in India and the growing middle class there, that’s a potential market of – not the same size as China but – [it put a good fight up 0:25:57]. (laughs) 
Yeah.  It’s a lot more fractured I think but they seem to be having a lot of struggles economically recently (laughs) with the withdrawal of cash currencies and stuff—
Yeah it’s a complex market that one. yeah.  
Yeah.  
[anon], I think we shall wrap it up there.  Thank you very much for talking to use and, yeah.  Thank you.  
Cool thank you.