Exclusive Interview: American McGee has seen the future of gaming, and it begins in China
You’ve been in Shanghai now for a while. Can you talk about how you’ve seen things evolve over there?
It’s seven years that I’ve been there. It’s been an incredible journey just to be witness to this revolution across every single facet of society there, whether it be finance, sexuality, gaming, entertainment, or whatever. It’s like a whole world that’s opening up not only internally for itself as a society, but also to the rest of the world. It’s been really amazing to witness.
When it come to games, can you talk about how you have progressed from developing hardcore PC titles to games that are for the mainstream?
The funny things is, when I went to China, one of the big things was that I wanted to be closer to what was, and is, the largest free-to-play online market in the world. I thought by virtue of being in the neighborhood, it would be a lot easier for my development team to also get involved in that business. What we had though, for the last five years, was a great struggle of trying to separate ourselves from Western development and this idea that we are Western developers. It’s only been in the last year via investment funding and a group of partners who are very much believers in online and free-to-play, that we’ve been able to finally be able to break away. It also happens to coincide with the Western market, in general, now starting to make a serious move towards social online.
See the full story here.
