Flagship Studios Interview

Ex-Blizzarder Bill Roper, now of Flagship Studios, answers quite a few questions about his new game development company for the folks at FlagshipX. A snippet:
Q: What changes have you observed in the video game industry as a whole in the past few years, and how are you allowing for these changes in the design of your first game?

A: The industry has really grown over the past few years, so staying up with just how big we've become as a whole is pretty crazy. It's at the point where games can make as much, or more, than major film releases, and the connectivity between our industry, film, television and comics is becoming quite tight. There has been a massive amount of consolidation in the gaming industry with bigger publishers and developers acquiring the smaller companies and teams. This means that while there is a lot more money available to create and publish games, the risks are weighed o­n a much larger corporate scale. So, just as in the film industry, you see a lot of emphasis o­n creating and maintaining franchises. New, unproven teams and ideas can, and do, get made, but that is really the exception as opposed to the rule.