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Editor's note: InstantAction is intriguing, but I don't know much about it. I do now, thanks to Mark's interview with InstantAction CEO Louis Castle, one of the minds behind the great Westwood Studios and Command and Conquer. I'm always interested when someone with Castle's background has something to say. -Jason
If you've learned anything about me, it's that I'm a bit of a skeptic. Nothing makes this quality shine more than a new technology that appears ready to overtake what I've become used to: DVDs to Blu-ray, cartridges to CDs — I've always been one to hold off until I've seen a good example and been able to try it on my own.
Louis Castle is a big figure in the gaming industry; Founder of Westwood studios –the company responsible for the Command and Conquer series– and a major player throughout his career at Virgin Interactive and EA (both of which owned Westwood and its employees), he has been through most of gaming's evolutionary stages.
I sat down with Mr. Castle while he was at the recent LOGIN conference in Seattle (and I was, sadly, at my home) this week to talk to him about InstantAction, the new company he's joined up with, and their plans for digital domination. InstantAction allows publishers to distribute games — including major releases — in browsers.
If this platform goes off and works as well as it looks and sounds, this could be the example of digital distribution that I've been waiting for.
Mark Whitney: You were a founder of Westwood studios and until recently were a part of EA Los Angeles.
Louis Castle: I see it a bit of a different way: I founded Westwood with [Brett] Sperry in 1985 and was with that company and its successive employers and owners up until this June. From Virgin to EA, I’ve been with one company but held a number of jobs: CEO, CFO, CIO, art director, technical director, etc. Lots of different things, but all within the different companies that owned us. It was difficult to leave EA, but I was hoping to do something different.
MW: What attracted you to InstantAction and Garage Games, especially after working with the same guys for so long.
LC: First of all, the competency. The one part of the business I didn’t have as much experience with was online services and distribution. I felt strongly while I was at EA that things needed to change dramatically from a fundamental level so that the industry and the business could take the next step. I had planned, after leaving EA, to actually focus on social and mobile gaming and actually see how it works. The opportunity actually kind of fell into my lap — to be able to work with a company that is world class in all of the same technology and understanding that I wanted to focus on.
I loved the technology they had and wanted to share it with the industry. That’s how I was taken in; I wanted to be the guy who helped share the great ideas the company had and hopefully bring something that would take us away from the brick-and-mortar stores.
MW: We’ve heard from various websites what they think InstantAction is. In your own words, what is InstantAction?
LC: Well, InstantAction is a process — more of a series of technologies — [that] allows publishers to deliver games anywhere and everywhere it’s possible. It allows people to sample them for free, and pay for them either all at once or incrementally instead of having a big monetary gate. All of those features; instantly playable, how long they’re free, everything about it and when they pay, how they pay, is all controlled by the publishers.
The system allows them to do everything I’ve said and more, but the publishers may not want to use certain parts. In other words, if one of our partners has a smaller game, they may not want to use the Gaikai, which allows users to stream games directly from servers. These games then run only on your broadband service and use absolutely none of your system’s resources feed to mask the download. There’s no point; the games will load fast enough without it. Some people will want to have a full price point before they pay, and that’s their choice. Others will say, “Hey I’m fine with the 30-minute trial, but then I want a full price point and don’t want a pay-to-play service.” I’m really looking forward to seeing exclusive titles that utilize all of our features because I really think it will change the way people perceive how games can be delivered.
MW: You’re kind of walking into a lively den. Companies like Steam, OnLive, and Impulse have staked their claim on this digital battleground already, and in the case of Steam and Impulse, have been very successful. So what I really want to know is: Why should I choose your system?
LC: All of those companies are a single technology, for the most part. Every one of them has a place and a part of the market that is very interesting, but I think the issue for me is that each of them has a large number of users where the experience is not fully satisfying. So what I’m trying to do is put together a suite of technologies and treat technology more like commodities that can be swapped in and out much like e-commerce systems — virtual currencies, commodities, things like that — where new technologies and new approaches come around, and you just use the new approach because it’s a better approach. So that’s what the difference is: All of the systems you mention are all specific technologies aimed at a very specific, target experience, and what we’re trying to do is wrap a lot of different, easily interchangeable technologies into a smooth user interface.
MW: What about things like offline play?
LC: Definitely. There are a lot of services that are not available yet, but are very close. Things like the Gaikai system and the rent-to-own features may not have been available in the first release of Monkey Island but they will all be available.
MW: If things like offline play are allowed, what are your — and subsequently InstantAction’s — thoughts on digital-rights management? Will publishers have a choice in having it in their games?
LC: I guess my response is that the purpose of DRM is really to try and curb piracy. When you think about piracy most people are trying to prevent it by just saying “no” and trying to stop it. My experience is that if you build better mousetraps, you get smarter mice. So the interesting thing about our platform is that it doesn’t seek to prevent people from pirating, for lots of technical reasons it does a good job at making it more difficult but that’s not really the point. The point is to make games shareable and free for some period of time that is reasonable for people to get a good taste of it and then allow them to incrementally pay for it at that time.
So by the time you’ve found the game, downloaded it quickly, played it instantaneously, invested a half-hour to 45 minutes into it, and saved the game a couple of times, we say, “Now, look, you can pay a little bit and keep playing more,” and at that time you have to decide if it’s worth a couple bucks or whatever the publisher sets as its price to keep playing and enjoying your experience, or will you go waste your time downloading it? You’ll have to start all over, find the game, download it, make sure it's a good copy that has all of the features and is connected, etc…. I think most people will keep paying the small amount of money for the use and it won’t be like you’re wasting your money — it all goes towards the retail price of the game. I believe that, even though there will always be people who will steal stuff, that if you approach it from benefit side, you get a much better response. It’s the carrot, not the stick.
But on the stick side our technology works in such a way that it’s possible the game will never entirely be on someone’s system. So it’s difficult for a pirate to make a complete image and therefore difficult to steal. But that doesn’t mean we’re throwing a gauntlet down saying “please come and try to break our system”; we’re saying “look, we give you what is necessary to play the game” and that, by its nature, makes it difficult to steal. It’s much like an MMO, where the challenge of stealing it doesn’t outweigh the benefit of doing it.
Continue reading for Castle's opinions on his system being a wet dream for reviewers, spam, affiliate programs, a Linux version, and Apple's iPad.
MW: So this makes your system a reviewer's and a blogger’s wet dream: the possibility to showcase the actual games that you’re reviewing or talking about to further prove your point and make it more interactive.
LC: [Laughs] We like that part! But it’s not just for reviewers and bloggers. The thought has been for a very long time on the Web that the goal is to take eyeballs and send them to where you want them to be. If you think about that, it’s not the natural path of the technology. The Web is meant to be a distributive technology — it’s why things like Akumai services and YouTube do so well. In a way, for the longest time, we’ve been fighting the natural tendencies to let things spread and if you just let go — kind of like a leap of faith — if you just let go of the idea that they have to be on your, the publisher’s, website, the benefit for having a game live on the website it was found on is huge. It’s good for the game, good for the publishers, and good for the people talking about your game and showcasing it. Now you have readers staying on people’s websites and playing the publisher’s games for a much longer time.
MW: Are you afraid of the games, once they’re flooding every website and window, becoming the new spam?
LC: No, they would embed the videos and pictures. It’s about friction points and “how do I get to my content. If I’m reading about a game somewhere on a website that is about games, why not just have the games there? It’s good for the person who has the website, it’s good for the gamers, and good for the people who make the game. It’s very different.
MW: Let’s say, further down the road, that a website has been showcasing your games frequently. Will the possibility exist of an affiliate program with those websites, like what Amazon and other companies have?
LC: Publishers will have a black-label and a white-label system. So they can control what websites are actually allowed to have their games on them. So it’s completely possible that they could strike a deal or have us cut a deal with the websites. It’s cooperative; we both have to agree that it makes sense. We wouldn’t allow, for obvious reasons, certain material on family websites. But other than the obvious things like that, it’s a commerce decision as to if you want the ubiquity or not. And we’ve had some publishers very adamant that they would only want their games on very specific sites. And so we’ll be very clear with the audience that, just because it’s an InstantAction game, it doesn’t necessarily mean it can be embedded on your site; that’s completely, to an extent, up to the publisher.
We were lucky that Lucasarts saw it our way and said “put Monkey Island anywhere.” [Laughs] It was much easier to showcase the technology that way and it made the game a great opening title.
MW: Other than Lucasarts, do you have any other publishers who have already jumped on board?
LC: Nothing that we are ready to announce yet, but trust me, the second we are, it will very quickly be announced.
MW: You have a PC version, and a Mac version is ready to go soon. Does InstantAction have plans for a Linux version?
LC: We don’t have a specific one right now but there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work. Clearly we don’t have any content right now for the Linux side of things but that’s down the road and certainly nothing about the way we use our technology will prevent it from working.
MW: Do you have plans for InstantAction for Apple’s iPad or other tablets?
LC: Yeah, we’re looking at that. Obviously, it’s an important platform, and we currently already do
MW: Would you see yourselves as a work-around for app stores on these tablets and devices?
LC: Yeah, you could, I guess. But Apple doesn’t want that to happen, and we want to be good business partners with them. We certainly don’t want to try and pull a fast one.
Continue on to read about PC modifications, Castle's thoughts on the demo, the capability of running blockbuster titles, launch date and library, and the possibility of achievements
MW: One concern is something that has kept the PC community so strong: mods. Will the games still have that capability?
LC: Well, it’s ultimately up to the publisher, but there’s no reason why not. The system allows for local file storage, and the nice thing is that it’s stored locally and on the cloud, so people can make modifications and it will be echoed. So you can make your own version of the game and then log on to somebody else’s system and play that version of the game. We’ve had talks like that with a number of developers, and there’s nothing to prevent people from allowing them.
MW: Do you think the way your system introduces a game by playing the first 30 minutes will kill demos?
LC: A demo is like a movie trailer. You show the best parts in order to give players something they would like. In a lot of ways demos and trailers are really big liars; you play the demo and love it, and when you pick up the game, you realize those were the only good parts and say, “Well, that was a big waste of my money”. But we’re allowing publishers to do it however they like. They can show you as little and as much as they would like, and we’re hoping they create content that will grab the player and that the market will decide what the best way is to go about it.
MW: Is the ultimate goal of this system to carry graphically heavy titles like Crysis and other big games?
LC: The system was designed specifically to deliver premium content through a browser to anyone who is capable of running it. And if you don’t, there is the fallback of the Gaikai system to still allow you to play it. It offers both solutions. My viewpoint is that we will have a large number of consumers who will want to play it natively on their machine using 100 percent of the power that they bought with that machine. Now, there will be people who don’t want to spend a ton of money on those large systems, and for them we’ll allow to play on a per-use basis. We support both models.
To that extent as well, we’re not an exclusive platform; anyone who wants to make a game for InstantAction can, and while there will be perks that exclusive publishers will receive — something we hope to showcase soon — you can bring your game over from any other platform.
MW: Are there any dates for a big, official launch?
LC: Well, right now a lot of the publishers we’re working with want to do closed trials to actually test the system and make sure we can handle their games. So we certainly don’t have any problem with doing that; I think it’s important. So I don’t have a date; that’s up to the publishers. As soon as they give us the green light, we’ll be good to go. It’s a bit more difficult to predict because it isn’t our own content, so we’re relying on the developers being completely ready.
The launch will be an incremental launch, and every title won’t be flooding the market all at once. It’s a big risk, and their games are their crown jewels; we want it to work perfectly and they want it to as well.
MW: Will publishers receive the full set of tools to use at launch?
LC: Definitely, absolutely. We will be happy to work with any publisher on our full suite of features and more as we add them into the system. What’s nice here is that we can constantly fix things on the game if something goes wrong through its lifespan. There’s no sense of “upgrading” when there’s a new version it will be ready to go for both the publisher and the players.
MW: Most platforms and games now have achievements or accolades of some sort; will InstantAction feature them as well?
LC: Absolutely. The system’s backend is already built to handle them, and the publishers can add them in. As far as meta-achievements — how many games you’ve played, achievements you’ve earned — we’ll have to have a library before we start work on that.
InstantAction has offline play, possible portable incarnations, and tons of interesting ideas and concepts that will hopefully be announced soon to the waiting public. If this system performs as admirably as Castle's admiration for it suggests, we could be looking at a new way to play our games without a lot of the fuss many developers have recently gotten bad press for.
I've got to say that I'm looking forward to the idea that I can bring my games (modified or not) with me anywhere there's a browser or a client. I also like the renting option, allowing someone with a near-archaic computer –or a Mac– to play titles they would have never been able to otherwise. While I'll still be a bit skeptic until I see a solid lineup of games, the ideas surrounding it and what have been showcased so far do seem extremely promising.