GamesBeat: That kind of community engagement seems like a smart direction to head in.
Hirshberg: It’s certainly one of the macro-trends in our culture right now. The ability and the desire to connect with other people through digital means is the zeitgeist. I would say that games probably played a hand in that. Playing multiplayer in Call of Duty is one of the first things that masses of people did together in a digital arena. Obviously that wasn’t as social an experience as what we’ve eventually seen since, but it was certainly connecting with other real people in a digital space, which is something that humans have become very comfortable with all of a sudden.
GamesBeat: So that’s still important to you. Does it mean, though, that you have to do less of the heavy lifting? Maybe you can count on the platform guys to integrate this.
Hirshberg: Technology and cultural preferences unfold in unpredictable ways. I’m sure seven years from now, we’ll be saying, “Hey, remember seven years ago when X, Y, and Z hadn’t happened yet?” But it just makes the hardware, at the moment, more current and more reflective of the snapshot of the world today as it relates to technology.
GamesBeat: Do you put e-sports in the same boat as something like live streaming or Twitch?
Hirshberg: Yeah, e-sports has been something we’ve been curious about. We’ve played with it around Call of Duty. I don’t know if you tuned into our Call of Duty championships. We did an event with Xbox, where we had a global tournament that culminated in a huge live stream even that drew millions of viewers. It was great content. It really works as a spectator sport. But interest in that kind of content is obviously growing. That’s something we’ve been interested in and trying new things with for a while now. Again, like I said, I think the new generation of hardware will make experimenting with that stuff more fluid.
GamesBeat: Skylanders Swap Force looks good against the competition, Disney Infinity. It’s an interesting way to get people to reinvest in the whole platform.
Hirshberg: I think Swap Force is great. Just straight-up great. It’s a great game and a great innovation. We launched Skylanders with a magical idea of bringing toys to life. Very early on, when we saw the success we were having, we looked at each other and said, “We have to make sure we keep bottling magic on this franchise.” The idea of swapping parts and characteristics of toys in the physical world, that’s just fun to do, period. You make these combinations—I don’t know if you’ve gone down to the booth and played around with some of the toys, but when you put the octopus legs on the flaming robot, you’re like, “Well, what can this guy do?” Your imagination starts to run wild. Then you put it in the game, and the game says, “All right, let’s see.”
It’s also adding innovation without adding complexity, which I think is key. One of the keys to Skylanders has been simplicity. Slamming a toy down on the portal and having it come to life is very visceral. When we did Swap Force, we wanted to make sure that it’s instant, that it’s fun, that it’s fast, that it’s intuitive. Having the game recognize your choices in the physical world is thrilling.
VV has done a wonderful job with the gameplay itself, too. The new graphics engine looks wonderful. The characters look more vivid and full of personality. There are now zones based on, say, this guy is a good climber, or this guy’s fast, or this guy can fly. Those traversal skills have areas of the game built around them. There’s an area of the game you can only fly through. You need to swap to make sure that the bottom half of your guy has the rocket boots or the jet engine or the wings. Then he can go through the fly zone. Or we have obstacle courses laid out vertically that you have to climb through. Being rewarded for your choices and your collection is a big part of it.
The other thing we’ve got going for us is the ongoing value of your collection. Every toy from Spyro’s Adventure and every toy from Giants not only works in Swap Force, but they’re better than ever. They can jump. They look better. They’ve been made over with the new graphics engine. If you have a Skylanders collection and you go home with the starter pack, you have so many options. The value of that collection is a huge competitive advantage for us.
GamesBeat: I’ve talked with people who have said they’re considering doing something like this through Kinect. With this next generation, you probably don’t need a portal. Kinect should be accurate enough to recognize whatever toy you have in front of it.
Hirshberg: It depends, though. The portal is visceral physically — the fact that you can slam the toy down on it, the fact that it lights up and recognizes not only that your toy is on the portal, but what element you put down. You put a fire elemental on it, it glows orange. You put a water elemental down, and it glows blue. Also, it depends how we use it. The Swap Force portal has more RFID readers because you have to be able to handle double the combinations now. It’s not just about, “Is there another way for the technology to detect the toy and import it into the game?” That’s functional. The portal is magical. So long as we keep delivering an experience that feels magical, I think that the portal has to be a part of it.
GamesBeat: So it’s almost a technology platform unto itself.
Hirshberg: It’s a technology enabler. But you have to look at these things equally as physical toys and virtual ones. To your example, could Kinect import the characters? Of course. But it wouldn’t be as fun. That’s why we did it the way we did it. Not because we couldn’t do it another way, but because it felt right to do it this way.