Mike Capps, president of hit video game developer Epic Games announced today that Electronic Arts will publish a new action game from Epic’s new subsidiary, People Can Fly.
People Can Fly is the game developer based in Poland which created the hit “Painkiller” shooting game. I sat down with Capps today in a joint interview with VentureBeat contributor John Gaudiosi.
Capps, a former professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, can be considered the adult supervisor at Epic. As president since April, he is charged with expanding the company’s repertoire beyond hits such as “Gears of War” and “Unreal.”
VB: So you guys are getting promiscuous now?
MC: What?
VB: You’re moving from publisher to publisher, from Sony to Microsoft, and now EA.
MC: Sleeping around with publishers? Well, nine of ten publishers are using our Unreal Engine technology (for graphics) now.
VB: Clearly, you’re not attached to one publisher.
MC: We’re matching titles and publishers. This particular title was a good fit for their portfolio. They were the most passionate about this title…We don’t do a bidding war. That’s not what it’s about anymore. Luckily, for us, it’s about trying to find a fit and passion for a product. The ideas about how they planned to market the title were a fit.
VB: Epic’s style and EA’s style have not been synonymous in the past.
MC: Five years ago, we would have never worked with EA. They were focused on internal development. They were the big corporate machine that was not a fit for an indie developer like Epic — especially a “primadonna” indie developer like Epic. They really changed their focus. “The Orange Box,” (which EA published for developer Valve) says it all. I talked to Gabe Newell of Valve and asked what their experience was like. They had a really good experience. EA didn’t own that game. They marketed it and distributed it and everybody made buckets of money. Rock Band worked the same way. We talked to Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk at BioWare. Inside the company, they said they watched the meetings where they discussed the products and every game was treated as a star in a portfolio. It’s still the honeymoon phase. Ask me in six months. Read the rest of this entry »
