News: Bing Gordon interview

May 25, 2007, 10:02 PM

by brandon, via ea -
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Bing Gordon is the chief creative officer at EA, and he actually made for a really good interview. You can read it here. He talks about a lot of stuff, but one thing ic readers might find particularly interesting is when I asked about the company's lack of support for the Dreamcast, which many view as a nail in the system's coffin. He also talks about Spore in there, and his three level 60+ World of Warcraft characters. Crazy.

WG: We lost confidence in Sega. With the Dreamcast, we told them two things: you should be an in-the-box online system, and you should use a 3D chip that we understand. They said, "We can't afford to be online, and we'll get back to you on the 3D chip." They ended up using an unusual, non-industry standard, not well-supported chip. It was something that nobody in EA had ever touched.

They knew we had no experience with it and no belief in it. Then with online, they said "no," then they said "maybe," then they said "no." They wobbled all over the place, and we lost confidence in them. At the same time, we knew that the PS2 was coming. I loved the Genesis. The Genesis was EA's first video game system that we supported, and you always remember your first.