GameCyte

Earlier today, CD Projekt announced a new distribution system for PC gaming — a service called Good Old Games, so named for its intent to focus on the treasured classics of our youth. Including semi-old-school favorites like Fallout, MDK, Freespace, and others, GOG’s intent is to re-invigorate gamers’ enthusiasm for these disappearing titles — selling them for under $10 apiece, updating them to work under Windows XP and Vista, and keeping them 100% DRM-free. Is such a thing possible? Will people be willing to pay for these games if they’re made cheap and easy enough to get? Are we ready for yet another collection of retro games or another digitial distribution service? Will I finally stop being the only person who ever played Sacrifice?

We spoke with CD Projekt’s VP of PR and Marketing, Tom Ohle, for more insight into GOG’s revival of the classics. Click ahead for insight into licensing abandonware, building a community for the classics, and whether or not I would steal from Tom.

GameCyte: How long has Good Old Games been in the works?

Tom Ohle: Basically, our team started thinking about the idea around March of last year, around GDC 2007. Since then, there’s obviously been a period of trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to do, building up the back-end, and getting licenses from the different publishers that we’ve got on board now. All in all, pretty close to a year and a half.

GC: What was the process like, trying to secure legal rights to these games?

TO: We’ve had our business development team approach different publishers, and just inquire about the availability of back-catalog titles because, in the end, most of these titles are games that are essentially abandonware — games you just can’t buy in stores anymore. It’s a matter of, on a publisher-by-publisher basis, trying to figure out who’s receptive to the idea of monetizing their back catalogs — seeing what’s available. In some cases, we’ve also had issues with certain publishers having the rights in different territories, and other publishers having them in other places, so there’s a bunch of little hurdles that we need to overcome. Otherwise, it’s basically just pitching the publishers; if they’re up for it, then we just go through the process of getting them an agreement, and getting as complete a code as we can — whether we can get the masters, or if we just end up having to basically rip a game disc.

GC: Were there any games that were particularly tough to license?

TO: Out of the batch that we’ve got now, not really. There’s a few games that I probably can’t quite talk about, where the licensing rights are tossed up between three or four different companies. Those get a little trickier, but not with the stuff we’ve got right now: the Interplay and the Codemasters games that we have rights to, and then a couple of other publishers that we’ve got coming down the pipe.

GC: Were there any companies that just refused you, flat-out?

TO: I don’t think so. I haven’t been that close to the business discussions, but there have been publishers that were a bit hesitant because of various issues — whether it was no DRM, or low prices, or whatever. Overall, we’ve gotten further along in the discussions with the publishers that we’re confident we’ll be able to talk to, that would be receptive to the overall concept. With some of the publishers, we’re also just holding off until we’re able to demonstrate really positive press feedback, and a really good reception from the public — strong sales, and stuff like that, so that we can go back to those publishers and say, “You’re not risking anything by selling your games here, you’re just going to make money off of the games that you’re no longer making money off of.”

GC: How did the idea come about to put together a digital delivery system that exclusively deals in older games?

TO: The guys that were initially sitting around — our CEOs, and some of our business people — were all just thinking that you can’t find a lot of these games that we really like to play. Games like Fallout and some of the other Interplay stuff that we’ve got; games that you can’t find in stores, maybe you’ll be able to find them online, but they won’t work on newer operating systems. Given that we have a fair bit of experience in the publishing business through the CD Projekt publishing company, we figured it’d be a good chance to test our mettle at trying to get this sort of service off the ground, because it was basically trying to fill a niche that nobody else has really filled at this point. We’re trying to get games that we actually want to play again.

GC: Why do you think there’s been such a heavy emphasis on retro gaming as of late? Between services like GameTap, Virtual Console, old games appearing in the Steam library…

TO: That’s a pretty good question. I think, if anything, it’s because games nowadays are either total casual games, or big-budget games that are, for some people, a bit over the top or a bit too in-depth. Whereas, with some of the games that we’re looking at, the gameplay might be a little more simplified, but you don’t have to have a brand-new computer to run them. I think those are some of the major reasons that people are wanting to play older games. It just hearkens back to the more simplified gameplay.

GC: With all of those services already in place, including GameTap, Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, PSN, and so forth, do you think there’s room in the marketplace for another retro games service?

TO: I think so. Ultimately, our market is probably a fair bit different from what XBLA and PSN would be. We’ve got a pretty set target audience, and that’s people that have been playing PC games for fifteen, twenty years, and guys that remember playing Tie Fighter, X-Wing, and so on, during the early 90s. With a lot of that console stuff, it’s a fairly different type of gameplay, where on the PC side we already had pretty in-depth simulations, and things like that, back in the 90s. I think console gaming back in the 90s was still pretty arcade-oriented. That’s where our business is at this point, is trying to deliver stuff that you can really only play on PC.

GC: What will GOG offer that existing PC services don’t?

TO: The biggest thing is the overall package of what we’re offering: being able to get a lot of these old games that, ultimately, some of the other digital distribution services might have, but we’re going to have them without copy protection, they’ll be really cheap, and they’ll work on XP and Vista. I think that overall package is what sets us apart. Also, we’re trying to do a lot of work in terms of developing our community: There’s going to be a big forum system, rating and reviewing games… we’re also going to be hiring a lot of freelance writers to do some really good retrospective articles and developer interviews. We’re going to have community achievements; the more people get involved, they’ll get these Xbox-style achievements. I think it’s just kind of everything — we’re really pushing to make people feel like they’re part of this classic PC gaming community. We’re going to have a custom game shelf in your profile that has all your boxes stacked side by side; little touches like that. It’s the whole experience, I think, that will set us apart from a lot of the other sites.

GC: What sort of “after-sale support” will GOG be offering? Will it mostly be compatibility issues?

TO: Yeah. Obviously, we’re not going to go too in-depth with support of actual gameplay issues. Each of the game pages will have a sort of community “self-help” section, where people can answer other people’s questions, get suggestions, tips & tricks, and stuff like that. On the other hand, we obviously want to make sure that the games are going to run on Vista and XP, so we’re doing whatever we can on the back-end to make that happen, but obviously there will be issues that arise with different hardware configurations. So, most of our support will be trying to make sure that people don’t have those kinds of issues.

GC: That is the peril of PC gaming.

TO: Yeah. And that is something that — for now, at least — we won’t be able to overcome, but as long as we can work to make sure that issues are resolved, and are as minimal as possible, that’s what we want to do.

GC: How much volume do you expect you’ll have to do, at your proposed price points, in order to sustain the service and your support programs?

TO: That’s a good question! I actually don’t know what we’re aiming for, for our minimum sales goals. Essentially, at this point, we just want to start building the service. CD Projekt, in general, is a very well-funded company, so we’ve got the publishing business, the development studio, the localization center… basically, we’ve got a steady stream of revenue, so at this point, we want to make sure we’re building up the service. I think, ultimately, if we can keep delivering the games we want to deliver, we should be in pretty good shape to sell a lot. Ultimately, it’s going to all depend on how well gamers embrace the service. If they show up and buy the games, we’ll be a success. If they don’t, then so be it.

GC: Have you brought any of the original developers of your game line-up on board for support or add-on content?

TO: Nothing specific in that regard. The way that we’re going to look at getting developers involved is, like I said, through these retrospective articles, or gaining more insight into the development process of those games — long-term post-mortem types of things. We want to show people the thought processes, and where these developers were at, back then. In terms of developing new content, we’re going to be creating game guides, but I don’t think we’ll really be looking to developers at this point for official support. For the most part, it’ll be community-driven; we’ll want to get game guides, patches, unofficial fan mods — things like that.

GC: Are those the kinds of add-ons that users can specifically expect?

TO: For the most part, our “value-added” proposition right now is going to focus on game guides. They’re going to be really high-quality, with full visual support. Sort of a magazine-style game guide. We’re also going to be doing HD wallpapers, and we’re trying to put together videos, and we’ll be adding game soundtracks. It’s anything we can have that will add value to the game, that people can’t get very easily elsewhere. At $6 or $10, it’s pretty easy for us to maintain a pretty high value. We do whatever we can to just pack in a little bit more.

GC: Are there any games that you, specifically, would like to see added to the GOG lineup?

TO: My own personal wishlist has a lot of the old LucasArts adventure games. I played a lot of LucasArts games in general when I was younger; Tie Fighter, X-Wing, things like that. EA’s got a lot of great stuff in their back catalog, like Wing Commander. I think the list is pretty huge. Sierra’s old adventure games. Thief, System Shock, there’s tons of games we could potentially get that I think a lot of people would love to play again.

GC: Are there any under negotiation at this point?

TO: Yeah. We’re negotiating with another three or four publishers at this point. Nothing I can really talk about yet, but hopefully, before the end of the beta, we’ll have another two publishers on board. We want to launch with three or four more publishers, and between 70-100 games.

GC: What prompted the decision to make GOG a DRM-free service?

TO: More than anything, it’s just the general notion that gamers are pretty sick of having to deal with a lot of really intrusive copy protection schemes. Over the last couple of years, every time some game comes out with some sort of draconian scheme, everybody gets up in arms, and there’s petitions. Because we’re gamers too, I think we realized that it’s just not fun to have to deal with online authentication, or digging up serial numbers, or anything else. At this point, it’s pretty easy for all these games to get pirated anyway; there’s probably torrents out there for pretty much every game we have. Ultimately, it’s all about not treating paying customers like criminals. It’s about making it as easy as possible for people who have legitimately bought the game to go in, download it, and install it any time they want.

GC: Are you worried about abuse of the system? Hypothetically, will there be anything stopping me, save for my strong sense of ethics, from buying a game once and then burning a copy for everyone I know?

TO: Hypothetically, no. Again, it ties in with our target audience, which tends to be a slightly more mature audience: People that are in their late 20s, 30s, 40s, who just remember these games really fondly. They know where they could try and get something for free, but because it’s relatively cheap — it’s under ten bucks, no copy protection, and they’re able to actually play the games and have them work on Vista and XP — I think that’s enough for most people to just decide, “Hey, I’ll just spring the extra five or ten bucks.” Ultimately, there’s nothing stopping them, but we’re basically working on something of an honor system. If everything ends up getting pirated, we’re going to have a hard time maintaining sales and so on. Based on what we’ve seen, in terms of public reaction at this point, just to the announcement, I think we’re going to have a really strong audience of people that will buy the games, and the more games we sell, the more games we’ll be able to bring to the service. If people want to keep seeing good games, then they need to actually pay for them.

GC: Will users be able to play their Good Old Games through online multiplayer?

TO: Yeah! Actually, we’ve been doing some testing, and the games that are multiplayer-supported seem to work all right. Obviously, we’re going to rely on the beta feedback to make sure that everything works well, but at this point, yes, the games that are multiplayer-enabled will work.

GC: Is GOG going to stay retro-focused, or are there any plans for newer titles to join the library?

TO: Our main focus really is on classic games, so that doesn’t necessarily have to mean “old” games, per se. One of our key pushes is for good old games, but we’ve got games that are 3-4 years old, and some other ones in negotiations right now that are a bit newer. We don’t want to focus, at this point, on trying to get new games — Steam, Impulse, Direct2Drive, GamersGate, all these services have new games and they’ve all got their established audiences, they’ve got a lot of stuff already available. We don’t see a lot of point in trying to step into that market and make an impact there, so we’ll just focus on doing what we’re doing, and leave it for now.

GC: As a gamer, what is your favorite title in the currently announced and confirmed lineup?

TO: Freespace 2 is probably my favorite one. I haven’t played it since it came out, so I’m really itching to get back into it. I just played Fallout 2 again through the site… Giants is a big one, Sacrifice is really good, Operation Flashpoint is another one. There’s a lot of games, just in the ones we have right now, that I really want to get back into; I just wish I had time. (laughs) I still haven’t even finished GTA, and that’s sitting as the new game on my pile. Ultimately, with the Interplay and the Codemasters games, we’ve got a lot that I want to play. The other two deals that we’re working on right now and fairly close to, there’s another bunch of games in there, so it’s pretty cool.

GC: What can we expect to see in the beta? What kind of numbers are you looking for, and how will it work for people who do participate?

TO: At this point we’re keeping the beta fairly limited. Initially, I think we’re looking at about 2,000 people registered off the bat, although we may implement an “invite a friend” kind of system. We’re going to be doing a bunch of giveaways, as well as doing the beta giveaways through the site for people who’ve signed up. When people get into the beta, they’ll get one free game, and then the whole site will be up, so they’ll be able to buy games and keep them, because they’ll carry over through the release. We’re going to be rolling out some of the titles we’ve already announced over the month and a half of the beta — the public beta will be about a month, so we’ll stagger the releases a little bit in there, but most of the games that we’ve already announced will be available in the beta.

We would like to thank Tom for speaking with us about Good Old Games. The service is expected to launch in September, and we’ll bring you updates as they break.

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