Feature: 'Death, Hedgehogs, and Major Motion Pictures'

Jon Goldman is CEO of Foundation 9 Entertainment, the 'super-developer' formed just over a year ago by the merger of Backbone Entertainment and The Collective, and Gamasutra talks exclusively to him about the Death Jr creator's new plans. Discussing that game itself, and suggestions that ' the game perhaps didn't perform as well as some people might have thought', Goldman is forthright: "I don't want to sound too much like a PR guy, but it did reasonably well in the marketplace; certainly if our royalty checks are any indication. Do I feel it could have done better? Absolutely. And we recognized that, and I do know there are some sequels along the way. As we were pitching Death Jr. we decided to pull back from it and think of it as more than just the game, but as an IP that we were going to try to commercialize in other areas and build a multi-area campaign around, and that by and large has continued to be the strategy. We had very successful comic books, we’ve got manga coming out, Halloween costumes and action figures, apparel licenses and so on. The game did reasonably well commercially, and I think that there's enough awareness of it for us to improve on the game experience and build up a franchise on it over the next several years. Like with any sort of media business, that may or may not come to pass, but the strategy in and of itself is playing out as we planned." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject for much more on Goldman's perspectives, a year after the important merger (no registration required).