Feature: 'EALA's Neil Young on Emotion, IP, and Overtime'

In a notable feature and in-depth interview, Gamasutra has quizzed EA Los Angeles VP and general manager Neil Young regarding vital industry-related subjects including emotion in games, original IP, working overtime, the Wii and the NFL. In the following extract, Young talks about Electronic Arts' new attitude toward producing original IP in significantly larger amounts than previously: "Well there are two levels to IP for me. There's franchise IP and then there's feature IP. And I think we have a responsibility in general, across every one of our games, to try to invent more new features that can strive to change the nature of the underlying game. Things like the aspiration in The Sims 2, things like the open world in Grand Theft Auto. And then at the other end of the spectrum, franchise IP, I think that's more likely to get enabled in by having an organization - you know, your studios – thinking about small inventions. So you end up swimming in a sea of small inventions that inspire bigger inventions. So that's the idea, and we're trying to adjust the culture of our company as a whole so we can just get innovation into the lexicon of Electronic Arts. With specific regards to new franchise IP, aside from the things that we've acquired, there are other things like the partnership with Stephen Spielberg, and that's focused exclusively on producing original, new intellectual property. And I was looking at the list of everything we're working on across all studios last night, and there's a lot of stuff there. There's like 15 or 20 new, original things being built right now." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including more on a host of intriguing subjects (no registration required, please feel free to link to this article from external websites).