Feature: 'Would You Like Fries With That Game?'

For the latest Gamasutra feature we present an exclusive interview with Blitz Games founder and industry veteran Philip Oliver about the making of the developer's forthcoming Burger King promotional games, the promise of next-gen console e-distribution, and what's happened to Dizzy. In this excerpt, Oliver covers the genesis of the Burger King tie-in deal, which had humble beginnings, but soon grew to more serious proportions: "It started as Xbox Live Arcade games, just for the 360, and we bought into that. Three games, Live Arcade, they’d get some good product placement, we’d get some good games out on the system, and it’d be great. It got more interesting as time went along, because we started committing people to the project, and time was moving on, and we started getting to seven months, which eventually fell to six months, when they started saying ‘we want them to be boxed games!’ Well, more accurately, they said they wanted them to be Xbox games as well. So we said, hang on a minute, that doesn’t work with Xbox Live Arcade, and they said “we’ll just put them in a box.” That makes sure they have to walk into the store, they can’t just pull it off the Xbox Live service, they actually have to come in-store. And we said ‘surely that’s a problem, cost of goods and everything,’ and they said ‘we have a good history with Microsoft, we can work out a deal with them, and we may as well put the 360 and Xbox games on the same disc!’ And we said ‘this sounds quite scary now, because you’re going to ask us for much bigger games!’ Well, that came next (laughs)." You can now read the full Gamasutra interview with Oliver, including more on working with The King, the company's initiative to deliver entirely new games across all next-gen consoles' e-distribution services, and how the Wii's small hammer suits consumers' needs. (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).