If you're counting, this is our 4th Q&A with Jeff Green (of Computer Gaming World fame) This year we find out about freelance submissions to CGW, Gamespot's biosphere at E3 2003, the ability of the marketplace to support MMORPG's, the morality of making movies out of games, serious vs. juvenile journalism, the AIAS Awards, and becoming emotionally attached to game developers (among so many other topics). As always, Jeff, thanks for your time! (And for further entertainment check Parts I, II and III.)

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Jeff Green (CGW): Part IV

Conducted by Omni

I’ll get this question out of the way first. Did you really ask Valve if Half-Life 2 worked on the assumption that the player chose the "good" ending of the original game? ("Good" ending, meaning the one where you don’t die.)

Let this be a lesson to you, kids. You may think you are smart. Others may even think you are smart, too. You may even advance your career to a point where you are running a national magazine with hundreds of thousands of readers. But at the end of the day, you’re still just the same dumbass you always were. So, to answer your question: Yes.

How has life been since you ended your tenure on the back page of Computer Gaming World (CGW)?

Kind of boring and officious and corporate-hell-ish. Not that I’m complaining. But the editor-in-chief job takes a lot of work and a fair amount of soul-sucking. Life was simpler when I was just the clown on the back page. I miss it.

How much more do you write per month that does not appear in the magazine?

Most of what I write ends up in there, since I’m the boss. That’s one of the good things about being in charge. If there isn’t room for everything, I’ll just kill one of the lame stories someone else wrote and stick mine in there instead, because I’m so important. Just kidding. Actually, all of us at CGW end up writing more than appears in the magazine almost every month, because it’s just the nature of the business: not enough pages for everything we want to say. You Web guys are lucky that way.

Does CGW accept freelance submissions? (Feature articles and such.)

You can always pitch stuff to us, sure. But you’ll have to break through a huge signal-to-noise barrier with us. Is that the right expression? What I mean is: tons of people write us all the time, and it’s hard to sort through it all, especially when we’re so busy responding to all the really useful Viagra spam. But, yeah, in theory, it’s possible. But be aware that, like I said above, we don’t have room for all the stuff WE write every month, so the odds of getting something in are extremely slim, unless you’re either a brilliant writer or an extremely gorgeous young woman, in which case I might need to conduct a personal interview beforehand. (Note to my wife: just kidding, honey! Ha ha!)

Max Payne 2. Did you see it at E3 and what were your impressions?

Well considering it took me months to finally respond to you, I guess you may know the answer to that now, since our Max Payne 2 cover story came out already. So, yeah, I saw it, and I thought it looked pretty great! I especially liked Max’s older looking face, which made me feel less alone around here. The same team is working on the new game, and I trust them.

You work for Ziff Davis so maybe you can shed some light on this. Why was Gamespot enclosed in a biosphere at E3?

Ha! See, now this allows me to clear up a common misperception: Ziff Davis and Gamespot are no longer affiliated, in any way. So get that out of your heads. We divorced years ago, and our website for awhile now has been gamers.com. Though I believe that too is changing shortly. That said, I think I can offer my own personal theory of Gamespot’s biosphere: Those boys do NOT bathe regularly. Memo to Greg Kasavin: hey, buddy, there’s a new thing going around called soap. Look into it!

Was E3 louder than last year?

Yeah. Or I’m just older. Or both. It drove me nuts this year, especially at the EA booth, where they apparently believe that making our ears bleed and giving us migraines is going to make us not notice that all they’re doing is recycling their usual, safe franchises over and over again.

Did you discover any gems at E3 – games you knew little or nothing about that really got your attention?

Evil Genius is the one that stood out for me, by the folks who just put out Republic. It’s kind of like a "Doctor Evil" simulator, and it just looked great.

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How do you respond to the idea that gaming magazines are too juvenile? (I’m thinking of Computer Games’ move to become more sophisticated in terms of content and editorial style.)

What’re you gonna do? People have been lamenting for the "old days" of CGW since practically the second issue, 20 years ago. I believe we actually have a very smart, literate stable of writers now,

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and that the overall caliber of prose is extremely high. And we do take our jobs, and the gaming industry very seriously. But, you know, this is not the New York Review of Books, either. I believe that a magazine about the entertainment industry should be entertaining to read as well. I don’t need things to be "serious" because that somehow makes us, and our hobby, more dignified. Screw that. If you need to tell yourself that playing videogames, or writing about videogames, is somehow important, I suggest you get out a little more. This whole industry is about wasting time and goofing off. Some of us, like me, are refugees from serious journalism. We came here to get away from that. But, that said, I think every issue of CGW proves that we have very strong opinions and do not pull punches where it really matters.

The gaming industry is full of buzzwords and one of the latest is "emergent gameplay". What is your definition of emergent gameplay?

Wow. I have no idea what you are talking about. I think I need to read more of those serious game magazines now.

Can the market sustain the 100+ massively multiplayer online role-playing games coming in the next 18 months? What will games have to do to attract and keep people playing?

No, it can’t. I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that the MMORPG audience is a finite one—that trying to grow it beyond the core of people who already dig this stuff is a difficult, if not totally futile, effort. At this point, there’s so many that it just exhausts me. I played EverQuest for years, and Dark Age of Camelot, and Asheron’s Call 2, and others, and I just have a hard time at this point being convinced that I need to get sucked back into another one, unless someone really starts doing something different. I just looked at World Of WarCraft, and, as usual, I was very impressed by Blizzard’s approach. They’re treating it very much like a single-player RPG, with lots and lots to do as a solo player—and I think that is part of the solution. Giving players a focused experience, rather than just collecting their money and plopping them into a world with nothing to do. Ultima X is operating on the same principles. Those are the only two I’m honestly looking forward to at this point. Well, those and EQ 2.

How much stock can be put in the AIAS awards? Sims Online as Massively Multiplayer / Persistent World Game of the Year – 2002 … what the hell?

God, yeah, that was awful. Even Will Wright himself was embarrassed by that, and said so right there when he won. The AIAS awards were better this year than in previous years—I was especially psyched to see Battlefield 1942 win game of the year—but they are really going to have to change the voting process if they want to be taken seriously. Right now, it appears that companies with large voting blocs, like EA, can just railroad their games to victory. (And Battlefield 1942 is an EA game, by the way—but it happens to rule, too.) Not good.

Have you had a chance to read Masters of Doom? How many companies start the way id Software did?

I haven’t read that book yet. I really have little motivation to read books about this industry. I’m in it all day, every day. The little chance I do get to read, I like to spend reading about other things. Like porn. Just kidding! But, yeah, plenty of companies start the way id Software did, sure. Probably all the best ones. A couple brainiac dorks with good ideas, skills, and the motivation to create something cool. It’s what keeps this industry afloat, despite the increasing corporatization of everything. There will always be maverick "little guys" with great ideas who come along and blow us all away.

Why is it when a game lacks multiplayer support it’s almost always presented in previews, reviews and features as a negative?

God, I don’t know. I hope we are a little less guilty of that than others. I personally find "multiplayer support" way overrated. There are plenty of games out there that offer brilliant multiplayer support—like Battlefield 1942—already. I can’t stand when I see developers wasting time on multiplayer for a game that has so little use for it, and that isn’t anywhere near as good as what’s already out there. Give me a solid, great single-player only game any day, and I’m a much happier guy.

When Westwood Studios was shut down, was there much ranting in the CGW offices? Tears or chanting, "How could EA do this to us?" Does the staff at CGW get emotionally attached to development houses?

Well, considering that we eviscerated their last game, Command and Conquer: Generals, I’m not sure how many tears were shed. Though they certainly made their share of classic games in their prime. In general, we do our best to maintain as much journalistic objectivity as possible, but, like everyone else, of course, we do make our attachments—to games, to companies, to specific individuals. I was really bummed to hear that Bill Roper left Blizzard awhile back. And I’m still smarting over the loss of Dreamforge years ago, who made the brilliant Sanitarium and then vanished off the face of the earth. But time marches on. Things change. People move. You know, the Circle of Life and all that. Hakuna matata.

In general, do PC gamers have a superiority complex?

Not as much as they used to, thank god. One good trend over the years has been the increasing cross-pollination of gamers to multiple platforms. I think it’s a function of age. Younger kids now are used to having PCs in their rooms, and game consoles attached to their TVs. Everyone on the current CGW staff has PCs and at least one game console—and that is not at all how it was when I started back in 1996. I have always hated that "superiority complex." As if the rest of the world didn’t look at ALL of us like the world’s biggest geeks. Console games and PC games both offer great experiences, in different ways. Closing your mind to a platform because you think it’s not as good as the one you prefer is just narrow-minded, and the only one who loses is you.

Which one will crumble first: nvidia or ATI? It seems they’re producing new cards at an astonishing (and unsupportable) rate, especially considering the decline in PC sales.

Yeah, it’s crazy. Remember 3Dfx? I don’t know who will crumble first. I hope they both find a way to stick around.

Morally speaking, should games be made into movies?

Morally speaking, all of those who even think about turning games into movies should be rounded up and shot. Hopefully the most recent Tomb Raider disaster killed this trend forever. On the other hand, if someone makes a Leisure Suit Larry movie, I’m there.

What about movies based on life at a gaming magazine?

Oh yeah, there’s a great idea. But only if David Cronenberg or David Lynch directs.

I don’t want to seem disparaging of the current designers but Full Throttle II – will it work without Tim Schafer?

Well, LucasArts answered that question for you already, by canceling the game. Thank god.

Doug Lowenstein sounded off during his E3 address about publishers releasing a glut of games in the Fourth Quarter, but on the floor most games had a scheduled release of… Q4. Will publishers ever get away from putting so much emphasis on the closing months of any given year?

No, they won’t. They can make all the noise they want, but at the end of the day, some beancounter in their corporate office is going to make them shove the game out the door to make the fiscal year. It’s all about the bottom line.

Does the global geopolitical landscape get much attention at the CGW offices?

Well, we all have Anna Kournikova websites bookmarked, if that’s what you mean. She’s foreign, right?

At CGW, who has the most interesting hobby? And does it spill over into work time?

Robert Coffey is into fish. And serial killers. He probably has more hobbies too, but I am way too scared to find out what they might be. Hobbies aren’t allowed during work time, because I am a fascist and run the place like a sweatshop. Just ask anyone. Meanest boss EVAR.

As Editor-in-Chief do you have the ability to randomly fire people?

Oh yeah. And I do. I love it! I like to go through the whole process, get them reduced to tears, and then tell them I was kidding. Then I say that I was kidding about kidding, and tell them to get the hell out. Woooooo! Good times.

What are your personal goals for the next 6 months? What about goals for the magazine?

For CGW, it’s to continue to be hard on ourselves and make a better product. We’ve got another redesign in the works which we’ll be introducing sometime in the next few months. I’ve been pretty proud of the last few issues, but we still have a ways to go.

For me personally, one goal would be to reduce the time I respond to interviews by like 3 months. Sorry guys. L Another would be to get outside and exercise more. And to take a motorcycle maintenance class, so I can learn how to take care of my bike a little better. Also, I have a pile of about 15 books by my bed that I keep neglecting because I’ve been trying to finish Baldur’s Gate 2. Gotta read more. Finally, and perhaps most important, I need to work on remembering not to leave the house without pants on.

(September 1, 2003)


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