>Q: When Twitch expanded into Just Chatting and non-gaming categories, was that driven by organic creator growth or internal pressure for revenue?

>MG: Actually, most of the internal pressure was that they didn’t want it. We wanted to stick to gaming. I will be the first to admit that I was on the side of, I think that’s a major mistake, because what I saw at this time is around 2016, 2017, when we first started the Creative, and we’re like, there’s definitely something here. And it was not big by any means. It got big once we created Just Chatting and IRL.

>So the way that I looked at Twitch was, what I found really fascinating, it was really representative of people coming together and just sharing what they loved. It was more a gathering place of passions, and it just so happened that for a lot of people, gaming was people’s passion.

>But one of the reasons I was so for it was: why shouldn’t I be able to broadcast my esports show live on Creative? That’s stupid. Why?

>And I was fortunate enough to be able to do that because I was on Twitch staff and I had a free pass, but I’m sitting here going like, this bullshit. It’s not fair. Why wouldn’t we open it up?

>Because my thought is, I come on here, I’m playing the newest game, whatever, and someone comes in, and they’re like, “Hey, I see you like Stormlight Archive behind you.” I’m like, “My God, I love Stormlight.” Why wouldn’t we want to promote that interaction? Why wouldn’t we want it to say, “Hey, you know what? It’s okay if you just stop gaming for a second and start talking about something that you love. That’s what happens when you’re building community.”

>So, to me, it was like this is a really long story because getting non-gaming content on Twitch was probably the biggest psy-op that we ran while at Twitch, because essentially we used TwitchCon as a vehicle to prove to leadership that it was a good idea to do.

>And that was the only way that I knew how to fight back. And myself and Anna Prosser essentially said, “We’re going to do a talent show at TwitchCon.” That’s how we’re going to get it. We’re going to, like, this is an extension of Creative. This is an extension of what people like to do, like playing the piano. That was not allowed at one point on Twitch.

>So, there was never revenue pressure. In fact, I think that people were concerned that it could impact revenue, when in reality I’m sitting here being like, “No. More people, more things to talk about, more content types. You categorize it, let it grow, we’re more than gaming.” Thirty million gamers came to use the site, and they’re like, “Hey, you like anime, too. You like Dungeons & Dragons.” Why wouldn’t we want to fully support all of those?

>So, there was a lot of internal back and forth on shouldn’t we not do it? And even to this day, I think people are like, “It was the biggest mistake that Twitch ever made.” Maybe it was, right? But it grew the site significantly.

>It opened up a lot of people’s opportunities for the type of content to make. They were no longer just game streamers. Suddenly they could be making shows. Suddenly they could be going outside and doing travel blogs. Suddenly there’s so many different examples.

>We probably wouldn’t have VTubers if we wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. We wouldn’t have these IRL travel streams.

>I can’t pinpoint where it happened or what happened, but it was true. It was never revenue. It was always more like, should this content just be on the site? That was more the conversation.

This is about the wave of layoffs from a couple of months ago.

>
How did the 2XKO layoffs unfold internally after launch?

>
Yeah. There’s about 82 of us that got let go. So the feeling… the notice was not there. I started to notice because I’ve been in the industry a long time. I started to notice the people above me were acting differently and I started to get frustrated. And so I was like, “Hey, what is going on?” And I found out that they had gotten a little bit of a heads-up so that they could help generate the list of people that needed to stay so that the game could continue.

So some people learn earlier than others. But it still felt sudden to a lot of us as well, especially… I’d only been there a few… some of the people, we’d only been there seven months. And so we were thinking this is our first project at Riot, we got lots of other things we’re going to work on.

To set some context for 2XKO, it was a big bet. It’s a very small addressable market, fighting games in general, and we were trying to capture a portion of that market, which… we had great people; the Cannon brothers and a lot of people on the team were really deep into the fighting game arena. They’re really good, knowledgeable people that I don’t think I’ve ever worked with any group of people on a game that we had more expertise on the type of game we were making. They knew the people, they cared a lot about the fans, and they really wanted it to be good for pros and for people. The bet was that they were going to be able to capture some segment of the hardcore population and, through the IP pull people over into fighting games, at least this Riot fighting game, because, “Hey, you get to play the champ that you play in League or that you play in other.” We’re trying to kind of blend those together and that combination would be enough to sustain the business, but it’s still a really small market to try and attack. So, there’s a risk.

To their credit, they committed to making it happen and they got it done. I think what they realised as we got closer was that there wasn’t enough success on 2XKO. There weren’t enough people playing. There weren’t enough people buying things to sustain the full size of the team. Then they had to decide who was necessary to keep the team afloat in this new era where we know this big bet didn’t wholly pay off and we’re trying to kind of still keep the business going.

>Would you still be interested in going back to do Dishonoured 3? What are the stories still to be told in that world?

>You know, it's funny because I think I've had my version of what could become Dishonoured 3. Harvey Smith has had his version. Ricardo Bare has had his version too. None of them are all the same at all.

>I don't know where we would all take it for a third game because we definitely closed the story of Emily and Corvo in the second game so it would have to be something else. It could be more like a sequel where you try to take on the whole world. Then the spirit of the player experience, what to do in the game, what other things you can do, it would be an interesting thing.

>In an alternate dimension, I'm sure it would be great for Harvey, myself, Ricardo, Dinga Bakaba and Sébastien Mitton to be reunited and put Christophe Carrier in there and make it but we only have one life so it would probably never happen. But it would be an interesting thing to create.

>Given your upcoming game and the new game from Harvey, Dishonoured fans may be getting two spiritual sequels even if they won’t get a direct sequel?

>Yes, that's another way to look at it.

>I think with some properties, I understand there could be more stuff to say about the world of Dishonoured, but you need someone behind it that really wants to make it. It cannot just be because it would be a nice number to have. It’s got to be something we want to do that I think we do something great with.

>We have to commit five years of our lives to creating a game because that’s what it takes now. If you include all the pre-thinking, the meetings, the production, the post-production, being late, it always takes forever to make a game.

>Q: Did you ever discuss franchising with Valve for Counter-Strike, and why didn’t it ever happen?

>WS: “I never spoke directly with Valve about franchising. ESL may have had those conversations, but I didn’t.

>I was heavily involved on the board of WESA (the World Esports Association), which was a natural evolution of gentlemen’s agreements between teams trying to avoid calendar clashes. WESA evolved into the Counter-Strike open franchise structure, but Valve eventually pulled the plug on partnered teams and direct Pro League invites because they felt it excluded aspirational teams and players from the top level.

>It was also hard to get all the teams aligned. The European teams were more cooperative, whereas the American teams played hardball around ownership structures. Finding the right balance between team size, viewership contribution, and revenue distribution is delicate.

>That said, ESL and the partner teams got quite far. Participating in ESL’s partner system and sharing sticker money was at times more lucrative for teams than being in the LEC. A big part of that success was that Valve was not funding it, which forced everyone to focus heavily on commercial viability. Compare that to Riot’s LEC, where the primary objective for the publisher is using esports as a marketing tool to drive in-game purchases.”

"I see so many people showing off 2D side-scrollers, claiming players don’t care about graphics anymore and only care about gameplay. That’s bs. Are you telling me Call of Duty, Dead Space, or any of my AAA games didn’t have gameplay? Of course they had gameplay. When a new console launches, it isn’t indie games driving adoption – it’s the massive AAA titles that push technical boundaries and build the tools the rest of the industry eventually uses.

Publishers have lost sight of that. It’s cyclical, but the biggest issue is that you must finance an idea, not a schedule. Everyone right now is rushing to find the next mechanic that sold 13 million units on a $10 million budget. Graphics matter, scale matters, and above all, the idea matters.”

"Developing a new Far Cry is another kind of project that would make Alex go back to the big players in the gaming industry.

“That was always one that I really enjoyed making,” he said. “But the tiring part is that they’re so political and there’s so many people involved. You know, it’s like making a Marvel movie. They’re fun, and they’re a roller coaster, and they’re big, but it’s draining to spend half your time defending or selling a decision instead of just making the game.”

What might be going wrong with Far Cry 7

Unfortunately for Alex and other Far Cry fans, recent reports by Insider Gaming indicate that Far Cry 7’s development is in trouble and could be delayed. When asked about his analysis of this report, Alex believes Ubisoft is going through internal problems, such as building consensus about what the game should be and not letting it change, rather than waiting for something external to take place.

“The thing that destroys projects the most in video games is trash,” he explains. You have an idea and either an executive or someone on the team comes back and says, ‘let’s change it.’ You spend years trying alternate versions of the same idea, then you realize, at the end of that, you haven’t gone forward at all. You’ve just gone around in a circle. And I think that’s often what paralyzes big developments.”