ame Informer: First of all, I want to say that it’s a great honor to finally meet you. I started out playing games on the Intellivision; that was my first system. Could you talk about some of the earlier work you did with that company?

Don Daglow: It’s funny because Intellivison with five of us in-house; Mattel has thought it was only going to be a one-season or two-season kind of toy and they originally contracted from the outside for a few games and thought it was going to be done. When sales exploded they said, “We have to do this for real,” so they started to build a team and on day one of Intellivision development there were five of us. Basically, each of us got to say, “Here’s a kind of game that we would be passionate about and want to do.” We were trying to do something where there would be a balance or range of the different kind of games, so one of the roots of Utopia was that the other guys were thinking about doing sports or action, and I was thinking about what I could do to be outside that area so we had a diverse range of products. And, that’s where the idea of Utopia came from.

Game Informer: What were some other games that you worked on while at Intellivison?

Daglow: I actually got kicked upstairs into management pretty fast. I became director of game design from Intellivision. So Utopia was the only game that I coded on myself. There were a number of different games that I did the initial design on, but other people went in and actually did the work on coding them. But, pretty quickly I got involved in actually building the Intellivision team and directing the overall effort and at its peak, we had about 50 people doing Intellivision games and another 50, led by another director, doing development for other platforms.

Game Informer: I gotta say that one of my all-time favorite Intellivision games is Nightstalker. I still have very fond memories of that game from when I was a kid. That one game really got me on my way into gaming.

Daglow: Stephen Montero was the programmer on that. That was a fun game because so much of those titles are about timing and tuning. So, we played that game for hours and hours trying to get the timing just right because you had one of those small playfields with large figures. It was that subtlety of timing and tuning that was everything in that game.

Game Informer: I still remember the invisible robots, those guys were tough!  To talk about Demon Stone, how has the development process been going? Two Towers gave you the chance to work really closely with EA, as well as their resources, as well as working with Peter Jackson. How has the transition been now that you’re working with Atari? Does it necessarily compare; is it better or worse in any way?

Daglow: It’s a very different thing. What’s cool is that the contrast keeps everything fresh. I think it’s safe to say now that Peter Jackson’s work on The Lord Of The Rings is considered a masterwork. So, we were working to follow a master on his masterwork. The EA guys were likewise very talented and very effective in coordination with working with us. Here on Demon Stone, we’re creating a game pretty much from scratch. We have a mastered novelist, creating the story and working with us. But, it’s much more original and because of the fact that we’re doing something original, the level of license work and supervision, and all the details you’re managing, we have much more freedom in action. And so, the publisher relationship, by necessity, isn’t as intense because you don’t have to have all the license work and coordination pieces. We have a lot less that predefined and a lot more that we define. So, it’s a very different experience. What’s interesting is that the way we did it with The Lord Of The Rings was the way it had to be done, with that intense process. And, the way that we did this as an original title was the right way to do an original. There’s an old phrase from The Mikado: let the punishment fit the crime. In each case, the punishment fit the crime in terms of how we lined up the development style and the function and how we work with the publisher based on the property.

Game Informer: Given the track record of Stromfront’s relationship with EA and the fact that you did The Two Towers for them, EA decided to drop you guys for The Return Of The King. Has that sort of soured the relationship between you and EA and is another game for EA a possibility given the decisions that EA has made?

Daglow: Actually, there have been a lot of misunderstandings about that. First of all, EA had to start The Return Of The King before we finished The Two Towers. Secondly, EA tends to have this momentum where they work on their major products in-house. So, there was a logistical issue…that normal momentum. We’ve done titles for EA in 11 out the last 13 years so that the way that it evolved with us doing The Two Towers and The Return Of The King was in-house, was actually pretty expected on our parts all along. We actually did a joint pitch with EA to New Line Cinema for the property before EA even signed The Lord Of The Rings, and if you had asked me to predict at that moment how this would unfold, pretty much the script has been followed. So, we have a good relationship with EA and we don’t feel mistreated by them in the way that things had evolved. I’m sure there have been points where team members had thought they would have liked to work on The Return Of The King, and that’s very true, but in terms of the way the video game industry works, we don’t have any issue with the way that evolved. The project was really good for us. It was good for us as a business proposition and it was good for us in terms of how much we learned. So, I think that would be the way to look at it.

Game Informer: Well, it’s interesting to hear that. I think that most people would think that, “Wow, The Two Towers was really successful, why would EA have someone else do The Return Of The King?” 

Daglow: If you look at it from the big picture, it’s all within normal and appropriate practices for the video game industry. And, we’re very cool with EA.

Game Informer: So, with the way things are working out with Atari now with Demon Stone coming along so well and the amount of freedom that you have to do your own thing, is that relationship looking like something that will continue on in the future, like it has been with Stormfront and EA?

Daglow: I think that there’s a good chance that it will. The one restriction Stormfront faces is that we only have two teams. And that’s a concrete decision; two teams is the size we want to be. Our mission is roughly every 18 months to build two great games. They may be on staggered schedules, like right now we have another game that’s earlier in development, and Demon Stone which is later. But what happens is that any title that Stormfront does we want to project it at one and half million to two million units in sales. We want it to be something that the team can be passionate about, we want it to be something that the team believes they can really create something that’s new and fun to play. We also want to team to at least believe that they can be nominated for major awards based upon what they do here. In other words, it's like a canvas on which they can paint something special. And then, we want to believe that it’s a publisher that can market and distribute the game, granted that we build a great game that can deliver all those things. In general, we have a very good relationship with Atari. When we come free at the end of it all, it all comes down to whether a publisher has property that’s available at the right time. But, the relationship with Atari has been very, very good and we’re very appreciative of the way that they’ve handled their side of this project. I mentioned earlier how I was all ready to argue on how production value should go, and we didn’t get fought with on anything; they had the same vision. And, they’ve supported us all the way through on these things. So, it’s a very good relationship with Atari, but in terms of when we’ll work with them next, you never know because nothing is signed at this point. But, the relationship is good and I really look forward to working with them in the future.

Game Informer: You mentioned that you have two core teams: one working on an early build of another game as well as Demon Stone. Are there any plans to grow in terms of team members as well as adding more games; sort of expanding your goals on maybe working on three to four games instead of just two?

Daglow: Perhaps at some point down the road we’d like to go to three. With the scope of product we do now where we only do the big blockbuster games, we’re now specialists. Over 15 years we’ve had different specialties at different times, but we’re now specialists in the huge blockbuster type of games. Dong two of those at once requires every bit of attention and focus that we have. If I’m going to make a mistake, I would much rather do two games and pass up the chance where we might have done three, and do those two games really, really well and really have our act together, rather than make the mistake of putting out three pretty good games. Pretty good games don’t go anywhere and pretty good is no longer acceptable in our industry. For the reasonable future, two teams is what we’re after. Even though it’s sometimes tempting when someone brings you something great and you have both teams signed, you have to have the ability to say “no” and just focus on doing one thing really good at a time.

Game Informer: Do you think that sort of hurts you? Classifying yourself as the company that only does blockbuster games, do you think that sort of typecasts you? What if people look at Stormfront Studios and say, “those guys make great games, but they’re all based on licenses. They’re not the company that’s known for creating a completely original game concept.

Daglow: We may do that down the road, but right now if somebody brings you Tolkien’s world to play in, boy I tell you that there was nothing to complain about. And frankly, with The Forgotten Realms being such a rich and wonderful world as well, it’s just a matter of knowing that these are fun things to play with. Down the road we may do an original at some point. Part of it is having something you care enough about and also believe has enough market to do the numbers we expect of ourselves. We’re shooting to be in the top 10 in annual sales on any game we do. The advantage of having licenses is that the consumers already know it. And, for many consumers, they already know your characters or they know your setting or they know all about it even before they start. In the case of The Lord Of The Rings, Elijah Wood’s portrayal of Frodo is something that people already have an emotional attachment to even before they even pick up the game. In The Forgotten Realms with Drizzt appearing as a playable character, millions of Drizzt books have been sold. People have a sense of Drizzt before we tell an iota of story about him. There are already millions of people in the world who are already dedicated to him as a character and have an emotional understanding of him. When you work with licenses you get to mine all that emotional commitment, so our goal is to create willing suspension of disbelief and our goal is to immerse people in this fantasy so they forget the real world and the outside world and they’re drawn into this game and this feeling of, “I have to save the world, nobody else is going to do it. If I don’t save it, it won’t be saved.” The idea of who Drizzt is and the characters and world around him is actually a creative advantage for us. We don’t have to tell everybody about all that, they already know it before they start.

Game Informer: You mentioned earlier that you want your games to be in the top 10 in annual sales and you want one to two million units sold per title. Was there any apprehension in planning Demon Stone for PS2 and Xbox, given the pretty obvious disparity between the number of PS2s on the market versus the Xbox?

Daglow: When we look at the numbers, we see that as combined across all platforms. After 25 years of hardware wars, you can always know who the current king is, but who the king is going to be two years from now, you never know. If you look back over 25 years of video game history, the only hardware manufacturer to be the clear leader in two successive generations is Sony. Everybody else, whoever led one generation fell off the next. If you look back, Sony pushed aside Sega, Sega pushed aside Nintendo, who had been in the number one position. The Genesis actually outsold the Super Nintendo. If you look back at when we had the crash back in ’83, Atari, Intellivision, and Colecovision, none of those top three survived. For that reason, predicting the horse race of hardware is always one of those things that is too difficult. We build and prioritize our products for the way things are today, but once you get beyond about 24 months out, we try to act with the minimum number of assumptions because the world can be a very surprising place.

Game Informer: You’ve been in the industry for 25 years and have seen all the hardware wars come and go. What are your thoughts on the industry as it stands today? We have the PS2, GameCube, Xbox, and the newly introduced PSP and DS. Do you think that this is going to be a recurring trend, that every three to five years that there’s going to be a glut of systems coming in? And, do you think it hurts the industry or that it’s just healthy competition?

Daglow: I think that it’s a natural part of the cycle because there’s so much money in the industry that business people will keep doing these things. I think you just have to accept that as part of our natural lifecycle. It has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are that every few years we get all these great toys to play with. And, once we get used to and familiar with what we’ve done, the new toys will outstrip what we’ve learned from the old ones. The bad part is that your installed base goes from umpteen million or tens of million units to just a few million units for awhile, until it builds itself back up again. So, there’s a yin and a yang to it; there’s a give and a take.

Game Informer: So what do you think about the PSP and the DS?

Daglow: First of all, the PSP and the DS are in different worlds than the consoles. They’re such different treatments, that I’m not sure if both can’t prosper. You can view the PSP as being a large-screen, portable, handheld gaming system that can flash you with the production values. Then, you can view the DS as something that has the unique interface and the different aspects of what they can do with the dual-screen, they’re both such different devices that it isn’t like a case of, “These are both pancake mixers and one mixer isn’t going to be different than the other.” The games on one aren’t going to automatically be good on the other; they’re so different. So, I looked at both of those devices and thought, “They’re both cool little things. I want to get these both.” And, they’re so different from each other, nobody says that I can’t like both of these. On the home consoles, I think the place you really need to look at is that it’s a battle for the living room. For so long, Microsoft, which has always dominated the den and the office, and corporate office, people don’t expect their entertainment in the den. People expect to have their entertainment in the living room. That’s where your stereo is, that’s where your big TV is. When you spend money on entertainment, it goes into your living room. Sony controls the living room in so many ways. They have their hardware already in the living room. Microsoft needs to go into the living room in order to truly challenge Sony and grow. So, Microsoft, which has been dominant in all these other areas and has grown, needs to go into the living room. So now you have Sony and Microsoft with deep, deep, deep commitments, to battle for the living room. They’re both companies focused on quality. They’re both big and have deep pockets and are very powerful. They’ve very wise and they’re very persistent. Sony’s the only one to ever win twice in a row. And, everyone knows Microsoft’s reputation for the idea that it doesn’t matter if they have problems the first or second time; they will keep coming back into a segment until they have the best product available. And, they are tireless. So, know you have those two players and you have Nintendo…oh, let’s see. They have a history of being the ones who brought back that second wave of video gaming and created the most memorable characters and franchises in the history of our industry. These guys are also very powerful. So, I think you have three major contenders there, none of whom can afford to give up the living room. I think we’re going to continue to see pitched battles between very, very high quality entries.

Game Informer: Has Stormfront kicked around any ideas about PSP or DS development yet?

Daglow: We’re very interested about platforms and the games that we’ve done recently would probably best fit on the PSP. But, the DS is a cool platform so we don’t know what we’ll do. I know that we all walked away form E3 and thinking that both of them are just neat devices. You walk away from things like that and think, “That’s just so cool.” So, we’ll see how it evolves, but in terms of the future we respect both devices and we’re looking for ways to put a Stormfront game on there.