GDC's Jamil Moledina 

In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Game Developers Conference executive director Jamil Moledina, we discussed what makes GDC tick; whether the lines were blurring between core games and casual games; and whether both the short session games market on consoles and the indie game phenomenon on PCs are fixtures or fads. In today's second and final portion of our interview, Moledina talks about whether it's legitimate to compare the PC and console markets; why game industry scold Jack Thompson won't be speaking at this year's conference; and what lessons should be learned from the Fox News/Mass Effect debacle. Enjoy.

Speaking of pessimism, you know, towards the end of the year it seemed like there were a number of flagship shooters on the PC that were not performing as well as people had expected. Unreal Tournament III, in particular doesn't seem to be selling as strongly as it has in the past. I think Crysis seems to be underperforming. Orange Box, I think did solid to strong numbers. You have Call of Duty 4 which actually did pretty decently on PC but those numbers were significantly less than it did on PS3, which was in turn, insignificantly less than what it sold on the Xbox 360. And this was a franchise that began on the PC. Shooters were the Jerry Bruckheimer summer movies of the PC, but the energy around them seems to be increasingly moving over to the console. Are you seeing the effects of that in the development community? Where should we expect to see the PC going? Are we pretty much going to be seeing free ad supported games, MMOs and RTS games on the PC while the rest of the flagship stuff moves over to the console?

Well, one season is perhaps not necessarily the best gauge for the long term viability of a particular style of play. It's the same season--correct me if I'm wrong--that Halo 3 came out in, right?

Uh-huh.

So that was something that certainly did some numbers that brought up the first-person prospective shooter genre. The interesting thing though that you bring up is the difference between PC and console. And I think it's hard to compare the two largely because the PC is constantly in flux. Everyone has a different PC. There isn't standardization as there is with console. And more and more you're seeing people find pros and cons to that. The pro with the standard platform, of course, being that the game will always work. But at the same time it may require an initialization process. There's still perhaps some time that goes into it. Whereas on the PC side, you have a much lower threshold for initially creating the game. So there's a greater diversity. You may see more unique or interesting types of titles. And so they don't necessarily need to do the same numbers as you see on the console.

Once you start comparing number of PC sales to numbers of console sales, I'm not sure you'd get a reliable trend out of that. The thing that we're really excited about PC though is that it has this kind of capability like I was talking about with indie games to create really off the wall types of titles. People have the ability to express themselves in a wider variety of ways. So by doing that and by setting lower targets in terms of what they ultimately hope to sell or have available by download, people still are making a living and doing so quite successfully.

I'm not sure it's that easy, but I'm not sure that I have a way to help parse it. Although it's something that I think is worth having an ongoing conversation about. There are a couple of PC developers that I know that we talk generally with about this idea, but you should definitely meet them and figure out how they're able to stay very comfortable and very satisfied and very creative.

Are there any sessions that are going to speak to this need?

 1UP Network editorial director Dan Hsu

Two weeks ago, Ziff-Davis' 1UP Network, which publishes the magazines EGM, Games For Windows: The Official Magazine and 1UP.com announced that it had reorganized its editorial group around three silos--Videogames, PC Games and Video--spanning both print and online. Simultaneously, the company revealed that its review scale would shift from its familiar ten point scale to letter grades, a la Entertainment Weekly. To get a better understanding of the changes that were afoot, we pinged 1UP Network editorial director Dan "Shoe" Hsu with a few questions over email, which he graciously took time to answer--but only after he finished closing the next issue of EGM. Now that's dedication. Here's what Hsu had to say.

What were the main reasons behind the recently announced reorganization of the 1UP Network? When do they go into effect?

We integrated the print and online teams because we recognized this is the direction that media's going. It's no longer just about print or just about online; it's about both. This reorganization lets us tackle our editorial duties more efficiently, because all our editors are constantly working in both print and online. We really think our readers will notice and appreciate this move, too, because it will translate into better, more well-rounded coverage from us.

Presumably, Jeff Green, who was just named the 1UP Network's editor-in-chief for PC games, will remain the editor-in-chief of Games For Windows magazine. But the press release wasn't clear about whether Jeff's 1UP Network counterpart for videogames, James Mielke, will also be the editor-in-chief of the corresponding magazine, EGM. Is Mielke now in charge of EGM, or are you still the editor-in-chief?

Jeff Green is the editor-in-chief, PC games, so he's running Games For Windows: The Official Magazine as well as the PC coverage on our online properties. James Mielke is Jeff's videogame/console counterpart, so yup, he's the editor-in-chief of EGM (as well as the console side of our online sites). I'm now full-time editorial director for the 1UP Network.

Over the past few years, video has moved from the periphery to the center of Ziff-Davis videogame coverage. You've also got a number of popular and/or influential podcasts, like 1UP Yours and the Games For Windows podcast. What plans do you have going forward for video and audio under this new management structure?

1. THE...killer awoke before dawn, or, meet me at the back of the Blu bus
2. PHD...revoked: how can we in the MSM hate what we don't understand?
3. DOC...tor Evil wants more than $1 billion for the house that Gears built
   
4. GOD...of combat Eric Williams expounds on the use of cancels
5. RND...Desperately in need of some stranger's hand/in a desperate land?