Interview with Fredrik Liliegren: Clarifying the “Wii is a virus” Controversy

Recently, former Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE) co-founder, and head of Antic Entertainment Fredrik Liliegren garnered serious criticism when he called the Wii a “virus.” That included Shufflingdead, we made him our Shameful Human of that week.

Mr. Liliegren has agreed to an interview with Shufflingdead with the hopes of clarifying his comments.

I think your initial comment about the Wii being a “virus” has been taken out of context by many. Can you clear up what you meant by that term specifically?

The analogy that I used stating the Wii is like a virus, was in reference to how I think a lot of the sales of Wii Systems has happened. I think a lot of people showed up at someone’s house, they had the Wii out and played some games (most likely Wii Sports) thought “wow this is cool and different!” and went out and bought one, played a few rounds of Wii sports, possibly with some other friends whom did the same thing, Looked at it and said “wow this is cool and different!” and went and bought one as well. So the Virus spreads, but it’s not that contagious, because most of these people viewed the Wii as a Toy and bought it as a Toy not a games machines, thus have not continued to play with it other than occasionally, and most likely have not bought any “serious” games or many other games for it (hence the small tie ratio for Wii software).

In your “Wii is a Virus!” post on your blog, you say the Wii is “more of a toy then a Games machine,” but you also acknowledge that the system has some great games. What is the difference between a toy that plays games and a games machine?

Once again it’s in the perception of the buyer where the reference is done. The Wii is viewed but a lot of Wii Owners as a Toy, something you take out and play with occasionally, it was never bought to be a Games machine, something you engage with more focused and on a more frequent basis. I think that’s why a lot of more traditional “games” has failed miserably on the Wii cause the audience is not interested in that experience. The problem is that the experience they might be interested in is much harder to market.

How would you feel about developing games for the Wii? Do you consider the system riskier for small developers than other systems because of its more “casual” base?

I would develop on the Wii if I had the financial backing of someone else and an IP I thought was attractive to the “mass” consumer that the Wii has attracted. We have considered the Wii for some of our own internal IP but not yet reached the conclusion that it would be worth the financial risk. I do think that the opportunity is greater for a smaller game developer on the Wii then the other platforms due to its lower barrier of entry but on the other hand it is harder targeting that consumer with your marketing and PR.

The expectation of ever-higher production values, especially on HD consoles, seems to be a real hindrance for small developers. Are the perceptions of PS3 and 360 owners not also an issue?

To a certain extent but then you have titles like castle crashers that did phenomenally well, So to a certain extent I think you have two levels of quality the Boxed product quality and the online only quality. And as with all markets, once they start getting big enough they will attract bigger players that can raise that quality bar, and thus the push out the smaller developers. The same thing is now happening on the Social game scene as well when EA (Playfish), Zynga etc can throw large amounts of money at a product and just make it look and feel and play better, thus competition is now fierce in that space as well.

You contend that many traditional games have failed on the Wii due to the system’s “mass” audience, but I’ve long felt that such games have struggled because publishers and developers don’t put the same kind of money and effort into their Wii games that they do for other systems. For example, the system often receives spin-offs and ports of old games rather than new entries in popular franchises. Do you see this as also being a part of the problem?

It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg problem, people see that a lot of titles do not sell much at all (mostly because they suck!) so they feel hesitant to risk a lot of cash on an unproven thing so they do another me to product or simply don’t invest enough into their title to lift it above the competition. There is always opportunity available for a high production quality product to stand out if you are willing to take the risk BUT (and it s a big but) you have to really know your audience and how to communicate your product offering to them, which is the hard part on the Wii.

What is the future of gaming? Is it browser-based or downloadable?

I believe gaming as a broad market (package gods, MMO, Casual, Iphone, Browser, social) has never been in a better shape as a creator, there are just so many avenues right now to put a product in front of people it’s crazy. I think we are finally seeing the major shift onto digital media (distribution) and Social and Mobile (consumption), I don’t think next gen major titles are going to go away, but the growth moving forward I believe is in Web based development (be it Social or portal based) as well as Mobile (Iphone). The business model that will in the end rule it all is Free-2-Play with micro transactions. Why? because the gap in experience between a paid upfront and free 2 play title will only narrow, so a user that can get experience A for free versus the slightly better paid for experience B will choose in greater numbers experience A due to its lower barrier of entry (aka free).

Let’s talk about Antic Entertainment. From a design perspective, what does “casual games for the hardcore player” mean?

it means offering the high quality play experience from the console space that is considered hardcore and serving it up to the users in a casual play setting (short play cycles, free 2 play) on the web or on mobile devices.

Tell us about Junk Battles!

Junk: battles is our launch title for Antic Entertainment. It’s a free 2 play, web absed product available at www.junkbattles.com. In short it’s about Collecting, Building and battling. You collect parts or “junk” in our world thru different play mechanics and with these parts you construct different vehicles with different abilities, you then take these vehicles into the world to do PvP battles, questing etc to gain rank, level and fame and fortune!

I’d like to thank Fredrik for taking time out of his busy schedule to clarify his comments. I think this has been a great insight into the mind of a game developer. To my readers: how do you feel about the “Wii is a virus” comment now? Still bothered by it?