Q&A: Tapping GameTap's inventor

Earlier this week, Turner Broadcasting announced GameTap, a broadband service that will give PC owners unlimited access to an ever-growing back catalog of classic computer and video games. At a premiere event on the eve of the announcement, GameSpot caught up with Turner's vice president of product development and innovation, Blake Lewin, to get further details on the forthcoming service.

GameSpot: For those who just see the logo and hear the name GameTap, in a nutshell, what's it all about? What's the elevator pitch?

Blake Lewin: Well, the elevator pitch is we looked at games as the next content type to create a network. Obviously we've created very compelling cable networks using video. As we looked at broadband, we realized that you needed a different content type to make a really exciting network. And with 40 percent of all US households having game consoles connected to their TV, we recognized that gaming was the right content for a new network. So we're going to distribute GameTap as a broadband-only product. We've built a software application that allows us to emulate games from the early arcades all the way through the consoles, and by doing that GameTap treats games as independent from the original platform they were on, so we can put programming and other exciting things around the content.

GS: Is it a mixture of original and tried-and-true content, or is it exclusively based on existing content?

BL: You know, if you look at what Turner has done over the last 20, 30-odd years, we are excellent at taking back catalog product and creating branded networks. And that's what we're doing with GameTap. Previously, we would go to the studios and license TV and film properties, and we'd put programming around it--we'd package it and we'd distribute it through cable to TVs. With GameTap, we've gone to the publishers and licensed great back catalog product. We're putting packaging around it, programming around it, a lot like we do with our TV networks. This time we're distributing it through broadband to PC.

GS: Can you give some examples of what some of the games will be?

BL: Yes, we can. At E3 we'll be announcing a lot more, and a lot of the publishers we have. We have over 17 publishers signed to date and close to 1,000 games licensed. I can tell you right now we've got everything from Pac-Man to Splinter Cell, and from Sonic to Tony Hawk. So it really covers the breadth of the gaming history.

GS: So what's the business model like? And from the customer's perspective, can you talk about the pricing or the setup costs?

BL: You'll download the GameTap application to your computer. It's a monthly subscription fee--we haven't set the price yet, but it's about $10-$20 a month. I mean, you see what's out there in the marketplace for these types of subscription services, so it will be in line with that. It's an "all you can play." So we will launch with 300 games in the service, and then we're going to treat it as programming. So every week there will be five to 10 new games coming out in the same way that we promote TV episodes. So the catalog will continue to grow over time. And then in addition to the games, which all play back in their original format on the computer, we also are creating video programming, a lot like we do with TBS Dinner and a Movie, or some of our other networks. We'll put video programming around it to enhance the game, to do behind-the-scenes making-ofs, and all sorts of entertaining stuff to broaden the user's understanding of gaming.

GS: And that's like original programming.

BL: Yes, that will be original programming. A lot of it will be entertainment based. We're not doing reviews of games, like some other networks, or even like yourselves. You guys are all about the new current games and reviewing games. What we're about is about celebrating the games in the same way that we celebrate animation on Cartoon Network or celebrate classic movies on TCM.

GS: How long has this been in the works? It must be a real challenge to have gotten so many people together behind the project.

BL: November 2002 was when I put together a draft of getting some money to get a prototype started. We went to management--it was very well received, even though it was a very unusual request, and we spent the last two years building the product. We have over 100 people working on it, distributed teams. We've got people everywhere. And we've really pulled from the industry as well. I mean, one of the things we recognize as Turner is we know TV but we don't know games. So we spent a lot of time getting good consultants and independent contractors in who have been very involved in the gaming industry over the last 10-15 years.

GS: What's going to be the distribution model of the application?

BL: It will be clearly downloadable off the Internet. The obvious things--we'll try and get it on discs, we'll try and bundle it with peripherals. The network enables you to play all the games using the keyboard and mouse, but obviously that's not always going to be the optimum way to do it, so we're talking to peripheral manufacturers--we'd love for people to plug in USB controllers. But the power of Turner is our networks. So, the fact that it's broadband means we are going to promote GameTap.com for people to go to and download the application--it's free, and we can obviously run advertisements and promotional spots on our entertainment networks.

GS: Apart from it being viable from a business standpoint, what was the motive behind the project?

BL: There were a couple of big motives, personal motives. I've loved games. I have kind of been in games early on in the '90s and then kind of got on the sidelines as I worked on interactive television at Turner, and I've always wanted to bring us back into that. The second is, as the game industry itself often compares itself to the film industry...$10 billion in game sales, $10 billion in box office...but that $10 billion in box office is only 24 percent of the revenue of the film industry. They have all these other windows from DVDs, pay per view, and then the cable syndication model.

So what Turner saw in this opportunity is to create that endgame for the game industry. You guys obviously have retail figured out--who knows what's going to happen in other windowing. But GameTap will be the windowing just like a cable syndication window, so for your game guys who don't know, a movie goes from box office to pay per view to DVD and then to network and then to cable. We're going to do the same thing for the game industry. So with our relationship with publishers, games will continue to roll onto the service in the same way that you see on TBS or TNT, movies that have come out of the box office.

GS: Will games be removed from the service much like how movies and shows get cycled out of syndication?

BL: No, and that's the one difference between this network and our broadcast linear network. We're going to grow an on-demand service. So again, we start with these 300 games and eventually it's going to become 1,000, and 2,000, and however big we can get, and the games will always stay on the service.

GS: Who do you see as GameTap's competition? Other online gaming services? The rental market?

BL: There's lots of competition to this service--specifically, people's time. I mean, everything is vying for people's time. World of Warcraft is vying for people's time just like TBS is vying for people's time. So, in terms of online game sites, we've really taken a different approach to this. While there's certainly time, you know, people are going to be playing in different areas, and we really feel this is going to be a complement to the gamer--this is not going to interfere with the retail space of the console business or the retail sales of games. It's something that's there just like TV. You go out and watch movies, you go and you buy and rent DVDs, but you still watch our networks.

It's going to be the same--we believe it's the same thing with GameTap. People are going to buy the latest games, they're going to still rent games, they're going to find other ways to get games, but at the end of the day, GameTap is going to be where all the great games go to live on. And we're going to continue to reintroduce audiences to those games in the same way we reintroduce Scooby-Doo on Cartoon Network to new generations over and over again.

GS: So let's say I created a cult classic arcade game in the 1980s, and I've since forgotten about it, and maybe the game is being emulated out there, but I'm obviously not making any money off it anymore. Would I be making money off that game suddenly as a result of GameTap?

BL: The way we've modeled GameTap is in the same way we do with film syndication. We've gone to the publishers, looked at the catalogs, licensed a bunch of games for a set fee for a certain period of time. So it was a different shift for our publishers to come to our model, but it also makes sense because every game is important, and we didn't want to come in and say, "This game is worth this much, and this game isn't worth that much." The catalog is worth a certain amount, and there's this popular thing called the longtail right now, where, if you aggregate together all these individual niche things, it adds up to a big sum. GameTap takes advantage of the fact that you have a game that you absolutely love. We want to have that game.

If you're the only one that comes and plays it, that's great. And we want that to be true. Now, obviously there are tenfold titles that will always draw people, but it's those smaller titles that we want to keep growing the catalog, so there's always something new, always something exciting.

GS: Any kind of content restrictions on GameTap? Are you trying to keep it all family-friendly?

BL: We have restricted it--there are no M titles on the service right now. The main reason is we have a standards and practices for our networks. If we bring in an R-rated movie we can always edit that to meet standard and practice. We don't want to touch the games--we want to have the games be authentic--so for now we're keeping it at Teen and down. And also the brand that we're trying to get across. We want to get to the hardcore gamers. We think they'll think it's a great complement because all the games are here that they know and love. But we're really going after the mainstream audience as well. It's a growing area--40 percent of women are playing games, for instance.

We really want to open up games to a new audience, make it a broad and mainstream audience.

GS: What are your thoughts on interfacing with these games? Although a modern computer system can perfectly represent the experience of an old arcade game, the experience loses something when you don't have access to the original controls.

BL: We spent a lot of time trying to make it as best we can with keyboard and mouse because that's our value proposition: You just need a computer and a broadband connection, and the software. However, the application is designed to read and recognize all USB controllers that we've found. So we're encouraging our users to go out as they get involved in it, go get a track ball, go get a stick controller, and amplify or expand your playground, as we say in our tagline.

GS: Anything else you'd like to add about GameTap?

BL: I've been involved in the industry for a long time, and I've seen a lot of big media companies get involved in games. The thing that Turner is really excited about, and I hope comes across, is we wanted to get involved in a way that was a natural extension of what we do, and GameTap is really that. We take great catalogs of stuff, we put a fantastic brand around it, build programming and give it a place, a destination for people to come and enjoy this stuff, and that's what we're doing with GameTap.

GS: Did we cover when we can expect it?

BL: GameTap will be available this fall, October 2005.

GS: Thanks very much for your time.