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Trilobyte - Rob Landeros interview - page 4

While the name Rob Landeros may not immediately ring a bell, as a pioneer of the genre his track record includes legendary titles like The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour and Tender Loving Care, and today we’re taking an in-depth look back at the long career of the co-founder of Trilobyte Games. Such retrospection isn't merely nostalgia, however, as Rob and Trilobyte are back in the news these days, so we've also taken the chance to find out about the upcoming plans of the resurrected company, including an iOS port of Tender Loving Care, which is due for release later this month.


Ingmar Böke: Hello Rob, it’s a pleasure to welcome you here at Adventure Gamers. To start us off, I would like you tell us about the early days of Trilobyte. How was the company founded, and what are your memories of the first few years?

Image #1
Rob Landeros and Graeme Devine (CD-ROM World, March 1994; Steven Bloch/Blackstar photography)

Rob Landeros: I met Trilobyte’s co-founder, Graeme Devine, while we were both working at Virgin Mastertronic in Southern California. I was head of the art department, he was head of programming. About a year into working together, we appointed ourselves “Department of New Technologies” and Martin Alper, our boss, sent us off to all these tech conferences around the country. All the talk was multimedia, CD-Rom, video. One night, in an airport bar, we came up with the basic idea for The 7th Guest on the back of a paper napkin, literally. When we got back to work we wrote up a proposal and presented it to Martin. We told him we wanted to develop the game offsite, so he promptly “fired us” in the friendliest way possible. He funded us for about two years of work. We founded Trilobyte, moved our families up to Southern Oregon, and that was it.

Ingmar: When you created The 7th Guest, you proved yourself a pioneer of the game industry. All of this happened at a time when things were changing a lot in the industry: the new CD-Rom medium, new tools for developers, many more possibilities to create something that could measure up to any other form of media, etc. How would you describe the mood in the company at the time? Were you aware that you were about to create something that people had never seen before?

Rob: Nobody really knows what they’ll end up with when they start out. You make a movie or a game, you think it’s going to be really good, it turns out to be a piece of crap. You never know. We were hoping for the best.

When we started, we didn’t know exactly what we were going to do. We didn’t have an absolutely clear vision, but we had a pretty good idea. Although, looking back, it’s amazing how closely we stuck to our original design outline. As far as the details went, well, we stumbled along and discovered what we needed along the way.

The mood of the company was great during those first couple of years. We all worked in one big room, talking together, figuring out what we could and couldn’t do. We’d try one thing and if it didn’t work out, we’d discover—happily, serendipitously—another solution.

Image #2
The 7th Guest

We used the most advanced tools we could find, and when we needed a tool that didn’t exist, we’d make our own. We started shooting video: panoramic, 360-degree shots of interiors in this huge, old mansion we’d scouted. Unsurprisingly, the results were poor. One of the artists, Robert Stein, suggested using 3-D modeling software, which was new at the time. I was skeptical. But he built a room, filled it with a fireplace, some chairs, tables, this and that, and he rendered out an animation with the furniture floating around in a ghostly fashion. Amazing. It was a revelation.

So I sat down and started experimenting. I may have been the first person to create an animated, 3-D cursor. As far as I know, anyway. I was used to pushing pixels, like I had in the old days. I’d been working on some animated thing, ten frames, drawn pixel by pixel, and it wasn’t looking all that great. I decided to try 3-D. The first thing I made was a skull, with throbbing brains. A skull mesh came with the software, so I just lopped off the top of the skull, made a brain and two eyeballs, had the brain throbbing over a few frames, eyeballs rolling side to side, got it rendered, and that was it! I had a really cool, perfect little animated image in half the time it would normally have taken to make by hand. 3-D changed everything overnight. These days, it's not all that interesting, no big deal. Back then, in 1991, it was huge.

Ingmar: The release of The 7th Guest turned the gaming world upside down and established the CD as the medium of the future. Bill Gates even called the game “the new standard in interactive entertainment”. What were your feelings at the time? Did you imagine in your wildest dreams that you would revolutionize a whole industry with one single game?

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Devine and Landeros (Medford Mail Tribune, July 1993; Steve Johnson, photographer)

Rob: No, I didn’t. Gates? Well, that was nice. And the quote has come in handy. But the confirmation that we’d created something really big happened at CES [Consumer Electronics Show]. 

We’d been working on T7G in Medford, Oregon, isolated and insulated from the rest of the world. Only a few people knew what we were doing. When we sent the first stuff to Virgin, they were really excited. Just, “WOW!!!” Their response was our first inkling that we were onto something good. But you know, Virgin was our producer, our publisher, our friends, so of course they were going to give us encouraging words. But CES was like a giant focus group. And the intense response there to our demo was undeniable. The whole place was talking about it, people were lined up dozens deep at our booth, trying to get a look at it. Everybody was bowled over. At that point, we realized what we’d done, that it couldn’t fail. The response was that big.

Everybody generally thinks what they’re doing is good, but you don’t actually know if you’re right until you put it in front of the public. Or, maybe you do something really good—whether it’s music, movies, whatever—but it doesn’t get any attention. T7G was the right game at the right time with the right design, and people took notice.

Ingmar: As you look back at The 7th Guest, what worked well, and what could have worked better?

Rob: Well, the graphics and music were successful. Everything else could have been better. The acting could have been better. Obviously, the video could have been better. It was low resolution. Those were early days, but it could have been better. We were experimenting. Fortunately, we were dealing with ghosts that could be semi-transparent and a little fuzzy, so that was fortuitous.

I don’t have regrets. I just wouldn’t work that way again. I would demand more professionalism. The acting was melodramatic. Aspects of the production were amateurish. There wasn’t a lot of professional video production talent in Southern Oregon at the time. We took what we could get. But the game’s audience wasn’t critical of any of that. The critical complaint from the gaming industry at the time, which I didn’t agree with, was that the puzzles were not well-integrated into the story. I like logic and fairness, so my puzzles were self-contained, you didn’t need to use trial and error or fuzzy logic to solve them, you didn’t need to lug things around from other parts of the game. But we got a lot of flak. We were bad guys to a lot of people. Cyan were the good guys. But today that old complaint seems to have disappeared, the Myst rivalry gone, and people accept the game on its own terms. Since the re-release of T7G, the press has been almost all positive.

Ingmar Böke: In 1995 you released the sequel, The 11th Hour. This must have been the first project you did with David Wheeler. How did he get on board and how important was he not only for this game, but your work in the upcoming years in general?

Rob Landeros: David had moved up to Southern Oregon from Los Angeles. He was a mature, established, experienced director, one of the few in this area at the time, and he became a creative collaborator. We suggested to Virgin that we do a T7G sequel immediately, and they heartily agreed. So, while Graeme and the programmers were finishing up TG7, David and I put together a plan for The 11th Hour. Dave was totally engaged, fascinated with the work, and a real collaborator. We worked together organically. And that’s important. There’s the cerebral, intellectual conceptualizing that game developers do—and that’s a really good and necessary thing—but when it comes to writing a story, a drama with real human characters, a different mind-set is required.

Ingmar: Please share your memories and anecdotes about the creation of The 11th Hour.

Image #4
The 11th Hour

Rob: There was a downright furor about The 11th Hour being sexy. We had a woman in black lingerie! OK. There were lots of rumours about nudity going around, people were speculating, making things up. I don't think we shot any nudity for The 11th Hour, and certainly nothing X-rated. All the hysteria started getting to me. TLC was even worse. People inside the company were freaking out. And then, of course, the rumours got out, the public heard about it, and THEY began clamouring to see all this supposed sex and nudity. We had to do so much damage control.

We were trying to bring some maturity, some adult storytelling to games. Not adult as in XXX, but adult as in mature content for mature audiences. I was pushing that envelope, and it was just amazing how much flak we got as a result.

Another memorable event was The 11th Hour press tour David and I did with our marketing person, Jane LeFavre, and Preston, our technical support guy. We’d been working on the game for a long time and the technical portion was hanging us all up. The press tour was a big deal. Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington D.C.; we had dozens of interviews lined up with major publications. Game publications, Rolling Stone, People magazine: major mainstream media. Graeme was none too happy that he had to stay behind and put together a working demo. “Fine, you guys go have fun; I have to stay here and work.”

We’d told all these media outlets that The 11th Hour was going to be out soon, and they’d timed their stories to coincide with the game’s release. We kept telling Graeme, “We need the demo, we’re leaving in a week”, then, “in three days”, then “tomorrow”, but still no demo. We had to conduct our first interviews in L.A. without anything to show. Finally, at the end of our first day in San Francisco, we get the demo. Big relief.

Image #5
Devine and Landeros (Los Angeles Time calendar, August 1994; Bill McClain, photographer)

The press tour was fun, and interesting. We conducted our San Francisco interviews in a place called The Mansions. Purportedly haunted, and decorated in the most fantastic style, every room unique. We’d rented rooms there, and we gave interviews on the very top floor. It was great.

One of Virgin’s head honchos came to San Francisco and took us out to a nice dinner, wanting to confirm that we’d have the game done on the date we’d projected. We told him “Yes, as far as we know, as far as we have any control over it.” But we were worried, and, sure enough, The 11th Hour missed its release date by an entire year. We missed our publicity, our window of opportunity. Speaking of Windows, Windows 95 had just come out and the game didn’t work with Windows 95. Yeah.

Right now you’d be talking to a multimillionaire if we’d hit that release date. Even then, I realized, “This delay is ruining my life, my career.” I spent a whole year waiting, watching the possibility of success drain away. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing.

I think Graeme just didn’t want to have anything to do with The 11th Hour. We would encourage him to attend creative meetings, but he wouldn’t say anything or have any input. By that time he was starting to want to go in a different direction. It's too bad that personalities and personal feelings get in the way of doing good business. Nonetheless, that was the beginning of the end.

Because of the rift, I ended up being fired from my own company. The money guys on the board decided I was the bad guy because, they said, I was spending too much on TLC when they wanted to follow Graeme and the 1st person shooter internet game trend that was just starting to happen around that time.

Ingmar: After the release of Clandestiny, a lot changed at Trilobyte, which led to a new company founded by yourself and David: Aftermath Media. Please talk about those developments and tell us what led to that decision.

Rob: When I got fired, my parting gift from the board was TLC. They agreed I could take it with me. Their one concession. TLC needed finishing; we had a German distribution agreement. Eventually, we got TLC onto DVD so you could play it on your TV. That was cool, a good experience; people could sit in their living rooms and play it on a big screen. That was the version released by DVD International in the States. The CD-Rom and DVD-Rom were released in Europe by THQ Germany. We got good distribution and probably made money for the publisher, but we didn’t see much of a return ourselves. However, we got critical acclaim. I’m happy with it from a creative standpoint. I like how it plays and the fact that it’s deep and rich. I intend to follow a similar path with what I do in the future, if I get a chance to make something else. Storytelling with depth.

Ingmar: Tender Loving Care is one of the most fascinating projects that the game industry has ever seen. In fact, in making it you proved to be true visionaries once more. How did you come up with the unique “gameplay” (psychological tests, etc.)? 

Image #6
Tender Loving Care

Rob: When we were still at Trilobyte, Dave had three scripts, and one of them, TLC, particularly interested me. I suggested we do something with it. So, we took a road trip on our motorcycles, around Oregon and to the Oregon and Northern California coast. We’d drive during the day, and check in at a place in the afternoon, have drinks, dinner, and discuss ideas for TLC. At a certain point in that trip, I got an idea of how we could make it interactive. Let’s not have any game elements in it at all. Let's make an interactive story.

We decided we wanted to incorporate some kind of psychological testing, like Rorschach tests, and later on we learned about the TATs, Thematic Apperception Tests, which seemed a lot more interesting than showing a bunch of inkblots. And more apt. We consulted a psychologist about them, and decided they fit well with the story.

We divided the questions into different sections, the exit polls and TATs. After watching a segment of the movie, the viewer is given an exit poll that asks for opinions about the story and characters up to that point. Next is a psychological test that measures the viewer’s attitudes indirectly, opaquely. The results of both tests influence the direction of the story.

I've compared the concept to a hypothetical ideal interactive movie experience. You know what it’s like when you go to a movie with friends and you all come out of the theatre afterwards and discover that everyone has a completely different opinion about it? To the degree that you can reasonably ask, “did you see the same movie I just saw?” Different people see different things. What if you could show a movie that really WAS different for different audiences or individuals, based on individual or mass audience perceptions? What if you could measure people’s responses, read their minds? What if a movie could be like a comedian who gauges a particular audience and tailors his jokes accordingly? So that if this personalized movie was being shown to a bunch of immature kids, as they watched, it would develop into a Walt Disney, family movie, and if it was being shown to a bunch of jaded, mature, cigarette-smoking Europeans, it would become dark, ironic, and sexy. And of course, if it was being shown to a bunch of pervs, it would be X rated. So everybody starts watching the same movie, but ends up Disneyesque at one extreme, and kinky porn at the other.

That was the idea, the ideal. It has always amazed me that even though there is no game in TLC, and even though we always described it as an interactive movie, when our fans talk about it, they call it a game. You can see the quotes on our website, things like: “TLC is the best game I’ve played since Riven!” Or, “Great game!” It’s not a game, but viewers are having a game-like experience while watching it. That’s why I think it worked. They see something different and new and they appreciate it. Plus, the critical reception was good. We didn’t get as much press as we would have liked, but what we got was very good. We also found ourselves to be the darlings of the DVD industry and won several awards.

Ingmar Böke: John Hurt is a brilliant actor. What was it like to deal with him on set?

Rob Landeros: I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him. I wasn’t on set that much. I was even kicked off the set! Even though I was the producer, I was kicked off the set. There were nude scenes. When shooting nude scenes in movies, it’s customary to clear the set of all unnecessary crew. I understand that. Even though I was the producer! Even though I was the guy putting up the money! Fair enough.

In fact, I was on the set so infrequently that when I did show up, the actors didn’t know who I was. I’m a low-profile guy. I probably exchanged only a few words with most of the cast. And certainly not with John Hurt.

Hurt's character, Doctor Turner, drives an Acura NSX. As executive producer, one great perk was that I got to take it out for a few spins, including a very speedy trip to the coast and back.

Ingmar: Tender Loving Care is a character drama, which isn’t necessarily a genre with a lot of mass appeal. How satisfied were you with the sales? Is there anything you can tell us about the budget and how much of that budget you got back with the sales?

Rob: Let's just say it cost a lot and we didn't get it all back.

Ingmar: Let’s move on to your next FMV project, Point of View. You went through quite a struggle to make this project possible. Please talk about the funding issues and how you found a way to finally produce it.

Rob: We didn’t make money on TLC, nor on POV, but the budget was pretty small on POV. We didn’t want to spend a lot of money like we had on TLC. TLC was shot on film, but by the time we got to POV, video cameras were good enough that we could shoot digital video. We used only natural light, so were able to scale down the crew, as well. Plus, we shot in Canada, got some Canadian funding, and a publisher to put up money for production. We also cut way down on the supplemental content in POV, the diaries, multimedia, radio shows, etc.

I like TLC better, myself, but POV did well as a movie in its own right. We screened it at the Ashland Film Festival, and it got a big audience response. One lady—who knows, she might have been crazy, might have been on drugs—she was absolutely effusive, she told us it was the best movie she’d ever seen. If I had actually agreed with her, I would have been ecstatic. I do think the basic idea, acting, writing, were all very good. The story’s very compelling.

Ingmar: I heard that the shooting budget for Point of View was around $85,000 and the total budget around $250,000 Dollars. Can you confirm these numbers? How exhausting and difficult was it to work on such an ambitious project with so little money?

Image #7
Point of View

Rob: Yes, I think the shooting budget was about $80,000, but I don't believe the total ever got to $250,000. You'd have to ask Wheeler. The funder for shooting was DVD International, which released TLC. The rest we did very inexpensively, with some Canadian funding. The art, graphics, programming, and interactivity were all quite straightforward and it was done quickly. It wasn’t exhausting, especially for me. I was in Oregon during most of it. By the time I went up to Canada, most of it was already done.

Ingmar: What are your general memories of the development of Point of View?

Rob: Oh, getting kicked off the set. Again. Not really. I don't have many stories since I was only there for a couple days of shooting and a couple of weeks to oversee and art direct development of the interactive elements.

Ingmar: Stefanie von Pfetten did a wonderful job as the lead actress. Where did you find her and what are your thoughts on her performance?

Rob: She answered the casting call. When we reviewed the audition tapes, she just stood out head and shoulders above the rest. There was no question; she was the one for the part. Model beautiful and vulnerable. The guy, Frank (Chris Bradford) was harder to cast. We had a few good candidates.

Ingmar: Tender Loving Care contained quite a bit of nudity and I heard that you wanted to have the same element in Point of View. However, at the last moment Stefanie refused to do these scenes, which must have been quite an disappointment for David and yourself. Please tell us the true story and share your thoughts about this.

Rob: All I know is that she decided she didn’t want to do it. Changing her mind at the last minute after agreeing to do it was not my idea of professional conduct, but what are you going to do? Actually, I decided to make the point that if she wasn’t going to do it, we’d have to do it for her. There are some possible psycho-killer guys in POV who are obsessed with Stefanie's character and cut out pictures of her for their scrapbooks. One makes a mask of her face and puts it on; it’s creepy. I thought, what would these pervs be doing at home? The less sophisticated would be cutting out photos of her head and crudely taping them onto naked photos from men's magazines. The more sophisticated would be using Photoshop. So, I created a set of crude collages, and a few more accurate Photoshop composites, and I showed them to Dave with the idea we’d put them in the supplemental materials of the “game”. It’s obviously not really Stefanie, we’d just be saying this creepy character would be making these images. Dave actually nixed the idea, the pussy. 

Ingmar: Now I would like to get to the resurrection of Trilobyte in 2009. How did you arrive at the decision to bring the company back?

Rob: Well, after being fired from my own company (have I mentioned that I was fired from my own company?), I left with TLC and some documents. I took those assets, and they kept everything else: The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour. But as soon as I left, all that past work was tossed aside, and they went onto new things. They abandoned what had brought Trilobyte success in the first place.

It didn’t concern me for a long time. But years later, I started seeing games that were made around the same time as T7G and The 11th Hour being leveraged in new versions and being put on different platforms. So, I did due diligence, hired lawyers, hunted down anyone who might have had rights to the games along the chain of title, and made sure the company was still intact, made sure I still had ownership rights to Trilobyte. Graeme didn’t care about Trilobyte, so I secured his shares too. I figured that at some point someone was going to want the rights to those games.

Image #8
Rob Landeros

I got a lot of nibbles from people who were not serious players, but finally somebody with big plans offered me quite a bit of money for the license and royalties to T7G, and we worked out a deal. This was just prior to the iPhone catching on. That first year they held the license, I kept telling them, “you should do an iPhone version” and they agreed, but kept on doing nothing. It was frustrating. Finally, they breached contract, and I took the license back. I’d been chomping at the bit, thinking I could probably do the iPhone port myself.

I teamed up with John Fricker and Charlie McHenry and formed the current company, Trilobyte Games. Fricker had been wanting to do iPhone games and he suggested that he do T7G for iPhone. It was great. He was so enthusiastic.

The iPhone, the iPad. The perfect medium for what I do. Point and tap. The kind of interface I design, and that I’m proud of, is always simple, elegant, and uncomplicated. This design value has been extremely important to me from the very beginning. A lot of adventure games are very complicated: you have the control, the inventory, the potions and magic tokens, on and on. In my interfaces, there are no rules, no instructions. You point and click; you can either do something or you can’t. And it lets you know. You can go this way, you can’t go this way. You discover what you can and can’t do, and by discovering those rules, you are also solving the game.

The iPad has such a beautiful interface. The touch screen, the gestures. The iPhone and iPad, their interface, are what brought me out of retirement. That, and the return of simple games to the market. It’s no longer necessary to produce a twenty-million dollar game full of people shooting people, raping women, hacking off limbs, horrible, violent, nonsensical action and no story. Once again it’s OK to play a simple word or puzzle game. The market has come back around, and I can go back to this kind of work.

Ingmar Böke: So far you've had a strong focus on mobile devices. Would you say your plans have worked out well to this point or does this whole mobile business sound more promising in theory than it is in reality?

Rob Landeros: Yeah, it’s difficult. Access is easy, which is the good part, and access is easy, which is the bad part. The Apple ecosystem is frustrating unless you’re a big company. You can get in, you can have a good game, but you need to get noticed. Without a marketing budget, it’s hard to get noticed. You’re competing with hundreds of thousands of other apps. The Apple store has its own search engines and ranks products on sales, so if you’re a major seller, you get good rankings and good visibility. Like EA. When we launched T7G in the Apple store, we were optimistic; it was during the Christmas season, but we got squashed by EA. They had a big sale right at that time, selling $14 games for $1. They pushed everyone down in the ranks. They can afford to do things like that. I don’t want to complain, I don’t want to say anything bad about Apple, but I don’t mind saying that the system could be better, it could be more fair.

Ingmar: Currently you’re working on a port of Tender Loving Care. Anything you can tell us about that?

Image #9
Set preparation for TLC (InterActivity, February 1996; Joni Coyote, photographer)

Rob: We are anticipating a late September release, and now that it is finished, I can say that it is great. At the time we first made it, I thought we were developing TLC for the new DVD medium, but now I realize we were just a few years ahead of our time and were actually developing for the touch tablet, which I think is the ideal platform for a product like this. I've also played it on HDTV using AirPlay with mirroring and it's another good use of that capability and a great way for multiple players to share the experience. (We are planning on adding true, full AirPlay support in a later version which will be kickass.)

TLC's original release had a problem with marketing and distribution. We could never get any shelf space it. Not in the video stores, not in the software stores. It wasn’t a movie, it wasn’t a game: what was it? No one knew where to put it. But now all that doesn’t make any difference. Interactive multimedia, app books, app movies, it’s all content. I don’t necessarily plan to make another TLC, but I am still interested in developing a new project along similar lines conceptually. Most likely a 7th Guest 3 as a prequel.

Ingmar: A while back you told me that you’re also working on a new original title which will be on PCs as well. Is there anything you can tell us about the new game?

Rob: I was talking about 7th Guest 3. It will be released on all viable platforms. We are currently looking for a partner to help make it a reality. 

Ingmar: I guess a lot of people see you and David Wheeler as a dream team. In recent years, David has gained quite a bit of credit in the game industry (for example, with the videogame Ghostbusters), while you returned with Trilobyte. Do you see a chance that the two of you will ever join forces again?

Image #10
Point of View

Rob: Ah, that’s like asking if Lewis and Martin or The Beatles will ever reform. I just don’t know. I didn’t even know David had done Ghostbusters until you mentioned it. I've been in business contact with him, but not so much personal contact. I wouldn’t discount anything, but right now, I don’t have any plans along those lines. We’re working out a deal for Trilobyte to distribute POV, but that’s it.

Ingmar: There were TONS of really bad FMV games that couldn’t match up with some of the very few GREAT FMV games. Do you think the demise of FMV had everything to do with all the bad games, or do you see other reasons as well?

Rob: Your guess is as good as mine. Most of what is made, no matter what it is, FMV or not, is mediocre. So, if there were more people attempting to make FMV, say a thousand, then you’d get a higher rate of good product. Twenty good FMV games out of one thousand would be a good rate. But if you’ve only got seven people trying…

I just had a conversation with someone who wanted to work on 7th Guest 3, and I jokingly said, “If you have a million dollars, let’s do it.” Well, he took me seriously and said, “You don’t need a million dollars, it could be done much cheaper than that!” He kept arguing along those lines and I started getting irritated with the guy. I said, “You’re not hearing me. I don’t WANT to do it cheaply. I’m not going to do this if I can’t do it right. And that means a large budget. A million may or may not do. It's a good place to start.”

Ingmar: Which FMV games – aside from your own – did you enjoy for what reasons?

Rob: I'm not much of a player of games. It’s true. When and if I do play them, it is just to get a quick idea of how they work and what is the approach to design and concept. Hardly ever to completion. I was talking to John Fricker, our chief technology officer, about this. I told him, “I’m glad you’re a gamer, playing all the new stuff, so I don’t have to.” This way, I remain uninfluenced. In terms of story, I’m already corrupted by other influences, but I think if I were a real gamer I would end up just copying something sooner or later. I wouldn’t stay fresh. John can figure out the mechanics of the best games out there, so I don’t really need to stay up on them. I’m too lazy. It’s like research. To play games would be like doing research. I'm happy to have somebody else do that.

Ingmar: With the return of Trilobyte and a new Tex Murphy game, it seems like FMV might be about to make a comeback. Do you think that this day will ever come and people will finally realize all the potential that FMV has as an artform?

Rob: Yes. But I wouldn’t call it FMV, I’d call it something else. And it may come from a new direction. TV is now an internet device, for instance. You have an advent of second screen apps and devices. You can interact with movie DVDs in all sorts of ways. Perhaps there will be an evolution of movies. Maybe. Maybe not. But if there is, I don’t think the movie industry will do it. On the other hand, it’s too tough for small developers. Too expensive. We shall see. I think to make a breakthrough outside of and beyond the box, it will take a company of some financial means and resources partnered with somebody with an innovative outlook and good track record. Might I be so immodest as to suggest myself?

Ingmar: Thanks a lot for your time, Rob. We really appreciate your efforts and wish you all the best with your upcoming projects.

Rob: Thanks.

 

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