Interviews// Disney's Matt Carroll

SPOnG: So, Turok is going to be one of the first Touchstone games?

MC: Yes

SPOnG: So, does this mark a move for Disney away from the perception that you’ve been milking the great franchises that you have, but haven’t been coming out with the most inventive games? Is this a conscious move to change the company’s image?

MC: Yes, I think to change the image, absolutely. Nobody in the organisation believes that milking properties is the way forward. We are adamant that the product quality in whatever we do will increase over time. And we want to bring in innovation in both gameplay mechanics and the environment. When people play an interactive product, they are associating with the brand in a different way – it’s different from sitting back and watching a show, and allowing that storyline to deliver itself in a linear fashion.

So, the Walt Disney Company is making a big statement in the games division, because it understands that in the future, people interacting with the brand will be done in a different way, and gameplay will have an increasing importance in that relationship. Our goal is definitely to increase quality in everything we do, both in those stories and characters that are already popular, but also to create new stories and new characters.

Turok is a very interesting game. It happens to be aimed at a more mature audience than Disney-branded games, and the gameplay mechanics would be different from something we would put a Disney brand on, simply because the audience is older, more sophisticated and more demanding.

SPOnG: If you put a violent game out under the Disney brand, Disney would get hammered, wouldn’t it?

MC: Yes, I think it would get hammered if it betrayed the trust of the label – when the Disney brand is on a product, people who buy it have expectations – it signs us up to ensuring there’s no blood, violence isn’t directed against humans and a number of other things.

SPOnG: Spectrobes is a new IP, which has been quite rare for BVG/Disney in the past. How important is it to Disney Interactive? It seems to generate all sorts of merchandising opportunities?

MC: It’s extremely important for us. It’s the first original IP that we’re delivering to the family. It happens to come out on the platform that everyone wants to be on at the moment, which was the biggest console last year and is firmly in the hands of the Disney heartland – six to 12-year-olds. Hopefully, it will be the first of many. As we emerge as a publish, this will become less and less unusual.

SPOnG: Are you worried that Spectrobes will be accused of being derivative of Pokemon?

MC: I’m not worried about that – Pocket Monsters, collectability and evolution are themes of many videogames, stories and books, so I think it is a product of popular culture.

SPOnG: Can you categorically tell me there won’t be any more name-changes and rebranding – Disney Interactive and Touchstone will be it now?

MC: [Laughs] I’d like to think so. But you can never tell, can you…


SPOnG: Thanks for your time, Matt.