Interviews// Keith Ramsdale: Electronic Arts Vice President

SPOnG: I suppose Nintendo has opened up the market to a much wider range of potential consumers. Perhaps the success of the Wii has somehow highlighted this current concern with mature games and so on?

Keith Ramsdale: Oh, no. I think that concern has been there for years hasn’t it? I don’t think it’s a new thing. What I hope happens with Wii – and I think that it is, certainly from the consumer research that EA has done – is that whereas mums were previously buying games for their kids to play, they are now buying games that they will play with their kids and play by themselves. And we’re seeing that with the DS too. We’re seeing it less with PS3 and 360, of course.

But the Nintendo approach at the moment is just opening it up. And if parents open up and start to understand a little bit more then some of the angst will naturally go away. I’m not saying for a minute that we should be blind to this angst. We just have to get the message out.


SPOnG: What are the plans for the future of the London Games Festival? It really seems to be coming together this year.

Keith Ramsdale: Yeah, I think it is. I think the test will be in the resulting media coverage. This festival is about media first, about getting good mainstream press coverage for gaming. That’s what we need as an industry and I think the London Games Festival is facilitating a lot of this.

What I would hope for next year – and I’m really happy to do this job again if I’m allowed to – is for much more of the same. We need to show the industry the value of the mainstream coverage that the festival has generated to make sure more publishers are getting involved.


SPOnG: Well, the US – following the demise of the beast that was E3 – now has events like E For All. I suppose the London Games Festival is the closest the UK has to those types of events.

Keith Ramsdale: Yeah, but what I absolutely was never going to do with the London Games Festival was to make it a consumer-focused event. We have consumer features, hence the ‘Be The One’ event in Trafalgar Square. We wouldn’t do it if we didn’t want to give consumers a big experience. But fundamentally if we take the approach that the LGF is media first and then consumer, then what that means is that it is more of a proper festival, in the sense that it’s not an event in a big hall – like we tried to do a few years ago with GameStarz Live and that just didn’t work, having a big aircraft hangar full of games.


SPOnG: Thanks for your time Keith, all the best for the London Games Festival.

Keith Ramsdale: No problems, thanks.


Keith Ramsdale has helped to establish LGF, only now in its second year, as an essential event on the gaming calendar. Additionally, EA took over Trafalgar Square for three days as part of this year’s festival.