Interviews// Ian Livingstone, Life President of Eidos

SPOnG: (Square Enix Chairman - Yoichi) Wada-San has spoken about Square IP being worked on at Eidos and vice-versa. Is that a prospect you find exciting?

Ian Livingstone: It is exciting, but it's still early days. Nothing has actually been determined. Where we stand today, we're wholly independent and it's business as usual. That's not to say things won't change in the future, inevitably things will over time. But where we are today, as I say, it's business as usual.


SPOnG: Batman: Arkham Asylum's coming up and was obviously started when Warner Brothers (the owner of DC Comics and thus Batman) still had a share in the company. With Square now wholly owning Eidos, will we see more Batman games from Eidos?

Ian Livingstone: The future of Batman... we haven't really talked about sequels yet. All we're concentrating on at this moment in time is getting Batman: Arkham Asylum out on the streets. It's coming out on August 28th. Quite clearly from all the reviewers, from what's been seen at E3, it's been spectacularly well-received and we've got great hopes for the product. Rocksteady, in partnership with us, have done an extraordinary job of putting out a great game and applying it to a great license. Often, film licenses are used as a marketing tool only and only sub-optimal games are attached to them. I think this is the first time that I can remember that a great game has been applied to a major movie and comic brand.


SPOnG: At the moment we're seeing games like inFamous and [PROTOTYPE] coming out which are, essentially, superhero (or supervillain) games without a license attached to them. Is there a danger for the owners of the licenses that publishers are just going to ignore the established IP and create their own?

Ian Livingstone: I think there's always been a case for exploiting intellectual property from other media. Games have been based on novels, they've been based on films, they've been based on comic books. And why not? These properties are well-known. What I think we've done is raised the bar and put out an exceptional game, and it might attract other people to that marketplace, but every genre, if it's successful, will always attract competition. It's just the way it is.


SPOnG: Kind of on the subject, there's been talk of a 'Batman-style' reboot of Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider franchise by people at Eidos. Do you think she needs it? Do you think she's still relevant?

Ian Livingstone: We haven't actually said too much about what the next Tomb Raider game will be. All I can tell you is that there is a group working on exploring avenues to make another Tomb Raider game, but nothing has been decided.

With regard to her popularity, she's been around and in the industry and successful – not just in the industry, but on the movie screen – since 1996 when the first Tomb Raider game came out. She survived the test of time rather like James Bond survived the test of time in the cinema. Not every game of Tomb Raider's been great, but the fanbase is still there and everyone is still very much attracted to Lara Croft. She's got fans in and outside the industry.

Angelina Jolie has obviously helped promote her appeal on a global basis. No matter where I go around the world, when people say 'what do you do?', I say 'I'm from Eidos, the home of Lara Croft', their eyes immediately light up because there's a positive resonance with Lara Croft the virtual character. So, of course there's a reason to carry on making Tomb Raider games.

The speculation is what kind of game will it be? Will it be a reboot, will it be something different? We're just exploring all avenues at the moment, absolutely nothing has been decided as yet.