Private: Kareem Ettouney: The Edge Interview

08/05/2009

Our loveable Egyptian Art Director Kareem has been interviewed by Edge Online, where he talks about things with three letter acronyms –  LBP, DLC and ART. Wait that last one is just a word…

kareembangbang

LBP to the general public was a hot game at Christmas and now it’s old news, and yet it’s now a far better game than it was when it came out. Do you in some ways regret LBP being so early on in this evolution from games being something you buy in a box to being an online, extensible platform?

Well no – we are so humbled and excited by that, and wait until you see what’s coming as well. As long as you inspire people hopefully they’ll keep on enjoying it. But what I really want to say about that is that the game industry for a long time was so powerful as a technology-driven kind of platform, and in the last 10, 15 years you start seeing cinema taking over games – huge cutscenes and lip-synching and trying to make immersive stories and believability of the world. But what we’re trying to do in LBP is to focus on expression, not impressiveness. We’ve given the bits to the people and people have – for example, the guy who made a wedding proposal. That is never going to be topped for that particular person because of the personal aspect. If we get the best studio in the world to do that level, it’s not going to mean to that person’s partner as much as his one because of the personal element. This is what LBP is all about. It’s the power of the personal and the indispensability of the individual.

Read the full interview over at Edge Online.