So was it easy to find the silver lining around the situation when you found out that THQ would have to let you guys go?

Probably because of the way I’m built, yeah. I’ve been in the industry for 19 years and I’ve seen the heights of success and I’ve seen the lows of failures and it’s a challenging business to be in; not just the videogame business, but the entertainment business as a whole. It’s a fickle business. You have to have the right games, you have to be relevant to the audience and you have to entertain people. Those are not easy things to do consistently, over and over again.

I want to continue. We built this studio for the long term. Back when I got here in 2002 our purpose certainly wasn’t to build a game or a couple games. It was to be able to put in an infrastructure and a team, technology, and talent, and leverage those elements, and to be relevant, and to entertain people for years to come. For me, it just seems an impossible choice to walk away from the studio or to start to close it down, and to not give the team here an opportunity to do other games, to work with other people.

I’ve had some conversations over the years with the people who weren’t fully aware that we were a wholly-owned division, and I remember some disappointed people on the end of the phone when we told them that we weren’t able to work with anyone besides our publisher and parent company THQ. That has changed, obviously. This is going to give us an opportunity to work with other publishers and other opportunities, whether it be in straight up videogame development or in other entertainment software spaces.

I imagine that you’ve been on the phone a lot lately trying to contact some of those people who were disappointed that you couldn’t work with them.

Sure thing, absolutely. GDC is next week and there’s a great congregation of people who are relevant to the opportunities that we’re looking for as a studio.