Level Six: Change Players

When changing strategies, don't forget to get new blood. The concept for GameWorks morphed, and the team morphed with it. When Michael Montgomery left the company to become a venture capitalist, Paul replaced him with his old Universal friend, Ron Bension -- not a surprising move, given the fact that Bension had been preparing for exactly this job his entire career. After rising to chairman and CEO of Universal Studios Recreation Group, Bension put into place a $2.8 billion expansion plan at Universal Studios Florida. At GameWorks's headquarters in Glendale, California, he is focusing his attention on international expansion and is aggressively looking at Asia and Latin America. GameWorks Rio opened in November 1999; São Paulo is scheduled for 2001.

Bension is also modifying the use of movie magic. "I don't think that we've done a good job so far of using specific movies -- movie-themed games -- and I'm going to focus on developing proprietary entertainment assets," he says. "I intend to develop those assets -- 'rides,' if you will -- based on a film. It will have a branded aspect to it. 'Vertical Reality' is a big idea, but I just hate the name. What does that say to people in Columbus, Ohio? You can say to them, 'We have "Vertical Reality." ' And? The experience is terrific, but how do you get people to experience it? If that were the 'Men In Black' attraction, it would be more successful."

Second, and rather astounding, the creative dream team that Snoddy and Spielberg painstakingly assembled is gone. "We just found that we didn't need them," says Snoddy. At this level, and at this point in its own evolution, GameWorks has decided that the best team can be a surprisingly small and inexpensive one (it comprises just seven other people).

Level Seven: Keep an Eye on the Future

It's another video-game operating rule: Try to know where you're going. That's why Snoddy is developing more games: a parachute jump and "another game that I can't go into detail about." And of course, he's working on more pure-video games, which users will soon be able to download from the GameWorks Web site. "Ultimately," says Snoddy, "any game that people play should be a GameWorks game. We want to be part of the definition of playing games with your friends. Our company will grow outside of its walls onto the Internet. It's always about people playing together."

As for Paul, the entire process is a vindication. "Now that I'm 51," he says, "the most fun thing has been watching technology and entertainment collide." He is one of the few executives who looked at Pong -- remember Pong? -- 30 years ago and saw what its great, great-grandson could be. "I feel," he says, with satisfaction, "like one of those animals that crawled up on the beach and grew legs." Game definitely not over.

Chandler Burr (cburr@fastcompany.com) is a freelance writer based in London. His second book, Heretic of the Senses, is due out in late 2001. contact Ron Bension(ron@gameworks.com), Skip Paul (skip@ifilm.com), or Jon Snoddy (jon@snoddy.net) by email. Visit Sega GameWorks on the Web (www.gameworks.com).

Sidebar: How GameWorks Works

Jon Snoddy, creative consultant at Sega GameWorks LLC, is in the process of decorating his office. He's creating a techno-explosion. There's a huge blood-colored spider Web hanging over the window (it's actually a red parachute), along with snapshots of Snoddy having beers at a GameWorks opening with Carmen Electra, Bill Gates, Will Smith, and Vince Vaughn hanging on the walls. GameWorks is heavily dependent on engineering and technology -- the latest game engine, the hottest motion base -- and almost immediately, Paul and Snoddy made a strategic decision not to be an engineering company or a technology company.

"We didn't want a big in-house engineering department," says Snoddy. " 'Vertical Reality' required a company with a lot of electrical-engineering knowledge and game development and computer animation and character and personality creation. To do all of that, we'd need a huge engineering firm. We just wanted to start with a notion and wind up with a game."

The process of developing the attractions starts with the perfect game idea. And GameWorks is actually under a constant bombardment of external ideas. "GameWorks is a magnet," says Snoddy. "People call up all the time and say, 'I've got this idea. Would you be interested?' Unfortunately, often when you ask, 'But what do people do with this?' they say, 'Well, anything!' And anything is a lot like nothing. Until you can be more specific, you really aren't there."

The game ideas then get a "script," which in GameWorks's case is mostly direction, a narrative of what the guest sees, not dialogue. The script must also allow space for each person to interpret the story subjectively.