The Final Boss Every month an industry leader wraps up MCV with their unique insight
You’ve been with Xbox UK since the beginning. What have been the most surprising changes in the industry and what has stayed unchanged? When I joined the industry in 1999, games were bought on a CD or cartridge and multiplayer gaming took place in the same room. Now games are downloaded or even streamed, receive constant updates to keep them fresh and are played online by millions of people. What hasn’t changed is that people are still united by a shared love of playing games, however those games are played. You came from the music industry. What are the parallels and differences? The parallel is that both the music and the game industries are borne out of people’s desire to be entertained by the thing they are passionate about. In some ways there are parallels in the way digital technology disrupted the music industry business model and the more recent digital disruption in gaming with game downloads and now streaming. The difference is that for many years the music industry felt threatened by its disruption, while the games industry genuinely embraces change and puts the player first. Can the industry possibly change as much over the next five years as it has over the last five? Maybe even more so. Who would have thought five years ago that games would be played across platforms, streamed from the cloud and consumed via a monthly subscription? It feels like the industry is at an inflexion point caused by digital technology broadening the ways games are discovered (via streaming), delivered (via the cloud), consumed (via a subscription service) and refreshed (via digital content updates). The global addressable market opportunity for gaming is vast and projected to grow significantly over the next three years and big tech companies not traditionally associated directly with gaming are entering this space. That increased competition, and changing consumer habits around consumption, are going to be great for the gamer as they will drive even more innovation over the next five years and beyond. It’s such an exciting time to be in the games industry right now and it’s going to be fascinating to see how it continues to develop. With the greatest respect to your current role, what is your dream job? Easy. Centre forward, Tottenham Hotspur. Although the current incumbent is pretty good and will take some displacing.
Harvey Eagle Xbox category director for UK and Ireland, Microsoft “I collected Moby from his hotel around 2am and we drove round the deserted streets of London on a sight-seeing tour of all the main landmarks.”
What’s was the most ludicrous single moment of your career to date? Around 1991, in the lead up to signing Moby to the record label I was working for at the time, he flew into London for one of his first visits to the UK. He arrived really late at night but wanted to see the sites of London and the only free time in his schedule was that night. So I collected him from his hotel near Ladbroke Grove around 2am and we drove round the deserted streets of London on a sight-seeing tour of all the main landmarks. I remember being star-struck but wanting to impress him that I knew London inside out without having to consult my trusty A-Z map too often. Do you feel the industry is headed in the right direction? I truly believe developers and hardware engineers are pushing the boundaries all the time – whether that’s Playground Games creating a game with a truly British canvas with a weekly change in seasons or Nintendo designing a dual purpose console. It’s also heartening to see how the industry is evolving and pushing for more inclusivity. To flourish we have to better represent the diversity of our players, whether that’s more women as lead characters, more opportunities for minorities to work in our industry or opening up gaming to more people through innovations such as the Xbox Adaptive Controller.
66 | MCV 946 May 2019
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