Frank Gibeau, label president of EA Games

Like Eric Murphy, the manager-turned-movie producer on HBO's Hollywood satire "Entourage," Frank Gibeau doesn't like being called a "suit." We couldn't hug it out, unfortunately, as the Q&A was conducted over the phone, but we'll certainly attempt to do so when we see Gibeau at next week's E3 Media & Business Summit in Los Angeles. Nevertheless, the success Gibeau has had as executive vice president and general manager of the Americas for Electronic Arts would make any suit creatively-minded executive proud. With the previously announced reorganization of EA under the direction of CEO John Riccitiello, Gibeau recently assumed the position of president of EA Games, alongside three other divisions: EA Sports, EA Sims and EA Casual. In Part I of our two-part Q&A with Gibeau, we discuss his mandate for EA Games, how he plans to preserve the creativity of his studios under the new structure, and why Activision should get ready for war if it thinks that its Call of Duty 4 can take the modern warfare genre away from EA's Battlefield series without a fight.

EA Games is a pretty boring name for your group. Kathy Vrabeck's division is called EA Casual. Did you ever considered naming yours EA Hardcore?

We've been playing around with the name Core, but one of the things that I wanted to look at inside the unit as we stood it up was what was the real personality and feel. What I've discovered in the brief time that I've been looking at the role is that the value is really in these units, these local teams and these local leaders. When you go to Criterion and you sit down with Alex Ward on Burnout and Black, or you go to DICE with Patrick Soderlund on Battlefield, or even Hanno Lemke up in Canada on Need For Speed, each one of these units is its own vibrant little city-state.

I've been at the company for a long time. A lot of the times when we've bought companies or done EAP [EA Partners] deals or even stood up teams inside the organization, it's when you have a tight link between the creative teams' local culture and a vision for projects that you get the best games. So when I'm thinking about this brand and this unit, I'm really interested in these local teams, these local franchises, these little cultures; trying to foster them and bring them to a greater level, rather than coming up with the next big brand name for the division.

For me, it's more a notion of vibrant city-states with light central government. That's how I'm thinking managing this, rather than what's more traditionally thought of how EA does things. I'm going to try something a little different with this label and try to be more tied to the customer and the product and focusing on the small. That's not to say these aren't huge products--because Need For Speed is 10 million units plus--but I think of this as the brand brought to you by EA as opposed to the other way around. Make sense?

Yes, it does. So you're looking at EA Games more like the United States, with strong states' rights, as opposed to former Soviet Union with its central planning?

I am actually. Now obviously you have to have a highway system. [Laughs.] You have to have the FAA to make sure the planes don't collide. But I believe in the local personalities, those local leaders. I mean, when you look at the equity that people put into the games, they're really doing it because of the people around them and the games they're creating, that they have a vision contribution on. That's the asset, that's where the value is created, so I want to create an environment and a culture that allows for that to happen. That's where the innovation comes from, not necessarily centrally planned economies with strict federal governments.

So what's your mandate?

My mandate is to grow as aggressively as possible and to grow in a way that creates enduring, highly acclaimed IPs. I think of it that broadly. I don't think of it as discrete platforms necessarily, I think about it in terms of creating experiences that we can take to lots of different places, that can work online, that can work handheld, that can work on the Wii that can work on PS3s. There's obviously a lot of customization tailoring by platform that happens here, but that's really what we're about.

Now under the old structure, if I'm not mistaken, EA had a head of worldwide studios--let's call him the creative--and a head of publishing--let's call him the suit. Under this new structure all the creatives have been pushed down the ladder and now report to one of four suits. How do you avoid stifling the creativity of your teams under this new structure?

That's an interesting question. I'm not sure I would characterize it that way. I always resisted the notion of being called a suit. At the end of the day, the people that are successful at EA are the people that have passion for interactive and for creating games. If you look at the model that I'm trying to bring to this label and my approach to the business, it's in fact giving more ownership, more autonomy and more ability to experiment and create than perhaps we had under the old structure. Because we can get more focused, we can get more nimble by bringing publishing and studio together into the same shop. You're going to get much sharper decisions and you're going to get much better connection to customers.

We were very siloed in the old structure and as John [Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts] has come in, he's been driving a very aggressive change agenda. His basic challenge to the management team when he first came back was, "Look, EA's structure worked great when there were two to three platforms in two to three markets that mattered--Europe, North America, Japan, and you had a couple of consoles on a PC business. Now you're publishing across 11 platforms, your customer base is more complex and diverse than ever before--boys and girls; young and old--regionally very different. So we have to adapt and we have to configure ourselves in such a way that we can be faster, more streamlined decision making, a lot more nimble, a lot more creatively focused and a lot more experimental to really capture this opportunity. If we continue to approach it in a heavily siloed way we aren't going to capture the opportunity or the potential of what our company really has."

You were formerly in charge of North American publishing. In this new structure, with you now being in charge of EA games, how much different does this new job feel than the old one? Obviously there are big pieces that aren't under you anymore, but there are a lot of big pieces that remain.

It's terrifically different. I spent my career at EA working my way up through product management and one of the keys to my success was being able to embed with a team and understand what made a hit and what made a great game. Now I couldn't code like a programmer. What I could do is I could sit down and listen to them about what they thought made their game great; figure out a way of bringing it to market and translating it for consumers so that it became a hit. Being able to marshal the resources inside the organization to make it a hit.

My expectation in this role is that collaborating--listening to the creative teams about what they're building and why they're building it--is going to be even more paramount. I really want to take an approach where we're blending creative risks and experiments along with extending proven franchises. Being fresh is absolutely paramount in terms of the creation process but also understanding how to take an idea and bring it to market in a powerful way and then how to extend it is also important. So for me it's going to be a balance of proven franchises and experimenting with new IPs.

Where do licenses fit into division for EA Games?

They're an integral part of our business. Right now one of the most creative and motivated teams we have are the guys working on The Simpsons. They're having a blast working with the folks at Gracie and Fox on bringing this product to market and creating--you've seen the storyline for the game?

Yep.

That's an example of where a license was creatively liberating and really fun. We're also working on Lord of the Rings licenses. So we have a part of our portfolio dedicated to licenses. A huge part of our portfolio is IP that we own like Spore, Need For Speed, Medal of Honor, Army of Two and so on. So it's going to be the right mix and it's going to be the right blend between the two. But it's not going to be heavily dominated by licenses by any measure. It's definitely going to be an IP shop, with licenses as well.

Speaking of some of those veteran franchises, EA practically invented the World War II shooter genre with Medal of Honor. Then the guys at Infinity Ward--who had formerly worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault when they were at 2015--they came along with Call of Duty and pretty much took leadership in the World War II category away from you. Now they're going after Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and the modern-day war genre with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. From a brand perspective and a development perspective, how do you go about maintaining your market position for Battlefield or regaining it, in the case of Medal of Honor?

It all comes down to innovating and it comes down to creating experiences that we can own and develop over the long term. Battlefield is unmatched in its multiplayer game play in terms of that combat, multi-team vehicle person role. I'll study my profile sometimes and I've got over 200 hours logged on the Battlefield franchise. The blend between vehicles and the drop-in-and-drop-out sandbox game play is what makes it special.

With Battlefield: Bad Company we're innovating into the single-player genre with some of the key strengths that made us such a great multiplayer game. That's where we're going to fight it out with Call of Duty 4. They're going to come over with what they do great, in terms of their very linear game play. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Call of Duty fan, I've finished them all. I really respect that team and what they've built. But it's good when you respect your competition and you fight it out. In the case of Battlefield, we'll take 'em. We have a very good position there; it's going to be a good battle.

In terms of World War II, you know, we're very proud of the work on Airborne; I don't know if you've seen that recently. The design innovation of being able to start the level anywhere in a battlefield and then work your way through it with using your own imagination and parachuting out of the plane, it's the key differentiator there.

In any competition, you have to find--and I learned this having been a key guy on a lot of the sports wars over the years, when we looked at the competitive set we had against the NBA product from 2K and we came up with freestyle--sometimes you have to flank with an innovation. Sometimes you have to go head-to-head like with Madden and NFL 2K. In this case, I think it's a combination of innovation and new ways to play and also knowing what we're good at. What we're good at in Battlefield is that multiplayer experience, that sandbox experience; we're going to bring that to the single player experience. Call of Duty has a different take on that and we'll see how we do.

Next: Does EA have too many shooters in development? And which of these battles--Half-Life 2 vs. Halo 3; Medal of Honor: Airborne vs. Call of Duty 4; or Rock Band vs. Guitar Hero III--does Gibeau expect to rage most fiercely?