In Part I of our multi-part Q&A with videogame director Cory Barlog, he explained how he met and clicked with Australian writer-director George Miller (of "Mad Max," "Babe" and "Happy Feet" fame), told us why he felt he had to leave Sony Computer Entertainment, and ducked our questions about his first videogame project with Miller. In Part II, he takes us deeper inside his decision to part ways with his previous employer and why he feels that the dominant employer-employee model under which most videogame directors labor is in dire need of change. Read on.

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounded like what you were saying is that you were having a hard time seeing yourself scaling the same mountain that you had scaled twice before--with God of War and God of War II--under the same conditions. Is that a fair description?

Yeah, yeah, The concept of actually doing the game was definitely not anything that I would feel all that leery about. I wasn't nervous about doing it all, but it was about whether to do it under the sort of same conditions. You know, it's not something that was ever really about money. I know there's been some speculation about that, but it's not necessarily about money. The reality that we live in is that when you look at the idea that you are a pretty large influence on something that has turned out to be a several hundred million dollar franchise for a company, but at the same time you're still not feeling like anything more than just a cog in the machine. And that you're still just, "All right, whatever, they're telling you to do; there's nothing different that can be done; go do that, go do that." You're really feeling like you're not [financially] invested fully in it whereas creatively and mentally and physically you're totally invested in it. Definitely for me, it was not something I wanted to see happen to the rest of my career especially me, getting with all these directors on the film side and seeing the way that they sort of run their careers.

Like I said before I know that the industry can't change overnight; videogame directors are never going to be of that same stature of film directors. That's not even the point. The point is just from a creative standpoint, you've got to be in charge of your own direction and really feel comfortable and happy with each of the things you're doing. And I think that also comes from diversity.

The reason I'm asking this is that David Jaffe said exactly the same thing when I was talking to him about leaving Sony and putting together Eat Sleep Play.

Right.

The larger point is obviously the situation that you've described and your search for freedom, but is there something specific to directing a God of War game that takes people and turns them into these ambassadors for change? Is it like the drummer in "Spinal Tap" or something? What is it about the process of directing a God of War game that makes people finish it and say, "I've got to leave. I've got to control my destiny. I've got to start my own thing. I've got to do my own thing."

[Laughs.] It is funny. [Pause.] Man that's an interesting point, because....I think it could have something to do with the size of God of War. I mean, I was there on the first one and I think I had a huge influence on what it was; I was there on the second one; working on the PSP game and then working on III; kind of riding that--it did make me realize that prior to God of War, I'd worked on crap. I've worked with really good people; having worked with a lot of those combat guys that were the ones who pioneered a lot of the stuff on God of War--I guess "pioneer" is probably the wrong word, but really kind of pushed the process.

So I think when you finally get to that point, where you've made something that a lot of people are enjoying and paying attention to, you maybe expect that that same level of attention from the company you're working with as well. It's not necessarily that it's like, "Pay attention to me," and "Oh I'm so awesome," and "Look at me," but it does move a little bit more towards, "We've done something very, very good. We are confident in what we've done and we know we can do this again--but we'd like to do these other things," and you're not necessarily getting that same response.

Jaffe put it best: when you work for a large company like Sony or any of these large companies you are a small cog in the larger machine. You are not all that important. And it doesn't mean to say that they don't value people, I think it just means to say that you're never going to achieve what you want to achieve and have the amount of control if you're still just making something for somebody else; under the relationship that is comfortable for them which is, "We'll just hire you as a salaried employee."

Just compare a director in the mid '80's--don't even use now--just compare a director in the mid '80's to a director in the '50's. You know they made a salary per week versus, "Hey the last thing you did was amazing." A perfect example, in the film industry, you make one movie, one movie that's successful--it doesn't matter if you've done anything prior to that--you make one movie that's successful and everybody loves it, at that point you are bankable, marketable and you have your choice. You have an idea, people want to move with you on that, you know you have the opportunity to work with many more people of a higher stature and increase your audience.

With the game industry, you make ten games and people are still like, [skeptical voice] "Well, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, maybe it's good." But once you break away from that relationship that you originally have, then you realize that everybody else has kind of realized that, "Wait, I really want to do this. Let's try this. Let's do that. Let's do that." I hate the word "complacency," but it almost is like that sense of, "Well we own this guy, what do we care? Let's just keep pumping them out." I definitely don't want to become associated solely with just God of War.

Right.

And I could see--this franchise is very successful for Sony and I think it's awesome. I was big part of making that a success for them and I think it's great that they should continue doing it, but I don't want to make God of War IV and God of War V and God of War: The Expansion Pack and God of War: The Role-Playing Kart Racing Game. I definitely could see that there is a potential for that.

At one point I was working on three games while finishing up II, and it was really exhausting. It was all God of War and it was all good and everything, but at the same time I can see that same road being traveled down the longer you stay in the same situation. And that was the onus behind changing the situation a little bit; still continuing to do this, continue to finish God of War III, but under a slightly different agreement.

Well, Stephen Totilo at MTV News is going to be pretty upset that you didn't stick around long enough to do God of Paper Mario.

That's right.

I guess he'll have to live with it. With that last burst of what you said, you're now sounding like what we're sort of imagining Bungie was probably sounding like. Now they've publicly denied that they left because they were sort of being forced to work on just Halo games, but I certainly heard from multiple well-placed sources that that was in fact one of the tensions that they had with Microsoft. And they had created a multi-billion--I don't know if it's billions now, but certainly multi-million dollar franchise for Microsoft.

I look at the industry and its origins as one or two or three programmers in a garage sort of doing it all. Then it sort of becomes this cottage industry, where you have some guys who have a background in sales or something else, and they start sort of running these small companies. Then at some point, like maybe during the 80's, you have this influx of guys who come from a product marketing and a brand marketing background; like from a Johnson &  Johnson or Procter & Gamble. And if you look at /those/ kinds of companies, the person who invents a new brand of baby oil or toothpaste, you don't even know their name. They're not seen as that important because Crest is what's going to be on the front, and the person who invented that third flavor of Crest or decided, "Well, we'll put the anti-tartar fighting stuff in there," we don't even know what their names are.

I don't know if you feel the same way, but it seems like that product marketing mentality got brought to the game industry and took over. Because there was a time when the names of creators used to be on the front of the box--

America McGee's Scrapland. Exactly. [Laughs.]

Yeah. It seems like now that's gone away. And if you talk to a variety of people in the industry like it's almost religion, it's pervasive, the thinking that, "You know what? You can take away that key guy--even the creator--and we can keep it rocking and rolling. It doesn't matter."

Exactly. That's exactly the way it is. It's sad really when you think about it. Because you look over at like, Crest or the baby oil; all right, they're selling a product and it is much more of a scientific endeavor, for lack of a better term. I'm sure there's some creative thought that goes into that. But when we're talking about things like writing and video games and film it really is a creative-driven industry. And being a creative person; a person who helps drive that kind of mentality, that kind of product-driven mentality, it does make you sad.

I don't necessarily know if I would really want Cory Barlog's Scrapland or anything like that, but by the same token, there are a lot of people I think are the key integral part of making something a success. But this is the mentality of these giant conglomerates, and there's less and less that's the amazing thing. More and more people are getting bought up, so that we will eventually have four companies, you know? We'll have EA, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft and they'll own everybody. It'll just be like, "You can have a choice: you can work for one of these companies and you will just be a part of making these individual products successful, but they still are a Brand X product." But I see so many really, really, really talented people that a huge and very extensive pedigree in the industry that they're kind of moving towards dramatic change as well.

Will Wright's breaking out of the game industry into other industries, as far as other people's awareness of him. It's not just people in the game industry who know him, like Cliffyb [Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski], although I guess he's probably getting known a little bit more outside of the industry as well.  But we have a long road in the game industry before we're going to be taken seriously by everybody. I think that some people's reaction to the writer's strike--and I think mostly people are very supportive of this and understanding of it, but there probably are people out there that are like, "Oh come on get back to work." And that's the way everybody views the game industry right now. It's just like, "Whatever man, you make videogames." I don't think they sort of see the individual achievement because it isn't like this in the industry. There isn't television shows about the directors, television shows about the producers, television shows about the biographies of actors and biographies of people who make these games.

We're so inundated with everybody on the film side and their process that there's kind of an inherent respect, whereas with the game industry I think there's still a belief from most people that we use Super Nintendo controllers and tighten up the graphics on level three like that Westwood College commercial. That or "Grandma's Boy." That's what people probably think the game industry is: a bunch of flaky people hanging out and playing ping pong and video games in a break room for most of the day.

I think even some of the language that gets used is part of the problem.The word "product" is used an awful lot. I mean, you know, Penny Arcade made fun of Bobby Kotick repeatedly using language like "exploited" in talking about Blizzard and the Vivendi merger. Look they're business guys--I'm not saying that they're committing a crime by using this language. But it's kind of like runes, right. Runes are derived from the concept that words have power and I feel the very language of the video game--well, I was about to use the word "industry."

Yeah.

The very language we use helps define this reality that you've been talking about and that you've been chafing against.

Yeah. Games are very expensive. In the next generation, they are even more expensive. I think more expensive than anybody ever anticipated. Budgets are going so high that nobody ever thought that we'd be getting to this sort of height of these budgets. So the business side is important, to actually say, "All right, something's going to cost 30 or 40 or 50 million dollars"--some people are even saying that Metal Gear Solid 4 is going to cost 70 million dollars--and there has to be a business side to it. But when you consider that the film industry can still have kind of an art side, I guess. A side of people sort of saying, "This is a product, of course, but it's also a piece of art. It's just something that somebody felt very passionate about. This is a piece of the director, of the writer, of the true backers that all came together and made this thing that moves me." Moving me on a level of, "This is such an exciting two hours," or "This was something that made me stop and think." Film still has that inherent respect.

We still have people in the industry continually talking about how all we do is make product and it's not art. It's like this whole concept of people saying, "Oh, because we intentionally make this to sell to other people it can't be art. The goal initially is that we are creating a product that is going to be sold to somebody so it can't be art." That's ridiculous. It's the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard, when you consider that Andy Warhol's considered a very talented pop artist and the entire intention behind all of his work was, "This is product. I'm going to sell this to you. I'm going to create factories of people. I'm not going to create half my stuff." But he was still revered within the art culture.

The statements people make with games have gone far beyond a couple of lines and a little ball. I think we've graduated from Pong. We've gone through so many changes from text adventures to playing point-and-click adventure games to the full-on epic games that we have today. There are these games that reach a little bit further. I think Ken Levine's game is awesome. BioShock is a great sort of testament to the idea that perhaps it doesn't have to be some sort of diluted story about a convict who is also a soldier who breaks out of jail and saves the world from an alien invasion. It doesn't always have to f--king be that. I think that's really important and I hope that as an industry as a whole we can  continue to strive for that.

The more you look at it; the more you start to realize, "Okay, we are more comfortable with the concept of 15 million dollar and 20 million dollar budgets," once they double imagine how scared everybody's going to be, like, "Wow, man, I really don't want to take a risk." And then you start to see the idea that there's going to be more and more sequels.

Right.

Sequels aren't bad as long as there's attention paid to them--the same attention that's paid to the first one, where you put the same amount of effort and love into each version. You're still going to have people going, "Oh, I wish they would've just totally made something different," but by the same token if it's a fun experience; if it takes them on a ride that may be somewhat familiar, but can at the same time still be as grand or maintain the same sort of spirit of the first one, it's a good thing.

Just a couple more questions, this is winding down.

Cool.

I know you can't really get into specifics, but what are you doing right now? What constellation of things, generally speaking, are you working on now?

Writing, finishing up some work on some script stuff.

Game script stuff or movie script stuff?

Kind of a combination of both. There's movie script stuff and then there's some game script stuff. A lot of it is just meeting with people, because it really is kind of a fresh thing, my departure. So a lot of it now is just connecting with people who I've either met through various conferences or people who've seen my work and they're just wanting to get together and hang out and see where that goes. And then there's some preparation of design docs type stuff; throwing around concepts, meeting with Eric and kind of brainstorming some stuff and refining things.

And what is it that you're refining?

I wish I could get specific actually, but I can't. [Laughs.]

I wish you could too. What does it feel like, this new phase of your career? When you made the decision, when you had your last day, what did it feel like? How does it feel different from where you were before?

Wow. For me, cumulatively it was about eight months until that final day and /literally/ seven months and 24 days was spent saying, "We're going to work this out." There was definitely a very strong belief that it was always going to be, "Whatever, we'll figure it out," and maybe a little bit too much complacency on my end of, "Yeah, it's going to be fine."

You had a little Stockholm syndrome?

Yeah. I just totally believed that there would be no way that it would end in the nuclear option. It didn't seem sensible to me at all that that's how it would go down. So there was only about six days for me to kind of adjust initially to like, "Wow, I really have to make this decision." But believe me, it wasn't at all scary. It didn't really freak me out. At first I was like, "Man, I won't have a job at this point, how do I feel about that" But I felt great.

Because I think if I had tried to something like this while working on, you know, Backyard Wrestling or Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots or something like that, I think I'd be a hell of a lot more freaked out. I worked on the original X-Men game and Jeremy Dunham from IGN had said that the animation was "stiff and unrealistic," much like the original Mortal Kombat. And I've carried that quote with me my entire career, because of that one sort of defining moment where I said to myself, "All right, I thought I had achieved something," but then I looked in the mirror a bit and realized, "No, I haven't gotten anywhere." And that kind of drove me a lot. But after leaving Sony I feel fantastic.

The people that I've met over the last like month-and-a-half and the opportunities that have arisen from all of that have made me realize that I would have been very, very, very unhappy not seizing some of these opportunities; not being able to take advantage of any of these things simply because I was locked in. If I really step back for a minute, I probably should've been at least somewhat afraid, like, "Oh my god, [Sony] is security," because that's what a lot of those jobs offer you--and kind of rely on--is the idea that you have security. The game has a guaranteed budget and you know it's going to get made and you're going to have a job and you're going to have a paycheck coming in. All these things are really important, but at the same time, you have to have a bold move in order to sort of reap a great reward. And I say that in the the sense of reap a great reward creatively not necessarily reap a giant paycheck.

Well, thanks very much for taking the time to speak with me.

Yeah, man. This was awesome.

Absolutely. Best of luck with your bold move and hopefully the great reward.

Yeah, thank you.