Wired has a great interview with Alex Rigopulos, the CEO of Harmonix, probably my favorite game studio at current (since I’m a huge fan of all things rhythm game related). Aside from all of the interesting discussions on downloadable content and marketing niche games, the small snippet on motivation caught my eye:

My feeling is that game creators need to devote themselves to the specific set of creative impulses that fuel them. And in the case of us, the thing that’s been pushing the team at Harmonix is this notion of recreating the emotion of music performance. That’s really what the game designs all revolved around. In other cases, with Matsuura as another example, character and story is at least as big a part of what those experiences are about as is the actual gameplay. And so for them, as creators, it’s getting their creative juices flowing, and so they need to find a way to integrate story into the experience. And so I think what it comes down to is what’s the right formula for the market, but what’s the right formula for a particular game creator that’s going to drive them to create something powerful?

Just an interesting quote and one I can whole heartedly agree with.