Deal maker Mitch Lasky tells us what he looks for in a great game - and how Activision's star-making machinery really works.

　　GameSpot News recently spoke with Activision's senior vice president of studios, Mitch Lasky. While gamers may not know the name, if you've ever played Quake II, for example, you do know his work.

　　Lasky is the head of the third-party acquisition department for Activision. He and his team are responsible for finding games from third-party developers, cutting the deals, and publishing the games under the Activision label. He'll admit to being a "super hard-core gamer" and says he has been for years. Since coming to Activision over two and a half years ago (after failing to become a game developer for a massively multiplayer project that he and a partner tried to build), Lasky's acquisitions have garnered a sizable amount of notoriety for the game publisher.

　　The real humor in Mitch's history is that he was schooled as a patent lawyer. When he first tried to get hired by Activision, he hoped to secure the position of general counsel. But when a position opened up in Activision's third-party relations division, he opted to fill that slot instead.

　　The division then didn't have any stellar games to its credit and "lacked a common philosophy" amongst its members, Lasky said. Lasky set off to change all that, and in the past few years, has scored a number of top-selling titles. After acquiring Legacy of Kain for Christmas '96, his division has been responsible for publishing such blockbusters as Quake II, Hexen II, Quake and Quake II mission packs, and Nightmare Creatures. On the horizon, he and his division have secured to rights to publish Quake Arena and Sin. No small task for the relatively small crew.

　　So what does Activision do to attract these games? Do developers come knocking at the door or does Lasky hit the pavement in search of developers willing to lend an ear and an hour?

　　"Many developers contact us with their ideas to see if we're interested in pursuing a relationship," says Lasky. On a more active level "we have acquisition analysts whose job is to search the market, follow up on good leads, find hot new developers, meet with developers, look at the games from the eyes of a games editor, and find out if we can make any money from publishing the game." He'll admit that his crew likes games that are "dark, violent, and bloody." But he has taken some chances on going beyond the crew's basic likes with games like Twinsen's Odyssey and adds that Activision actually made money from the title.

　　Lasky and his team's good eye for games have quickly translated into growth for the department. "Well, we published four titles the first year. This year we'll publish 24 titles. That first year, we grew 1000 percent, last year we grew 350 percent, and this year we'll grow 100 percent," Lasky says. "Right now, our division is responsible for 60 percent of all Activision's revenues."

　　When asked where all of his good luck has come from, he cites that his attempt at becoming a developer helped him out more than anything else. When he first began his current position, he talked to developers and found out what they did and didn't like about their publishers. "One of the most common complaints that we heard was that developers thought that publishers had all the information and power, even in cases where developers had more experience than the publisher," Lasky said. Because of these complaints, he wanted to make sure that his division treated developers with more respect than the competition did. "Some of the changes we made here were things like making sure we had a 'we're here to serve you' attitude. We've had to do a little more work to accommodate developers' wishes, but it appears to be paying off."

　　The latest example of Activision's publisher-for-the-developer attitude was the process of getting Ritual Entertainment involved with the look of the box for the upcoming game Sin. In the end, Lasky said that it took more work to get the box just right, but he felt that Ritual knew what it wanted to say about its game so the extra effort paid off. "It's a good example of how the marketing and development staffs can work together."

　　Still, it's Ritual Entertainment that has since gone with Gathering of Developers. "Well, after the Quake mission pack, Ritual became a very hot commodity, and many publishers focused their sights on the company. We tried to keep them with Activision, but they're close friends with Mike Wilson and decided to go with the Gathering. Luckily, we have the rights to Sin II, so we'll still be working with them on that title."

　　And the crew is branching out. Recently Activision opened a London office to seek developers to publish in those regions - or even to publish back in North America.

　　The first major acquisition for the new Japanese office was Tenchu, which Activision will be publishing later this year. When Lasky looked at Japan, he saw how many developers had their games published for the PlayStation and other consoles and said that out of the 600 or so PS titles 200 or so should be translatable for the North American market. Some of the games are uniquely Japanese and fit a niche market, but Activision is looking for "the gems in the Japanese market." Some of the unique titles that might not be suitable for Western tastes include dating sims and horseracing games, which are amazingly popular with the Japanese.

　　"We know that we have to branch out to include the colorful and cartoon-like aesthetic that many games in the Japanese market follow. I feel like I'm a pretty good gauge for telling if a game is going to make it. While some games command an interest like Parappa the Rapper and Bust a Move, games like Resident Evil sell significantly better." These are the types of games that Lasky is looking for.

　　In Europe, Activision has noticed the quality of games coming from the UK. And countries like Finland, Latvia, and Poland are also looming larger on the game development horizon. "With the console market literally exploding in Europe," Lasky said. Activision wants to establish its presence there to publish the games coming out of the up-and-coming development house. The company plans to publish at least four or five titles from both of these new regions.

　　Closer to home, how did Activision get to publish id's Quake II?

　　"At the time, we were communicating to Jay Wilbur at id. After several months of going to Texas and begging, they decided to allow Activision to publish Quake II." He says that begging usually isn't part of the daily workload but admits id was worth it. Since Activision published Quake II, id has also signed publishing deals for the next edition to the Quake series, Quake Arena.

　　"There seems to be a great deal of confusing information out there about Quake Arena. We've known for some time what Carmack wants to do with the game, but there is a much bigger story to it all. Carmack has only told parts of it in his plan files. Maybe more of this will come out later. On the Web, some people think that the single-player portion of the game is gone. It isn't. Carmack is inventing some of the most fascinating game concepts ever, and from what I've seen, it's going to rock."

　　Recent acquisitions include Presto. "Recently we signed a deal with Presto Studios, the people behind the Journeyman Project series, who is working on Beneath. And we may even be expanding that relationship later on. We have some other projects on the back burner right now that are really going to surprise gamers."

　　Besides all the hard work (and begging), Lasky still has time for an occasional spin of the mouse or joystick. "On the PC, I love action-shooters like Quake II. But I love games by other companies like SSI, TalonSoft - and other real-time strategy titles. I'm not really into RPGs at all. I'm a pretty mainstream gamer in some respects. Recently, I noticed a listing of the top 40 games of the year and noticed that I owned at least 20 games in the list."

　　"When I look at games, I tend to look for depth in a game along with a sense of authorship." Many of the people that I work with here look for similar attributes in games, and we've called this our 'house style.'" And while he does admit that dark games win out with his crew, they still look relatively normal on the outside.

　　Lastly, we asked Lasky about his background as a lawyer and if he found there to be many lawyers out there who play games. "Not really," he told us.

　　Maybe that's why Mitch Lasky left the profession. Oddly, he said that Activision currently employs 14 other non-practicing lawyers at different levels of the company, although he admits some of them would never admit that they were ever lawyers.