“Trade shows have a limited shelf life and E3 served its purpose”: Peter Moore

For many years, Peter Moore served as one of the most visible members of the gaming industry, being part of key companies such as SEGA, Xbox, and Electronic Arts at key points in different console generations. The launch of the Dreamcast, the Xbox 360 and one of the strongest moments of EA Sports were key moments in the life of this executive. For those interested in gaming history, he would have thousands of stories to tell, and for those who enjoy industry analysis, he would have many interesting perspectives on how the industry has evolved.

During the EGS in Mexico City, Meristation had the pleasure of speaking with the man who at one time or another presided over the aforementioned companies, and he spent a few minutes with us talking about the present, past and future of an industry that we are passionate about.

Biggest change in the industry

Having been in the industry for a number of years, our first question was what the biggest change has been. From Moore’s perspective, the answer was quick, with the advent of online gaming. “If you wanted to play a game against your friend, they have to come to your house and sit next to you on the couch,” Moore began. “The growth of our business has been the ability to connect millions of people around the world through games. For people to interact with each other through games.”

While connecting people helped “the stigma of gaming has been gone away,” something else came along, and it’s something Moore has a close second to: mobile gaming. It democratized gaming. Everybody has a cell phone, everybody is a gamer. You don’t need a dedicated device to play really deep, immersive, fun, good-looking, good-sounding games..”

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E3 served its purpose

One of the details Peter Moore talked about was the trade shows and how they were used to show “how big this industry is, bigger than movies, music and television”. However, he also admits that E3 has run its course. “Trade shows have a limited shelf life and E3 served its purpose,” Moore said bluntly. “That purpose was to legitimize video games, was to make them part of not just entertainment, but popular culture.  It was at one point one of the biggest trade shows in the world, and it showed to people outside of gaming how big this industry was.” However, Moore admits that these types of events were not cheap, and an example of this was what they did with EA Play. “It was not cheap to go to E3, and I think companies looked at the cost structure. we did this because we moved to EA Play where we felt we could deliver a better message, a stronger message, a more EA message than fight to the floor against all our competitors.”

AI and the future

Finally, one of the topics we discussed with Peter Moore was Artificial Intelligence and how it might affect the future of gaming. Moore sees it as a “double-edged sword”, although he admits that it’s something the industry has been working on for some time. “We’ve been using AI or a rough version of it for many years to procedurally generate trees, things you need hundreds of. If you got a populated map, and you have to do all of the art manually it takes a lot of time, it’s expensive.” However, Moore acknowledges the concerns and why people have the fears they do about this technology. “People are very concerned and nervous that it will replace people’s jobs. Video games are no different than other industries that there’s a lot of concern that you will have something that right now, that you go to college for, you got a degree, that you are getting well paid for, all of a sudden you will be replaced by some form of a machine. But gaming  in particular has the ability to benefit from this, but at the same time I get the concerns.”