Richard Wah Kan
Richard
Wah Kan is president of Dreamcatcher Games. Randy had a chance to meet with him
at the 2000 E3, and Mr. Wah Kan kindly agreed to our interview.
Dreamcatcher
has come a long way in from previous E3s, from a relative unknown to the leader
in the adventure community. To what do you attribute this growth?
Basically
we focused on getting into more and more of the retail stores and focused on the
customer support side. We’ve learned a lot of things along the way. Customer support
has been the key thing obviously. Our presence at trade shows such as E3, supporting
merchandising in retail as well as the improved quality of our titles, has changed
as well. I think you would have to agree with me that the quality and variety
of the products we have now is much better then what we had in the past. That’s
not to say that the old stuff was not good, but it was limited in variety. The
marketplace has changed, it has become much more competitive price wise. We also
have a lot more titles and are focused entirely on adventure, whereas previously
we had adventure as well as other categories.
You’ve
recently changed your name to Dreamcatcher–The Adventure Company and now advertise
yourself as family entertainment. Would it be correct to assume that you are not
looking for cutting-edge products as concerns language and violence?
That’s partially right. If a great adventure product comes along that
has an M rating on it, we will publish it, but it will be clearly marked on the
front that it is M rated.
Do you have any future plans to pattern
yourself after Sierra at its peak, having your own stable of in-house artists
and programmers instead of purchasing other’s finished products as you do now?
Not likely. Though we will continue to work with producers that have
produced quality products.
Do you have plans to port any of
your products over to the Dreamcast or the Playstation 2?
We
do have plans to have some additional titles on consoles and are working on that
right now. Dracula Resurrection is one we are working on the rights with
the producers.
Have you purchased the rights for Dracula:
Sanctuary, the sequel to Dracula Resurrection?
We
are working on it. We have first right of refusal.
What kind
of sales figures are you hoping for on Dracula Resurrection?
I think we can do at least 50,000. Anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000
would be great. 50,000 is a minimum because of the quality of the title. Adventure
titles in the past have not been all that well received, and I think we can change
that standard by presenting something that is better and I think we have done
that with this title.
As the industry shakes out, are you looking
to position yourself the company that developers and producers approach first
to have their adventure product distributed?
I hope so
at some point. I can’t control what developers do with their title, but I think
that what is beginning to happen is that people are beginning to perceive us more
and more as the adventure company with adventure games. What I ideally would like
to see is that we get the first look at those titles and that they come to us
to market the titles in North America and also for the rest of the world. That
would be the optimum situation.
A lot of the Cryo titles you
are distributing in North America have undergone name changes. Some adventure
fans have accused Dreamcatcher attempting to dupe the consumer by renaming Atlantis
2 as Beyond Atlantis, Aztec as The Sacred Amulet, etc. What
many fans don’t realize is that most of these titles have never been distributed
in North America and the majority of the gaming public is not even aware of the
name change. What is your take on this?
There are a couple
of issues influencing the name changes. For example, Atlantis 1 was not
all that well received in North America when it was first released and so there
are a lot of people who don’t even know that Atlantis 1 even existed. So
to launch a title and call it Atlantis 2 sort of begs the question, where
is Atlantis 1? That’s one of the reasons for renaming Atlantis 2 to
Beyond Atlantis; trying to be true to the storyline, because it really
indeed is beyond Atlantis, and being consistent with the fact that it is
a new title, and if somebody looks back far enough they will see that, yes, Atlantis
1 did exist at some point. But we also want to introduce a title that stands
on its own and tells its own story without having to explain the previous installment.
What
about the edutainment aspect? Are you afraid that consumers may be put off by
games with titles like Pompeii, Aztec, etc.?
That
is an issue in North America because there is such a camp between entertainment
and education. What we are trying to do is present to the buying public, not just
adventure gamers but also the buying public, a piece of entertainment software.
If you skew it as an education only or heavily educational, which the games are
not, one title may point the gamer in that direction whereas another title may
give it more of an adventure feel, which is what they are, so hence the selection
of different name changes.
Do you have the right to distribute
any Cryo game in North America that has first been distributed in Europe?
Yes, we do for their adventure line.
Can Cryo then
distribute any of your North American releases in Europe?
They
do have the first right of refusal if they are interested in a product we have
distributed in North America.
Your new product line is wonderful,
but it seems to be short of any animated adventures. There are a lot of good games
out there like Tony Tough, The Quivering, etc. that our readers would love
to be able to purchase. According to a poll Just Adventure recently conducted,
our readers said they preferred these type of games over the Myst-like
games. Do you have any plans to pursue these type of titles in the future?
We are certainly open to looking at more of the animated titles.
