Multimedia Stars Shine : Game Makers Get Their Names Above the Titles at Expo

The stars of multimedia don’t get billing above the title. In fact, they’re lucky if they get billing at all. In a fledgling industry where talent is scarce, publishers of hit video games and CD-ROM titles are loath to publicize the developers who actually create their products.

But that is starting to change.

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Friday, Irvine-based Interplay Productions announced it is acquiring Shiny Entertainment, an 8-month-old development firm founded by Irish game developer David Perry, known in Europe as “the Spielberg of video games.”

Perry gets to keep his offices in Laguna Beach and do “just about anything he wants,” says Interplay Chairman Brian Fargo. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but industry analysts placed the value at about $7 million.

The lanky 27-year-old Perry has been entertaining offers ever since the success of Shiny’s “Earthworm Jim,” a humorous game in which Jim, a large, green worm, fights his way through a series of adventures with a plasma blaster. The game has sold more than a million copies, and a television show and toy line are in the works.

Perry says Sega of America wanted to buy Shiny, but would have required that the team move to San Francisco. Others have proposed deals that would have left Perry with less independence, or with a less-compatible partner than Fargo. (The two say they played a pool game to decide some final details of the deal.)

“We want to make games the way we want to make them,” Perry says.

Publishers are beginning to see the light. Scott Marden, chief executive of Philips Media, recently reversed the firm’s practice of reducing developers’ names to tiny print in favor of promoting them over the Philips brand, in an attempt to build software “labels” comparable to Motown or Island Records.

“The days of hiring a developer for a dollar-fifty an hour and no royalties are over,” says Marden, who assigned a headhunter to scout talent at the show. “It’s like signing a film producer or a recording artist. The stars are stars, and they know it’s a hit-driven business.”

Even those who only aspire to stardom are striking better deals these days.

A four-person start-up called Museworthy showed its first game, “Paparazzi,” at a trade show in February and was quickly besieged with offers to publish it. This week, founder John Kelly is in the Activision Inc. booth, marveling over the bright-colored box with his firm’s logo on the cover and his own picture on the back.

“It was dreamy, like being romanced,” Kelly said. “We had to keep pinching ourselves to see if it was real.”

The Dallas-based firm went with Activision because the publisher--which recently formed a new division and set aside $15 million specifically for developer acquisitions--was willing to do a “three-title deal.”

That is a wise idea in the fevered climate of the interactive industry, says venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who has invested in new-media publishers such as Crystal Dynamics and Spectrum Holobyte.

“I’m telling my companies to be more generous with developers, to do longer-term deals,” Khosla says. But he refuses to cite an example, because “people go after them. Developers are in demand and this is a very aggressive business.”

Recruiting talent is especially important to companies such as Sega Enterprises Ltd., Nintendo of America and Sony Corp., which are investing millions in the development of next-generation machines. Nintendo just took an equity stake in Rare Ltd., the developer of the “Donkey Kong Country” game, which turned the firm’s flagging fortunes around last year.

“To find the talent and people who are capable of creating great games is extremely difficult. I think it’s the biggest risk we have in terms of the Ultra 64’s success,” says Nintendo Chairman Howard Lincoln, referring to the firm’s new machines due out next year.

Still, the most excitement at the show Friday was generated not by the likes of Ed Boon or John Tobias, creators of the wildly successful “Mortal Kombat,” who were demonstrating the third of the series, but rather by more conventional celebrities such as filmmaker George Lucas, who appeared to promote his company’s new “Mortimer” CD-ROM, a fairy tale for children.

Also generating considerable buzz was John Wayne Bobbitt, who was signing autographed copies of his new CD-ROM, “Uncut.”

Why the interactive format? Says Bobbitt: “Why not?”