The CEO and chair of Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, has expressed doubts about whether user generated content will become a dominant force within games.
The exec was asked about modding and UGC in a recent investor call for the company’s quarter ending June 30th and responded by saying that the former has been ‘exciting’ for Grand Theft Auto so far. As for the latter, Zelnick said he views user-generated content services like Roblox as as platforms unto themselves rather than titles in their own right.
“We’ve been very open-minded, and we certainly are very excited about many things that our users are delivering in their engagement with our titles and other people’s titles,” Zelnick said.
“Obviously, we’re excited about what we see in the modding for the community, for GTA, and we think that that’s pretty exciting. At the end of the day, entertainment companies need to bring great entertainment to consumers. That is the starting point.
“And I’m not a believer that the industry will turn into a UGC-driven industry. However, for certain titles, for example, Roblox, they are really more platforms than they are in digital entertainment titles.
“And I think this company, we pride ourselves on making the best entertainment of any sort on earth. And if consumers want to add to that and enhance that for their own use, generally speaking, we would like to enable that behaviour, generally speaking, protective of our intellectual property.
“We’re protective of other people’s intellectual properties. But we do think that that can be a positive addition to the industry. I don’t think it will define either our company or the industry, however.”
