Junction Point's Warren Spector

Yeah, oh sure. I know that. I haven't seen the game, so I can't claim any secret knowledge, but based on what I've seen - and I have talked to a lot of the guys on that team over the years - they certainly seem respectful of it and want to do right by it. I think it's in good hands. We'll all see when it comes out, but I'm pretty psyched.

You're trying to get me in trouble, aren't you?

That's another one where I almost don't care. If we haven't already won, we're inevitably going to win. Videogames are just coming out of the period where I describe them as the medium adults don't get. Roger Ebert is like the adult. He doesn't get it.

The fact is if we haven't already reached the point where this is true, we're very close to reaching the point where everyone plays games, in the same way that everyone goes to the movies and everyone watches television. We're really at that sort of point where everybody plays games.

As younger people grow up and as twenty-somethings have kids and they start gaming - it's not like the twenty-somethings are going to stop playing games when they get to 30, 40 and 50. We're becoming a mainstream medium where everybody plays.

Eventually, some other thing will come along that I don't get or you don't get and we'll all say, "Oh, those kids today, that stuff isn't art." The same thing happened with movies. Go back to the early days of movies. Go back to the early days of the novel, for crying out loud. That can't be art. Go back to the days when people gave Shakespeare a hard time.

Whatever medium adults don't understand can't be art. Eventually those adults go away and new adults take their place, and some other medium takes the place of the thing that everybody hates. We're coming out of that period now. What Roger Ebert thinks is completely irrelevant.

I don't know if it's how Epic Mickey does, but it's certainly how Epic Mickey finishes. We're working very hard. I want to get this one out of the way before we start thinking too much about what comes next. But I've got some ideas. If Disney say they want it I think I can take care of them.

Why can't I do both?

You know, we'll see. I don't know. It all depends on what Disney wants to do and how this game does. We'll see what happens after that. First, let's get this one out.

The most important thing about the game to me is making Mickey as big a hero in the videogame world as he is in every other medium he's tackled. To be a hero you have to be thrown into a situation that's bigger than you are, that's epic.

I want to throw Mickey at some big problems. And there are some big problems in the game. If you don't want to focus on the family story that's in this thing, you can just go and play and have a good time. But there is an epic story here. The world is big and the villains are villainous, and how you interact with stuff makes a difference. So it feels epic to me. I hope it does to players too.