Wolf Tracking

Earlier this week, Electronic Arts made a big splash with public announcement of their $2 billion unsolicited offer to buy Take 2 Interactive, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto series, 2K sports franchises, and last year’s critical darling, Bioshock. Take 2 said “no thanks,” EA CEO John Riccitiello invited everyone to read his creepy love letter, and now we’re all just left waiting to see if these two crazy kids can make it work in time for the prom. If you actually have been living under a rock for the last week, Steve Totilo at MTV’s Multiplayer blog has a good digest, and The Wall Street Journal put together a very thorough run-down as soon as the news broke.

I can understand why mainstream media latched onto EA’s offer so readily - it’s a genuinely big story, even though no deal is complete… yet. EA’s a superpower in the industry, and Grand Theft Auto is definitely a super-franchise. Besides, it’s an M&A story with quite a bit of money involved, and every reader can make sense of that, even if they couldn’t pick Super Mario out of a lineup.

There is a downside to all this coverage of the not-quite-deal. It sucked all the air out of the room for the more important news, in my opinion: EA’s Blueprint division announcement. Blueprint shows a commitment to lo-fi, indie-developed games from one of the world’s biggest publishers. Combined with announcements from Nintendo and Microsoft at last week’s Game Developers’ Conference regarding snack-size game delivery channels (WiiWare and Xbox Live Community Games, respectively), low cost games from garage band developers are a bona fide industry trend. Just like every other entertainment medium, user generated video games will be awesome, and the big boys (except Sony) have acknowledged that.

At the end of the day, Grand Theft Auto will deliver mostly the same experience, regardless of what publisher owns Rockstar Studios. And if the House that Madden Built buys 2K, it just means the industry’s best baseball game will get better marketing and those signature EA white cases. Unlike the EA/Take 2 business, Blueprint is really big news that WILL impact gamers immediately.

I’m excited to see what this new batch of developers brings to the table. After all, these guys (and girls) have no reputation to uphold or shareholders to keep satisfied. They can take the risks that big studios can’t, and if genre-busters like Katamari Damacy, Fl0w, and Desktop Tower Defense are any indication, quirky and risky is just what this industry needs.