YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew Wilson

lines on the record: 32
first: 2021-08-26
most recent: 2021-08-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And I think that we have an opportunity as an industry to actually positively impact the world through values-driven messaging. And as we sit down and think about the things that we do and the worlds that we create and the characters that we put in them and the stories that we want to tell around those characters, we are trying to be more thoughtful about that. And I think it's really important for our industry to be more thoughtful about that. And it puts a bigger onus on us in how we do things, but I think it should be an expectation we have of ourselves.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've talked about the role that video games play today. We've talked about the role that video games play through the pandemic. We've talked about where we think it's going to go in the metaverse. I think one of the big things that is going to be up for question over time is how do we think about ensuring that it is a really positive place to play? I would tell you as a company, it's a big focus for us. A lot of people look at publicly traded companies and say, well, it's all about the money. They just want to make money. They just want to do this. And again, we are a for-profit organization. But the greatest way that I think that we can generate long-term value is to ensure this thing we do has a long lifespan. And the way we do that is we have to spend time and energy ensuring that it has a positive impact on people's lives. And we see movies make all kinds of statements. We've looked to music, you know, since the 50s to make all kinds of statements.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing that we do. And as a result of that, my orientation isn't to try and build walls and prevent them from getting over them. And when you see what we've done with Disney and the Star Wars franchise, with Knights of the Old Republic, with Star Wars Galaxy Heroes, with Battlefront, with Jedi Fallen Order, with squadrons, we have expanded the Star Wars universe with Disney. It is now a bigger universe by virtue of our cooperation and the creation of those experiences than it would have been just with the movies or television alone.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think that you're very perceptive. You know, we have not said, hey, let's build walls, let's build a moat, let's kind of protect. We've said, let's go be where our players are. We are now more open than we've ever been. We have our games and our services are more platforms we've ever had in more geographies and accessible through more business models. So our orientation isn't a close. Our orientation is to open. Listen, I'll partner with Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo and Apple and Google and Facebook and Netflix because this thing that we do is hard. And I don't say that to be arrogant in any way or sound overconfident, but it's a very particular thing, this thing we do. Making movies is an unbelievable thing. But this thing that we do is different. And what we have seen as a lot of these other big platform players, a lot of these other big entertainment companies have had success in all forms of the internet, in all forms of entertainment, have really struggled to do this.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That while they can bring in large numbers of people in the context of their subscription, no entertainment medium drives the level of engagement that ours does, that games on a per minute basis drives much deeper and long-term meaningful engagement by virtue of the social connection that we talked about earlier than any other form of entertainment can. And I think at some level what we're going to see is the bundling of linear and interactive and the blurring of the lines between those two things in the context of the cloud and in the context of subscription. And so when you say what's at stake for electronic arts, you know, for us, we want to be a meaningful player in that future. But we're up against 800 pound gorillas in the context of some of these other big platforms. But again, if I look at what our teams have been able to do over the last 18 months, I would bet on them every day and twice on Sundays. And so I feel pretty bullish on...”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Typically rises to the top is either subscription or ad-driven monetization. And subscription typically is seen as the higher quality opportunity and the highest quality entertainment typically falls into that category. And so you started to see that in our world today, we are the leading cross-platform subscription in the market, but you see Microsoft kind of doing this as well. And so I think that we're going to see the more bundling of content over time. I think that for electronic arts, we have a unique leadership position with the depth and breadth of our portfolio to be a meaningful player in that future. But there's another thing that I think is also going to happen, which is the Netflixes, the Amazons, the Hulus, the Disney's, the Peacock.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think we find ourselves at a really interesting point. So if you go back and you look at history, every great revolution, at least in the context of entertainment content, every great revolution is built on the unbundling of content or the bundling of content. And the late 90s through the early 2000s, I kind of refer to as the great unbundling. Everything was about how can you get just the one piece of content that you wanted just that moment in time at just the price you want to pay. I think what we've seen over the last five to ten years is the great rebundling. And we're seeing this happen around sports content. We're seeing it happen around entertainment content, particularly in the linear entertainment sphere. So the cloud has done this. As the cloud comes into an industry, consumer orientation moves from ownership to access. And once that orientation shift happens, the business model...”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And saying you can say this, you can't say this, you should take this side or you should take that side. This is about, hey, we want this to be an area that people come and enjoy and have fun and get entertainment. And we want this to be true to our values. And where it's not true to our values, we're going to step in and we're going to ensure that people understand that when you exist in this environment, when you participate in social interaction through this platform, here's how we want this to work. And it's a hard line to draw. It's very nuanced sometimes. There are people that look to kind of get around the system. We're still at the very early stages of this, the very inception. And we're just trying to be thoughtful about it. And we're trying to be values led as we think about putting these guardrails in place.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think this is a really good question. And I would say worry is not the right word, but we want to be very, very thoughtful about it. Very thoughtful. My position is we shouldn't be out there censoring speech and censoring dialogue and censoring opinions. That's not our role in the world. With that said, we're a values-led company. And our company is built with central values of diversity and inclusion and equality and creativity and pioneering and passion and learning, determination and teamwork. And so the way we think about it is how can we use technology, artificial intelligence, these types of things to help us get to a point where the dialogue represented on our platform is true to our values. We develop a group and we're building around this group called the positive play group and the positive play charter. And this isn't about us stepping.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would tell you we're at the very inception of this, the very inception. And so it's hard to understand how it's all going to play out. Our role is to create the foundations for these amazing worlds and then empower our community to do great things and just put some guardrails in place so bad stuff doesn't happen. And I would tell you we're still working through that. And as you see the expansion of what FIFA is today versus what it was 10 or 15 years ago, and you see the expansion of what the Sims is today, what we're really doing is we're doubling down on where we add the most value. And inevitably, there will be commercial enterprise both with us as the vendor and with others in the world as the vendor. And over time, we'll have to just kind of figure out how that will work. But in a free market economy, everything kind of has a way of working itself out.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what you're going to see from us, and certainly what you're hearing from the industry right now is this democratization of the creation of content and services. And that will be true for the Sims, and that will be true for SKATE, that will be true for FIFA and Apex and Battlefield and so many other games. This notion of a metaverse is going to be a developing 3D virtual representation of a social space where over time we look to expand the activities that we could perform in that space and the world expands in line with the activities that we want to perform.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the other end of the spectrum, you have games companies who already build out 3D virtualizations and who already create 3D avatars and who already facilitate social interaction in the context of a 3D virtualized space, who start to kind of work backwards. And what other things can you do in a game beyond just the core conceit of the game? So if I'm a soccer player today in the context of FIFA, what might happen if I walk out of the stadium and you're starting to see us and others kind of expand what you can do inside of a video game, the next step of that, of course, is, well, how do we let you create in that world? So the metaverse likely or a series of these smaller mini metaverses likely won't be built by any one company, but will be built by empowering a global community of players and creators to create the world that they want to spend time in.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“About it is concentric circles. The first thing is a 3D virtual representation of a social space. So think about what Facebook would look like in a 3D environment. We would have an avatar, we would speak to each other, we would share stories beyond just social interaction, what else might we want to do together? Well, we might want to take a walk. So in that world, we're going to have to...”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's the buzzword of the moment, that's for sure. So the metaverse as a word or as a framing of a digital space, I think was first used in a book called Snow Crash, which is like 1993. So imagine this, this notion of a 3D virtual world where we all exist as avatars. I think that was the first time the term avatar was used. It kind of blows my mind. I went back and read it again recently. Like, wow. You know, in hindsight, it was such a visionary book. Now, what I would also tell you, if you haven't read the book, things don't end that well in that book. You know, it kind of goes sideways in a hurry. And then, of course, we had Ready Player One, which retold that story of what happens. Again, didn't all go that well in that book either, as it turns out. So as humanity, we probably want to be careful of just how fast we run at this thing called the metaverse. Be that as it may. You know, what the metaverse really is.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The short answer is yes because I think it had been raised at other people's courts. I would love to believe that folks know and understand the actions that we've been taking for some number of years. I'm not quite sure that was it, in all honesty. I'm just not. And actually, I would have welcomed the opportunity to have the conversation because we could have shared some of the things that I'm sharing with you today, which is we're not perfect, but we have been directly addressing this for some number of years and we have been doing all we can to be a better company each and every day and come out in service of our people, built on a foundation of diversity, inclusion, equality, and equity.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I try not to spend a lot of energy solving problems that are happening in other companies. What I do try and do is spend all of my energy listening to what our people need and have that meaningful conversation lead to very direct and measurable actions. I don't want to pretend like we've got this all solved and sorted out and where we get it wrong, we're going to do our best to fix it as quickly as possible. I would tell you there's been many a night or early morning as I lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling of self-reflection both for me who I am as a leader and how I show up and us as a company and how we show up both to each other, to our pliers and to the world at large. Are we missing something? And it really is this desire to be a better company tomorrow than we were today and a better company next week than we were this week and just always be challenging ourselves that way.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are imperfect creatures. As a collection of human beings, our company culture isn't perfect. But what we are is dedicated to this and we're being very deliberate about this. And we do have gender pay equity across the company. And we do have pay equity across minorities where we're allowed to measure that data across the company. And we have instituted new processes around how we hire people and how we recruit people and how we retain people. But more importantly, how we investigate anytime anyone raises a concern. And this just has to be central to who we are as a company. And it's something I've taken very, very personally, something our management team has taken very, very personally. And it's something we'll continue to work on from now until the end of time.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tolerate harassment of any kind. And not only are we going to talk about it, but we're going to take real actions and we encourage any and all of you who have encountered anything or seen someone else encounter anything. Please come forward. And since that time, we've been working diligently on our raise a concern tool, on our communication with the organization, on open and honest dialogue. We've got employee representation groups, our ERGs that have about 3,000 people in them that help us shape the culture. And every time we have a concern raised, we investigate it to the very end and we take in and all appropriate action. And that's meant actually removing people from the organization and or rescinding offers that we'd made to senior executives and where we recognize that they may have done something in their past. And again, I just echo, we're not perfect. As human beings,”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anytime you read about harassment in any form anywhere in the world, in our industry or in our world at large, I would tell you as a company, we understand and appreciate that this is something that we have to be really, really focused on. And culture for me, you know, is the collective habit of an organization. And habit is formed by human beings. And when you bring 10,000 or 11,000 people together, that collective habit becomes the culture of the organization. And so we've been working really hard on electronic arts for a long time. And let me start by saying we're not perfect. This is an ongoing journey for us. I think it will always be an ongoing journey. And I stood on stage, oh, I must be back in 2016 or 17 now. And I looked out to our audience of what was probably about 7,000 people and I just said, listen, I'm sorry for anyone that has been subject to this. But this is unacceptable electronic arts. We will not.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A big part of our business is our Star Wars business. There are going to be some other things we do with our partners in Hollywood that we're very excited about in the next few years. But, you know, we're confident in who we are.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh no, not really. We are confident in who we are. We know we are the biggest, fastest growing entertainment medium in the world by a wide margin. And it has been that way for some time. I love movies too. I love music as well. We still have this dynamic around deep envy of our Hollywood stars. But over time, I think what will become apparent is that games truly are the leading entertainment medium on the planet for all generations. When I started this industry over 20 years ago, and it was all about 14-year-old boys in the basements of their house playing games by themselves. Now what we know is that games now span 6 to 60 male, female is evenly split. It's global, spans all business models. And so it's just a matter of time. But, you know, we don't begrudge it. We love our Hollywood family. We love movies. And we have great relationships.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and maddening hockey and UFC and other things. And so what we have recognized is this strength that we have in sport on a global basis is a really big opportunity for us as a business. And so when you look at glue, when you look at Metalhead with Super Mega Baseball, when you look at F1, when you look at Playdemic, while a lot of it has a mobile orientation, it also has a sport orientation. And it's the combination of these two opportunities that really fueled our energy around these acquisitions. Again, coincidentally, they all happen in a really short time frame. Having bought one thing in eight years, we did four in quick succession. That's just, I guess, how the world works sometimes.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think there's two things in play. One is we have more people playing on more platforms and more geographies through more business models than ever before by a wide margin. Mobile continues to be the world's biggest and fastest growing gaming platform. I think we have had some success in mobile, but not nearly as much as we would like. And there was an opportunity to make some acquisitions in the mobile space that really extended our mobile business, built OIP, but more importantly brought in new amazing creative talent to our organization. But the second thing that we also saw through the pandemic was that for many people who were deep fans of sport, deep followers of sport, we were their sport. So much of the world's real sport was on lockdown. We were their sport. We were bringing in athletes and teams and creating esports tournaments around FIFA.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, last year's first quarter was unbelievable. We actually didn't expect a big drop off. I know there were lots of people predicting that we would see it because that was true for a lot of other forms of media. Video games aren't just an amazing form of entertainment. They're an amazing form of connection. And when you normalize Q1 over Q1, this quarter was a week, shorter than last year's Q1. And so on balance, we were about flat. And that's really because we've had 140 million people playing our sports games. We've had 100 million people playing Apex. We've had over 35 million people playing the Sims.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yeah. And so I don't think that goes away. Social interaction and competition are two of the most powerful positive motivators of human behavior. And as we engage in them and as we fulfill those motivations and we feel good about it, we do it more and we do it more and we do it more. So when you get a bunch of fans and friends together who are really fulfilling those two core motivations and leaving that interaction feeling good, they're going to come back the next day and do it again. And as we think about building games and as we think about building entertainment, that's what we focus on.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. My son, my daughter's in college on the other side of the country, they're hold up in their dorm room. I'm getting together and playing games with them online every night. We're maintaining this connection. And so I think what we saw through the pandemic was tens, maybe hundreds of millions of more people recognized that games are a lot of things. They are inspiration. They are escape. They are competition. They are self-improvement. They are creation. But what they really are is social connection. And that won't go away.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really comes down to kind of human motivations. There's lots of reasons why people seek out entertainment, escape, inspiration, social connection, competition, creation, self-improvement. These are these core motivations as to why we do what it is that we do when we play video games and we watch movies or we listen to music or we go to sports events. And so where you were looking for escape, that might be more transitory because once you go back out of the world, you don't need escape so much anymore. When you were looking for self-improvement, that also may be transitory. We don't have as much time to spend on the peloton as we did before. But when we think about social connection and we think about this secular trend that is social interaction is moving from physical to digital, COVID accelerated that secular trend. And what we see is the reason most people played our games wasn't about escape, was about social interaction. I was getting letters on a weekly basis saying, wow, I just want to thank.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would tell you for me that I'm an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. So this concept of being at home and with my family was actually kind of warming for me so we kind of spent the last 18 months or so as a family unit, the four of us, my wife and my two kids. And we decided really early on that we weren't going to try and segregate things. My kids, they love to come in and kind of sit on my lap for town halls and sit on my lap for investor calls and remember doing one call where the people were very serious and they said, well, so listen, here's what we need you to understand. You know, we can't have kids coming in. We can't have the dog barking. And I just looked at him and I said, listen, I'm really sorry. I don't want to be rude. I can tell you on a daily basis, my kids and my dog are present in every activity I do. If you happy to move forward on that basis, let's keep going. If you're not, then we're going to have to wait till after the pandemic. And they kind of look at me and went, huh? Okay.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“over artists to us. Now our teams have demonstrated that, yeah, it's actually better to have them on site. It's actually better to have them in a studio. But in a world where that's not possible, we have avenues open to us to still get what we need to make great entertainment. So I think that we will almost certainly evolve. I don't think it will be 180 shift from people coming together.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I think we've certainly learned a lot, but we're still in a very acute time frame, right? I mean, our company's been around over 40 years and what we're talking about is 18 months. And in that 18 months, our people have done extraordinary things, launched a whole bunch of games and a whole bunch of live services and supported hundreds of millions of players around the world. So on balance, you look back and go, cool, let's just be remote forever. But it wasn't without its challenges physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually for our people. And so I still feel like we're in the learning phase. And there's just no doubt that the future is going to be more flexible than the past. And there are things that we have learned that we can do remotely that we never would have thought possible, which impacts not just the flexibility of the work environment, but certainly how we capture motion, how we capture audio, how we do animation. These things that we always felt had to be in person, we always had to bring athletes and actors and voices.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got very lucky as an industry, as we're moving through the pandemic and people were using our games to connect with their friends and their family. We saw our business do very, very well. And we didn't come out and celebrate that and we didn't beat our chest about it. It didn't feel right. But we were very lucky. But the other thing I would say is it was also challenging on our people. While we spent a lot of time and energy around our players and doing things for our players, our focus all the way through was on the health and well-being of our people and their families. And let me tell you, while the industry on balance did very, very well, it's hard to do what we do from home. It really is. And we have the ingenuity and commitment of our teams and the resilience of the human spirit to thank for the fact that we were able to do so much for our players. But there were some tough days on our teams. Making games from home is no easy feat and it is not for the faint of heart.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are the biggest, fastest growing entertainment medium in the world by a wide margin and it has been that way for some time. What we saw through the pandemic was tens, maybe hundreds of millions of more people recognized that games were a lot of things. They are inspiration. They are escape. They are competition. They are self-improven. They are creation. But what they really are is social connection. And that won't go away. The Netflix, the Amazons, the Hulus, the Disney's, the Peacocks, the HBO Max, while they can bring in large numbers of people in the context of their subscription, no entertainment medium drives the level of engagement that ours does.”
2021-08-26 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: How Electronic Arts grows a metaverse, with CEO Andrew Wilson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT