For those who didn’t know, 15 years ago late-night TV host Conan O’Brien got into gaming. He says he plays with Bill Hader. As such, he took the stage at SXSW on Tuesday with Blizzard Entertainment president Johanna Faries.
While Faries didn’t lay out any grand plans for Blizzard in terms of its games timeline, both acknowledged the passionate fanbase of gamers, how they should be listened to, and also how entertainment companies are now treating the video game industry seriously.
“What I found fascinating to me is that when I started in show business a long time ago, it was trying to get as many people as possible in superficial way,” said O’Brien.
“Now it’s not about me trying to get 50 million people, but people who are really paying attention to what I’m doing. It’s less horizontal and vertical,” the recent Oscar host said.
When it comes to connecting with his video game legion of fans, O’Brien remarked, “It feels like I’m drilling down into a special community.”
O’Brien spoke about the time he visited South Korea when he was in his 50s. “There’s screaming kids. And it was because we found out later on, a lot of it was through the gaming videos. You think more than ever, we need this connectivity. There’s a way that people connect through video games. There’s something that’s special and unique.”
The Conan O’Brien Must Go host joked that he’ll often avatar himself as a wizard, alien, the undead or demon asking fellow online players, “What do you think of Conan O’Brien?”
He beamed “I want to be in the next Diablo. I want to be a demon or necromancer. My wife when she met thought I was a necromancer.”
“If I’m in Diablo, people will get to decide if I live or die very quickly,” he quipped.
Faries responded, “No, we’ll get the writers on this.”
Faries mentioned that when it comes to the viewership pull for online video games, “it’s comping against Super Bowl numbers in terms of interactivity at a global level all the time. That’s why we see other entertainment industry leaders entering the conversation. It’s normalized in a way that was misunderstood or misrepresented.”
She threw praise at Blizzard’s new parent Microsoft, a marriage that “we feel blessed to be a part of.”
Faries added, “The partner lets you do the thing that you know how to do. Without saying no, they let you be you. That’s critically important. We’re happy to be together, to have a seat at the table.”
