As Executive Vice President of Core Games at THQ, Danny Bilson has a plan to make THQ known for its hardcore titles as much as it is for its casual offerings. Since joining the company, Bilson has turned around many of THQ's stagnant franchises and is determined to creating several new ones. Besides taking control of the long-standing Red Faction and WWE titles, Bilson also helped launch UFC and Darksiders franchises, and hopes for similar success for the upcoming shooter Homefront early next year.

Last week, Bilson spoke at the IGDA Leadership Conference in San Francisco. IGN caught up with him afterwards to get his thoughts on creating new franchises, motion controls, and what's wrong with the games industry.

If you wait to see if a new game hits, you're going to lose the team. When the team finishes the game, they have to roll onto something else. So you have to start pre-production on the second one and believe it's going to be a hit. Now, if Homefront is a bomb and sells 100,000 units and everybody hates it, we aren't going to make that sequel. We'll just stop it.The reason you have to do sequels is to get the cost down. It literally takes three years to start an original IP and get it to gray. Then the rule is we give them two years for the next one. So that already cuts about a third of the cost for the sequel. Now they already know how to make the game; they've got a certain amount of assets that can be re-used. In Homefront, a lot of the weapons and tanks, for example, will be the same for the sequel, but it will have different characters and environments. Most importantly, you have a team that now has worked together and knows how to make something.Darksiders 1 took three and half years, Darksiders 2 is on a tight, 24-month schedule and we're getting a bigger game. Darksiders 2 is about 25 percent longer than Darksiders 1.It's like the movie-to-DVD business. If we sold 1.3 million units, at least two and a half million people have played that game because the used game churn is insane, especially on a single-player game where you finish it and sell it back. When we come out with a better, more exciting game we've got those people to market it for us, buy it themselves the second time around, and I believe we can grow the audience that way.So it's a combination of a belief that at a certain penetration there's a viral quality because of used games to how many people touched the game. If Darksiders 2 does 1.3 million there won't be a third one. If it doesn't grow, it just won't support itself financially.You can't just say Double Fine games are great and don't sell. What they need is better marketing, communication, and engagement. For example, with Psychonauts, people love that game. So, I think there's a case for a Psychonauts sequel. Now, I'm just talking for Double Fine, we're not making that game. I think what they need is a little better marketing and some guidance. I'm a big fan, I think Grim Fandango is a work of art. I look forward to doing more stuff with them in the future.Back then we had 17 studios, now we only have 10. What we're focused on is having one blockbuster title per quarter over the next two-and-a-half years. That's still pretty focused. We're not spending ridiculous amounts of money. You have to invest in each title, though. Each one and its marketing costs a lot of money so you just don't have many bets.Used games.It's really simple and very difficult. This isn't about the gamer, it's about the business. The amount of used games that move is a humongous amount and we don't see any of that revenue. When a retailer is selling it at $55 in a resale when they maybe bought it for $40. It doesn't really matter what they're selling it for, and I don't blame the used gamer at all for buying it at less money if they're getting the same thing.The fact is we may get paid for 1.3 million units on a game when before used games we would have got 2 million units, and that's money we could reinvest into making games better. Making games better costs money, these games are really expensive.Look at it this way, games are really expensive, and we have to sell a ton of units to pay for them, and we have to sell a ton a units knowing that another 30 or 40 percent or more are going to be sold that we're not making money on. That's taking away revenue that we would have had in the past. That's what really hurt the model badly, that, and it's just expensive to make great games.I don't get that. Here's what we have to do to answer that and it's not to abolish used games because there's a great advantage to discounted games for people who don't have enough money and we want to have more gamers. It's not that. What we have to do is give premium content to the new game so that it feels like there's more value there and that the used guy can choose to spend more money to get back to premium.It's really important not to punish the used gamer in any way. I'll be honest, if I'm buying games with my own dollars, and if one is $60 and $40 for the same thing, I'm buying the $40 one myself. We're struggling to find ways to make more money on our investment so that we can make games at all. Because making these big, core games is really expensive. If somebody has a magic wand where we can make these things for $10 million and compete with Gears or War and Call of Duty. Give me that magic wand. It costs a fortune to compete, and you have to compete because only so many games are going to sell well now.