Cindy Cook, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Vivendi Games is being interviewed by Geoff Keighley, producer of Spike TV’s GTTV at the LA Games Conference.

Geoff asks about the explosion of the music category. How do you work with the music companies?

Cindy says that the music business is actively looking for new outlets for their content. The interest level for music companies to be involved with games has reached a high point. First it was just background, then it became jukebox material, then artists became characters in the game, and then music became the game.

It’s been good to see the growth in sales of these games. We’ve also seen lots of growth of in game music purchases which is very exciting.

Geoff asks about movie games. The view is that movie games are rushed out and hard core gamers don’t really like them. The high mark was the Chronicle of Riddick. It seems that Vivendi is going back into the old movies, for example Scarface and Ghostbusters.

Cindy says they try to coordinate with release dates where they can. These are good opportunities. The problem is that it can take longer to make a good game than make a good movie. They wanted a way around this problem, so they researched the back catalogue. Scarface emerged as one property that could do well. For Ghostbusters, it’s one of the most familiar and popular movies. They were able to unite the original cast and it has unique game play.

For Scarface, they had huge popularity of the character and they were able to weave in contemporary hip hop theme. Ghostbusters was also familiar to the audience.

Geoff asks about The Bourne Conspiracy release. Cindy says they are immersed in a large scale marketing campaign. They see this as a mass market product so they are looking creatively at how to reach people. Two things they are doing that are unique. The first is cinema based ads. The ads are based on showing the motion capture technology and action sequences from the game. They will be shown at the opening of the new Indiana Jones movie. The other thing we did was to have the music composer, Paul Oakenfold, host a music conference and produce a music video for the game.

They will also have outdoor advertising and street teams that will help promote the game.

Geoff asks about how Vivendi approaches a Facebook or Myspace. Cindy says they go where the people are. For Scarface, they had a Myspace contest to determine music for the game. They also have a Scarface page on Myspace which has 400,000 friends.

Cindy also describes How Do I Survive High School. It’s a mobile game that connects to people. It’s episodic. People are attached to the game. 7.5 million packs have been downloaded for the game. They have promoted it in Facebook focusing on how to get the game on your mobile device.

Geoff asks about iPhone games. Will it be disruptive to the mobile market? Will it blow the market wide open? Cindy says that most mobile games have been crappy games. The iPhone has the ability to support much better games. It has the potential to be disruptive when the installed based gets bigger. The key is to get enough people with the phone to make it really big.

Cindy addresses a question about new virtual currency. She says that she wants to clarify that World of Warcraft continues to grow and that Blizzard is really focused on the player experience is.

Question: Will Blizzard allow digital object exchange? Blizzard has made it clear that they have decided not to do this. They are focusing on the player experience.

Question: What about iPhone games? Will Vivendi be delivering more games through the browser? She says the ability to download or access through the web is really exciting to Vivendi. It will be a matter of consumer choice how the get the games.

Technorati Tags: LA Games Conference 2008, Cindy Cook, Videndi Games, gaming