There’s an interview with Lum and Dave Rickey at F13 and I wanted to answer the last question.

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So, presume you had an infinite amount of time, an infinite amount of talent and an infinite amount of money. What do you make?

I’d make a school. I’d make an environment that is half production, half school.

So that, instead of stealing talent from other companies and feed this incestuous behavior, you grow talent and have that talent go feed yours and others companies. So that you build and refine talent instead of just hiring those who got their experience somewhere else.

You can have a school that doesn’t train abstract, but that teaches the basics and then the practice. You could have those students working and practicing with real games developed (and pay them for this work), and in the case what they make is good and they demonstrate talent, you hire them directly into the company.

And one day they’ll lead something or even be teachers themselves.

And with ‘school’ I don’t intend a MMO school. I intend something that will open to every activity. Game designers, writers, artists, animators, programmers, musicians, actors and so on. If one day you have a game and then want to make a TV series about it, you open a new production for it. Publishing games, animation, books, whatever. From a side you open the school, from the other a new production.

And with ‘school’ I also intend a place where you can go live. Like those colleges you have there in the US. But where also grown-ups are accepted. Apartments, cinemas, bars, dancing halls.

I’d actually make a town. With the school in the middle.

Maybe put it at the bottom of the ocean, and call it “Rapture”.