Editor's note: InstantAction is intriguing, but I don't know much about it. I do now, thanks to Mark's interview with InstantAction CEO Louis Castle, one of the minds behind the great Westwood Studios and Command and Conquer. I'm always interested when someone with Castle's background has something to say. -Jason

If you've learned anything about me, it's that I'm a bit of a skeptic. Nothing makes this quality shine more than a new technology that appears ready to overtake what I've become used to: DVDs to Blu-ray, cartridges to CDs -- I've always been one to hold off until I've seen a good example and been able to try it on my own. 

Louis Castle is a big figure in the gaming industry; Founder of Westwood studios --the company responsible for the Command and Conquer series-- and a major player throughout his career at Virgin Interactive and EA (both of which owned Westwood and its employees), he has been through most of gaming's evolutionary stages. 

I sat down with Mr. Castle while he was at the recent LOGIN conference in Seattle (and I was, sadly, at my home) this week to talk to him about InstantAction, the new company he's joined up with, and their plans for digital domination. InstantAction allows publishers to distribute games -- including major releases -- in browsers.

If this platform goes off and works as well as it looks and sounds, this could be the example of digital distribution that I've been waiting for. 

Mark Whitney: You were a founder of Westwood studios and until recently were a part of EA Los Angeles.

Louis Castle: I see it a bit of a different way: I founded Westwood with [Brett] Sperry in 1985 and was with that company and its successive employers and owners up until this June. From Virgin to EA, I’ve been with one company but held a number of jobs: CEO, CFO, CIO, art director, technical director, etc. Lots of different things, but all within the different companies that owned us. It was difficult to leave EA, but I was hoping to do something different.

MW: What attracted you to InstantAction and Garage Games, especially after working with the same guys for so long.

LC: First of all, the competency. The one part of the business I didn’t have as much experience with was online services and distribution. I felt strongly while I was at EA that things needed to change dramatically from a fundamental level so that the industry and the business could take the next step. I had planned, after leaving EA, to actually focus on social and mobile gaming and actually see how it works. The opportunity actually kind of fell into my lap -- to be able to work with a company that is world class in all of the same technology and understanding that I wanted to focus on.

I loved the technology they had and wanted to share it with the industry. That’s how I was taken in; I wanted to be the guy who helped share the great ideas the company had and hopefully bring something that would take us away from the brick-and-mortar stores.

MW: We’ve heard from various websites what they think InstantAction is. In your own words, what is InstantAction?

LC: Well, InstantAction is a process -- more of a series of technologies -- [that] allows publishers to deliver games anywhere and everywhere it’s possible. It allows people to sample them for free, and pay for them either all at once or incrementally instead of having a big monetary gate. All of those features; instantly playable, how long they’re free, everything about it and when they pay, how they pay, is all controlled by the publishers.

The system allows them to do everything I’ve said and more, but the publishers may not want to use certain parts. In other words, if one of our partners has a smaller game, they may not want to use the Gaikai, which allows users to stream games directly from servers. These games then run only on your broadband service and use absolutely none of your system’s resources feed to mask the download. There’s no point; the games will load fast enough without it. Some people will want to have a full price point before they pay, and that’s their choice. Others will say, “Hey I’m fine with the 30-minute trial, but then I want a full price point and don’t want a pay-to-play service.” I’m really looking forward to seeing exclusive titles that utilize all of our features because I really think it will change the way people perceive how games can be delivered.

MW: You’re kind of walking into a lively den. Companies like Steam, OnLive, and Impulse have staked their claim on this digital battleground already, and in the case of Steam and Impulse, have been very successful. So what I really want to know is: Why should I choose your system?

LC: All of those companies are a single technology, for the most part. Every one of them has a place and a part of the market that is very interesting, but I think the issue for me is that each of them has a large number of users where the experience is not fully satisfying. So what I’m trying to do is put together a suite of technologies and treat technology more like commodities that can be swapped in and out much like e-commerce systems -- virtual currencies, commodities, things like that -- where new technologies and new approaches come around, and you just use the new approach because it’s a better approach. So that’s what the difference is: All of the systems you mention are all specific technologies aimed at a very specific, target experience, and what we’re trying to do is wrap a lot of different, easily interchangeable technologies into a smooth user interface.

MW: What about things like offline play?

LC: Definitely. There are a lot of services that are not available yet, but are very close. Things like the Gaikai system and the rent-to-own features may not have been available in the first release of Monkey Island but they will all be available.

MW: If things like offline play are allowed, what are your -- and subsequently InstantAction’s -- thoughts on digital-rights management? Will publishers have a choice in having it in their games?

LC: I guess my response is that the purpose of DRM is really to try and curb piracy. When you think about piracy most people are trying to prevent it by just saying “no” and trying to stop it. My experience is that if you build better mousetraps, you get smarter mice. So the interesting thing about our platform is that it doesn’t seek to prevent people from pirating, for lots of technical reasons it does a good job at making it more difficult but that’s not really the point. The point is to make games shareable and free for some period of time that is reasonable for people to get a good taste of it and then allow them to incrementally pay for it at that time.

So by the time you’ve found the game, downloaded it quickly, played it instantaneously, invested a half-hour to 45 minutes into it, and saved the game a couple of times, we say, “Now, look, you can pay a little bit and keep playing more,” and at that time you have to decide if it’s worth a couple bucks or whatever the publisher sets as its price to keep playing and enjoying your experience, or will you go waste your time downloading it? You’ll have to start all over, find the game, download it, make sure it's a good copy that has all of the features and is connected, etc.... I think most people will keep paying the small amount of money for the use and it won’t be like you’re wasting your money -- it all goes towards the retail price of the game. I believe that, even though there will always be people who will steal stuff, that if you approach it from benefit side, you get a much better response. It’s the carrot, not the stick.

But on the stick side our technology works in such a way that it’s possible the game will never entirely be on someone’s system. So it’s difficult for a pirate to make a complete image and therefore difficult to steal. But that doesn’t mean we’re throwing a gauntlet down saying “please come and try to break our system”; we’re saying “look, we give you what is necessary to play the game” and that, by its nature, makes it difficult to steal. It’s much like an MMO, where the challenge of stealing it doesn’t outweigh the benefit of doing it. 

Continue reading for Castle's opinions on his system being a wet dream for reviewers, spam, affiliate programs, a Linux version, and Apple's iPad.