MI6 caught up with Scot Bayless, Executive Producer of the new Bond game "Everything or Nothing" at Electronic Arts HQ in Redwood City, California, to find out how things are shaping up...

"Everything or Nothing" - Exclusive Interview
29th July 2003

The James Bond film producers may think they have a tough time creating the next Bond film in the shadows of the past 40 years, but Electronic Arts have an almost impossible task with their latest game - beating the success of GoldenEye 64.

The game that launched the new Nintendo platform into dizzy heights on August 25th 1997 has become ingrained in a generation. Hailed by many as "the best game ever made", it brought both Bond to game fans, and games to Bond fans.

Having sold eight million copies and brought Bond to approximately 75% of American kids during the four years on release, do EA feel they will always be creating Bond games in the shadow of GoldenEye?

Earlier this week, MI6 caught up with Scot Bayless, Executive Producer of the new Bond game "Everything or Nothing" at Electronic Arts HQ in Redwood City, California, to find out how things are shaping up.

"GoldenEye was a wonderful game that caught the imagination of both gamers and Bond fans. It will always be part of the information cloud around any 007 game", Bayless told us.

"Having said that, I think Everything or Nothing stands out as a completely different expression of the Bond experience. Our focus is entirely on capturing the essence of being in a Bond film, not watching one, but playing it out."

Since GoldenEye won critical acclaim as well as record sales figures, the series of recent games from EA ("Agent Under Fire", "NightFire") have slowly moved away from the Atypical videogame experience and headed towards the movies domain.

Will "Everything or Nothing" continue this trend further toward a hybrid of games and movie experiences?

"That's the very heart of what we're doing with Everything or Nothing" Bayless explained. "We've gone all the way this time. We started by making sure we worked with the principle cast from the films: Pierce Brosnan, John Cleese and Dame Judi Dench have joined us for the project."

"When it comes to creating personality and atmosphere, it's hard to beat combinations like Brosnan and Cleese. Dafoe delivers a wonderfully sinister performance as Nikolai Diavolo and our Bond girls are delightfully smart and sexy.

"We also hired Bruce Feirstein, the writer of GoldenEye (the film) and co-writer on Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is not Enough, to do our script. We've also brought in Heidi Klum and Shannon Elizabeth as two of our Bond girls. For our villain we went to one of my personal favorites, Willem Dafoe. We're working with the best and the results have been amazing."

Everything or Nothing will be more than a Bond game with famous actors filling the parts though. Next week we dig deeper into the gameplay and what new developments Bond gamers can look forward to this November.

Thanks to Scot Bayless and the team at Electronic Arts for their time.