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Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor Had Game Design Dreams Once Upon A Time

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Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor doesn't have much of a video game pedigree—he contributed to id Software's Quake and Doom 3—but the man is no stranger to games. He even pitched one, long ago.

Reznor tells Digg founder Kevin Rose that he and Nine Inch Nails art director Rob Sheridan once pitched a game a couple years ago to "a few big publishers." The response, from apparently all those pitched, was disheartening, says Reznor.

"Well, it costs so much to make a game, we're really only interested in sequels or movie tie-ins," Reznor was told. That goes against the Reznor philosophy, apparently, as he weighed in on the industry's cookie cutter design.

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"I think a lot of the big publishers have gone the route of record labels and movie companies where it costs so much to make a game and they're so obsessed with the idea that games have to be cinematic experiences," the musician said. "Lots of money gets spent on the marketing and the rendering, and not a lot of money gets puts into anything innovative and interesting."

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These days, Reznor says, he's much more interested in the kind of fare one finds on WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade, things like Geometry Wars, which harkens back to Reznor's favorite game of all time, Robotron.

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Any budding developers willing to tackle Nine Inch Nails: The Video Game?

Digg Dialogg - Trent Reznor [Revision 3 via NeoGAF]