The Xbox Interview: J Allard

You know we have military-grade security in our data centres. [Looks around to see make sure we're all believing him]. I mean, we have safes, you know - we have my key, your key, three, two, one, turn... we have armed guards. This is serious stuff, because we're talking about people's reputations here. And forget your hi-score, what's more important than your reputation? We have to protect the privacy and the experience of the gamers, and we have to be vigilant about that. It means a lot of technology because we know we're a big target. People will try to take down the service and cheat, and that really can spoil it for others. But we have measures against it - that's just the nature of the Internet in general.

Kikizo: What are the legal implications and privacy issues with you knowing so much about all the users?

J Allard: There are tons of legal implications. We have a team dedicated to these policies. It's one of the major challenges, especially in rolling out the service globally. There is so much variation, different local laws and policies in different countries, and online laws evolve so rapidly. So it's very hard to do that. But the default choice when you sign up is to opt-out of marketing offers, and your existence online is viewed anonymously by our datacenters. But by going online, you do share your privacy with other gamers.

Kikizo: What are you going to do if people just flame each other all the time for no good reason?

J Allard: Well let 'em! If that happens, you're gonna say, "I'm not gonna play with that guy any more!" We don't have that system in place; we want the community to self-police itself first. We think there's enough control in the gamers' hands. We'll take a wait-and-see approach. The interesting thing is that voice has really changed the dynamics of online gaming. People are much more polite. Take two strangers on the street. How often do you see two strangers being incredibly rude to each other and using foul language? Not very often. On the phone? Not very often. But on the Internet? A lot. But one step of the anonymity gets remove when you start talking with your voice - it's much more intimate. And you can't change your name to escape the fact that you were rude to someone. It should make for a more polite place.