Mag-log in bilang miyembro
Ang pamumuhunan ay natural na isang sentral na paksa sa summit ng DevGAMM, at ang parehong mga devs at execs ay sabik na matuto nang higit pa sa kasalukuyang kapaligiran. At sino ang mas mahusay na makipag-usap tungkol sa mga pondo kaysa sa beteranong CEO, isa sa mga nangungunang executive ng negosyo sa industriya ng laro.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is the Madeira Games Summit in Portugal.
We are learning a little bit more about the innards of this industry.
There's some interesting talking points here."
"One of them is investment, and I'm super happy to have you, Jeff, with us.
You just had a panel, you've been talking about investment precisely with other actors.
And yesterday we were thrown a question by the organizers of the event, which was, in five years from now, which is the one thing you would have wished you fixed this week in gaming, so that we can look back to that in five years."
"Which was your answer, or something that you would like to share about that?
Managing expectations about funding and what you need to do.
I think the biggest thing I'm seeing at this show with some of the younger developers is they're talking so much about grants and government money, and they're forgetting that consumers don't play grants and government money."
"They play games. Start with the game.
Then mention that you have...
No one cares about your grants and government money and tax subsidies unless they want the game.
If they want the game and they like it, then bring up grants, tax rebates."
"And just always remember, whenever you want to bring it up, consumers don't play grants, they play games.
That's a headline for them, absolutely.
How do they approach investors then?
What is the piece of advice you can give them to approach investors?
Once again, get your grants lined up. Have your other money lined up."
"The other thing is, investors like it when you quit your job, and you're really dedicated, and it's all or nothing.
If you're asked the question, what are you going to do if this doesn't succeed?
The answer is, it's going to succeed."
"That's the only answer.
Because then the investors know you're going to do everything you can to make this succeed.
Come hell or high water, you're in.
Number two, if you're working for another company, especially in the video game industry, most of the employment agreements own anything you create while you're working there."
"And what you're doing is probably illegal.
In my past, anytime someone hadn't quit, we asked them for their employment agreement, and we're like, you can't talk about this game anymore, because everything you're saying, your company owns."
"So be very careful with that.
You'd be shocked.
How many people probably don't even know.
So you just mentioned your past."
"Of course, you have a long running career with investment, with advising.
You had another agency before. Now you guys are Starting Point Games* What can you tell me you're doing as of now, as of late, with different studios and projects?
Well, I sold my agency 10 years ago."
"I started a game developer.
So that one's still going.
We just passed 100 people, so we've been operating for a while.
We're good."
"And then I'm advising studios.
I think video game got too expensive.
Development got too expensive.
So I'm really, really focusing on the lower budgets."
"I used to operate in the $100 to $200 million range.
And now I'm all in on sub $20 million, sub $15 million, sub $10 million.
Because that's where I think the new billion dollar franchises are coming from.
And then it's how you break out as well."
"You're taking a couple of different genres and mashing them together.
And there really is no comparable.
You can't go out and ask for $100 million with no comparable to model it against.
So I'm focusing a lot on that."
"Advising CEOs, helping them navigate.
We did a panel here on how to navigate the hard choices you need to make.
Hey, guys, if you lose your project and you have 80 people on staff, based on your genre, based on the platforms you're working on, you better have a rolling plan at any time to go down from 80 people to whatever number of people you need to have one-year burn rate in the bank."
"And that might be 10 people.
It might be 15 people.
But it better be done in 48 hours.
You're not doing anybody a favor.
All right."
"Super big.
100 plus million projects.
Smaller now.
Is there any specific case that you would like to share that you're specifically proud of in terms of how you managed to find investment, to find funds for a very interesting creative idea or for a very exciting project?
Yeah, my studio."
"At Final Strike, it was our first game we made.
Great reviews.
Came out right after Fortnite relaunched.
And they said, wow, this looks a lot like Fortnite, but it's not free."
"But we were really proud of that game.
It really built us as a studio and showed that we can build a game, ship on time, on budget, which to me is a big deal and matched all of our specs and had great reviews."
"That's probably...
That one's recent.
And there's a couple more mixed in there.
I've been doing this for 30 years, so it gets confusing."
"Yeah.
So 10 years ago, that's 30 years.
10 years ago, you were talking about VR and AR.
A lot has changed from that?
I never was."
"No?
No, I never bought into VR and AR 10 years ago.
I started buying in two years ago, and I'm buying in more and more, even now as we're hearing everything from Meta, because I'm simply watching the numbers."
"Yeah, let me ask you about that.
How do you see it?
Well, Google doesn't share, Meta doesn't share, but you can kind of pick up ancillary numbers by watching the market and watching that, oh, they're doing a sequel."
"Oh, you're looking at it like, oh, they just did an update.
That's an expensive update.
And then you can kind of look at the content they're doing.
Part of this is being in the game industry."
"They must be generating a lot more revenue than we think.
So the market segmenting, everybody was trying to do VR, and there just weren't a lot of good VR games.
They just weren't good."
"They weren't interesting.
They weren't good.
The cameras are getting better.
People are learning how to, people are getting more comfortable wearing them."
"So there's just a whole thing that's happening.
There's a zeitgeist happening with VR right now where people are getting more comfortable wearing them.
The headsets are getting lighter."
"The fidelity is going up.
And people are really learning how to make the games for it for a better experience.
And that's it."
"It's very interesting because people were talking with me about, I don't think VR is going to make it.
I'm not ready for VR.
We're not ready for it."
"And then all of a sudden, when everyone is saying the industry is going down, I'm like, I'm in.
So that's the moment right now?
Because we felt like you said, it's drying out."
"We're always expecting a comeback or a breakthrough, and it never happens.
But as of now, do you think it's a good opportunity because people are getting more comfortable?
It's a good opportunity."
"Well, the updates that I'm seeing are showing me it's a good opportunity because Meta is the number one.
They don't share their data.
They just don't."
"So you kind of have to make assumptions.
And then for me, and a lot of people in this room can look at an update and go, ooh, that's a multimillion-dollar update.
They have to be making money."
"Somehow?
Yeah, somehow.
Money is coming from somewhere because VCs are not investing in this anymore, so they have to be doing it out of cash flow."
"And to do that update out of cash flow, it's selling.
So that's my metric that I'm focusing on right now.
That's very interesting.
I'm also into VR."
"Yeah, it's a different approach, and this is just from being in the industry 30 years.
You can look at a game and be like, that game probably had this many person months on it."
"Where was the team?
Okay, it cost about this much.
So you can kind of look at it.
It's like, oh, that team was in California."
"Okay, that means it's three times what it would have cost in Germany.
That's just a cost basis for it.
Of course.
And finally, let me ask you about IP development and transmedia because the opportunities for investors and for studios and for publishers and franchises to become transmedia have been multiplied in the past 10 years."
"We've seen more games or even books come into games, come into movies, come into TV series.
So how do you think that changes the landscape for investors nowadays?
Cross media has always been important."
"Yes.
Capcom for years was like, in the dirty little secret about when you license a video game IP to Hollywood, you're lucky to make a million dollars from the TV series or from anything else."
"You're lucky.
What it does is increase your sales of your existing games.
And Bethesda was speaking, and she could only share so much information because Microsoft's a public company, but she said when the Fallout TV series came out, Angela [Browder]. Yeah, when that series came out, we not only saw sales of our latest games come up, the entire catalog went up."
"And I remember talking with Capcom years ago because I worked on a couple of Resident Evils, and they're like, well, we're trying to time this game with the relaunch of this movie."
"And they're like, why?
And they're like, oh, these are multiples.
When the movie comes out, and they never worried about day and date."
"People used to get obsessed with day and date in a movie.
Capcom never cared.
They go, our entire catalogue sells.
The latest one, we'll get a five times lift."
"And I'm like, oh, these numbers are real numbers.
And they're like, we don't even care about making money from the movie.
It's from the games.
Yeah."
"Related to that.
It's going to happen this year with Street Fighter for Capcom, and it just happened with Nintendo with Mario.
Yeah, their entire catalog."
"People remember, they take out their Switch, and they dust it off.
And they're like, oh, I'm going to go play that game.
And they go with their kids."
"Like, yeah, we got that.
And then the kids want to play, and they're like, some of them don't even know what a Switch is.
And they're like, we can play that?
And remember, a lot of them don't even know that some of these things were games first."
"Like, the number of people that never knew Fallout was a game.
Exactly.
Yeah, and I've had a number of people say to me, oh, they made a game based on Resident Evil?
I'm like, sure."
"That's really nice.
That's very interesting.
Yeah, but I'm very big into crossmedia.
I'm sorry, transmedia.
Yes, yes."
"And I think it's great that we're finally dovetailing in, and it's great that we're finally appreciating the media.
And the problem we used to have is we wanted the game to follow the movie, or the movie or TV series to follow the game."
"And they should.
Ish.
Yeah, ish.
They absolutely should.
Respect the canon."
"Respect that.
But you know what?
Sometimes it just doesn't make sense in that media to do that.
And yes, I'm sorry, Street Fighter actually needs a storyline, a narrative storyline for a movie."
"It just does.
Just a little bit.
Yeah.
And the game just doesn't.
Yeah."
"I mean, I want to see the cut scenes after my first couple of kills.
But after that, OK, no.
I don't need it.
Yeah, that's at the end."
"Fantastic, Jeff.
All right, it's a real pleasure.
Thank you so much for your time.
Enjoy the rest of the show."
