A crowd of game executives tried to land on solutions to some of the industry’s biggest problems at DevGamm’s Madeira Summit last week.
Pragmatism and flexibility seemed to be the theme for this boutique conference, which hosted execs from Epic Games, Bethesda, Krafton, Kwalee, Nordeus, GSC, Tinybuild, Curve Games and more.
The gathering was also a pitch for local investment in Madeira, which offers tax breaks that the Portuguese territory says puts it in-line with business hotspots like Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg.
Notably, a sizeable chunk of the crowd were work-for-hire and consultancy firms, reflecting a games business edging towards a Hollywood-style reliance on shorter-term contractors and outsourcing.
As ever, the mobile games industry has already absorbed many of the lessons those in PC and console games still seem to be learning: stay lean, don’t overcommit or overscope, specialise – and don’t forget you’re supposed to be running a business.
There were less well-worn topics covered across two days of discussions, though. An investor panel hosted by Starting Point Games CEO Jeff Hilbert with Agora’s Lili Zang, Oakfyn’s Willi Kellich and Krafton investments’ Victor Lee noted that game-makers must now also consider making their next game defensible from AI cloners.
Studios must therefore imbue their games with enough of a human touch to make them distinctive, relatable or strike some other chord with players – stuff that soulless AI slop can’t do. (Though frankly it’s not clear whether the average mobile game player really cares.)
Krafton’s Victor Lee and Starting Point Games’ Jeff Hilbert only appeared to be half-joking when they said we’re heading into an AI-powered future where any studio can whip up their own spin on PUBG or Fortnite in a couple of weeks.
And so when discoverability gets even worse, studios must also become experts in attracting and growing a community around their games, they said. Pitches that don’t include a clear plan of attack for player targeting and fandom-building will likely fail, they suggested.
Balancing making the game you actually want to make and one that is investible was acknowledged as a tough balance to strike, though. “You’ve got to find the right investor and the right people that believe in your product the way you do,” said Krafton’s Lee, advising against changing the game and why you’re making it too much.
Hilbert agreed and urged studios to take feedback on board, but avoid changing the fundamentals of your project. And for God’s sake, added Hilbert, tell investors what your game actually is in the first few slides of your deck, before you go into financing models. Lee also warned against pitching investors when your game is not ready; first impressions count, and a bad intro means you might not get a second chance.
Later, a lively chat between GSC Game World’s Agostino Simonetta, Bossa founder Henrique Olifiers and consultant Rami Ismail centred upon team sizes, budgets and the rush of ‘dumb money’ into the business in the early 2020s.
In particular, they lamented the smaller outfits that over-expanded and lost focus after getting financing in the post-COVID frenzy. The group were particularly critical of the many teams that spun out of large establishment studios aiming to make an overly ambitious game without the experience required to actually do so.
On costs, Ismail advised attendees to build development teams in territories like South America, India and Indonesia rather than in European or North American markets.
The panel also agreed that figuring out what your studio does best – and working on projects that few other studios can execute as well – is also an important thing to figure out and then focus on.
But most of all, they agreed that big new market opportunities are best grasped by studios that aren’t weighed down by the baggage of running a large live game or by complex, long-established development pipelines.
Stay small, nimble and pragmatic, they suggested, and it’ll all be okay. Maybe.
Disclosure: DevGamm covered travel and accommodation for this event.
