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人物专访:PopCap首席执行官称公司将为IPO做好准备

发布时间:2011-02-22 14:04:47 Tags:,,,

Zynga如今吸引了众多游戏行业投资者的注意力,这家总部位于旧金山的Facebook游戏开发商估值已高达100亿美元。西雅图的PopCap或许将成为下又一个Zynga。据游戏邦了解,该公司目前拟在今年秋季进行首次公开募股(IPO)。

虽然PopCap尚不具备如Zynga、Twitter或是Groupon一般的用户规模,但同样有可能因在acebook和移动设备等平台上运行的游戏品牌,而受到投资者的关注。

该公司CEO戴夫·罗伯茨(Dave Roberts)在上周曾经表示,“此时此刻,我们全力以赴为IPO做好准备。”

PopCap公司400名成员中有200多人的办公点位于一家合作银行上的四层楼,其他人则集中在欧洲及亚洲等地的工作室。回想当初三位创始人John Vechey、Jason Kapalka和Brian Fiete于2000年在一间阁楼中创办了PopCap的情形,该公司目前的运营情况确实是今非昔比,要知道在PopCap正式开业前,他们曾欠下3万美元的信用卡债务。2001年发布的《宝石迷阵》是一个转折点,不仅确定了该公司的行业地位,也标志着西雅图成为休闲游戏产业中心的时代的降临。

据游戏邦了解,PopCap去年的销售额已经突破1亿美元,已经完全有条件进行IPO。但罗伯茨表示,在确信发行股票不会影响企业文化和游戏开发业务之前,PopCap不会开始进行IPO。

摩根证券公司的分析师迈克尔·帕切尔(Michael Pachter)表示,开发了《祖玛》、《Peggle》及《植物大战僵尸》等游戏的PopCap具有很强的创造力和投资价值,是进行IPO的绝佳候选企业。他认为,“PopCap所在的休闲、社交、移动领域中具有很强的发展潜力,这些行业的增长率每年至少达到25%。”

以下游戏邦摘录的罗伯茨部分访谈内容:

PopCap Games-logo

PopCap Games-logo

问:PopCap近来似乎经常谈到IPO。

说者无心,听者有意。我的表述和以往并没有什么不同,只是人们更加关注这件事而已。

问:那么你们的确是在准备IPO吗?

我所说的是我们将在今年年底做好准备,具体时间仍不确定。我们是否进行IPO仍取决于事态的整体发展,包括市场是否已经做好准备,我们这家公司是否已经做好准备。所以这一切的发生与否,我也不得而知。

问:你们已经采取措施进行准备了吗?

在某种意义上我们一直在为它作准备,但像许多事情一样,我们放缓脚步、谨慎地对待这一切,我们并不采用“快,三个月内做好上市准备”这种速度。

问:那么你们的收益足以上市了吗?

我们的营业额在2010年首次破亿。关于上市条件这个问题,不同的人有着不同的衡量标准,但我们一直认为一亿美元就是我们的转折点。

问:公司运营情况如何?今年会实现1.1亿、1.5亿美元的销售额吗?

一切进展都很顺利。我并不是说今年将如何发展,但我们已经连续十年实现了稳健发展,并希望继续保持下去。目前我们在手机游戏业务,特别是iPhone智能手机游戏和社交游戏方面取得了巨大的成功,Facebook游戏的市场表现很好。

问:我听说社交游戏领域的发展正在降温。

许多东西都只有一时的热度,我们并不像许多人一样过度追捧它们,就像当年任天堂的Wii或是Xbox Live大受欢迎时,我们也没有把宝都押在它们身上一样。我们一直相当谨慎地看待这些现象,并适时采取行动,保持良好而稳定的业务发展。将热情转化为和谐、理性的商业模式,这对我们而言永远是件好事。因此,Facebook目前对我们来说是一个极好的平台,我们实现了可观的营收增长。

问:其他游戏高管告诉我,iPad和平板电脑将复兴休闲游戏产业。

我认为这绝对有利于整个行业的发展,并且这已经对我们产生了积极的影响。仅苹果iPad每月销量就已经达到200万,这让我们感到很兴奋。

如果仅仅是把玩家从一个平台吸引到另一个平台,那并不能激发我们的斗志,因为我们正打算吸引那些没有意识到自己可以玩游戏的群体。如何让45岁的女性宣称“我可以玩游戏”,这永远是我们的挑战。

iPone的做法是让数百万的用户相信自己会玩游戏,Facebook的做法同样如此。我对《FarmVille》评价很高,如今有2亿玩家可以说“我玩电子游戏”。我们第一步是,让他们了解PopCap产品是适合他们玩的游戏,只有迈出了这一步,我们才有可能进一步开拓市场。

问:对Android平台有何看法?

持观望态度……它并不像苹果平台一样简便易用。目前来看,它的市场仍然过于分散,而且我也不认为有人已经在Android平台上赚了很多钱,就算他们游戏销量可观,也还是难以成功创收。

问:有些公司把IPO提上日程表是因为它们可能被收购,PopCap会发生这种情况吗?

任何事情都有可能发生,多年来业内就一直将我们视为一个收购目标。但无论如何,我们希望创造一项杰出而久经时间考验的游戏遗产,这个目标永远不会改变。如果IPO可以帮助我们做得更好,我们就会进行IPO。如

果收购可以让我们在适当的时机与适当的搭档合作达成这一目标,我们也可以那么做。但无论基于那种情况,我们的业务都不会发生根本性的变化。

事实上,我们十分希望PopCap在未来能够创造一些最为知名的游戏品牌。目前我们虽然有了一些比较知名的电子游戏品牌,但当人们说起最著名的游戏品牌时,大家通常想到的是《大富翁》、《拼字游戏》等,我们希望可以取代这些过时的桌面游戏。

问:如果摆脱“电子”这个词,你们可以俘获更多玩家,对吗?

完全正确。如今“电子游戏”不是个好词,它会吓倒许多人。50岁的妇女会说“我没法玩电子游戏”,但她其实很快就能玩上手了。

问:关于电子游戏销量的下滑你有何看法?

我们的所有业务都在发展,从未因经济衰退而遭遇坏年景,我们曾经也担忧过,但实际上从来没发生这种情况。

问:你们还可以保持这样的发展速度吗?

我认为我们暂时可以保持稳步发展,部分原因是现在我们有大量的发展机会。我们已经持续在亚洲投资了三四年,但效果今年才开始表现出来。假如我们能够成为少数在美国和亚洲都获得成功的游戏公司之一,我们将获得更大的发展机遇。

问:你们打算用IPO所获得的资金来做些什么?

很可能用于未来的投资,让我们成长为更大的消费品牌。我认为PopCap所创建的草根品牌十分了不起,但想要成为《大富翁》(Monopoly)或《拼字游戏》(Scrabble),我们仍不具备足够的品牌认知度。为了达到这个目标,我们必须提升投资水平,押下比以前更大的赌注。

我们不必明天就开始做这件事,这和今年底花费2500万美元投放Super Bowl(游戏邦注:美国橄榄球超级杯大赛)广告这种事情明显不同。我从不认为通过这种方式可以帮助公司发展。但从某种角度来说,想要成为一个消费品牌公司我们还需要做得更好。

问:是针对美国本土还是国际市场?

主要是在国际市场,这也是我们进行IPO的动力之一。

我们已经成了一家游戏运营商,在大多数平台上,游戏更像是一种服务。即便是iPhone游戏也是一种服务,因为我们必须在后台运行多个服务器。

我们在这方面做得相当不错。PopCap的下一步就是实现所有的游戏的联网和社交化,然后成长为一个更大的消费品牌。我们的宗旨就是取代《大富翁》、《拼字游戏》,成为人们在第一时间想起的游戏品牌。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,转载请注明来源:游戏邦)

Seattle’s PopCap readies for IPO game

Zynga is getting all the attention from game-company investors now, with the San Francisco maker of Facebook titles reportedly valued at $10 billion.

But Seattle’s PopCap Games may be next.

After hinting for many months about going public, the company’s now aiming for an initial public offering in late fall.

PopCap doesn’t have the scale of hot consumer startups such as Zynga, Twitter or Groupon. But it could still benefit from investors’ growing interest in strong brands riding the growth of  Facebook and mobile devices, where its games have been hits.

“At this point we’re just heads down trying to get ready for the IPO,” Chief Executive Dave Roberts said last week in PopCap’s funky Belltown offices.

About 200 of the company’s 400 employees occupy four floors above a credit union. Others are concentrated at offices in Europe and Asia.

It’s a long way from the attic where the three founders — John Vechey, Jason Kapalka and Brian Fiete — started the company in 2000, racking up $30,000 in credit-card debt before PopCap took off.

In 2001 “Bejeweled” became a runaway hit, establishing the company and marking the dawn of the Seattle-centered casual-game industry.

Last year sales broke $100 million, crossing a common threshold to attempt an IPO. But Roberts said it won’t proceed until PopCap is sure the offering won’t harm the company’s culture and patient approach to game development.

Analyst Michael Pachter, at Wedbush Morgan Securities, said PopCap is a good candidate for an IPO with its creativity and strong portfolio, including franchises such as “Zuma,” “Peggle” and “Plants vs. Zombies.”

“There’s a lot of growth in the areas that they’re in,” he said. “They’re in casual, social, mobile. Those are the places people want to be, those are all growing 25 percent a year or more.”

Here’s an edited excerpt of the interview of Roberts:

Q: PopCap seems to be saying IPO a lot lately.

A: You whisper that word and the press eats it up. I’m not saying anything different. People are paying attention to it more.

Q: So you really are going for it?

A: What I have been saying is we’re going to be ready at the end of this year. I guess I’m being more specific about the timing.

Whether we do it or not is still going to depend on a whole bunch of things — whether the market’s ready, whether we’re as a company ready. Whether it happens or not, I don’t know.

Q: You’ve been taking steps to prepare?

A: We’ve been kind of doing it along the way. But like so many things, we’re slow and deliberate about all this stuff instead of the “quick, let’s have the three-month ready-to-go-public plan.”

Q: So your revenues are high enough to go public?

A: 2010 was our first $100 million year. You ask different people, they have different metrics for what you need to go public, but we’ve always assumed 100 was the number you want to be at.

Q: How are things going? Will it be $110 million, $150 million, this year?

A: Things are going great. I’m not saying anything about what it will be this year, but we’ve had consistent growth for a long time. For 10 years we’ve had year-over-year growth. Hopefully we’ll still do that. There are some really great successes right now in the mobile business, particularly the iPhone-smartphone business, and in social [games]. We’re seeing just huge amounts of growth in those two sides; the Facebook games are doing great.

Q: I had heard the social-games business was cooling.

A: These big fads come and then they go. We don’t ride them up as high as a lot of people do; we didn’t go all-in with Nintendo Wii or even Xbox Live when those things were hot. We’re always in them fairly deliberately and we ride the big wave out and keep a good steady business there after it’s all done.

It’s always good for us when the fervor dies down and it turns into a nice, rational business. So for us Facebook is a great place right now and we’re seeing great revenue growth.

Q: Other game executives have told me the iPad and tablets will revive the casual-game industry.

A: I absolutely think it’s going to be great for the industry and it’s already been great for us. They’re supposed to be selling 2 million of those a month, just the Apple ones. We’re pretty excited about it.

If all it’s doing is taking gamers from one place to another, that’s really not as exciting to us, because we’re about trying to get all those ma and pa people who could play games but don’t think they can. That’s always been our challenge — how do we get the 45-year-old woman to declare, “I could play games.”

What the iPhone did was take a few million people and convince them they could play games and then the same thing happened with Facebook. I give “FarmVille” a lot of credit. There are 200 million players or whatever that now say, “I play video games.” That’s the first step for them to understand our games are appropriate for them and really expand that market.

Q: How do you feel about Android?

A: We’re a little wait-and-see. … It’s not quite as clean and simple as the Apple platform. Right now, it’s still a little bit fragmented and I don’t think anyone’s making a lot of money on Android yet, even though they’re selling a lot of units.

Q: Sometimes when companies start talking about IPO it’s because they may be acquired. Could that happen?

A: Anything could happen. We’ve been talked about as an acquisition target a lot over the years. The goal is kind of the same. We’re trying to build a legacy of great enduring games. If that is better done with an IPO, we’ll do an IPO. If there’s an acquisition that makes sense for that — and the right partner was there at the right time — we might do that. But we don’t really change our business based on either one of those.

Really, we’d love to be at a place in the future where we have some of the best-known brands for games. Right now we have some of the best known video-game brands. But when you say the best-known game brands you think “Monopoly,” “Scrabble.” We want to displace those old-fashioned board games.

Q: If you drop the “v” word you might get more players, right?

A: That’s it. Right now “video game” is a bad word. It scares people. The 50-year-old woman says, “I can’t play video games.” She probably is starting to right now.

Q: What about the slowdown in video-game sales?

A: All of our businesses have been growing. We never really had a bad year from the downturn. We were afraid we might … and never really had it.

Q: Can you keep up the pace?

A. We think we can keep the steady growth for a while, partly because there are a lot of opportunities. We’ve been investing in Asia for a couple of years now — three or four — and that stuff is only starting to come out this year. I think there are some huge opportunities if we can be one of the few game companies that succeeds both here and in Asia.

Q: What would you do with money generated by an IPO?

A: There’s probably a step function of investment in our future to become a bigger consumer brand. I think we’ve done an awesome job as the grass-roots brand we’ve created, but we still don’t have the brand-recognition that you want to be “Monopoly” or “Scrabble.” To do that, we’d have to up our investment levels to make bigger bets than we’ve ever been able to do before.

We don’t have to do that tomorrow; this isn’t the sort of thing that by the end of the year we’ll be spending $25 million on Super Bowl ads. I would never pretend you could grow the company that way. But at some point we need to do a better job of being a consumer-branding company, a consumer-marketing company.

Q: In the U.S. or internationally?

A: A lot of it is international. That’s probably what would drive a lot of the need for an IPO.

We’re in the midst of being what we think of as a game operator. Games are more like a service on multiple platforms. Even the iPhone games are like a service, because we have high-score servers we have to run in the background.

We’re doing a pretty good job there. The next step would be, OK, once all games are connected and social, the opportunity to be a bigger consumer brand is really there. That’s our charter, our path to getting to displace “Monopoly” and “Scrabble” as the game brands people think of at the top of mind.(source:seattletimes)


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