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游戏投资会变成金矿还是投机泡沫?

发布时间:2014-06-03 16:59:48 Tags:,,,,

作者:Dean Takahashi

在过去几年里,游戏投资和收购取得了巨大的发展,在这整个过程中共有几十亿美元的资金运作着。交易,首次公开募股(IPO)和投资等总是会成为新闻中的头条内容,其中便包括Facebook花费20亿美元收购了Oculus VR,SoftBank在Supercell中投入了15.3亿美元,以及King Digital Entertainment在IPO中获得了70亿美元等等。根据游戏投资银行Digi-Capital的预测,这些交易反应出了到2017年,游戏将发展成为跨越所有平台且掌握1000亿美元的全球业务。

面对着如此大型的交易,我们很容易对游戏中所存在的机遇感到得意忘形。所以在最近于法国昂古莱姆所举办的电子游戏竞技论坛上,我们便讨论了这一话题。在与一群经验丰富的游戏投资者的交谈中,我们尝试着理清在投资游戏时的最热门趋势以及应该避免的误区等问题。

我们的交谈对象包括Guillaume Lautour,我们在法国IDInvest Partners的合作者;Lars Buttler,位于硅谷的Madison Sandhill Capital的常务董事同时也是Trion Worlds的前任首席执行官;Marc Jackson,位于洛杉矶的Seahorn Capital Group的首席执行官兼创始人;John Stokes,位于蒙特利尔的Real Ventures的风险投资家,同时也是魁北克风险投资协会的董事会成员;Ian Baverstock,位于英国的Tenshi Ventures的创始合伙人。

investing(from weiyangx)

investing(from weiyangx)

以下是关于这次的座谈小组讨论的文字记录。

GamesBeat:现在你们所关心的热门趋势是什么?

Lars Butterler:智能手机是当下的冠军平台。你能够在此做些什么是个有趣的问题。我所着眼的一大内容便是智能手机是否能够变成微主机。每个人都在为智能手机创造游戏,但如果是使用智能手机但仍然是基于一个伴随着控制器和键盘的优秀监视器或电视玩游戏的话,你会怎么样?在我看来这是非常有趣的一种前沿尝试。

此外我们还很关心任何能够帮助我们摆脱破损的应用发现模式的内容。手机网页是否会以某种方式回归?信使服务是否能够让你轻松地找到应用?这都是我现在所着眼的内容。例如Kik便是现在北美最大的信使服务平台。它在美国甚至大于WhatsApp。

我只是将自己的钱投在一家基于股权的集资公司。在Oculus Rift出现之后,人们对采取任何微小的行动变得更加感兴趣。不过不管怎样,我的投资标准仍然是对方是否是一支出色的团队,他们是否知道如何创造优秀的游戏以及如何从中获得盈利,并将所有的这一切有效地组合在一起。

Marc Jackson:影响游戏产业,特别是数字方面的一大主要趋势便是数据分析。我们只是处于冰山的一角,即只注意到分析的强大性的初始阶段。甚至连谷歌和Facebook这样的巨头也还未发现该如何将人类与数据结合在一起,并找到一种有效地方式与新设备进行互动。

这会对游戏产生巨大的影响,因为游戏将成为能够快速调整且最快速盈利的媒体类型。我关注了一些公司。例如在洛杉矶有一家名为Ninja Metrics的公司正在围绕着社交图谱(特别是关于非付费玩家)使用预测性分析去做一些非常有趣的事,然后将玩家划分到鲸鱼/鲦鱼/海豚这三种不同类别中。除此之外我也听说了一些非常有趣的公司正在游戏中尝试认知分析。这真的是一个巨大的发展趋势。

许多人将赌注下在Facebook身上并专注于它的发展。显然Oculus Rift将可能成为一大主导力量。虽然存在许多潜在的竞争平台,但我们将能够看到一些非常有趣的内容发挥作用。将这些带回昂古莱姆是非常重要的。因为在法国,昂古莱姆在开发一些可替代的内容类型方面扮演着一个重要的角色。

Ian Baverstock:最近我发现一些开发者开始谈论基于分析自动调整自己的游戏设计和游戏玩法。突然间,对于开发者来说如何实时使用分析进行游戏(显然都是关于可进行AB测试的现场服务游戏)调整这点发生了彻底的转变—-在某种情况下你将获得自动的反馈。在这种游戏开发中存在一些有趣的技术。

如果你着眼于投资,你便会尝试着明确如何反复地获得回报。你是如何识别这样的投资?现在真正热门的一件事便是对于亚洲市场的投资,即寻找一种方式在那里展开业务并获得收益。

这些投资公司往往会寻找那些拥有经验的公司,它们期待这些公司能够获得盈利并有效地运行着,但是它们将太多注意力放在那些拥有用户,社区并找到如何将用户留在身边的公司。从正面来看,这是你能够购买并转变成一个更大的实体的内容。如果你可以基于这种方向创建公司,那么瞄准那些具有利益的特殊领域并围绕着专有的知识,你将能够有效地卖出产品。

John Stokes:就像我所说的,我们已经在网络空间中创造了各种不同的投资,而我做出了许多投资的一个领域便是预测分析,即我们的一些其它公司所使用的一种方法。我们进行了许多电子商务投资,同时还有广告技术投资,而这两种业务都是受到创造预测模型的尝试的驱动,即关于你应该将什么产品销售给什么人,你应该将什么样的服务面向什么人进行推广。使用预测分析以及相关引擎类型,并将其应用到游戏产业中便是我现在非常感兴趣的事。

Oculus便是一个非常明显的例子,因为出现了许多新的输入和输出内容,所以我们一直在游戏领域,但不只局限于游戏领域,寻找能够利用这些全新输入和输出内容的公司—-Oculus便是其中一种同时包含了输入和输出内容的产品。我们同样也着眼于手势作为一种输入内容。触屏和这种类型的内容完全改变了玩家对于游戏的看法,游戏开发者也可以思考创造一些新内容。而手势正是我们现在非常关注的趋势。

着眼于现在的孩子们在做些什么,特别是关于教育,但不只是如此—-出现了一股全新的潮流,即人们是伴随着全新的学习与体验方式而成长。而游戏更是扮演着主要的驱动因素。我们对此非常感兴趣,但与此同时我们还发现,随着这些孩子逐渐进入青年期,那么基于不同的互动与学习方式,特别是在游戏环境中,下一代的孩子是否又会出现不同的情况。

Guillaume Lautour:对于现在的我来说有三大关心的事。我发现复杂的游戏正在回归。虽然游戏工作室总是在谈论着中核游戏和硬核游戏,但是他们所创造的大多数游戏却非常简单。最初的游戏真的都很复杂,想想你在10年前或20年前所玩的游戏吧。但是在过去5年间我却看到了许多非常简单的游戏,并且这些游戏都是社交游戏。我想难度游戏是时候该回归了。

其次,我希望看到亚洲游戏市场和西方游戏市场间出现更多交集。我们已经看到Softbank收购Supercell等事件带来的重要影响,但这只是其中的一步。如今这两个市场还非常分散。它们都具有很大的影响力,特别是现在的亚洲市场。但是我们却发现并没有太多欧洲和美国玩家对亚洲市场感兴趣。虽然这是一个很难解决的问题,但是我正努力去解决它。

再来,我遇到许多工作室正在经历与创始人之间的深刻问题,即创始人想要坚持付费游戏,但是其他人却只想创造免费游戏。在法国我便看到一些工作室正遭遇这样的情况,他们不能同时应用两种不同的游戏类型。我们在今天的手机免费游戏中看到的大多数成功都是由小型工作室所创造的。也就是说如今的大型发行商还是不能解决这样的游戏设计问题。我希望能够看到大型发行商在朝着免费游戏发展的时候创造出更大的成功。

GamesBeat:在过去几年里,游戏业务比之前很长一段时间创造出了更多的价值。King从没有多少价值发展成在股票市场拥有60亿美元估值的公司。Zynga的估值为30亿美元。Nexon也是价值好几十亿美元。连Supercell也从0变成了拥有高达30亿美元的大公司。

我们发现这毕竟是一个全球性业务。在去年的前10大收购案例中,有9个买家是来自亚洲。根据你们的观察,为什么这些公司能够快速创造出这样的价值?你能否接受这样的发展?这些价值的创造是关于时机吗,或者你是否在某种程度上担心它们的突变?

Buttler:我认为这只是冰山的一角。我想这与时机有关,但同样需要正确的时机。并且很大程度上与世界趋于平衡的事实相关。如果你在今天创造了一款热门游戏,特别是在智能手机上,它便有可能成为全球热门游戏。这不再局限于特定区域或者高端主机上的较小的安装基础。现在你所创造的是数十亿人可以在智能手机上玩到的游戏。他们可以基于同样的方式玩你的游戏。盈利方式得到了解决,盈利机制和平台等等内容都是以全球为基础。

这将更大程度地拉开彼此间的差距。你将看到无数游戏遭遇了失败而少数的游戏成为了大热门的游戏。只有其中的一些游戏能够同时结合质量,运气,时机等等内容而成为排行榜前20或前10名的游戏,并在全球范围内获得盈利。

亚洲市场更早地走向了手机和在线平台。没人需要去处理传统的业务。因为手机和在线平台所带来的更棒的业务(也拥有更高的利润),现在的亚洲开发者们拥有更加强大的内部优势。它们拥有40%至60%的优势企业。这将创造出巨大的利益,延伸着它们的欲望,从而不断壮大并逐步走向全球市场。

甚至连传统主机业务中最顶级的西方开发者在与腾讯,Nexon或任何亚洲开发巨头比较利润上也要甘拜下风。可能在西方市场你所拥有的利润比例是0至10%,但是在亚洲却有可能是40%至60%。如果你拥有所有的这些过剩资本,你自然会想继续壮大并在不同的区域复制同样的成功。

伴随着全球市场一起来到你身边的还有全球化的平台,在我看来这股趋势将继续壮大。一旦你突破重围创造了一款热门游戏或高质量的游戏,且能够面向全球市场进行销售,你将能够创造出更多利益。如今的30亿美元在明天可能会变成100亿美元。并且这种发展态势将继续向前延伸着。

Baverstock:我非常同意第一部分的看法。现在正是好时机。所以这些利益的出现是应得的。我们现在所看到的正是全球业务不断成熟所结出的果实。

我也很关心最近西方的大市值公司上市的事。对于这些比它们的亚洲同胞估值过高的公司来说真的很危险,虽然它们拥有更稳定的业务,更多样化的产品,但却只能局限于国内市场而发展。这里存在着一定的风险,即有些西方公司所获得的估值并不准确,这对我们这些想要在世界范围内创造业务的投资者来说将造成长期的消极影响。

但不管怎么说,整个产业的全球发展状态还是很乐观的。

Jackson:我认为我们现在所看到的价值创造是与人类交流的发展相对应的,即互联网处于第二次或第三次的迭代过程中。对此我更关注的是传统的发行商估值,就像艺电等公司,这种情况似乎将出现短暂的复苏。

我同样也认为我们见证了地理上的巨大转变。当然亚洲市场的壮大不容小觑,但是在我于游戏产业的经历中,更让我印象深刻的是德国从游戏消费国转变成了重要的游戏创造国。关于这点存在许多例子。虽然在引擎,技术和内容方面有Crytek(游戏邦注:欧洲电子游戏开发商,总部位于德国法兰克福),但现在在柏林已经涌现出了许多全新的手机应用。而在法国我们也看到了这样的巨大复苏。

恐惧是件好事。就像我真的很担心且害怕估值。它们真的很疯狂,且并没有多少意义。如果你学过财政,你便清楚很难去预测市场估值的走向。我不认为动机能够真正摸清楚这一情况。基于一个宏观规模来看的话,我们将会注意到不管是在消费者水平还是企业水平方面,市场都会持续发生着变化。

关于这一点,我还想提到一个趋势,也就是我们通常说的游戏化—-将游戏般的属性带向企业软件以及其它软件开发类型甚至是更早前的媒体。再一次地,我们只是处于冰山的一脚,在此我们可以看到游戏产业转变成之前从未出现过的形态,即它将把游戏正式带向职场或教室。

Stokes:我已经在互联网中做了许多投资。我见证了花了数十亿美元去收购一家公司但却未能捞得一分利益的情况。当我看到你在这里所谈到的估值并着眼于它们将能够生成的利益时,这并不能等同于你在世界上所见证的其它疯狂行为。

我的脑子里所想的是,当我着眼于互联网公司,或回到20年前甚至着眼于微软和苹果时,我并不认为存在任何品牌具有King这样的品牌亲和力。实际上这些公司并不具有任何品牌亲和力—-只是它们的产品具有品牌亲和力罢了,这是关于当没有真正的品牌亲和力时你将能够把产品的亲和力带向多远的问题。

Zynga便是如此。它并未拥有任何品牌亲和力。它总是尽可能地延伸自己产品的亲和度,然后一切便会崩溃。而King能够取得怎样的成绩便是我非常关心的。

Baverstock:这真的非常有趣。不管怎样我们都是处于一个创造性产业中。投资者必须理解你需要创造出真正优秀的产品。你不能只是拥有一项大型业务但是最终创造出一些垃圾。人们是不会购买这样的产品。你始终面对着巨大的创造性风险。

我们处在一个人们经常会将面前的内容与其它技术平台相比较的产业,因为我们处于互联网业务中,所以它也是一种技术,对吧?其实并不是这样。它应该是一种内容业务。这是基于完全不同的角度。这意味着我们需要基于不同的视角去看待估值和利润空间。

Stokes:这被当成一种内容业务吗?我认为在公共市场中它并非如此。

Baverstock:是的,这也是我对于像King和Zynga等公司当前的估值的担忧。我认为人们对它们的估值方式并不正确。

GamesBeat:能否解释下什么叫“被当成一种内容业务”吗?

Baverstock:就像我在谈论早前的发行商所提到的那样——一方面我们很难说像艺电这样带有像《FIFA》内容的公司不是一家具有价值的公司。但是另一方面,我们可以发现在今天它们努力挣扎着把自己非常有价值且受欢迎的IP带向不断发展的市场中。我们处在一个快速变化着的环境,你必须意识到任何一个IP都有可能不能过度到我们明天可能所处的位置。

Buttler:我并不是说我们很容易投资于游戏。恰恰相反,我认为这是件很难的事。我同样也认为我们不可能预测到哪一家公司能够创造出下一个世界性巨作。但是要预测谁会失败的话就简单多了,特别是当一支团队并不团结或者它们想出的理念并不突出时。而要想预测哪里会诞生下一个Supercell却是不可能的事。所有的这一切都意味着早期的游戏投资是件非常困难的工作。

如果你着眼于全面的估值时,会发现其实它们并不高。只有那些能够真正创造出突破性的的内容才有可能获得较高的估值。我认为这里所存在的唯一问题就是时机的问题。如果你在Supercell刚刚爆发的时候进行投资,这便是一次非常明智的投资。而如果你是在他们到达最高点的时候才参与进来——也就是他们已经经历了成功而你期待他们之后的游戏能够再次爆红,如此的话你便算处于历史错误的一边。

不管是对于Zynga,Supercell还是King都是如此。如果你是在他们刚刚取得发展并仍处于上升阶段的时候进行投资,那么这便是非常有效的投资。所以这里所存在的技巧便是去寻找那些刚刚暂露头角的投资对象。如果你投资的是已经到达发展高峰的对象,那么你将遇到一个问题,因为他们的下一款游戏,甚至是接下来的10款游戏都可能很难再超越之前的成绩。

GamesBeat:Guillaume,你是如何看待这种类型的宏观环境?

Lautour:这里所存在的难处在于尝试着评估创造性媒体业务并将其与风险投资和投资者经常做的事进行比较,这是一种网络事物或者技术公司所创造的可回收业务。关于媒体所存在的问题是存在所谓的生产竞赛。你可以创造一个大热门的产品并且没人知道你是否能够再次创造出另一个热门的产品。如果King止步于《Candy Crush》,那么显然50亿美元的估值太高了。

有些人认为我们很难对游戏进行投资,但是我却不是这么认为。那些创造出成功的游戏的人虽然具有才能,但与此同时他们也是付出了辛苦的努力。他们必须用我们所说的分析平台去武装自己。他们必须了解自己所面向的平台。许多人在讨论多平台与专注于一两个平台间的区别,甚至未真正改变游戏本身而从Facebook转向Android或iOS,但是要知道每个平台都具有不同的行为。

如果你真的非常努力并拥有非常好的装备,那么一切都将有效地运行着。也许这并不适用于每一款游戏,但是至少从长远角度来看是有效的。这是我所坚信的一点。回到你所提到的问题中,我一直在寻找坚持于同一个平台,并且能够真正透彻地去了解那个平台的企业。对于创造一款成功的Facebook游戏存在着专门的节奏,韵律以及曲调。而当你面向iOS创造内容时,你也需要一个特定的发行UI。在主机游戏和PC游戏中也是如此。

你不能调整每一个内容。如果你着眼于面向平板电脑创造游戏,那么每一款游戏仍会带有某种控制问题。你如何伴随着某种强度而使用手指控制游戏?某种类型的游戏将适合于某些平台,但却不适合于其它平台。

让我们回到宏观的市场视角中,对于我来说,游戏就像机遇一样非常迷人。我已经作为技术投资者长达15年。但是在此之前却从未看到过这样的内容。我们在三个不同方面取得了一场变革。如果你着眼于Spotify以及其它平台,你会发现它们在资源配置方面改变了音乐,但是它们却并未改变生产。它们并未为整个产业改变业务模式。你可以着眼于Netflix以及任何改变了今天的电视的平台。它们也并未改变生产。Netflix仍然需要投资1亿多美元去制作《House of Cards》。唯一发生改变的只有分销方式。当你只改变了分销方式时,你便需要创造一款更大型的游戏。你需要在获得成功前拥有一个较大的规模。

而在游戏中情况恰恰相反。多亏了像iOS,Android以及Facebook等平台,我们不仅看到了分销方式的改变,同时多亏了免费模式,我们还看到了业务模式的变化以及生产成本的变化(除以10)。所有的这些加在一起,并伴随着Facebook将游戏传向无数之前从未玩过游戏的用户面前都注定了今天的我们拥有一个非常棒的机遇。我们只是处在开始阶段。

当你在考虑这点时,像Facebook或iOS等平台的功劳将占据你的总收益的30%。但是如果你是基于零售模式,它们的功劳将超过50%。手机游戏的业务模式更是提升了20%的毛利润。作为一个产业来说这真的是非常有利的。我对于这一前景充满了希望。是的,虽然我们很难去为一家热门公司估值,但是我相信你在King中所发现的优秀团队和专业性都能推动着他们创造出之后的成功。

GamesBeat:在这样令人兴奋的环境中,企业该具有怎样的微观策略?

Jackson:在这次的会议上我注意到一件事—-我想我们多次谈到了两个产业。即传统产业和数字产业,后者是受到分析公式所驱动的手机和Facebook导向型产业。

我一直在诱导企业能够呈现出精益的创业文化。我真的相信传统产业忽视了这点,除非你是一家大型的工作室。但是大多数大型工作室都是面向国内市场。所以在该领域采取企业家行动是件很困难的事。如果你是一名艺术家或游戏设计师,你便可以受雇进入一个大型工作室中,但如果你真的想要进入最近的发展浪潮,你就需要引进初创文化,即早期公司开发阶段的文化—-这是树立良好的管理,商业意识和专业意见的有效方法。

这两天我们提到过很多次的一个问题是,你是在制作一个产品还是在创建一家公司?我认为你需要专注于创建一家公司。

Buttler:最近硅谷中的一个真正的流行词并非“大数据”之类的内容。而是“枢轴”。不管何时当一家公司中的某些内容因为某种方式不能有效运行时,它也仍然很棒,因为它是枢轴般的存在。过去的情况是“啊,我错了。”而现在则是“哦,我们决定将其作为枢轴。”现在这变成了一个褒义词。我很高兴看到开发者们拥有这样的心态,因为这意味着“我们正在尝试某些内容。我们并不相信自己的故事。”

如果你着眼于Kabam或者Zynga等等,你便会发现他们都在采取“枢轴”的方式。他们是受到机遇的驱动,而不是自身故事的驱动。这是一家企业应该具有的强大力量,努力去寻找之前的人们(因为他们并未认真去把握这些机遇)未能找到的新机遇和新内容。

Baverstock:在对于业务的理解方面,许多游戏开发者是基于他们创造的是一件艺术品这一角度进行理解。他们是在创造一些自己所在乎的内容。他们对此充满激情。他们相信如果自己能够创造出某些出色的内容,人们便会从中获得乐趣并去分享这种乐趣。

这里存在一个基本的谬论。人们必须认识你的产品。我会鼓励这个产业中的所有小型公司以及所有创业团队将市场当成一种功能并与之建立起友好的关系。你的市场营销团队和你的游戏设计团队必须融为一体,市场营销对于你来说必须与理念和游戏设计一样重要。很少有开发者能够基于这种方式与市场营销搞好关系,但我认为这却是他们必须努力去做的事。

GamesBeat:有些人支持所有的广告技术公司。他们向人们展现了现在有945家手机广告技术公司。也许这看起来有点像在胡说,但这同样也处理了人们尝试着要解决的盈利问题和发现问题。你是如何看待这个领域中的机遇?人们应该如何在这945家公司中做出选择?

Baverstock:我不认为现在存在任何简单的方法能够解决它。在产业中我们能够看到的最有趣的一点便是发现问题。如果它开始得到解决,我们的产业将再次发生巨大的转变。

如今我们的产业所具有的一大核心功能便是在早旧的主机/零售领域外部没有任何一个人想出有效的发现问题的解决方法。如果我们无意中遇到了这一方法,这将能够赋予那些具有雄厚财力的现有巨头们比那些小型创造性团队拥有更强大的力量。如果发现问题得到持久有效的解决,产业将发生巨大的转变。但是在今天我们仍未看到这样的解决方法的出现。这就像是蛮荒的美国西部。我们一直在尝试着各种内容并希望看到有效的结果。

Buttler:我完全同意。当你着眼于Line,微信甚至是Facebook等将手机当成一大市场营销平台的手机通讯公司时,你会发现它们之所以能够获得如此巨大的估值的一大原因便是应用发现问题被彻底破解了。App Store与Google Play和早前网络时代的雅虎非常相似,只是那时候整个搜索引擎门户基本上只列出了一些较酷的网站的链接。这便是最初的发现模式,即在谷歌和其它平台真正出现之前,而现在的我们面对的是一个完全不同的模式。

一旦我们拥有一个更棒的手机网页应用发现模式,我们将创造一场巨大的变革。实际上,如今的谷歌和苹果已经能够控制整个环境了—-HTML5和其它手机网页工具还未真正发展起来。这是个遗憾。但技术史上的任何内容都未曾永久持续着。如今拥有两个市场捍卫者去面对世界上的所有爆破力的情形并不能独自维持下去。事情将会发生改变。我们最终拥有了手机网络,这也将再次刺激更多创造性的诞生。

GamesBeat:你觉得如今的手机游戏工作室拥有多大规模才合适?它应该拥有多少名员工?一个团队需要多少人?它最初应该筹集多少资金?

听众:这就像是Dean关于手机游戏工作室的规模的问题,这也是我思考了很久的内容。我认为在当前的产业中最合适的工作室规模应该是拥有10或12名员工。当然较大的规模也是可行的。我担心的是如今的中等规模的工作室没有容身之处,因为似乎30名员工不适合创造一款游戏(游戏邦注:Double Fine是例外),如果成员数再多个3,4倍会更好,或者能够比10人工作室获得3或4倍的盈利也会更好。对于听到是否存在任何方法去长期解决该问题我充满好奇。

Jackson:Supercell便是一个例子,即从概念上来看,你必须将自己当成是一个致力于多款游戏的孵卵器。如果你们是一家拥有30个人的工作室,你必须发现有5或6个小型团队虽然工作速度很快,但是失败的速度也不差,所以你必须裁掉一些人员以确保不会破坏公司文化,且不会在人员投资上遭遇失败。我们并未使用孵卵器/加速器模式。者并不是关于培育小型公司,基于同样的方式这也能够用于技术的其它方面。但我认为我们还未找到创造游戏的一种有效方法。

Baverstock:关于规模问题,如果你所说的是一家真正的初创企业,敢于冒险并尝试着创造某些内容,那么10或12名成员应该是最理想的状态。如果你面对的是一个已经拥有一款成功游戏的业务并且你尝试着去确保它是一个持久的业务,你便不会想要冒这些风险。那么拥有30或40名成员可能不能为你的游戏提升4倍的价值,但这却能更好地推动你创造出一款优秀的游戏。如果你能够担当起更高的资金消耗率,你便能够尝试着将自己带到一个更可靠且更长久的情境中。

这是关于尝试着从某些可行的内容转变成开始创造自己的用户和社区,而不再继续冒这些风险。

编者:以下是每位投资者的一些介绍。

GamesBeat:请介绍下你们自己。

Guillaume Lautour:我是一家总部位于巴黎的VC公司IDinvest Partners的合伙人。我们一直在欧洲市场进行投资,最近我们投资于一些总部位于美国西海岸的公司。我是两家游戏公司的固定投资者。直到现在我共创建了7家游戏工作室,它们都是来自欧洲。其中一些工作室还很小,还处于发展初期。我们也在寻找着投资,但我们的要求并不高。

我们同时也有一些像Social Point这样较大型的公司,拥有200多名员工,且总部位于巴塞罗那和巴黎等地方—-它们在Facebook上取得了成功,此外还有4,5家不同的工作室。它们中的大多数最初是致力于创造Facebook游戏,并在1年前转向了手机平台。

Lars Buttler:我是一名连续创业家和投资者。我共创建了3家公司。我认为自己与任何尝试着集资并创造某些内容的人都有关系。在我的上个初创公司之前,我曾待在Carlyle Group,这是世界上最大的私人股本公司。而现在我在Madison Sandhill,这是硅谷的一家VC公司。

就在此之前我创建了一家游戏公司并通过股票,联合开发以及借款等方式下筹集到了大约5亿美元的资金。这对于一家游戏公司来说真的不是件易事。然后我便创建了这家VC公司。

现在我非常高兴能够着眼于许多不同的事情,包括大数据和投机等等,但游戏仍然是我最大的激情所在。我已经完成了自己在游戏领域的最初几次投资。我也很想看到欧洲市场的发展,毕竟我是在这里长大的。

Marc Jackson:现在的我是一名天使投资人同时也是个个人“孵卵器”。在过去5年间我于游戏产业中创建了6家公司,在此我投入了少量钱并提供了一些资讯服务。其中一家是Big Red Button Entertainment,即最近正致力于《Sonic Boom》这款游戏。该工作室花了4年的筹备时间,并最终变成洛杉矶一家致力于主机游戏的大型工作室。我同样也帮忙培养一家名为Fearless Studios的公司,它诞生于2010年末,并在2012年被Kabam所收购。

作为一名专业的项目融资风险管理者兼传播者,我建议投资者能够将2000年代中期非常有效的电影和电视般的融资模式带向游戏。此外我还参与并创建了两个游戏化类型项目,一个是关于电子学习,另一个则是关于能源效率。

我有许多不同的兴趣,而现在的我正努力组建一支团队去创建一些基于游戏的公司。我同样也是一名法国公民。所以我在巴黎的HEC获得了我的MBA学位,我真的非常热爱法国。我希望能够在此展开更多业务。

Ian Baverstock:我是来自英国的Tenshi Ventures。我的背景应该是一名游戏开发者。我是从1989年与同事Jonathan Newth一起进入开发领域。我们创建了一家在英国上市且拥有300名成员的公司,并多次将其进行出售,取得了不错的成绩。

现在的我们希望能够帮助一些小型公司更好地发展。我们是种子投资者。比起更大笔的资金,我们更多地着眼于天使投资领域。我们想要与合作的公保持有更亲密的联系,并在提供资金的同时提供更多意见。你需要他们的热情与能力,但有时候你也需要一个智者在不远处说着:“不,你不能那么做。你应该做些其它事。”

我同样也在创造性方面为英国政府效力,同时也会提出以下具有创造性的产业策略。

John Stokes:在成为风险投资家之前我是亚太地区一名小有成功的企业家(长达12年)。我先后在手机领域,互联网领域以及媒体领域打拼过。我主要面向加拿大进行投资,但也会投资于北美的一些公司,并且我们也想从欧洲市场寻找机遇。

我们真的是一家网页/手机投资公司,但是我们也开始挑战游戏产业,因为我们的总部是在蒙特利尔,所以我们在此的行动更多。到目前为止我们投资了一家位于多伦多名为Massive Damage的工作室。我们还投资了蒙特利尔一家名为Execution Labs的实验室。我们同样也投资了一些外部的游戏公司。其中一家是位于温哥华的玩家获取公司,我们还投资了硬件Oculus Rift的竞争者。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Has game investing turned into a gold mine or risky bubble speculation?

By Dean Takahashi

Game investments and acquisitions have exploded in the past few years, with billions of dollars at stake. The deals, IPOs, and investments that grab the headlines include the $2 billion Facebook acquisition of Oculus VR, the $1.53 billion SoftBank investment in Supercell, and the $7 billion IPO of King Digital Entertainment. Those deals reflect the potential of games to grow into a $100 billion business worldwide across all platforms by 2017, according to a forecast by game investment bank Digi-Capital.

With such huge deals, it’s easy to get overly excited about the opportunities in games. So we discussed the topic at the recent Videogame Economics Forum in Angoulême, France (which has a video game university and is home to a giant comic book festival). In our chat with a group of seasoned game investors, we tried to sort through the hot trends and the pitfalls to avoid when investing in games.

Our session included Guillaume Lautour, a partner at IDInvest Partners in France; Lars Buttler, managing director of Madison Sandhill Capital in Silicon Valley and former CEO of Trion Worlds; Marc Jackson, CEO and founder of Seahorn Capital Group in Los Angeles; John Stokes, venture capitalist at Real Ventures in Montreal and board member of the Quebec Venture Capital Association; and Ian Baverstock, founding partner of Tenshi Ventures in the United Kingdom.

Here’s an edited transcript of our panel.

GamesBeat: What are some hot trends that you care about right now?

Lars Buttler: The smartphone is the winning platform at the moment. What you can do with it is the interesting question. One of the things I’m looking at is whether the smartphone could be the micro-console. Everyone makes games for the smartphone, but how about using the smartphone and still playing on a great monitor or TV with a controller, a keyboard, whatever you want? In my mind that’s one of the interesting next frontiers.

Also, anything that gets us out of the super-broken app discovery model that we’ve discussed already. Is the mobile web coming back in any way? How about messengers that allow you to find apps? That’s something I’m looking at. [For example, Kik is actually the largest messenger in North America now.] It’s bigger in the U.S. than WhatsApp.

I just put some money into an equity-based crowdfunding company. After Oculus Rift, everyone is much more interested in getting a little piece of the action, not just a T-shirt. At the end of the day, though, I’ll still only invest if it’s a fantastic team, if they know how to make great games and how to monetize and make all these other pieces come together.

Marc Jackson: One of the key trends that’s affecting the games industry, especially on the digital side, is data analytics. We’re only at the tip of the iceberg, the very beginning of seeing how powerful analytics can get. Even the biggest players – Google and Facebook and so on – haven’t found out what they can do with that special mix between humans and data and the way they’re interacting with new devices.

That has a big bearing on games, because games tend to be the type of media that can be adjusted the most quickly and monetized the most quickly. I’m following some companies. For instance, in L.A. there’s a company called Ninja Metrics that’s doing some very interesting things with predictive analytics around the social graph, especially with non-paying players, that then drive players into the whale/minnow/dolphin zone. I’ve heard of some other very interesting companies here that are experimenting with bringing cognitive analytics to games. That’s a huge trend.

A lot of people are hedging their bets and watching Facebook very closely. They seem to be the one to watch. Oculus Rift is clearly going to be something that could be a leader. There’s multiple potential competing platforms, but we’re going to see some very interesting content plays. Bringing that home to Angoulême is important. Angoulême in France could play a key role in developing some alternative types of content.

Ian Baverstock: I’ve heard quite a few developers recently starting to talk about automatically adjusting their game design and gameplay based on analytics. Suddenly there’s a whole conversation going on amongst developers about how to use analytics in a realtime way, to have the game adjust — obviously this is usually A-B testable live service games – in a way where you have automatic feedback. There’s some interesting tech in development there.

If you’re looking at investments you’re always trying to figure out how to get your money back out again. How are you going to realize this investment? One of the things that’s really hot right now is this money in Asia, looking for a way to take the businesses and the cash that are there and grow those businesses, often in Europe, as the place where there’s the least development intersections.

Those companies, more often than not, are looking for companies who’ve demonstrated expertise.They expect these companies to be profitable and well-run, but they’re focusing very much on companies that have an audience, a community, and know how to engage with them. That’s something you can buy and transfer into a bigger entity in a positive way. If you can build companies in that direction, in that particular area of interest and axis of expertise, that makes you very sellable.

John Stokes: There’s a couple of similarities with some things that other people are saying here. We’ve made, as I said, a wide range of investments across the internet space, and one area we’ve invested quite a lot in is also predictive analytics, as applied to some of our other companies. We’ve done a lot of e-commerce investing, also ad tech investing, and both of those businesses are very much driven by trying to build predictive models of who it is that you should be selling what products to, who you should be promoting what services to. Using predictive analytics and those types of engines and applying it to the gaming industry is something I’m quite interested in.

Oculus is an obvious example of this, but as there are new inputs and outputs, looking for companies in the gaming space, and not just the gaming space, that are looking to take advantage of these new inputs and outputs—Oculus is one, both in input and in output. But we’re also looking at motion as an input. Touch screens and these types of things have completely changed the way that gamers can think about playing and game developers can think about building stuff. Motion is one that we’re very focused on.

Looking at what children are doing, particularly in education, but not only just for that—There’s a whole new wave of people growing up with a new way of learning and a new way of experiencing. A lot of it is game-driven. We’re interested in that, but also looking, as these children move into young adulthood, at how this next generation of people is going to be different from the current generation in terms of how they interact and learn, particularly in a gaming environment.

Guillaume Lautour: To me, there are three key things that are interesting right now. I see the return of difficult games. Game studios always talk about mid-core and hardcore and so on, but most of these games are actually super easy. Games were originally very difficult, if you remember the games you guys were playing 10 or 20 years ago. I’ve seen too many easy games in the last five years, these kinds of social games. I think difficulty is coming back.

Second, I’d like to see more connections in the industry between the Asian gaming market and the western one. We’ve seen transactions like Softbank acquiring Supercell, but that’s just one step. For now, those two markets are very separate. Both of them are huge, especially the Asian one. We don’t see many European and American players taking too much of an interest in the Asian market. That’s difficult to tackle, but I’m trying to do that a little bit.

The third thing is, I meet many studios who are experiencing deep problems between their founders, who want to stick to premium games, and others who want to do free-to-play games only. In France I see several examples of studios that have split this way, not being able to adjust to two different types of game design at the same studio. Most of the successes we see in mobile free-to-play games today are published by very small studios. It’s still difficult for the big publishers to tackle these kinds of game designs. I’d love to see a stronger appetite for success from the large publishers toward free-to-play games.

GamesBeat: The games business has created more value in the last few years than we’ve seen in a long time. King went from not being worth very much to $6 billion in value in the stock market. Zynga, $3 billion. Nexon, another few billion. Supercell, from zero to $3 billion.

We’re finding that it is a global business after all. In the top 10 acquisitions last year, nine of the buyers were from Asia. What are some of your own observations about how quickly all of this value has been created? How do you feel about it? Are you comfortable with it? Is it about time that this value has been created, or are worried about it in some way?

Buttler: I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think it’s about time, but it’s also the right time. A lot has to do with the fact that the world is getting flat. If you create a hit today, particularly on the smartphone, it can be a global hit. It’s not longer contained to a certain geography or the small installed base of a high-end console. You are now making games that a billion people on the smartphone can play. They can all play it in a similar way. Monetization is solved, monetization mechanisms and platforms, all these things are in place on a global basis.

That makes the highs higher and the lows lower. You have thousands that fail and ones that become big hits. Some manage the combination of quality, luck, timing, and everything else to be in the top 20 or the top 10 and basically print money on a global basis.

In Asia you had this move toward mobile and online much earlier than here. Nobody had to deal with legacy businesses. As a result of these better business models in mobile and online, which have much higher margins, the Asian players have this tremendous domestic strength. They have 40 to 60 percent margin businesses. It’s huge money generation, and that now allows them to have this appetite and have the muscle to go global.

Even the top western players in the traditional console business, compared to the margins of a Tencent or a Nexon or any of the top Asian players, it just doesn’t compare. You have zero to 10 percent margins here and 40 to 60 percent margins over there for comparable leading players. If you have all this excess capital, of course you want to grow even more and replicate this in different territories.

Together with the global marketplace you now have and the platforms that are global, in my mind that will continue to fuel this trend. Once you break through and you have a hit or a quality title that you’ll be able to sell globally, you’ll be able to attract enormous amounts of money. $3 billion today is probably going to be $10 billion tomorrow, and so on. It will just continue in this way.

Baverstock: I’d very much agree with the first part of that. It’s the right time. It’s deserved. The money should be there. We’re seeing the fruits of a global business maturing.

I am slightly concerned about the western big market cap companies that have gone public recently. There’s a real danger that those are overvalued compared to their Asian compatriots, who have a much more solid business, much better diversified, and a very good stranglehold on their domestic market. There’s a risk that, at the top end, some of the western companies are not being correctly valued, and that will have a long-term negative impact on the investment climate for all of us trying to build businesses in this part of the world.

Overall, though, the global state of the industry is quite deserved. It’s a great place to be.

Jackson: I think the value creation we’re seeing right now is commensurate with the revolution in human communications, with the internet in its second or third iteration, however you want to count it. To your point, I’m concerned about the legacy publisher valuations, like Electronic Arts and others, which seem to be having a resurgence which is very short-term.

I also think that we’ve seen tremendous shifts in geography. Of course there’s Asia, but in my experience in the game industry, we’ve seen Germany come from being a consumer of games, not a creator of games, to being a key creator of games. There’s many examples. There’s Crytek on the engine and technology side, as well as the content side, but now you have this flourishing area in Berlin where you have all kinds of new mobile apps. To bring it home to France a bit here, one thing we can see is that France could have a tremendous resurgence itself.

Fear is a good thing. I’m definitely concerned and afraid of valuations. They’re crazy. They don’t make any sense. If you’re trained in finance at all, you can see that it’s very hard to predict where market valuations are going. I don’t think the motivations are there to really understand that. On a bigger, macroeconomic scale, we’re seeing the indication that the market continues to shift, both on a consumer level and on an enterprise level.

On that note, I’ll give a plug for one of the things that I think is a trend as well, and that’s what we generally call gamification – bringing game-like attributes to enterprise software and other types of software development or even old media efforts. Again, we’re at the tip of an iceberg there, where we could see the game industry transform into something we’ve never seen before, as it brings gaming formally into the workplace or the classroom.

Stokes: To throw a little bit of negativity in, just to mix it up a bit—I’ve done a lot of investments in the internet space. I’ve seen companies bought for a billion dollars that have zero revenues. When I see the sort of valuations you’re talking about here and I look at the revenues and the margins they’re generating, it can’t be that crazy relative to the craziness that you see in the world.

The thing that would be sitting in the back of my mind is, when I look at the internet companies, or to go back 20 years and even look at the Microsofts and the Apples, I don’t think there’s any brand affinity with King. I don’t think anyone has any brand affinity with King. The fact that these companies don’t have any brand affinity – it’s their products that have brand affinity – it’s a question of how far you can stretch that product affinity when there’s no real brand affinity.

I don’t think that’s what’s been pushed yet. That’s what we saw with Zynga. Zynga didn’t have any brand affinity with the public. It stretched its product affinity as far as it could, and then things collapsed. We’ll see what happens with King. That’s something that would concern me.

Baverstock: That’s very interesting. In the end, we’re a creative industry. Investors have to understand that you do need to make great product. You can’t just have a big business and turn out shit. People won’t buy it. It doesn’t work that way. There’s always a massive creative risk.

We’re in an industry where people often make comparisons with these other tech platforms, because we’re in the internet business, so it’s tech, right? It’s not. It’s a content business. That is a different perspective. It means valuations and profit margins have to be seen in a different light.

Stokes: Is it being valued as a content business? I don’t think it is, in the public markets.

Baverstock: No, and that’s one of my concerns about the current western valuations of companies like King and Zynga. I think they’re not being valued in the way that they should be.

GamesBeat: What do you mean by “valued as a content business”?

Baverstock: As I say when I’m talking about the old publishers—On the one hand it’s very hard to say that a company like EA, with properties like FIFA, isn’t a tremendously valuable company. But on the other hand, we can see today that they’re struggling badly to move their existing, very valuable, very well-known IP in to the markets that are growing. So it doesn’t matter who you are today. We’re in a very fast-changing environment and you have to recognize that that IP might not transfer to wherever we’re going to be tomorrow.

Buttler: I didn’t say it’s particularly easy to invest in gaming. I think it’s actually very hard. I also think it’s virtually impossible to predict which company will create the next worldwide megahit. It’s much easier to predict what will fail. It’s much easier to see when a team doesn’t jell or when an idea’s not great. To predict where a new Supercell will come from is virtually impossible. It makes early stage investing in games very difficult.

If you look at valuations across the board, they’re not high. The valuations are high for the ones that really break out. I think the only question is a question of timing. If you can invest in a Supercell when it’s just broken out and taking off, it’s a fantastic investment. When you come in after they’ve peaked – when they’ve gone through all this and you expect their next few games will be global megahits again, with these totally breakaway economics – of course you’re at the wrong side of history, basically.

That happened to Zynga, Supercell, it’s probably happening to King. But if you can come in after they’ve broken through and they’re in this upswing – League of Legends, many other examples – then you can have a fantastic investment. The trick is to find those that are just coming out of the soup, basically, where thousands fail, and haven’t peaked yet with that global megahit. If you invest at the absolute top, then you’ll have a problem, because the next game, or the next 10 games even, will have a very hard time following that.

GamesBeat: Guillaume, what’s your view of this sort of macro environment?

Lautour: The difficulty is in trying to value creative media businesses and compare them to what VCs and investors usually do, which is internet stuff or technology companies that build up recoverable businesses. The problem with media is that there is this production race. You can make a hit and nobody knows whether you’ll ever make another hit again. If King ends up being Candy Crush and nothing else, obviously $5 billion is too high a valuation.

Somebody said it’s super difficult to invest in gaming. I don’t think it is, in fact, if it’s something you specialize in as a media investment. People who succeed with their games are talented, but they’re also very hardworking. They have to equip themselves with the proper analytical platforms we talked about. They have to understand the platforms they work on. Many people talk about multiplatforming versus being specialized in one or another platform, switching from Facebook to Android or iOS without really changing the games themselves, even though behaviors on each platform are very different.

If you’re really hardworking and well-equipped and from the right generation, it should work. Maybe not for every title, but it should work for the long term. That’s what I believe. To come back to your question, I’m looking for entrepreneurs who stick to a platform, understand it from the bottom up. There’s a pace, a rhythm, a tone you need to make a successful Facebook game. There’s a speed and difficulty level. There’s a UI specificity to publish when you do something on iOS. It’s the same for console games, the same for PC games.

You can’t adapt every single thing. If you look at shooting games on tablets, every title still has some kind of control problem. How do you control a game with your fingers with such intensity? Some genres will adapt to some platforms, some will not. The platform has to be involved in that.

Coming back to a general macro view of the market, for me, gaming is looking fantastic as an opportunity. I was an investor in technology for 15 years. I’ve never seen such a thing. We have a revolution on three different fronts. If you look at Spotify and all these other platforms, they changed music on the distribution side, but they didn’t change the production. They didn’t change the business model for the entire industry. You can look at Netflix and everything that’s changing TV today. It’s not changing production. Netflix still has to invest $100 million or more to produce House of Cards. The only thing that has changed is distribution. When you’re only changing distribution, it needs to be a big game. You need to have a critical size before you’re successful.

In gaming it’s the opposite. We’re not only seeing a revolution in distribution thanks to platforms like iOS and Android and Facebook, but we also have a revolution in business models, thanks to free-to-play, and a revolution in production costs, which have been divided by 10. All of these combined, along with the fact that Facebook evangelized for games to hundreds of millions of people who never played games before, makes it a fantastic opportunity today. We’re just at the beginning.

When you think about it, a platform like Facebook or iOS will take 30 percent of your revenues. But if you sell at retail, they’d take more than 50 percent. The business model in gaming on mobile improves the gross margin by that 20 percent, right away. This is very profitable as an industry. I’m positive on the outlook. Yes, it’s difficult to price a single hit company, but I’m convinced that the quality of the teams and the professionalism that you can find within King will eventually allow them to publish additional successes.

GamesBeat: What’s a good micro strategy for entrepreneurs in this heady environment?

Jackson: One of the things I noticed at the conference here—I think we’re talking about two industries a lot of the time. There’s the traditional industry and then the digital industry, which is mobile, Facebook-oriented, driven by the analytics equation.

I just urge entrepreneurs to take on the lean startup culture. Try to seek out those methods. I truly believe the legacy industry doesn’t have a lot more going for it, unless you’re at a big studio. Most big studios are internal. It’s very hard to take entrepreneurial action in that area. If you’re specialized as an artist or a game designer, you can get hired into a large studio structure, but if you really want to participate in the newest wave, bringing in the startup culture, the culture of early stage company development — a very holistic approach to having all the pillars of good management and good business sense and good advisors – is important.

It was said many times these two days – are you making a product or making a company? I think you need to focus on making a company. This comes from 20 years in the industry, nearly 20 years.

Buttler: The real buzzword in Silicon Valley these days is not “big data” or anything like that. It’s actually “pivot.” Whenever things don’t work so well at a company in some way, it’s still cool, because they’ll pivot. It used to be, “Oh, I was wrong.” Now it’s, “Oh, we’ve decided to pivot.” That happens all the time. It’s a positive word now. I’m glad that’s the mindset, because it means, “We’re trying things. We don’t believe our own story, necessarily.”

If you look at Kabam, or even Zynga, and all these other guys, they did pivot and pivot and pivot. They didn’t even come from the gaming space. They let opportunity drive them, not their own story. That’s a tremendous strength an entrepreneur should have, to be able to pivot and find new opportunities, new things that people who have their knowledge from the old world won’t find, because they’re not listening carefully to opportunity.

Baverstock: On a related note in terms of understanding your business, a lot of games developers come at it from the point of view that they’re making a piece of art. They’re making something they care about. They’re passionate about it. They believe that if they make something great, people will share it and enjoy it with them.

There’s a fundamental fallacy there. People have to know about your product. I would encourage all small companies, all entrepreneurial teams in the industry, to engage with marketing as a function. Your marketing team and your game design team should be almost the same thing, and marketing should be as important to you, as a concept, as the game design you’re working on. There are very few developers who are that happy to engage with marketing in that way, but I think it’s very important that they do.

GamesBeat: Somebody had that slide elsewhere with all the ad tech companies. They showed that there are 945 mobile ad tech companies now. That seems a little nuts, but it also seems to address the twin problems of monetization and discovery that everyone is trying to solve. What do you think about the opportunities in that space? How should people sort through 945 companies?

Baverstock: I don’t think there are any easy ways of solving it right now. One of the most interesting things to watch in the industry is that discovery problem. If it starts to be solved, our industry will change dramatically again.

One of the core features of our industry right now is that nobody outside of the old-school console/retail space has a good discovery solution that works reliably, repeatably, and scalably. If we do come across that, that will tend to empower the big existing players with deep pockets against the currently disruptive small creative teams. The industry will change dramatically if a reliable, repeatable, scalable solution to discovery comes about. Today there isn’t one. It’s the Wild West. Try some stuff and see what happens.

Buttler: I completely agree. One of the reasons the mobile messenger companies get these tremendous valuations—If you look at Line, or WeChat in China, or even Facebook, which is now working on mobile as a marketing platform, it all has to do with app discovery being completely broken. The App Store and Google Play are similar to Yahoo in the old days of the internet, where the entire search engine portal was basically just listing links of the cool sites on the web. That was the initial discovery model, before Google and others came in, and now we have a completely different paradigm.

Once we have a better app discovery paradigm for the mobile web, we’ll have a mega-revolution. We’ll also take off this other 30 percent, which you never had to pay on the web. The fact that Google and Apple can control this entire environment today—HTML5 and other tools for the mobile web haven’t really taken off. It’s a pity. But nothing in the history of technology ever lasts forever. This situation where you have two gatekeepers for the entire market facing all the disruptive forces in the world has never sustained itself. Things will change. We’ll have a mobile internet eventually and that will catalyze a lot more creativity again.

GamesBeat: What do you recommend as far as the size of a mobile game studio these days? How many people should it have? How many people should be on a team? How much money should it initially raise?

Audience: This is a question to sort of answer Dean’s question about the size of mobile game studios, which is something I think about quite a lot. I think there’s a size that’s the right size for the current industry, which is something like 10 or 12 people. There’s a size that’s huge, which also works well. I worry that there’s not a good way for mid-size studios to exist right now, because 30 people tend not to make a game — Double Fine is probably an exception to the rule – that’s three or four times better, or monetizes three or four times better, than a game from a 10-person studio. The burn just tends to be much higher. I’d be curious to hear, along the lines of Dean’s question, if there’s any way to solve that problem in the long term.

Jackson: There’s the Supercell example, at a conceptual level, which is that you have to look at yourself as an incubator that’s working on multiple titles. If you’re a 30-person studio, you have to see that as five or six small teams that work quickly, that fail fast, and that you can move people around so you’re not losing a company culture, not losing investment in people. We haven’t exploited the incubator/accelerator model. It’s not necessarily about incubating small companies, in the same way that it’s done in other parts of tech. But I think there’s an application for creating games that hasn’t been found yet.

Baverstock: To pick up on that question of scale, 10 or 12 is great if you’re talking about a real startup, taking risks, trying something out. If you have an existing business with a reasonably successful game and you’re trying to make sure it’s a resilient longer-term business, you don’t want to keep those kinds of risks. Having 30 or 40 people in your studio might not make you a game that’s four times as valuable, but it will make you much more likely to deliver a good game. If you can afford that higher burn rate, you are trying to get yourself to a more reliable, longer-term situations.

It’s all about that difficult second album, right? It’s all about trying to go from something that worked – being as small as possible and doing as many games as possible – to locking it in and starting to build your audience and your community, and not continuing to take those same risks, if you can afford it.

Editor: The following is some introductory material about each investor:

GamesBeat: Please introduce yourselves.

Guillaume Lautour: I’m a partner at a VC firm based in Paris, IDinvest Partners. We’re investing around Europe, and we’ve recently invested in some companies based in the U.S., on the west coast. I’m a steady investor in two game studios. I’ve founded seven game studios up until now, all based in Europe. Some of them are still very tiny, seed-stage stuff. We do seed investments as well, as little as half a million, up to later-stage investments in companies we’ve seeded already.

We have companies like Social Point, for instance, 200 people based in Barcelona and France — they’re successful on Facebook – as well as four or five other different studios. Most of them were originally working on Facebook games and switched to mobile about a year ago.

Lars Buttler: I’ve been a serial entrepreneur and investor. I’ve started three companies in my life. I think I can relate to anyone who’s trying to raise money and build something. Before my last startup, I was at the Carlyle Group, which is the world’s largest private equity firm. Now I’m at Madison Sandhill, which is a VC in Silicon Valley, on Sandhill Road.

Right before this I actually started a gaming company and raised almost $500 million in a combination of equity and co-development and debt. That, for gaming, is not too easy. Then I started this VC company.

I’m very happy right now to look at many different things — big data, gambling even – but gaming is still a big passion. I’ve already made my first few investments in gaming. I’m very interested to see what’s going on in Europe as well, since I grew up in Europe. I have a special interest in what’s happening here.

Marc Jackson: In my current iteration I’m an angel investor and one-man incubator. I’ve set up six companies in the video game industry in the last five years, where I invest a small amount of money and provide advisory services. They’ve all been in games. One of them is Big Red Button Entertainment, which is doing the current Sonic Boom title. That took about four years to incubate, and is now a very large 70-person studio doing a console game in Los Angeles. I also helped incubate a company called Fearless Studios, set up in late 2010, which got sold to Kabam in 2012.

I advise investors, and I’ve been a specialty structured project finance risk manager and evangelist, bringing film and television style financing to games, which worked quite well in the mid-2000s. It may have a resurgence now with new business models, and I’m looking at doing some of that. I’ve also been involved in spearheading and setting up two gamification-type projects, one addressing e-learning and another addressing energy efficiency.

I have a diverse set of interests, and I’ve worked very closely with founding teams at a very early stage to set up primarily game-focused companies. I’m also a French citizen. I earned my MBA at HEC in Paris, and I have a great love for France. I hope to be doing a lot more business here.

Ian Baverstock: I’m at Tenshi Ventures in the U.K. My background is very much as a games developer. I started as a developer in 1989, with my colleague Jonathan Newth. We built that company up into a 300-man U.K.-listed company, sold it a couple of times, and did very well.

We’re now very much interested in helping other small companies get off the ground. We’re seed investors. We’re looking at the angel space, rather than large amounts of money. We like to get involved with the companies we work with and add advice as well as cash, in fact particularly the advice. You need their passion and energy, but sometimes you need the wise old gray-haired person in the corner saying, “No, don’t do that. Do something else instead.”

I also do some work with the U.K. government on the innovation side and in creative industry strategy. But here I work with my games background. That’s all.

John Stokes: Prior to being a venture capitalist I was a moderately successful entrepreneur in Asia Pacific for about 12 years. I had experience in mobile, in startups starting mobile, and then starting in internet and finally in media. Our fund is based out of Montreal, primarily investing in Canada, but doing a few North American investments, and we’re not averse to looking at European opportunities.

We are really a web/mobile investment firm, but we have been dipping our toe in the gaming industry, and because of our base in Montreal, we’re doing more. So far we’ve invested in one studio out of Toronto called Massive Damage. We’ve invested in an accelerator/incubator out of Montreal, Execution Labs. We’ve also invested in a couple of peripheral gaming companies. One is a player acquisition company out of Vancouver, and we’ve also invested in a hardware Oculus Rift competitor as well.(source:venturebeat

 


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