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给寻求投资的新兴游戏工作室的5点建议

发布时间:2013-12-07 15:10:03 Tags:,,,

作者:Kadri Ugand(Gamefounders联合创始人)

GameFounders是欧洲首家手机游戏和游戏化应用的创业加速器,在过去18个月中监测了60个国家/地区的游戏工作室推出的超过300款应用。以下是我们针对这些工作室的正确和错误做法所总结出的经验和建议。

虽然有些建议属于相当基础的范畴,但我们还是不时看到一些团队陷入这种误区。

angel-investors(from businessnewsdaily.com)

angel-investors(from businessnewsdaily.com)

1.投资者重视团队甚于游戏

当游戏初创公司去找投资者时,他们当然是希望获得制作游戏的资金。他们会开始告诉投资者关于游戏的内容,例如游戏对玩家有多大吸引力,他们将如何胜出,在游戏中通关并购买加速道具等情况。

游戏投资者本身就是玩家,所以他们会乐意倾听这些内容,但如果这是双方唯一可谈的话题,那就很可能筹不到任何资金。

毕竟投资者寻找工作室的原因只有一个——为投资赢得更大的回报。而这些回报则是由工作室成员所创造的。

我们看到许多游戏工作室,例如Seriously、Grand Cru等初创公司都可以在没有一款游戏拿出手的情况下获得投资,但却没见过投资者赞助有游戏没团队的公司。

2.团队规模很关键

如果你也是像我一样的控制狂,你可能就会认为自己能够搞定一切,但事实并非如此。

维基百科告诉我们,团队通常是由具有互补技能的成员组成的,并且能够通过共同努力最大化技能和最小化劣势来产生协同效应。GameFounders不会接受仅有一名成员的团队,原因很简单,单枪兵马并非团队。

如果是一两个人的工作室去找投资者,那么很显然他们只有扩大团队规模后才有可能让投资者获得回报。那么为何不在接触投资者之前就先组建好团队?

我并不是说大型团队本身就是一项资产。如果你曾听说或实践过精简方法论,就会知道小即美。我认为游戏开发工作室最开始的理想规模是3-5人。

3.突出团队的经验

通常新兴游戏工作室是由想自立门户的某游戏公司的成员,或者从事外包工作的开发团队,游戏开发专业的学生或对游戏极有兴趣的爱好者所组成的。

有些团队拥有丰富的经验,有些则未必如此。通常情况下,没有经验的团队会将自己标榜为“超级程序员”、“编码女王”或者“天才美术师”……千万别这么做。

最好是谈谈对你们团队有用的事情,列出曾经开发的游戏,合作过的团队或同事,荣获的奖项,参与过的竞赛或者曾让你们与众不同的人生成就。

这里的经验与年龄无关。我最近听到的一个游戏提案自称“我们有一个由极富激情的年轻学生以及行业元老所组成的活跃团队。”

这听起来确实是个很棒的组合,但当我询问其中细节时,才发现原来他们所指的元老不过是几个毕生都在玩游戏的50多岁的老头,他们此前根本就没开发过任何游戏。这并不是我们所需要的“经验”。

共同经历也是个关键。你每个人可能都是个超级开发者,但如果你们不能彼此兼容或者顺利合作,结果未必会好。我们想知道你们是否合作愉快。

我们需要看看与能力相关的团队文化。你们如何共事,使用哪些交流工具,如何迭代,是否能够快速制定决策,团队是否足够灵活?

4.了解自己的强项并专注于此

我曾见到一些找上门的团队说“这是我去年制作的游戏,现在我有6个原型了”。之后他们又问:“你觉得我应该采用哪个原型开发游戏?”这并不是潜在投资者该回答的问题。

投资者不会吃这套的,我们想知道团队是否清楚自己的长处,是否了解自己的独特卖点,并且拥有如何将产品转化为收益和回报的计划。

5.了解相关数据

我曾看到许多游戏提案称他们在寻找数额为X的资金,但如果问他们要拿这些钱来干什么,团队就答不上来了。

这会给投资者一个强烈的信号,即你想制作游戏,却没想好预算和业务,从长远来看这意味着你不会专注于赢得投资回报。

所以一定要有明确的计划!

另外还要清楚LTV、DAU和ARPPU等指标。参照一下同种题材的游戏或使用了相同机制的游戏。估算你的游戏可以获得多少用户,预测一下平均投入是多少。

这些数据总会不断发生变化,但你还是得想出能够让你的游戏吸引投资者的规划。(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

Top 5 tips for game studios who are looking for investment

by Kadri Ugand

Kadri Ugand is the co-founder of Gamefounders, Europe’s first business accelerator for mobile games and gamified apps. It is located in Tallinn, Estonia.

GameFounders has seen over 300 applications from game studios from over 60 countries during the 18 months.

We also do many evaluations, so in the process we get to know the teams quite well. We see what they do right and what they do wrong – plenty of material for articles like this.

So even though these tips might seem quite basic, we regularly see teams failing to follow them. That’s why we decided to put together this small reminder.

1. Investors value a team over a game

When a game startup goes to an investor, they want to find money to make their game. They will start telling the investor about the game and how cool it is for the player, how they can win, how they can buy boosters and pass through the levels.

Investors in the gaming sector are players themselves, so they listen and enjoy this, but if this is the only level to the conversation, no money is coming the studio’s way.

The investors are looking at studios for one reason only- to make great returns on their investment. And these returns are produced by the people working in the studio.

We see a lot of game studios, such as Seriously, Grand Cru, etc raising investment without having a game ready, but we do not see investors throwing money at games without a team.

2. Size does matter

If you are a control freak like me, you think you can do everything alone, but this is not the case.

Wikipedia tells us that teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy through coordinated effort maximizing skills and minimizing weaknesses. Make that the definition of your team as well. At GameFounders we do not accept one-man shows and there is a reason. One person is not a team, it’s as simple as that.

When a 1 or 2 person studio approaches an investor it is quite clear that they have to grow the team before the investor will make any returns on their investment. So why not do it already before approaching the investor?

By no means am I saying here that a big team is an asset in itself. If you have heard or practice the lean methodology, you know that less is more. I would say the optimal size of a starting game development studio is 3-5 people.

3. Make your experience count

Usually new game studios are either employees of a gaming company that want to create their own studio, a game development team that has been doing work for hire, graduates of a game development discipline or people who are just hobbyists that live and breathe games.

Sometimes they have experience, sometimes not that much. Usually in the case of no experience the team describes themselves as “Superstar Programmer”, “Code Queen” or “Talented Artist”. This means nothing … don’t do that.

Say the things that are applicable only to your team, list of games, teams, people you have worked with, awards, competitions you have participated in or a life achievement that makes you different.

Experience is NOT age. I recently heard a game pitch that said “We have a really dynamic team of young hungry students combined with veterans”.

It sounded like really good combo but when I asked for details, it turned out the veterans were 50 year old guys who had played games their whole lives. They hadn’t developed any though. This is not the kind of ‘experience’ we are looking for.

Joint experience is key. You may individually be superstars but if you cannot stand each other or work together smoothly, the result cannot be good. We need to know you are happy working together.

We need to see the team culture next to the competences. How do you work together, what tools do you use to communicate, how do you iterate, are you making decisions (and failing) fast, are you flexible as a team?

4. Know what you are good at and focus on it

I have seen teams who come to us and say; ‘This is the game I made last year and now I have these six prototypes’. Then they ask: ‘What do you think, which one should I start working on?’ This is not a question to ask your potential investor.

If the investor sees that you are fishing – trying to please him by having the right answer, they will not bite. We want to see teams that know what they want to do, teams that know their unique selling points and have a plan how to turn these USPs into revenue and in turn returns to the investor.

5. Know your numbers

I have seen a lot of pitch decks that say we are looking for ‘X’ amount of money and when asked what the money is about, the team does not have a precise answer.

This gives the investor a signal that you want to make the game and are not thinking of the budget and business, which in the future means you are not focused to make a return on the investment.

Have a plan!

The same goes for metrics such as LTV, DAU and ARPPU. Look for games in the same category or games using the same mechanics. Find out how many users your game can get, how much is the average spend and make your projections.

Life will always make changes in the numbers, but you have to figure out the business behind your game to be attractive to investors.(source:pocketgamer


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