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From QA to Biz Dev: Charting the Game Industry's Growth with Terry Haynes
87 Plays8 months ago
The Evolution of Gaming and the Power of Networking
Welcome to the Player Engage Podcast, where we explore the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. In this episode, our host Greg chats with Terry Haynes, a seasoned veteran from Tanglewood Games, about his journey through the gaming industry, the evolution of game development, and the critical role of networking.
Episode Highlights:
- Terry's Start in the Industry: Terry shares his beginnings in QA at Virgin Mastertronic and his progression through iconic companies like Sega and Probe Entertainment.
- The Shift from Production to Business Development: Learn how Terry transitioned from production roles to business development and the opportunities that arose from networking.
- The Importance of Networking: Terry and Greg discuss the "networking effect" and how it can break the ice in the industry, leading to potential collaborations and opportunities.
- Evolution of Game Development Teams: A look back at how small teams used to manage entire game projects and how the industry has grown to require much larger, more specialized teams.
- Co-Development Studios: Insights into the benefits of co-development studios and how they can provide flexibility and specialized skills to larger projects without the long-term commitment.
- Trends in the Gaming Industry: Terry shares his thoughts on where the gaming industry is heading, including the potential for studios to rely more on co-development partnerships.
Memorable Quotes:
- "You have to network, you have to keep in contact with people and you have to talk about your own business because no one else is going to talk about your business if you're not going to talk about it." - Terry Haynes
- "Connect with people because they're people... those people, more than likely in their career, will move on to a new venture or move on to a new company, may go and start their own business." - Terry Haynes
- "Having co-development studios out there is a huge benefit to the games industry and it's a huge benefit to studios that are out in that field of kind of going, you can have the resources to make your game to the quality your game needs to be." - Terry Haynes
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Transcript
Introduction to Player Engaged Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey all, before we get started with today's episode with Terry Haynes, I wanted to sincerely thank you for listening to the Player Engaged podcast. Your time and input are incredibly valuable to us and we're grateful for your engagement with us. Please feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn or search for Player Engaged directly or you can look for myself, Greg Posner.
00:00:18
Speaker
For more insight and updates, please visit us at playerengage.com. And if you found our content enriching or enlightening or just fun to listen to, consider subscribing to us and ensure that you never miss an episode. Your support really helps us bring the latest and greatest to the gaming world and to your ears. So thank you so much. And let's continue this conversation together and please never hesitate to reach out. I love being able to connect with everyone. So thank you again and please enjoy our latest episode.
00:00:45
Speaker
Welcome to the Player Engage podcast, where we dive into the biggest challenges, technologies, trends, and best practices for creating unforgettable player experiences. Player Engage is brought to you as a collaboration between Keyword Studios and Helpshift. Here is your host, Greg Posner.
Meet Terry Haynes: Gaming Industry Veteran
00:01:01
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Player Engaged Podcast. Greg here. Today, we are joined by Terry Haynes from Tanglewood Games. And I'm excited to be able to talk to Terry. He's been in the industry for quite some time. He was the first person I actually connected with when we came to Keywords and just a little bit about Terry up.
00:01:18
Speaker
He was a business development manager for multiple studios like Electric Square, Studio Gobo, D3T, and now Tango with Games. He's been in QA and he's done a lot in the gaming industry. So, Terry, thank you so much for coming here today. Is there anything you want to say about yourself? Well, it's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me along, Greg. It's good to be here.
00:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, I remember meeting you for the first time. I think it was GDC last year. I think it was in San Francisco. I kind of lose my years after COVID kind of played a kind of was it pre-COVID after COVID and all that sort of a lot.
00:01:51
Speaker
But yeah, as you say, I've been involved in the games industry since 1989, first starting off in QA, a company called Virgin Mastertronic, which some people may not even heard of.
Evolution of Gaming Studios
00:02:04
Speaker
And then moving on to Sega and then moving on to Probe Entertainment. Probe was kind of like, I guess, the first kind of
00:02:12
Speaker
not necessarily code dev, but it will work for higher studios. So we did things for publishers such as Mortal Kombat. We did a load of Disney titles. We worked on the first FIFA back in 96 for EA and so forth. So yeah, there was a lot of, that was kind of my thing. And I was in production those days and then slowly but surely kind of moved along into away from production and into more business development as I see today.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about the business development costs. It may not make always the idea for the sexiest podcast out there, but you know, it's one of these things that we talk about networking a lot on the podcast because networking is an important skill set that you kind of got to hone and get perfect. And I remember when I first come to keywords, I'm like, Oh shit, who am I going to reach out to? And I came up with a list of names and you were at the top and I reached out to you and you got right back to you. I'm just like,
00:02:59
Speaker
Okay, it's kind of like breaking the ice for the first time. So I want to make sure we talk about kind of the networking effect, what makes it so strong. But looking at the, I was looking at your LinkedIn, and the first thing that popped up and probably not the most exciting one was, like you mentioned, QA testing, right? You were a QA tester back in the late 80s, early 90s. And I'm just curious, what was that like? Do you have any memories from that? Or is it just so nightmare if she blacked it all out? Yeah, no, I have memories of it.
00:03:27
Speaker
being I started when I was 17 and after the first week of being there I turned around to someone on Friday and said are we coming back on Monday they went yeah this is a job and I went this is mental because I was a keen gamer but like to think that you were getting paid to play games in QA back all those many years ago was was extraordinary but it's
00:03:51
Speaker
I mean, the days of those are things that really stick in my head compared to today is that the industry was just so much smaller. It was not tiny, but it was a lot smaller than it is. Way, way smaller. And the teams on the games are smaller. I remember working on games with people where you had one programmer, one artist, one designer who sometimes did the audio as well. And you might have a producer person. You may not have a producer person on it.
Transition to Business Development
00:04:19
Speaker
And then you had the QA department and that was it. I remember working with Dave Perry and Nick Brutey back in the day and Dave Perry has been around the industry for a long time. He's a bit of a legend in the industry. But yeah, it was like Dave and Nick Brutey and we had some audio done by Jerome Tell.
00:04:38
Speaker
that was it it was like three four people that that was the size of the games back in those days it's kind of these are the days of like st and amiga before uh sega mega drive well master system come along and then the mega drive and you had the nintendo systems and stuff but yeah they were very they were small companies i mean small companies small small teams not nothing compared to what it is i worked when i worked at virgin master tronic we were
00:05:06
Speaker
32 people in the whole company and that covered everything from a few people in the dev team, marketing, sales, accounts, HR, QA, everything. You get 32 artists plus now on a game. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of the whole, it's a different aspect, but no, it was great to be a part of and it was great to kind of be able to talk about those days and where it's come from and how we went about making video games compared to the days now and
00:05:36
Speaker
the mistakes that were made and the learning curve by that generation really has allowed the industry today. I'm not waving my flag and it was all down to me and all down to people of my generation, my age, but we didn't have production tools, we didn't have things like waterfall and
00:05:58
Speaker
software to do stuff it was kind of an excel document and how long do you think this is going to take you and you put in eight hours 16 hours or two whatever and then you kind of like it come out and go right that means it's going to finish then it's like oh yeah we need to make those things happen quicker because there was it wasn't like again oh let's let's put more results on it wasn't all for a lot of people making video games those days most of if not all of the engineers were self-taught in their bedroom so there was i can't remember exactly the year that i met someone who
00:06:28
Speaker
join the industry that went to university to come into the industry. Everybody was self-taught, you know what I mean? So it was a completely different environment back in those days, but extremely fun, extremely exciting.
00:06:41
Speaker
lots of young people living by the seat of their pants, trying to get stuff done. And yeah, it was it was a pleasure to be a part of it. Did you know this is something you want? I'm just trying to imagine kind of what the gaming scene was like back then, which I mean, calling it scene might be might be doing it a lot of justice. But like, how do you get involved with something at that time? Or how do you even know that it's going to be something or you just take a chance?
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah, no, I kind of fell into it. I mean, I left I left school at 16. Didn't go to college, didn't go to university. It was very different in those days. And I kind of got a job. I saw something advertised and looking for QA, a local company, Virgin Mastertronic, and I applied for it. And there's no way that back then we thought the industry would be as big as it is today. I mean, it's impossible to kind of fathom, but
00:07:33
Speaker
I guess the only way you can compare it is the early days of TV and film. I got into it because I like playing video games. I'm like, wow, I can test games. I'm a keen gamer. I played a lot of games and stuff. And the people, my peers that were doing the engineering side and the art side,
00:07:52
Speaker
the artists were guys and girls who were good at art at school and then because everything was 2D, you know what I mean? And it was like stuff so daylight when I'm going to bring this and I'm going to fall into it. I mean, we had people coming into the industry from
Networking in the Gaming Industry
00:08:08
Speaker
From like comic books and like 20th century ad we had some answered works originally on like dread comic books and stuff and they were using their skills and then finding that they could bring them into computerized and they can go I think about I can I can do some stuff in video games here because you're drawing sank in 2d you can use a computer to draw stuff in 2d animations were very kind of.
00:08:30
Speaker
know eight frame walk cycles and stuff like that and yeah and I mean I think the first game of work someone was on the spectrum and we had to get the whole thing done in 48k yeah it's a it was a different world different beast back then that's for sure.
00:08:43
Speaker
So then time goes on, right? You're doing different things with different companies, with your producer, you were in recruitment, you were at HotGen for a little under a little over a decade. Then you come to Electric Square, where you begin doing business development manager. How did you kind of fall into that type of role? Is that something that drew you? Or is that
00:09:05
Speaker
When I worked at Probit, I worked alongside people like Tony Beckwith and for people who are listening to the pod, Tony Beckwith was a guy that formed a studio called Climax Racing that then got acquired by Disney and become Black Rock. And they did certain games such as, I mean, Tony Beckwith and the team at Black Rock, they did some incredible stuff for Disney. And we just stayed friends. And while he was doing that, I was working at Hot Gen. I ended up running Hot Gen for a few years when Ferguson McGovern
00:09:33
Speaker
who previously used to run Hot Gen, it's kind of all entwined. Everybody knows everybody in that generation of making games. And he decided to retire and I took over running Hot Gen and therefore I learned to kind of run a business as such to the capabilities that we can run it at. I didn't decide to step away from Hot Gen and I wanted to take a bit of a break. Hot Gen were doing a lot of stuff in interactive toys, plug and play stuff that you might have seen in America. There was a huge,
00:10:02
Speaker
massive success in those markets with a company called Jack Pacific. I was taking a break and I caught up with Tony and he asked me how hot Jim was going and I said I don't know I've left and he was like no way and then he called me up a couple of days later and said if you fancy lunch I might have something I need some help with. I went down to see him in I think it was 2007 if my memory serves me right
00:10:27
Speaker
And met him for lunch, met Tom Williams, met Jim Callan, met Pauela for the other directors and owners of Studio Gobo at that stage. Studio Gobo owned Electric Square and Tony wanted someone to come in, do a little bit of biz dev but also help with some recruitment and the size of Gobo and Electric Square at that stage.
00:10:47
Speaker
They were about, Cross Studio was about 45, 47, something like that. A lot smaller days there. So I joined and I was like, yeah, look, I'll come and do this for a few months. I'm going on holiday in August with a family. I'll do three months and yeah, we'll see what it takes. I sort of got into it.
00:11:07
Speaker
really started enjoying it. And then Tony asked me if I wanted to extend the contract to the end of the year. And I was like, yeah, why not? I mean, like, I could only play so much golf and extended it to the end of the year. And as we went through that year, it was like, yeah, look, do you want this as a full time job? We're really enjoying having you around. I was really enjoying being part of it all. And and it went from there really. So it wasn't kind of moving into business development.
00:11:36
Speaker
running something from like Hot Gen into Studio Gobo Electric Square wasn't a path that was kind of like defined and I went I'm gonna go and do this it was kind of a just a lucky meet-up with Tony over a couple of beers one evening and it was like I told him I was doing nothing and he was like yeah look can you come and help and that's how a lot of people of our generation have kind of done stuff so even though this is going back what
00:12:04
Speaker
seven, eight years ago sort of thing. It was kind of still done on that kind of like you get to work with people that you trust and you want to work with people that you enjoy working with. So it kind of evolved around that really. So it wasn't, as I said, it wasn't a path seeking, I'm going to go into business development. It kind of evolved around me doing business development and helping them with a little bit of recruitment at that stage within their business.
00:12:29
Speaker
I hate to sound like a broken record, right? But it always comes back down to networking, right? Whether you're just grabbing a beer with an old friend at the bar, whether you're talking to someone on the phone, right? It's about keeping in touch and getting those opportunities that you've built that trust over years and it becomes easy for lack of better words. Yeah, no, network is the key. I highlight it like yourself, Greg. It's kind of like, you have to network, you have to keep in contact with people and you have to
00:12:56
Speaker
have to talk about your own business because no one else is going to talk about your business if you're not going to talk about it but you have to network you have to try and get out there you have to try and see people at conferences you have to find the time to do stuff it could be just a simple thing of just replying to an email or replying to a whatsapp or whatever it may be it's it's it's kind of just keeping that connectivity going it's difficult it's not easy uh it's not easy to kind of
00:13:21
Speaker
run your business and stay connected to everybody as well as having your family life and stuff like that. But it's trying to find that part and trying to find that bit where you can connect with people on as a regular basis as you can do. And as you say, bumping into how many business opportunities and deals and structure have just been coincident or meeting people in
00:13:46
Speaker
in bars and stuff and the whole thing of networking especially it's things like shows it is kind of like if you've worked with someone and they respect you and you respect them you ever you're always going to recommend them because you respect what they do and hopefully that's reciprocated and that they're going to recommend you so when you're at conferences I always say to people like I mean try and find the most popular hotel lobby try and find the most popular bar area catch up with some old friends
00:14:16
Speaker
if you see your friends or you know someone's talking to somebody you don't know go over and say hi and try and get introduced because the amount of times I've kind of said to people oh you should speak to you because yeah you're looking for the same thing and and that's been pushed my way as well and and we all kind of pushed that around it's mainly in no circumstances due to due to the fact that someone might be looking for something specifically the
00:14:41
Speaker
your business doesn't have and stuff, but you know someone who can help them and stuff. And if you're going to recommend someone to a friend or a business acquaintance, they're going to take your recommendation. It's a lot better than cold calling and so forth. And it just goes a long way because I'd like to think that if I was introducing you to someone, Greg, or you was introducing me to someone,
00:15:08
Speaker
People are going to respect your introduction and they're going to go, well, if Greg says you're cool, then I should speak to you. And I like the thing that if people think that I know if Terry says you're cool, then yeah, we should have a conversation and stuff. So it's the key to everything. Networking is the key to everything, especially from my line of business.
00:15:24
Speaker
I love the way you put that because almost every enterprise deal I ever worked on. It wasn't the Zoom calls, it wasn't the presentation, it wasn't the demo that actually won us the deal. It was the social aspect to it. Go out, grab a beer, go get dinner. It's going to cost the company money, but you build these and form these relationships that are just much more powerful. I think the trust level, like you're mentioning, is great because
00:15:47
Speaker
you know, when you're at a hotel lobby at a bar at a conference, so is everyone else at a hotel lobby at a bar in a conference, they don't probably know as many people as you do either. So most people won't go bite your head off if you go say hi, especially if you ask them questions about themselves, people love to talk about themselves. So like, just ask them what they do for a living, right? And ask them how they do it. And all of a sudden, you start building this relationship. And I think it's fantastic. Yeah, no, definitely. I think that is the key. I mean, not necessarily gonna have to have for the people who don't don't drink, you don't have to be drinking beer or wine or
00:16:17
Speaker
or your vodka or anything, you can have a coke. And I mean, I kind of go through stages of like, I'm having a drink and I'm not having a drink and stuff and so forth. And I've still had great nights out and socially having lots of diet cokes and so forth and drinking water and so forth. So you haven't got to hit the alcohol, but what you have to do is you have to hit the social. That's the key to it. The social is the key to it.
00:16:45
Speaker
about. And it's not necessarily about who you're working with. I always try to look at events that are coming up and try to reach out to people that we've done business with or companies we are doing business with. But I also try to scout the industry because it's such a beast now and there's new companies popping up all the time in different locations around the world. I always try to have a look at companies and go, I've never met them before.
00:17:14
Speaker
like what are they all about let me let me let me see if i can and and just have you got 15 minutes can we can we meet like and people are there again i'm like look what about the end of the night like or the end of the meeting
00:17:28
Speaker
I'm going to be in, let's use GDC for example, I'm going to be in the W or the Intercontinental or the Regis. Are you going to be there? Yeah, great. I'll come and say hi and we'll have a 15 minute chat and see where it takes us. And if it's not the right thing for either party, then it's not the right thing for either party, but you've made another contact and stuff. And the other thing I always say to people is that I am who I am and you are who you are.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I've worked at Electric Square and Gobo and D3T and I wore those badge and I wore that with pride. They were great companies and they still are great companies. I've got lots of friends there and I still talk to those people on a regular basis. I'm now working at Tanglewood Games. That doesn't change me as an individual and Tanglewood Games offer a different service than those companies offer. So me keeping my connections and companies that I might have spoke to in my Gobo days or Electric Square days or D3T days,
00:18:20
Speaker
that didn't really fit what those companies were offering may change now from a Tanglewood point of view because Tanglewood are a different entity and so forth. And I always say that people don't always kind of connect with people because it's the company who is connect with people because they're people. I mean, because those people more than likely in their career will move on to a new venture will move on to new company may go and start their own business.
Electric Square: Growth and Projects
00:18:45
Speaker
The days of
00:18:46
Speaker
Our parents and our grandparents working at a company for 25 years and getting a little carriage club to sit on their mantelpiece. They've gone. They've gone in 25, 30 years of business. People are probably working for at least probably six, seven, eight, maybe even 10 companies and stuff. And so, yeah, it's more about meeting the people than it is as well as as much as it is about meeting the companies. It's about meeting the people because
00:19:14
Speaker
If someone moves to another client or potential client, then that gives you DNA into that organization.
00:19:21
Speaker
And that's why it's important to build trust as an individual, not necessarily a company that you're representing because then you trust the person, right? Maybe it's not the best fit for the product. I'm trying to push you, but it's my job to be honest with you and sell you that. But, um, let's talk a little bit about games because, you know, when you're a co-developer, you often don't quite, people might not quite understand the types of games that you're building, right? I remember when I started at Keywords, I'm just like, what types of games are they making here? And then you look at the list, you're just like,
00:19:49
Speaker
Wow. So I feel like Electric Square, Gobo, D3T were some of the keywords larger studios. Are there specific games? And I don't even know if you're allowed to talk about this, but let's give it a shot here. Like are there specific games that you remember being a part of or at least like seeing in the studio that you're like, wow, that's awesome. I can't wait to play this or give it a shot. Yeah. Well, I think my days of playing games are far probably behind me due to the fact that
00:20:16
Speaker
The younger people are far quicker on their controllers than me, and I'm a little bit all fingers and thumbs in those multiplayer games. I prefer playing single player, because at least I'm not getting shot by someone. I would say using Gobo as an example, like I joined Gobo and they'd previously worked on Disney and Finney, and they'd done four packs of Disney and Finney, which were incredibly successful, great games, really well reviewed, really well respected from the industry.
00:20:46
Speaker
and they sold really well as well. The metacritic on those games were 80 highs and into 90. So sometimes the industry will look at that and go, oh, you've made Disney Infinity. And they just think it's a family-oriented game. You're kind of pigeonholed into like, oh, we want to make a family-oriented game. We should speak to these people because they make family-oriented games. When you take away or scratch away the surface of something like Disney Infinity and really look at the design of those games and the content that's in those games
00:21:16
Speaker
the creativity that's in their games. It's kind of you realize how good some team like Studio Gobo is. I would say one of the pillows in taking Gobo from a Disney infinity into where they are today is when I worked with Ubisoft and For Honor.
00:21:32
Speaker
So you've gone from Disney Infinity, Mickey Mouse, all Pirates of the Caribbean, all of the licenses that are within the Disney world to, for honor, hack and slash, melee, very hardcore fighting games. So you've got kid-friendly Mickey Mouse to, now I'm going to chop off your head, plan a multi set thing. Those are the genres of the games, but the quality and content within people making those games
00:21:57
Speaker
it's still the underneath and under the belly of it. So I would say For Honor was a big turning point in Studio Gobo's career. And I think lots of companies need those pillows and defining pillows that allow you to kind of step onto another game. I think every studio would have that. I mean, Electric Square, when I was there, I can talk about these games because they're in the public domain. And this is my opinion. It's people at Electric Square, Gobo.
00:22:27
Speaker
D3T may disagree, but I would say Electric Square, when they were working on Forza Street, it was kind of like it was set up as a racing studio, it was set up as a mobile studio, so Forza Street was a big racing game on there. A lot of people who were part of Electric Square were boss aliens, so they had done CSR racing and so forth.
00:22:49
Speaker
And they bought that sort of thing. And then over time, Electric Square then went and done the grand tour for Amazon and stuff, which was an incredible feat of engineering and get that game out on a weekly basis to coincide with the show. If anyone ever does a talk on that, I think people would really appreciate what went on behind the scenes to get that game out. When I was part of Electric Square, I always put it in a presentation. It wasn't the most successful game that was out there compared to other games. To get a game
00:23:16
Speaker
and developed that in 14 months from start to finish. And for 13 Fridays, get a game out every Friday that coincided like you've just watched the show, now you can go and play the show. I think it's an incredible feat of the amount of content that had to be developed in that time and the tools and systems that those incredibly talented people created. Yeah, Gobo was that. But the other thing with Electric Square is they were doing the racing games. And then again, pillars of kind of like
00:23:43
Speaker
change people's perception and what Electric Square is all about. I think things such as they've announced they were working on Assassin's Creed VR, they've also announced that they were working on and it's out in the public domain of Diablo.
00:23:57
Speaker
with Activision Blizzard. So these are games which are far distance away from racing games and these are pillars within that studio that allow other companies to kind of go oh wow you guys can go and do this but what you sometimes need is you just need a company to take that chance on you and go yes we believe you can do this because if we've had several meetings we understand what the talent you have within there and it's not all are just about making games in this genre so
00:24:25
Speaker
I would say, for my time at Gobo and Electric Square, I would say those were the key points. My time at D3T, I was only there for kind of a year. So the stuff that I worked on from a business development is stuff that's still in development. So I can't talk about that. But the other games which kind of stick in their mind, I would say, is the guys at D3T would be able to give you a thing. But I think Hogwarts Legacy was really good for them as a business. It was good for lots of companies.
00:24:55
Speaker
Gobo went from For Honor into Hyperscape with Ubisoft and then worked on Hogwarts Legacy for four and a half years and created a huge amount of content within that game and stuff. So that again was a good pillar for a thing. It's kind of like Disney Infinity, For Honor.
00:25:15
Speaker
Hogwarts legacy and now they're working on a new game which they've publicly announced they're working with Gorilla. That's as much as I can say on that other than what's in the public domain and stuff but again I think that will be another pillar and another for them to kind of expand and show the worth of what that studio is all about.
00:25:35
Speaker
It's fun to hear, for lack of better words, but you can almost call it a flex. What are these studios able to create? And I love your way you're putting it. Give them a chance in another type of game. We see that from, was it a creative assembly right now? They tried to create hyenas and whatever that was going to be. And maybe it didn't work out, but the game looked like it was going to be
00:25:58
Speaker
successful, but they pulled the plug on it. But you know, if you don't give these studios opportunities to try to build new games, you're just gonna be stuck in a rut. And then you have what's coming out is a suicide squad, right? Kill the, uh, kill the, uh, whatever. Right. It's like, uh, rock steady doesn't even look like the old rock steady. And then everyone just kind of pigeonholes them into what type of game they think they can create. And like,
00:26:21
Speaker
That's why we hear a lot of pros about co-development right now, even from a mentality of in the studio, right? Like you're not forced to work on your own IPs. You get to start working on different types of tools. And that just helps individuals as well, right? You don't just create the same character over and over again. Yeah. And I mean, one of the things I will say to people about working
Co-development Studios: Flexibility and Growth
00:26:42
Speaker
at co-development studios is that
00:26:45
Speaker
you get to touch a lot of games and work on a lot of games over a period of time that if you were working in a studio and solely working at that studio you may only work on that one game so let's I mean for argument's sake let's mention like rockstar games I mean amazing rockstar games are incredible like I can't wait for Grand Theft Auto 6 to come out
00:27:09
Speaker
Grand Theft Auto 5 was the last game that I'd officially took two days off work to play and I mean it was like I took two days off went and bought it got a load of popcorn, crisp, coke, chocolate and everything and just kind of and I remember my two boys were still at school and they were envious so we're like that's just outrageous dad I'm like you're not old enough to play anyway and they're like oh
00:27:32
Speaker
Did you do an Xbox or PlayStation? PlayStation, but yeah, but it's it was so, but the people who works on that, works on that for a long time. And then again, if you kind of look at it and go, well, GTA 5's been out, GTA 6 has come in, it's kind of like the people at Studio have worked on it for a long time. And I'm sure it will be, it's going to be highly anticipated to come out. And I'm sure it's going to be a huge success based on the quality of the games they've produced before.
00:27:57
Speaker
However, there's people in our industry, and rightly so, that want to work on games like that. And there's other people in our industry who go, I don't know if I can be working on a game for like six years or five years or whatever it is. The fatigue comes into that. I mean, and stuff. It's just the way we're all made up. It's horses for courses.
00:28:18
Speaker
If you're a person that wants to work on maybe a game for a couple of years or 18 months or whatever it may be, then co-development studios is a great place for you to sit because you can go and work for those studios.
00:28:32
Speaker
such as what we're doing where we are now at Tanglewood and what I've done previously within the Keyword Studios and you get to work on a lot of games over the same period of time. You may not have exactly the same amount of input into that game as someone who's worked on it for a big period of time but it's that kind of mentality. It's kind of like if people are working on the same thing all the time they sometimes go
00:28:57
Speaker
I'm a bit bored. I need a change. I want to go and work on something else. And if that option isn't there in their company, they will probably go and look for that option elsewhere and stuff. So there's no one size fits all in game development. It's very kind of every person is an individual. And also,
00:29:21
Speaker
your studio's like Rockstar, your studio's like Sony Santa Monica, your studio's like Naughty Dog and stuff. I mean, your studio's around Gorilla, for example. Insomniac. Insomniac, that's it, thank you, thank you. But yeah, so the guys like, to me, they're destination studios. Do you know what I mean? They're studios that like, I'm 52 by the end of this month and
00:29:48
Speaker
If I kind of think of, if I was like 30 years younger and I was coming out of a university and trying to get into the games industry, I'd be looking at those studios going, I want to have those on my CV. They're destination studios. I know co-development studios are working really hard to become destination studios. It's always going to be a
00:30:08
Speaker
a tricky hurdle to climb and get over for those studios. But they're studios that people go, I want to work at that studio. I want to work at those studios. And I'm sure there's more up and coming studios out there as well that have got games in development and stuff. There's a few that I can think of but I won't name because they're working on products and their products are not out at the moment.
00:30:32
Speaker
That's, I mean, if you're young and enthusiastic and like everybody is in the games, we're all enthusiastic. Those are the studios I think you kind of like, you aim to be a part of. So I don't know if someone will work at any of those companies for the lifetime of their career in video games, they may do, but they might just use it as a stop and go, I want to tick that box. I want to scratch that itch. I need to go and do that. And I mean, there was a young guy who,
00:31:02
Speaker
When I was doing recruitment at Gobo, we went to a university. It was a company and game assembly over in Malmo, and it's a very strong university that brings a lot of talent into the games industry. And we met him, we interviewed him, we flew him over to Brighton, met him, we took him out to dinner. We offered him an internship and had a position at a company.
00:31:26
Speaker
I asked him why he got into video games, why he wanted to make video games. He went, ah, because of Rare. He said, I wanted to make video games because of Rare, because I played Rare games when I was younger and I loved them and blah, blah. And he got offered an internship at Rare. And he said, I've been off for something at Rare. I said, well, congratulations, good luck at Rare. And he went, do you not want me to come? I went, no, no, you have to go and work for Rare. Because he was young, he was only 22. It's not like he's 50 and he's like gonna retire soon. It's like, you have to go and do that because
00:31:55
Speaker
In my eyes, it was kind of like, if you don't go and do that and you come to work at someone like Gobo or another company, in the back of his head he probably began, I wonder what it was like. And that was the company that made him want to make video games. So in that instance, you have to go and do that. And we fully encouraged him to go and do that and stuff.
00:32:15
Speaker
I don't know if he's, I believe he's still not there. I believe he's at another company now. I won't mention who he is. But we stay in contact and he always faints with that. He said, thank you very much. He goes, I said, no, you had to do it. I said, because if you didn't do it,
00:32:33
Speaker
you'd always have that thing in the back of your mind going, I wonder what it was like, I wonder what it is. And you may not get that opportunity again, and it may be saying you'll regret forever. So I think there are destination studios and in co-development, there's going to be a group and there's going to be masses of people who want to work for co-development studios and so forth. And some people might want a bit of a mix of both.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah, I love that story. I mean, I think we all had a game that kind of turned us on to gaming and say, Hey, this is an awesome, right? Awesome opportunity and GoldenEye for someone that's my age is one of those types of games. It's just like, wow, that's changed gaming, right? And yeah, maybe rare isn't what it was years ago. It's making a great name, I think for itself again, but like scratch that itch, right? I love the idea of a destination studio because that's,
00:33:18
Speaker
Insomniac, I imagine being able to tell someone you worked on Spider-Man 2 and I think it's awesome. I mean, seeing what these studios are building itself are like new innovations like the quick travel on Spider-Man. It is fun to see how gaming is progressing and these destination studios are the ones that are building a lot of those experiences, not saying co-development aren't as well.
00:33:37
Speaker
usually doesn't get credited as easy, but like, I think that's an awesome way to put it is like work for your dream studio, learn what you can and then go from there. Cause that's what this industry is. That's what most industries are. Learn what you can at one place, bring that knowledge from another place. Exactly. And if, if we look at a studio that we kind of mirror and as such is like video, like film and stuff like that, TV and film is like people go and work for the big studios. They go and work for the MGM and Fox and stuff like that. And then those people learn their craft and they learn their
00:34:08
Speaker
They understand the business more, et cetera, et cetera. And then they might go off and create their own production company and go and make their own film and stuff like that. But they're never going to be able to do that or very, very tricky to do that straight out of, uh, of a university and so forth. So you have to go and learn. Like I always say to people, like try and, try and get into an organization where there's like, if you're coming out of university, it would do something with friends and have some fun doing that and hopefully be successful, but try and go to the company where you can
00:34:37
Speaker
like really
Adapting to Gaming Trends
00:34:38
Speaker
learn. It's like try and be that sponge and try and absorb as much as you can and take in and stuff. And as an industry, we need to be doing that as well because we're now getting to a point in our industry where people are starting to retire.
00:34:53
Speaker
Yeah, and that shows the maturity of where we are as an industry now, is people are starting to retire and we need to be sharing that knowledge because we can't take that knowledge away with us. So there must be ways of how we can transfer that knowledge into the younger generation of today and stuff. So yeah, that's my kind of take on that.
00:35:15
Speaker
It's an interesting conversation on kind of where gaming is going, because that's a great point that some of our veterans in the industry are going to start to step down, and it's opportunity for new people to kind of step up and make a name for themselves. We also, the demographic that plays games are changing on how they play, right? Back in the day, no one would even fathom that Twitch is a thing, and people are going to watch people play games. Now we see a lot of the younger generations are watching people play as much as their playing game, and I think that changes the strategies of,
00:35:44
Speaker
how you create games, what type of games you want to create. So with all that terrible intro of me saying that, it's like, where do you believe gaming is going to be going? Like what are the big things you as a business development manager kind of are focusing on noticing trends in the industry for 2024? And is there anything specific that excites you? Before I answer the question, I'd say one thing on the watching of Twitch and people watching it, I remember my
00:36:10
Speaker
two sons, and I'm not saying they're the marketplace and stuff like that, but obviously they're two boys that have grown up around video games. They play a lot of video games. And I remember going in, I'm like, oh, what are you playing? And I went, and I was just watching this. And I'm like, what are you watching? They were watching some YouTube videos on Minecraft. And I'm like, why are you watching video? Just play the game. I said, why are you watching it? And my youngest son said, why do you sit on the sofa and watch football on a Sunday? And I was like,
00:36:40
Speaker
And it was such a light bulb into my head. I was like, yeah, I've grown up watching football, so I want to watch football or soccer as the Americans call it. But to him, he wanted to watch other people play video games and stuff because that was just the generation of where it is. So it was a very kind of light bulb. With regards to
00:37:03
Speaker
new trends and where we might be going in the video games and how we're looking to work. I don't see 2024 being any different from the other years with regards to, I don't think anyone's going to come out with an amazing new genre and so on and so forth. I think the big changes that will happen this year and the benefit of co-development is, I think the benefit of co-development studios, and I've said this to a few people, is that
00:37:29
Speaker
If you want to expand your studio, you've got to try and hire in 20, 30, 40 people. So you've got a studio of maybe 50 people, and you're looking to expand, you have options. The options are you can go and work with a code development studio, and they can bring the additional resources to you, or you can go and hire those additional resources. If you go down the hiring route, it's going to take you time to find those people, and you've got to find the right people, so the right caliber of people you want to. And the most important thing is,
00:37:58
Speaker
you've got to find and make sure that those people are going to be able to work with each other. Working with a co-development studio, something like Tanglewood or the other studios that we mentioned, Gobo's Electric Square, is at Tanglewood, we've got people that have worked with each other for the last 10 years. If you come and work with someone like us or other studios in that co-development
00:38:19
Speaker
You've already got over that hurdle of like, are these people going to be able to work with each other? Is there going to be anyone at loggerheads and eyes? Is it going to be mixed? They're all clever people, but are they going to gel and stuff like that? Well, with a co-development, you've already got those gel. You've already got a high, A, you've got a high caliber of individuals that are working somewhere. So that ticks a lot for you. B, you've already got a caliber of people that are used to working with each other and understand how each other works and stuff like that.
00:38:45
Speaker
The benefits of working with co-development are massive, I think. I just think it's where the industry will continue to grow and grow. I think that as an industry, we had a hard time in 2023. I think a lot of people grew. Obviously, they did grow in the pandemic years because they needed to get resource on books. They wanted to get content out because people were spending more money on video games because we could go nowhere else in the world.
00:39:11
Speaker
now the world's reopened so people's disposable income is now being spent on the things that it was being spent on in 2018 and 2019 it's like i'm going for a restaurant with a wire form taking the kids on holiday or we're going to this or we're going to that and etc etc so my disposable income is now being spread across the 15 to 20 things that it was spread on before when we was in lockdown my disposable income was either spent on doing my house up
00:39:37
Speaker
Netflix Disney Plus subscription Paramount prescription or playing video games and video games was a big thing because you could interact with that and stuff or doing online pub quizzes and stuff which everyone got into but I think with
00:39:54
Speaker
decoded with the downsides and the downscaling of the industry last year, it becomes, it comes with negative press for companies and that's unfortunate, but when an organization decides to reduce their scope and reduce their size they have to let those people go, that comes with the negative.
00:40:10
Speaker
press that comes with being the press jump on that bandwagon and Riley Sow and stuff and as an industry we're out there trying to support each other everyone via LinkedIn is like oh we've heard this is going this is going and I think the industry has really tried to help those people have been unfortunately have been let go from wherever they were previously working and try to come together as an industry and be stronger for it. I think going forward I think people might be looking at that and kind of going well we only want to get to an internal team of
00:40:38
Speaker
X big and that X could be anything. There's no magic number on that. It could be 50 people, 100 people, 150 people, whatever. I think I'm going to be surprised if I see internal studios get over like 150 people, even for the big, big studios. And the reason for that is I think they will get to a number where they kind of go, yeah, we're happy with this.
00:40:58
Speaker
We can keep this internal studio, we can have this burn rate, etc. And we just build our team with external resources to make the game. And then when the game comes out or when that external resources contract finishes, if when I was at Gobo and then I was at Tanglewood and Electric Square,
00:41:17
Speaker
When Gobo Fint and D3T, when we finished working on Hogwarts Legacy and D3T finished working on Hogwarts Legacy and Tangle would finish working on Hogwarts Legacy and Red Kite was working on it and certain Finney were working on it, when all those external studios were there, there was no bad press towards Warner Brothers. I mean, no one wrote that our Warner Brothers had got rid of these studios. That was part of our contract. That was part of our agreement. Everyone knew what was happening.
00:41:40
Speaker
I think maybe I like to think that's the way the industry is going to go and to go. I like to think that the industry will look at that scenario. And again, if I look at film as being a kind of an industry which kind of I always
00:41:57
Speaker
look in comparison to video games is if you go and watch a big movie, 5-10% of the people who work on that movie are probably employed full time at MGM and the other 90-95% of people work for hire people. It's like you're not going to hire cameramen 24 hours like
00:42:16
Speaker
a day 12 months a year. You're going to hire your cameraman when you need your camera and you're going to be hiring your makeup artists when you need your makeup artists and you're hiring your editors when you need your editors and it's a similar thing in video games. You're going to hire the engineers when you need the engineers, you're going to hire the artists when you need the artists and you're going to hire the QA people when you need the QA people and audio and so on and so forth with that. So I think it's
00:42:39
Speaker
Having co-development studios out there is a huge benefit to the games industry and it's huge benefits of studios that are out in that field of kind of going, you can have the resources to make your game to the quality your game needs to be. You don't necessarily have to have all these people internally.
00:42:54
Speaker
I'm not saying it's for every single company out there because there will be some companies who do decide to have everything internally within their studio but there are going to be studios out there who go we only want to be this size and then we can hire these people in for six months, twelve months, two years, three years, gobo works on hogwalls for over four years and stuff so there is going to be that need and when they come to cut the cloth and that's kind of a
00:43:24
Speaker
Maybe a silly way to say that the contract comes to the end. Everybody knew what was happening. And at that stage, at gobo and at Tanglewood, we can see that contract's going to end. We'll be talking to our clients about, oh, are we extending? Do you want to extend the game is being released? You know, that's not going to happen. So X amount of time before that is, I mean, whatever that may be for that business, you start looking around for other opportunities and stuff for your team. And so, so I think.
00:43:53
Speaker
Co-development has huge advantages, but I'm saying that from a co-development point of view, but I do believe it has huge advantages for people with regards to like, you can turn it on and turn it off when you want to, and you'll get an experienced team that know how to work with each other and know how to dig into the trenches when the trouble kind of comes along, and it does, unfortunately. Video games are hard to make.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I think with that being said, you're going to need a good business development manager at the end of the day. Because if there's more of these co-development studios that are being built up, it's going to come down to the type of talent that you have on board with the type of games you can create, the portfolio that we were talking about earlier, and also, again, your network. Who are we actually selling these games to? Are we able to go to Microsoft? Are we able to go to Sony? Are we able to go to these people and get business there? Because I think there are a lot of pros to co-development, but
00:44:42
Speaker
We don't often talk about the cons of pro development. I actually can't think of many other than maybe you don't internally have the resources, but when you're just trying to create a game, right? Like here are your specs, go create your game. In the co-development world that I've always been in, we've always joined a product. We've not been the lead developer on it. So we've not kind of a product as normally come to us where
00:45:04
Speaker
For example, when we was at Gobo, we joined for on the day that it got released and worked on the DLC stuff. We joined Hogwarts when it was about a year, year and a half in development. So Avalanche would already have something up and running. A lot of companies that we work with now within the Tanglewood world are kind of going through a pre-production, may get to a vertical slice. They found that they found that fun within their game. And now they're kind of going, oh, we found the fun and
00:45:31
Speaker
saying you found fun and finding fun it's kind of like how long is a piece of string it's difficult but once they found that and go this feels really really good
00:45:41
Speaker
we need to build more of this, that's where they then go and look for code development studios to do it. So it's about offering the right resources at the right time. And the only way you get to offer the right resources at the right time is by networking and keeping that communication loop open of where potential opportunities are coming. For me, it's not about, oh, I'm talking to you on a Friday, what do you need on a Monday? I'm having conversations with people about, look,
00:46:08
Speaker
This is our roadmap for 2024. We have some availability here. We have some availability in the second half of the year. What's your roadmap looking at? And those conversations six years ago, we're kind of aliens with a lot of people going, oh, wow, we're really trying to plan ahead and stuff. And it's like, yeah. And now it becomes a norm where people are talking about,
Games Aid: Charity and Community Support
00:46:28
Speaker
oh, we might need some help in January, January 2025.
00:46:33
Speaker
And it's just like, okay, fair enough. Let's have that conversation. Because what you want to be happening there, and one of the things that we did a tangle with and stuff is, if we can have those conversations on earlier, and it's not like we're having those conversations every week or we're having those conversations every month, we're having conversations. We're talking about your game. We're talking about your game and how we might be able to help you make your game.
00:46:57
Speaker
and get your game to it. During that period of time, what it allows us to do as a developer understands a vision of what your game is all about. It understands what you're trying to create your roadmap for that game and so on. So if we are going to be your chosen
00:47:10
Speaker
or one of your chosen co-developments, because there's traditionally more than one, because of the different services people are offering, is when we join that product, we've kind of met most, if not all, of your leadership team and most of the development team. We've probably visited your studio. You've probably visited our studio. We've already been out for meals and a few beers or whatever you're doing socially, building up that rapport and stuff. So when we do officially start, it's not like the first day of school when you're going around and going, oh, nice to meet you.
00:47:38
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Well, we know what you're doing because we've had meetings about this because the whole benefit of doing that is that the client knows what they're bringing you on board for. We know what the client's bringing us on board for, and we're doing that. And we're having those pre-conversations that when we hit the ground, we hit the ground running. All of the IT infrastructure is set up. All of Perforce is set up and everything else. These are hugely benefit. And you only get to do those opportunities if you can engage with people very early in the process and having those conversations.
00:48:08
Speaker
So I hate to kind of change the topic of conversation here. We're getting close to the top of the hour here. And I want to make sure we talk about something that excites me the most on what you've worked on. And that's you being on the board of directors for games aid. I think it's a fantastic charity. You've raised over 4.4 million pounds. You've been around for 15 years. And every time I log on to LinkedIn, someone's talking about the go-kart
00:48:31
Speaker
uh, go-kart thing that keywords, if you're looking to send anyone go-karting, you can, you can send me over. I'm happy to do it. But can you tell us a little bit about games? They wear that kind of idea stemmed from it. And what's the mission? Yes. The games they was founded, as you might say, 15 years ago, I wasn't involved 15 years ago. It was formed by, um, a lot of people who are now extremely senior within the games industry, um, who, uh,
00:48:57
Speaker
seeing them within their organisations at the time. People like Stuart Dinsley, who's a curve, Andy Payne, who's a British e-sports and Mastertronic, Charles Cecil, Ian Livingston now. He probably hate me calling him Sir Ian Livingston, so I'll call him Ian Livingston. And there's a whole group of people who set up. And then over time, they attracted more people to get involved because you would only get involved as a trustee, as it was
00:49:25
Speaker
described for a minimum of kind of three years. You could do a little bit longer, but a minimum of three years. And once you've done your three years, you would go and get someone else to get involved and they would become a trustee and you would be able to step back and other people would get the bat and then roll run with it and stuff like that. So games aid is an umbrella organization. So
00:49:43
Speaker
I say the easiest way I can explain it to people is kind of like it's been like comic relief in the UK or stand up against where it kind of looks to raise as much money as it possibly can. And then that money gets distributed to smaller charities within the UK. It's a UK charitable organisation. And the charities are chosen by the members. So anyone within the video games industry, big or small, old or young, can become
00:50:10
Speaker
a member of Games Aid. It's free to become a member of Games Aid and what that allows is you get a monthly newsletter saying all these things that are happening in Games Aid. Things like the go-kite and comedy nights etc etc and then all our members get to vote so all our members get to nominate charities so any charity which they believe they want to support and nominate they can nominate. We do a due diligence on those due diligence is based on the overheads have to be less than three million pound and the turnover
00:50:37
Speaker
And the expenditure on that is to be less than 28%. So your overheads are less than 28% or whatever you're generating. If you generate over 3 million, you kind of fall outside of that. Because we're looking to support those small local charities. And those small local charities will be doing anything from children with severe disabilities and born with maybe short life time expectations up to charities where they're looking after people who unfortunately might find themselves homeless from the ages 16 to 22.
00:51:06
Speaker
and stuff. So there's different charities around the country. And then once they go through the due diligence, we then have a voting process and every member gets to vote.
00:51:16
Speaker
And then the five or six charities, depending on the funding that's happened that year, the highest votes, they become our selected charities for that year. So they then from April through to March, the charities are selected and whatever funds are raised for that year, then that gets equally distributed across the charities. And then again, we go around the cycle and every year we get to vote again and vote again and vote again. One of the first charities that Games Aid supported was a charity called Special Effect, which everyone has probably heard of Special Effect worldwide now.
00:51:45
Speaker
but they create specialist controllers with young children and adults with severe disabilities and so forth. So people playing FIFA or Forza with their eyes to like head and neck controllers where people are playing, which is an incredible charity and they were the one, the first that we supported. And so we've allowed them, well, not us allowing them, but we've, I'd like to think provided them with a platform in it and
00:52:11
Speaker
an engagement with the games industry that the games issues really absorbed them because they are making games accessible to everybody. And they're an incredible bunch. And we work, we still work very close with them. They're not one of our charities we support at the moment because they've gone outside the funding window, but we still speak to each other on a regular basis just due to the relationship that we have. And to be honest, we still, we still speak with most of the charities that we supported over the years on a regular basis and stuff. Events that we do,
00:52:40
Speaker
We just try to bring people together and have fun and try to, on a serious note, explain why we're doing and what we're doing. And the reason I got involved with games is because, in games aid is because the games industry has been really good to me. I joined when I was 17. I left school. I got in in QA. I'm still doing this now at nearly 52. Come April, it'll be 35 years I've been in the games industry. And I've been some amazing cities around the world.
00:53:10
Speaker
I've been to some amazing conferences. I've met some incredible people, people I've never even dreamed of meeting and stuff like that. And yeah, I've been very, very fortunate. And I always thought that I wanted to give something back. So I've been a part of Games Aid on two different stages for six, seven years, back in 2016 to 19 and then more recently, 20 through to today and stuff. But my tenure is coming to the end soon. So I'm going to have to step down after doing my bit and hopefully rope in
00:53:40
Speaker
some more people to kind of carry the baton on. But it doesn't mean I'm stepping away. On a day-to-day basis of running games age, yes, I'll be stepping away from it. But on a basis of helping putting on events such as the go karting, the comedy nights, the gang in the van, the develop tombolas and things like that, yeah, I'll still be involved with them. It's very difficult to leave that stuff behind once it kind of grabs you. It grabs you by the heart and you kind of go,
00:54:11
Speaker
This industry is a great industry and we all do very well. We just all do well because we're working in an industry that we love. There's not many people who probably go to work every day of the week and go,
00:54:33
Speaker
Yeah, this is fun. This is really fun. It's like we make video games, we're making entertainment. It's like it's the greatest thing that I've been fortunate enough to be a part of in my working life. And I don't think many people, when I speak to my mates who don't work in the games industry, they've had different jobs doing different things and they go, you're incredibly lucky. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm lucky. And so for being lucky,
00:55:00
Speaker
and being part of games, it just allows me to offer something back and go, yeah, the industry has been good to me. Let's try and bring the industry together that can raise some funds and help people who are a little bit less fortunate at that time in their life and stuff and try and give people a bit of a better enjoyment and hopefully give them some exposure to video games in some shape or form and so forth. I'd love to get keywords involved. I'm talking to Joe Byatt, opinion about the go karting. I'm talking to him about the golf.
00:55:29
Speaker
I would love, and this is a primary, I'm going to use this, I'm going to use this platform now to film. So this is a prime example, right, where I look at keywords and Electric Square come and do the go-kiting, Studio Gobo do the go-kiting, D3T do the go-kiting slash Coconut Lizard. Those studios are big studios. They all employ over 150 people, right? So they will go and do the go-kiting because there's only four people in the team. So they have enough resources to get four people who are excited about go-kiting year in year out, and they will continue to do that.
00:55:59
Speaker
What I see from keywords point of view and using them as a basis or even someone like Virtuous or something like that is that keywords have a lot of companies in the UK specifically because that's where it takes place. Or if they want to fly you over to the go karting Greg and then stick you on a plane, that'd be great. But they have companies who are probably in the region of maybe 20 to 30 people and trying to find four people who want to do go karting or four people who want to play golf or
00:56:29
Speaker
X amount of people who want to go along to the comedy nights is more difficult because it's a numbers game. You know what I mean? So, so what I think keywords can do and Bertram and John Hawken and Joe are going to be like, oh, edit that out. I don't know. I'm joking. I'm joking. They're lovely people. I hope they listen. No, but they, they, they can, I think they could put teams in under the keywords banner and then go to those small companies so they can go to like waste. They can go to itchy. They can go to indigo pearl.
00:56:59
Speaker
They can go to player research and go to the trailer farm. They can go to the companies who are a little bit smaller with regards to numbers and go to them and say, we've got a couple of spaces. We've got a couple of teams. We need eight people who's interested and hopefully you'll get eight. Hopefully they get more and then they can do a selective process of doing it. And in that way, that allows those people to go along to that networking event. We have 48 companies that come along to the go kind.
00:57:27
Speaker
like it's two semi-finals of 24. So if keywords had one in the south and one in the north, because keywords offer every single service that you potentially need in the video games industry, there's a great platform. They could take someone like Blondine along, could take Johnny Taylor along from the UK, like BizSev sales team and stuff that could go along and network and stuff. I know companies, and I won't name who they are, but I know companies that have gone along to the go-karting as a developer, met a publisher, and they're doing a game with that publisher
00:57:56
Speaker
And that's based on the figure. And I said to them, and they went, yeah, we need to make a donation to GamesAid because it wouldn't have happened without GamesAid. And I went, yeah, look, you paid for your go-kind. But it's a prime example that networking isn't just about going to a hotel lobby on a big GDC, DICE, XDS, whatever the conference may be, pocket gamer. Networking can be in other elements. And sometimes in those
00:58:22
Speaker
more casual, kind of relaxed environments. It can work. People are a little bit more kind of, yeah, look, we'll have a conversation about this. They're a little bit more open to having conversations and stuff. So, yeah, I'd love to see companies like Keywords get involved. I'd love to see companies like Virtuous get involved. I'd love to see people, organizations that have
00:58:42
Speaker
biggest, like a big organization that has multiple studios and going, oh well, we can't get enough out of this studio, we want to go. And it's like, well, open this up to all your studios. Hopefully you're, if you've got eight studios, hopefully you'll get one person from each studio, you'll be able to have two go-karting teams, you'll get branding and then stuff like that and so forth. So yeah, that's my bit on games lead. I love it. And I will push for it internally as well. But going back to the original point, right? I love just the
00:59:08
Speaker
the giving back, the helping of charities. I think that we are in fortunate places and it's very nice to be able to look and say, hey, I want to help people out.
00:59:17
Speaker
That's the importance of this industry. I think it makes it stronger. No matter what industry it is, when you're helping out people who will want to be involved, right? It makes
Mentorship and Networking in Gaming
00:59:23
Speaker
it a stronger thing. And I love that you do it and I love that you help. And I think you deserve all the credit in the world for putting these events together and the team that's helping you with that. I think, you know, accessibility, gaming for all kids who are between 16 and 22, right? It's hard for them to find homes when they're out there. And I think supporting is the most noble thing that we can do as people. And I credit you for that.
00:59:45
Speaker
No, it's incredible. It's very humbling. It's very... Yeah, it's just brilliant. I love it. I love every single thing. Even when you're busy at work and you're travelling around the world and I do a lot of that and stuff like that, I always find time to get involved with the games and stuff because it's just so important. In my mind, it's just so important and stuff. And if anyone is interested in
01:00:15
Speaker
Helping games aid in any way or getting involved in the events we do. Please go on to LinkedIn look for games aid as an organization Get in touch with Gina Lorenzo or Lily Remington who are coordinators And they're our full-time members of staff. They will be able to kind of direct you into stuff We have a thing called
01:00:36
Speaker
we call it games raid now we used to call it gang in the van but we it was kind of like that didn't really kind of work but we call it games raid where what we do is once a year we we hire a lorry and
01:00:50
Speaker
the last few years it's been me that's been driving around London and the south of England and we go to publishers and we turn up there and it's all coordinated with them beforehand and we say look have you got any old games or old t-shirts or old swag or merchandise or anything it's just sitting in your warehouse sitting in your cupboards gathering dust that you can donate to us and we fill up this van with a load of stuff and we end up selling that reselling that via eBay
01:01:15
Speaker
or we take it to the Develop Conference in the UK or EGX in the UK and we run a Tombola and it generates money. The Tombola last year EGX raised £23,000 over like three days. The one it developed raised about £7,000 or £8,000 over two days. So if anyone in the publishing side wants anything to develop, donate and stuff, please get in touch with the Games AT.
01:01:42
Speaker
if you're interested in getting involved as an ambassador, helping, doing an event, doing a bake-off, doing anything that's just fun. Just do something that's fun. Do a 24-hour stream or whatever it may be. It's like, please get in touch with Lily and Gina, reach out to myself. I can always put you on to those people directly and stuff. And I always say the most important thing is become a member. Become a member of Games Day because the members
01:02:12
Speaker
make the difference. They're the people who nominate the charities. And we've supported charities that I've never heard of because they've been local charities in local towns or local cities. I'm based in London. I don't hear about a local charity up in the northeast of England or the northwest of England or in Birmingham or in the Midlands and stuff. The people who work in those industries, they find those charities, they work with their charity and they go, oh look, we could try and get you into games aid and so forth. And I think the biggest year we had
01:02:42
Speaker
was back in 2017, 2018, we raised just shy of a million pounds. That was our biggest year and stuff. And it kind of dipped a little bit since then, but we're hopefully, and the pandemic really didn't help because we do live events and in-person events and so forth. So we couldn't do that for two years. And when you start doing things, people kind of forget about it. So we've taken a few years to try and get back to where we are, but we are organizing more events and stuff.
01:03:11
Speaker
We can continue to grow it. Hopefully we can continue to engage with the industry and hopefully we can continue to support maybe instead of five or six cherries, we can support seven or eight cherries.
01:03:23
Speaker
I love it. I think it's fantastic. I will push internally for it because I do think I love the cause and I appreciate hearing about it. And Terry, we've had you here for an hour. You've talked about co-development, networking, charity, what's coming up in gaming, and I loved it all. I think we can keep going, but is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to share before we go for the day? No, not really. If anyone's
01:03:47
Speaker
interest in reaching out. I mentor a few people in the games industry. If anyone's interested in reaching out and having a conversation, please hook me up on LinkedIn. By all means, I will do my best to try and get back to you as quickly as I possibly can. Please don't feel I'm ignoring you if it's taken a few days. It's just busy life and so forth. And if I'm not the right person, then I'll try and introduce you to somebody who might be able to help you and offer some guidance. And I would say
01:04:16
Speaker
Just keep knocking. If you're in business development or you're setting up a little studio and you're wearing several hats because that's what small studios do, just keep knocking on the door. Don't pester people every single day and go, I didn't even use them. I'm going to pester you today. Give people time to come back to you. Give them a week, two weeks, whatever it is. I normally have a 10 to 14 day window and stuff like that. You don't want to be hounding people.
01:04:43
Speaker
Try and get along to as many events as you possibly can. I appreciate some of the more expensive than others. If you can't, or your company, or if you're a startup and you're bootstrapping stuff, then you can't get along to the event and get past the event. Try and get into that city. Try and get into those hotel lobby bars and stuff like that. Try and do your networking that way. Try and get into that sort of realm and so forth. And yeah, and you'll be surprised. Reach out to the people in the industry. You'll sometimes be surprised how
01:05:12
Speaker
warm and welcoming people are, because in years to come, I still want to be playing video games with my grandchildren if my two boys have children in their life. But the only way that's going to happen is if we keep bringing people into the industry. And so we have to make ourselves available to share that knowledge. You got to get those nimble fingers back to start feeding them. Yeah, I don't think so. I think the joints are starting to go, Greg, to be honest.
01:05:41
Speaker
Well, Terry, I really appreciate you coming out today. We will have all information for Terry Tanglewood as well as games aid directly on our player engaged website. We'll put it on social media as well. Again, this was a very educational session for me, Terry. I had really enjoyed our conversation and thank you so much for coming out today. Pleasure, Greg. Thanks very much for the invite. Cheers.