How to go big in Vancouver

[Music] this time we're going to talk about going big in Vancouver and so uh how can we do that without people like Josh from East Side games Oliver Birch from hothead games Caroline from forward human Capital Solutions and Michael Chang guys come on up oh go for it my scenery is now going hey how you doing right how come on up thanks hey creative BC didn't want to sponsor me going down we'll have a hug later so let's let's kick off in the usual fashion Kar do you want to just sort of introduce yourself uh so the audience know who you are and what you do hi my name is can you hear me do we

have that mic on go ohing hello ah hi my name is Caroline Stokes I'm the founder of forward human Capital Solutions we work with uh innov inov Innovation leaders specifically for Executive coaching and executive recruiting we're based in Vancouver but we work with companies internationally hi my name is Michael Chang I work at NC soft with which is a large public Korean game company I focus on investments and Acquisitions I have one investment here in Vancouver in ytown and before this I uh did freet to-play mobile and PC Acquisitions for Electronic Arts hi I'm uh Oliver Burch I'm the head up the marketing team at hothead games we're a studio locally of 170 people we have uh 250 million downloads mainly in sports and shooting genre um and uh I'm pretty proud to be part of this community I'm not made in Vancouver as you can probably tell um but uh yeah

proud to have been part of this community for The Last 5 Years 250 downloads I should have sat there so I don't have to go back I don't have 250 downloads I'm Josh from EET games uh we're a scrappy independent studio uh bootstrapped and profitable in eastan uh we have 25 million downloads uh for our mobile games and right now our big games on mobile is pop farm so if you need digital weed come see me but it's kind of a real kind of kind of scope of different kind of game genres and styles that you guys kind of represent you know kind of the the more kind of uh traditional genres and the the more kind of jokey kind of well joke is not quite the right word is is pot farm jokes I don't know uh depends on where you are I guess um but you're talking about different scales of companies different types of audiences why why here why why be in Vancouver you know why British who wants to describe I mean is it just a mistake of birth by the fact that you're here you or is there something about this this culture

in this in this location I'll start I think there's a lot of ambition here which is similar to say places like the Bay Area perhaps um but it's still very relaxed as well so it's not so you know concerned about the valley and that sort of VC and everything else so um a lot of people want to do good things here and make great games I think that's probably uh one of the the key drivers just start with Talent everything for US starts with with the talent and the quality of development teams what what they can achieve what they creatively are thinking of without that you really have nothing so do you think that that Talent exists because of the heritage of how long games have been an important part of this it do you've had a number of companies out here radical blackbox others become EA spin outs from that there's been so many so many different companies that have come through those experiences there's an establishment of the video game culture here um and frankly the the BC credits and the the Canadian shred credits are not not harmful as well so you know it it well let's start with the talent side of it

you know that's obviously more in your kind of T Talent is huge in in Vancouver and throughout the whole of Canada it's mostly production and creative whether or not it's VFX or whether or not it's games mobile console games really took its its hold when EA you know had their runaway hits very very early on with Need for Speed and then obviously Ubisoft out east and then since various evolutions of the of of layoffs and the cycles of of the games industry when are laid off that's when new new companies are started are started and new companies are formed and and it's it's it feels awful at the time but it's actually very healthy lots of new companies have Spawn from that um and people are very very passionate about the games that they create the development Community is very very connected and strong there there's I I call it the Goldfish bowl of talent where companies or individuals will move from company to company everybody knows each other and there's a lot of loyalty and commitment um we were just talking the other day about just how committed

Talent are to the projects when they're committed to finishing they'll finish it it's not like other parts of let's say America or maybe even Europe whereby they will think okay let me just go on to the next project they will they will close they will finish and it's it's a very different vibe here in Canada and and Vancouver I kind of like the idea of like death of big projects leads to birth of Indie companies is that kind of actually you do a lot of work with the you know what Indie parties I think is where I first met you and you you know many years ago at GDC and you think about kind of Indie parts of of this bace are we seeing those being successful turning into bigger companies becoming more interesting or is it just you can create cool stuff yeah um so to dtail on that um there's like 168 uh I think it's 168 uh tech companies that qualify for mmtc and BC so the biggest clusters are in Vancouver Vancouver Island uh Oak aen and like interior

Prince George and up um so it's a really big cluster but it's not just games it's also Tech so um you know back to that first question about why the talent is so great is because there's some huge anchor tech companies that I think games are a couple years behind but we're in a hockey stick growth and we're going to get there so if you think of world class uh organizations that come from a startup you you look at you know hoot site slack Moby um and there's a whole bunch more in there that I'm probably forgetting but those are the anchor tenants that I think we're going to get the next anchor uh billion doll game studi is going to be here it's going to be like a mobile studio um that's profitable it'll be uh you know hotthead a thinking a uh something like that um that's going to grow and explode and I think that's what we're seeing right now so I think what we're seeing now in that sort of 168 that I mentioned there's four or five huge companies that are over um probably one 150 or so Josh I

was actually just writing up a list on the PC side you've got clay uh Piranha games ufg united front Blackbird uh Phoenix Labs all companies with 50 to 100 to 150 people on the mobile side cabam Vancouver hothead your yourself at East Side augo a thinking ape uh Roadhouse we've invested in one uh called this game Studio GRE DNA Andi may have pulled out but there is enough out there to support 100 150 200 person companies now question is can some would be even larger yeah I I I think when you say like that's another big thing of the cuz I talk a lot about the Vancouver game basically like last night in pubs when I'm drunk so it doesn't really make sense most of the time but today I'm just hung over so it still might not make sense so bear with me but um you know what happened in the Vancouver game scene is we had that big sort of Exodus of um you know uh all the bad stuff that happened you know radical Ubisoft Rockstar moved out but then all those veterans came joined up started doing

mobile game uh stuff um some studios pivoted like hotthead and um and that was kind of the first phase and now the next phase that we're why I think we're in the terms of you know the growth like this is uh because all of these other companies came and uh they weren't successful in their business here but what they did do was they planted the seeds of all these people that are very focused on uh mobile freeo playay which really helped the ecosystem so uh unfortunately we wish GRE DNA and Gom would have stayed but they didn't but they left all the senior Talent that's now going to Studios starting their own Studios we have a huge upcoming VR AR cluster we have a huge upcoming uh uh Indie scene and we also have all of the supporting companies um that we don't talk about much but are really important in the cluster so those are you know uh ad networks um people doing analytics for VR people people doing all that stuff in the startup

space so that's where I think is really exciting where games can start to work with the startups and and uh and the startup you know the startup area is uh is huge here it just came back from another conference and it was it was amazing this speakers they got here I will say to the audience at large um one back was iugo it is a red ocean in Mobile and for you to play mobile if you want to have your brand new studio and go Bing Vancouver and free topl mobile I probably think a little little harder about that um just like the console World evolved from many console players down to a few PC down to a few uh you know for and coft we're thinking of reserving 20 30 $40 million in marketing in UA for the launch of our first game that is not messing around um tough for an indie to do that where are the other areas of growth right now where can you go where there's opportunity to be an indie and Thrive whether it be mobile VR high-end immersive VR high-end may be low expensive Sony and others are paying their way and and buying content right now so there are big checks going on but

mobile VR still way for opportunity I generally buy into that and and I say similar things quite often myself but um one of the things I think I still reserved on with that is that the billion dollar games yes I totally with you you getting in the top 10% is very difficult but for a lot of Indie Studios success doesn't have to look like billions of dollars uh you know to be able to make for to make the next game is still achievable even though there are like 450 games launched every day on the App Store even though 2% of games break even it's still feasible I would turn this around I'm going to be a little careful cuz of camera here yeah um back in uh actually have a note here back in 2011 when I first represented EA at one of these conferences I got I got instructions from corpcom saying say nothing that's quotable right so last year I looked at 180 deals I had a a p at gree some of you know Shany bergo looked at 200 we both did one last year and we didn't actually think that we missed anything if I think

about studios in Vancouver and I compare this to Helsinki or to Southern California I can name some companies if I could get my hands on them for NC soft I could see them making a $100 million annual revenue game um here in Vancouver currently I can't name anyone like this except iugo but they had help they had Walking Dead and they had scopely it would be very interesting to see the community develop one of those that can make of itself $100 million annual revenue sort of a game I think that would be awesome to see I think I think both of you kind of pointed out something a real fundamental truth about it which is that that that scope that that growth is requires the tech it requires the infrastructure it requires the talent and also there's some kind of chemistry that seems to be missing which Helsinki seems to have in space so if you're okay with 5 10 1520 million you and and you you're Staffing up 20 30 people and you get tread credits and and

Vancouver digital media credits you'll have a fine business that greater ambition to something larger that is what we are looking for so we can invest in or buy that sorry I just want to add to that I I absolutely agree with you and and when I look at culture the culture of the games business in Finland for example or in in Silicon Valley or you know anywhere else there's something very unique about the talent in Vancouver is that they're looking for a nice business and the they they really ultimately need some significant invest to be able to take that trajectory that you're talking about and that is is really hard to find because you're looking for those individuals that maybe come from um the maple syrup style um Mafia where you've got that incredible hunger just just like the slacks of this world Etc that can just take it to that level I'm pretty sure 95% of the Finnish companies are going to Biff honestly but because there're a super cell and there's roio they all have the dreams and the Ambitions I think chemistry is right though what you're talking about there so hotthead comes from a group of

people that set up radical entertainment console days those people still work together now you know 10 15 20 years later so and they've had success as well I think that's the other thing that you missed is like experience of success also can help breed more success in a way so um previous panels have been talking about failure and how that you know can help breed success in a way this City's you know you can do that in this city with a startup you can fail it's okay don't mind that you know they just want to see people get out there do things and try and get better you know that's that's the sort of ethos of of this city kind of in some ways I live in a town just outside Guilford which is obviously has a lot of the games industry from the old school days the triaa kind of companies and it's you in the last 20 years I've had about 12 meetings in that town because we meet at develop or GDC and it's only in the last year that that Community has actually work work out to the fact that they need to start talking to each other and

behaving with an ambition and I I think this is one of the sort of problems we've had in in the UK and particular we haven't we if you failed once that's it you're over and I think that mindset being different here or being different in hinki and is like you say having Taste of success but also ability to know what failure means is an incredible part of it yeah I think one of the things that people discount is uh um if your bootstrapped and profitable you can fail a lot more right um You can be very successful having a top 200 maybe even a top 300 grossing title in the App Store um with very limited UA budget homegrown Talent your own Tech and not paying a publisher you can do very well yourself um and you don't you can just there's lots of Freedom there because cash and Bank means you can uh fail a lot brush yourself off and do other stuff or pivot and do that so we model ourselves more after the startup World here where it's

uh you know small amount of seed money and then just go start producing content and don't worry once you start making money um Publishers will talk to you after that they really want to talk to you then and so do investors yeah oh it's a bit like salmon Lance earlier on talking about currency being oxygen is so you know you know the the the the cash is is key to then being listened to um so is there a is there a pathway from the idea to the small company to the make it big company or is there a bit of a break there it sounds to me like like most countries there's a break between the small Indie getting successful and then turning into the company with the big idea I'd have to say today among the Indies I can't name the one that will go all the way without some help without perhaps a big brother and even in the early days with radical others they got acquired by EA and so and there was there was growth right through through that through that channel we'll see

where it happens here there's not as much Venture Capital as you'd like to hope there would be here versus in some other parts of the world but there are shred credits there are you know Vancouver digital media credits there's you know things like tele film cmf those sorts of things that are helpful and and we're starting to eek out a little bit of maturity now as well in in this space like especially mobile some teams here have had live Ops experience you know and Josh was doing live Ops before live Ops was a thing I think um yeah now I'm totally over it yeah not cool at all we're we're doing Deads how many people uh you've seen how had grow from how large to to what number of people today um when I started it was 35 people and uh yeah we're 170 now um so I trying to keep up with who's coming through the door but so there is a path there clearly and maybe if hotthead finds a big brother you know oh yeah even more well we want certainly want to make $100 million so that's but it's also interesting again I Ed people

like um um hipster and guys like that and these incredible Indie successes we see and to CAD you know actually they're not just flashing thean new people they're guys who've had lots of experience over decades making games in other companies and then when they come together magic happens he just got to work really hard I mean you know there's magic there and you can be an entrepreneur you have great ideas but you just got to work really hard at it I mean that's you know it's it's that simple sometimes just to make sure that the effort goes in and then you need that vision and everybody else to go with you too so um you know setting that out so that your whole team is aware of what you're actually trying to achieve I think that's probably uh the biggest piece of advice I could give out is making sure that everybody knows where they're heading you know and we do that we we meet as a team every week we know we get together every single day the management group we talk we have a standup we you know we've filtered that out to the rest of our team so everybody

shares the same vision every single day so that's what really helps us you know drive forward so is that something that happens elsewhere or you you guys do that or you just sit in the pub and chat about it uh yeah so I think that's one of the the kind of the secret sauce we have in Vancouver is um the only other cluster that really does this uh in the world is is Finland I think and I travel a lot and go to a lot of meetups and stuff like that but we Vancouver has is a really good ecosystem for Founders to get together through BCT Tech we have um a group of CEOs and decision makers that get together and freely share information how much revenue we make how much downloads we get who to work with who not to work with all off the Record and just look you know look at my dashboard that sort of thing um that's really unique so I think that's changed from how it used to be used to be if you worked at one studio and you went out for lunch with somebody from another Studio they thought you were going to uh

quit but you're you're like dude I just want to get lunch yeah ex exactly um so that's really unique so um we have all of our groups talking all the time and you know even with some of the other Studios that um like out of thinking ape we've had some people um want to work at we do more casual games we do more puzzle games and uh so they wanted to get out of the Casual Market more into the corn Market they moved over and so we work for people to stay within the Vancouver ecosystem but um sort of more opening and sharing and I think that's the different difference Vancouver has with with other places it's just that sharing in that um if you have a question let me know and I can tell you off the Record and hopefully that helps you I mean that sounds even further than I the H think guys are amazing because they do exactly as you say you know these you know people like Marcus and and ilka and UC and all those guys do talk to each other all the time um and and they mates they they they been doing this this stuff for a long time and

events like um uh assembly you know were a critical part of how they grew up together learning to code and to to make in interesting stuff um but that that idea that you're nurturing everybody as you go through is actually seems a little bit unique seems even different from from Helsinki I mean is it something you is this cultural thing in in Bou you want to help people along I I think it's actually a Canadian thing um I think because Canada is and I'm sorry about I can't really talk about culture um National cultures considering I'm English and what the English have recently done but um what I will say is that the Canadians I think because they they they're always the The Underdogs compared to most most of the American companies they they there is this culture because everybody worked together at one stage because they want to create their own Community for example when you were when we were emailing the other day you were talking about how can we invest in the universities to ensure that they are going to be the talent that comes through that can be our monetization

Specialists or you know what what whatever area that really Canada is lacking Canada as I said earlier is great at creative and production but not so good at monetization and user acquisition Etc because that is South of the Border kind of thing so really nurturing nurturing the talent here and ensuring that they are retained and engaged and loyal I think is very very important again we're coming back to Talent aren't we I think Josh I think you mentioned this in an email earlier about actually getting enough Talent here and we we're sitting in a panel and there's like three Brits on a ma in Vancouver panel only one of whom doesn't live here American oh an American oh yeah cool yeah so you know we only have this is like wow and how important is that immigration into this place my team my marketing team is nine people and uh there are a few Canadians um but there are people from all over so um you know whether it's Hong Kong and given a certain vote in the last few week you

few days you know I mean I imagine there'll be a few more coming this way yeah it's um you know that's one of the one of the challenges of uh Vancouver is um from startup startup Studio standpoint is just getting in Talent from across the world like it is a challenge uh but you know our various governments are working at it but it's not not as simple as you think it would be so if you need move somebody over here even from a commonwealth country it just takes a long time there's a lot of process you have to do you you have to hire a consultant to help you with that and there's people that can help you but it's not like you can get somebody to start in a month it takes a long time we have whole bunch pending right now um so if anyone's from the government that's out there you're doing a fantastic job and if you're not then I can say some other things now I will say for all the advantages here um there are some increased in challenges cost in

particular labor costs are coming up a little bit you know equalizing housing absolutely um I had a studio that we backed that opened up in Yale toown and I got to look at their rental it's not a lot different than San Francisco actually right wow so those advantages some of them are are going away and so they'll need to be equalized equalized out at some level yeah it's difficult to get the people from the bay to come up here too as well because you know there the salaries aren't comparable at all so you know and that's in the mobile World anyway that's where a lot of the the expertise is and the talent and everything else so um you know if anybody does make it up here we always seem to think that they're they're more on loan than they are in for the for the long haul you know so um but we're trying to nurture it ourselves at the end of the day so whether it's people from the UK or people from whichever country Venezuela um other many other countries that we have in our team you know it's really about trying to get them to learn it you know be good at it and then maybe they'll become one of

those big guys later on you know well I'm looking at our moderator who comes from an we'll call it an infrastructure company there are a whole lot of those not here so whether it be the Bay Area ad ad Network companies analytics a few have come up in Canada I think a few powered and others like that um put into uh upsite it would be helpful if there were a few more local as opposed just Bas in the bay and close to Apple and Google and close to Facebook and yeah but that's an interesting problem because what we're describing here is the same things I hear from the Helsinki guys you know because you know they've got the same problem of getting their access to talent I mean they had the massive advantage of the legacy of Nokia and what I mean let's face it I think that's why unemployed people from Nokia exactly and and that even before Nokia went down I mean there was this uh amazing kind of support that Nokia teams gave to that industry in general um you know and but now we're reaching the point where it's very tricky to get people to go to Helsinki to live and to

get the talent and do you think you have the same kind of problem or am might got feeling is this a little easier show of hands in the room if you had a choice between Helsinki and Vancouver how many for Helsinki living how many for Vancouver yeah yes that could be good and bad it may be that places that are dark half the year you have nothing to do but drink and make games could be an advantage I don't know so but just to add the the salaries are much lower in Helsinki as well so it's it's very hard to convince somebody from experience trying to convince somebody that Helsinki even though the company may be Estella AAA top five gam 10.2 billion company maybe it's yeah it's very very hardc and and uh they they have to be prepared for that significant life change and and see it as a as a major career opportunity but the majority of people won't go for that I mean there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes along with that of course and you know organizations uh like supercells uh they're you know they they some somehow

managed to retain a largely because of people like ilka but you know they retain a kind of identity that definitely seems to bring something more than just the salary uh and and not just because you're working on you know worldclass Gams because the their attitudes and their their design processes are so kind of powerful and interesting so you know how do we deal with this I mean are we in the situation where you know of course it's inevitable that you're going to have these clusters but what will happen is other clusters will start you know taking over or do you think there's something that Vancouver can do to bring the best talent to make the next billion dollar game how is that process going to happen well I think the well the obvious answer is we can just combine Finland with Canada and make a new country if kick ass hockey team uh we' get some uh you know I I just think it's a win-win if we can do that then we're golden yeah I I think Vancouver needs to do a better

um the Vancouver games industry and the VFX industry and any technology entertainment digital industry in Vancouver needs to do a better marketing job that I find is really really crucial people don't understand what the opportunities are here and I had this same problem a career ago 10 years ago when I first came to Vancouver I had a completely separate job and I was working with a company called Global Market insight and there we were trying to build their talent pool and at that time there saying we can bring people here but they don't last here for very long uh they they they move on somewhere else they go to San Francisco so here it's it's being able to have the entire Community work together to say okay where are the where where are all the opportunities what is the community all about it's come a long way in the past 10 years I absolutely admit that it should be an easy sell job just walk outside it's amazing right now go tell people to come here we don't want anyone else so we want to keep it exclusive once too many people come here we're going to have to to move East side's games to Edmonton or something and make

that the next cool place well that's why housing prices are going up because some people know I I think it's already happening in a way I mean maybe the sales job isn't as good as it should be but you know we have Kabam here and Kabam got a $200 million game you know and uh that's a pretty impressive stat to be throwing around as a studio here so it's actually happening but I think Josh is right too we don't want too many people to come here really you know unless they're going to be good at analytics or good at marketing or good at like game development QA whatever it might be so we're pretty select about that yeah I have to admit I'm I'm kind of liking the place so far you know two days in yeah I can see why people like it but let's this this I mean we round off the you we want to kind of let these guys take something away if you're trying to make the next billion dollar game in Vancouver what's the one piece of advice you guys would give focus on quality focus on the product just make it the best that you can possibly make it take advantage of what you have here but differentiate I don't need to hear a

clash Royale with DC or Marvel on top of it I don't need to hear a game of war or mobile strike with some other flavor of Ip something a little more original yeah focus on that Vision make sure you know exactly what you're trying to build and you know stick to that it's going to move around a little bit along the way um and then the other part is make sure you know how to get a lot of downloads cuz you're going to need them apparently that's the thing downloads are big I'd focus on don't worry about that big Vision just you know as an entrepreneur make your first million make your first 10 10 million make your first 25 million that focus on that keep cash in bank and keep VC's away as long as you can because they're you don't need a bunch of old white dudes telling you what to make when they have a been in games forever um you don't need that so just focus on being small hustle and and uh just copy the startups they're already doing it and you know that's

that's the slack model right when have you ever seen slack advertised they don't they grew all that just through Organics and people wanting to do that so build your own brand and your own IP with that and don't worry there'll be people knocking at your door to to date you when you're the pretty girl just be okay with being who you are for now that's my mom almost told me I think that that perfect perfect way to win yeah yeah I think I think worked pretty well so that note I'm going to thank the panelist taking and so you now know how to make it big in Vancouver thank you good job [Applause] [Music] per