Long development cycles are putting off video game investors

This week, we are joined by one of the world's most successful video game VCs in the form of David Gardner. We speak to Griffin Gaming Partners about its new $100 million indie fund, plus big news coming from Nintendo, Sony, and Sega. Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show. Some big guests this week, all tied to the world of video game investment, but both very much video game people. We have David Gardner. He used to work at EA for a very long time as one of their very first employees actually. He was there for 26 years and then he went on to lead Atari and now he's been at London Venture Partners which he co-founded and they've invested in all sorts of companies like Supercell. He also supports businesses like CD Project. Um so he's going to chat to us in a moment about game investment and just the industry in general actually. And also we have a short interview with Tim Bender. He is an indie publisher who runs Hooded Horse. are best known for Manalords probably, but he's also leading the new indie fund at Griffin Gaming Partners who are making $100 million available for small projects. Both of them will be

with us shortly. But before we get to that, a quick reminder. The Game Business Live, that event that we're doing in Los Angeles on June 8th, the morning of June 8th, we have over 90 companies coming now. I'm really excited about that. We have three big speakers. We have industry veteran Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin, industry analyst Matthew B, and EA leader Laura Mle. They'll be speaking to me on stage. Tickets are available now. So, please do come and join us. It' be lovely to have you there. If you're a paid subscriber, you can come as part of your paid subscription. You just need to check our newsletter. We send out on a Monday, our micro. It's all in there about how you can get your uh it's technically not free cuz you're paying to subscribe to us, but but your ticket. Now, this week has been quite a noisy one for the world of video games. And before we sort of welcome our guests on, let's do our news roundup, shall we? Now, Nintendo share price. You may have seen this dropped more than 9% after its financial results last week. It's still 7% down now. It all follows the news uh that the Switch 2 price is going to go up on the back of memory shortages. So, Switch 2 will now

cost $50 more in the US, 10,000 yen more in Japan, $30 more in Europe, and $50 more in Canada. The company expects to ship 16.5 million Switch 2 units in the next financial year. That is 3 million lower than what it did in it last financial year. That's part of the concerns. It's worth noting that Nintendo did initially expect only to ship 15 million Switch 2 units last year. So, it could be that they're being conservative, but I'm not sure they are this time. Nintendo says the price rise plus the stronger than expected first year is the reason for their expected drop in shipments for Switch 2. I mean, it's still a good number. It still be a strong first two years for Switch 2, but obviously any signs of weakening is is a concern for investors. Um, Nintendo still hasn't released many many of their biggest franchises on Switch 2. They've had a Mario Kart game, of course, but um we're still waiting for like Mario and Zelda. We've had a couple of Pokémon titles, but not a big mainline Pokémon title that's come out in 2027. A lot still to come from Nintendo. I wouldn't be too worried about Nintendo. You know, they're they're an IP business and one of the strongest IP businesses in the world, let alone video games. But

obviously, uh some investors are concerned about the short term. Let's go to one of Nintendo's old rivals, shall we? Sega. It's just announced that it's canceled its ambitious Super Game Project. If you don't know what the suka game was, it was this idea that Sega's really good with online stuff because a fantasy star online and things like that has a library of major IPs and it sort of was going to merge these together somehow in something that was going to be called a super game. They talked about spending a huge amount of money on this project. Um, however, the market has shifted. It's become incredibly competitive for online games. So, the firm has discontinued the project. Not surprising really, the industry has shifted and they're doing a lot of they're doing a lot of bringing back classic games, including a new Crazy Taxi, which I'm very excited about. Overall though, Sega is also lowering its focus just on free-to-play games. Uh, this is due to the weak performance of its recent live service game, Sonic Rumble Party. That was a mobile game from Roio. Roio acquisition overall has not done what Sega wanted of it. I'm not too surprised. I think Angry Bird's a great IP, but um I'm not entirely sure Robio was was going to do what Sega Ne

couldn't do itself. We already had some success with Sonic on mobile. But yeah, I think there's just a few write downs to go there. But obviously Roio knows mobile and that's a powerful thing to know and have in your business if you have IP like Sonic the Hedgehog. This is a fun story. I didn't expect this. Um the former face and leader of the Tekken series, Katahhiro Herada, who we interviewed last year, has formed a new studio with SNK. He surprisingly left Band Dynamco after more than 31 years at the end of last year. Tekken's basically been his life since the very beginning. The new studio is called SNK Versus Studio or VS Studio. It's in Tokyo. He will act as a CEO. SNK is known for the King of Fighters, Fatal Fury and Samurai Showdown games. That's interesting. He hasn't confirmed he's making a new fighting game, but you'd assume, wouldn't you? Sony released its financials last week, and there was a few stories out of it. So, one of them is that Sony won't commit to a PS6 launch. uh won't commit to the launch timings of the PlayStation 6 rather due

to the high cost and components. PS5 has now sold 93.7 million units since launch, which is great, but has actually now trending behind the PlayStation 4. PS5 pricing has also risen by around $100 due to the shortage of RAM and high costs. I think the PS5's got a long life in ahead of it. I don't think we're ready for new hardware really as as an audience, not necessarily as a technically. And then of course you got these RAM shortages which makes it even harder. But Grand Theft Auto at the end of the year should provide a boost assuming the stock of PlayStation 5, of course, because these shortages are causing big problems for hardware companies. And meanwhile, PlayStation also went into detail on how it's using AI in game creation. So, Hideki Nishino, it's the CEO of PlayStation. He believes that AI will lead to fresh experiences, better discovery, and will lower the barriers to entry for making games and cause an increase in the amount of content released on PlayStation platforms. In terms of how PlayStation is using AI, the Shinosan said AI is automating repetitive workloads and accelerating areas like QA, 3D modeling

and animations. He gives an example actually something called mockingb bird which animates 3D facial models based on performance capture. He said importantly we're not replacing human performers but rather optimizing how we process the data from these live captures. Studios like San Diego and Naughty Dog are already utilizing AI tools. Always a non an uncontroversial topic is AI. I think sounds okay, but we'll if you from a creative point of view, they're talking about accelerating workflows and all sorts of things using AI, which which you know a lot of people are doing, but obviously it's causing a lot of concerns around what it means for our art and what it means for our jobs. Moving on to someone else's financials, Capcom. It saw a rise in profits across all divisions for the ninth consecutive year. And this is driven by a certain Resident Evil Reququum, which has now sold 7 million units worldwide. Older Resident Evil games also sold strongly during this period. I've seen some of the ampair Dutch arts and actually Resident Evil 4 was really high and did [clears throat] really well. Overall, Capcom sold over 59 million games last

year and 49.5 million of them were from older catalog titles. Um, the firm also saw growth in its esports and media divisions due to the Devil May Cry TV series while its arcade and merchandise business also rose 12.8%. It's already started the next financial year very well because of Pragmata. That's that new IP they released. It's sold 2 million copies in 16 days. It's a new IP. It's single player game and it's a very competitive market. It may have peaked. We'll see. But um they we'll see what happens. We'll see the numbers at least in Capcom's next financial year. This is a annoying story really. The PC version of Forsa Horizon 6 leaked over the weekend just gone ahead of its May 19th release or May 15th for for premium edition players. Pirates have already cracked the game and they're sharing it online. In a statement, Playground Games said there any player caught playing the pirated version will face a ban from the entire Forsa series and even hardware bans. It's a real blow that because the game's only on PC and Xbox and Game Pass will be a big thing for it on Xbox. So,

it potentially impacts the game sales. Um, but it's doing really well in wish lists and I know there's a lot of anticipation for it, so hopefully not too much. A couple of Nintendo stories I'm going to finish on. Nintendo legend Tekashi Tzuka is retiring. Tukasan has worked on almost every major Mario game. He was there 40 years ago on Super Mario Brothers and he was the producer on Super Mario Brothers Wonder from 2023. Basically, that's the all the Mario platformers from beginning to end. He also played a major role in a bunch of other series including the first Legend of Zelda and and some Zelda games since and the Pikmin series. He doesn't get, you know, he was always Miiamoto's right-hand man, so he doesn't necessarily get, he doesn't have a uh quite the following as Miiamoto does, but he's a very significant person at Nintendo. And he is retiring. We're going to see all the Nintendo icons retire over the course of generation really. But the great thing about Nintendo is it's um people don't leave and so their expertise gets passed down to new generations and new generations and that's how you build a sustainable business that lasts generations, not just years. And finally for Nintendo, I

was really fascinated by this. Have you seen they announce a new Star Fox game? This may seem like a while ago now, but it's a really distinctive looking Star Fox game. Feels like a reboot. It's not um the game is a remake of Star Fox 64 or Lilac Wars for us in Europe, but it does feel like a reboot. It's called Star Fox. A very distinctive look. It's got a load of new stuff in it. It's going to cost a little bit less than Nintendo games normally cost. It's out on June 25th. The lead character, Fox Mloud, also showed up in the Super Mario Galaxy movie in April, so they're sort of going for a bit of relaunch for this IP. I'm really interested in it because I love if you're watching the video of this, I've got a Star Fox 64 poster behind me signed by the artist in that game. So, exciting news there from Nintendo. Right, if you enjoyed that little roundup of news, we do a version of it every week on the game Business Micro. That is just for paid subscribers. So, if you'd like to hear my take on the industry news every Monday, why not become a paid member? It also helps support the whole thing, including this show, this podcast as well. So, by all means, consider it. Um,

you don't have to, of course. But enough about that. Let's welcome our first guest. He co-founded London Venture Partners, and he backed Unity and Natural Motion and probably most famously Supercell. He is an industry veteran. He spent 26 years at EA, having joined the company in 1982. He launched various big games, including FIFA, and in fact, he featured in a big article I wrote about the making of that first FIFA game. He was the CEO of Atari for a few years. He was the VP of games at BAFTA. He has an OBBE but he doesn't do many interviews until now. I am delighted to have with us David Gardner. Hello David. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.
Now I saw you on stage at the uh BAFTAs handing out an award for um Ilka Supercell. I have to say I was surprised by the choice. Um quite quite different to previous I mean I loved it as a business journalist but quite different to previous fellowships
because it was mobile.
Yeah. I think BAFTA have underplayed

mobile and it's the only award and if you like institution that covers all the screen arts and so it's been around for a long time but I think mobile it's it's still and still feels new [laughter] even though it's half the industry.
Yeah.
And obviously so important. So I think it's good that NAFTA is obviously recognizing law. I think it's good that it sort of recognized as someone that sort of creates the environment for these games to be made as well rather than I mean there's nothing obviously the creators are the creators but sometimes that gets overlooked that you know these environments and these cultures have to come from someone that perhaps isn't the creative force behind these things. I think that's right. He and Gore EC is where you get by with Hila and he really does create an incredible environment and it was one of the I if I look back in my life I think it's one of the most enjoyable experiences of being involved in the early days we were you know early funders but really just journeying with

them helping them get connected at Apple helping them get connected in Japan these things had absolutely incredible results and they were just so nice uh as people. We even did a uh a dinner with the kind of original 10 after they had become successful and personally very financially wealthy and that's a big deal in Finland because you know the Nordics they have this kind of uh modesty around and they don't want to you know be much richer than each other and their public their tax records are public record. I don't know if you know that. You could look up your neighbors who did. I didn't know that. And dear Ila, I think he was, you know, he was reasonably successful before and I think he kind of he had like a uh an older Ferrari that he drove around. That was like his treasure uh toy and then when he became the biggest taxpayer in the history of Finland, he sold the car.

I don't switch to, you know, public transport and stuff because he just uh, you know, he became too too high profile, but the culture, so I the dinner, we kind of got those guys together and talked about how has it impacted your life. We had kind of a real human dinner about things and not so much a celebratory one, but more of a kind of reflective one. And at the end of that dinner, I thought, these are the kinds of people you want to make money. They're reinvesting it in their society. They're, you know, helping kids improve their literacy skills. They're investing in hospitals. You know, just it's the dream story. If all capitalist outcomes could be like that, we wouldn't have all of it. I hate capitalist uh protests.
Well, yeah. There's unfortunately it's the same of anything. The bad actors sort of um [clears throat]
Yes. Exactly.
Obviously, you've had despite how you look, you've had a long and illustrous gaming career. I mean I know I mean I know what it is but for the listeners obviously you were Were you employee number 17 at EA? Was that what I read?

I was employee 11.
11.
I was aged 17. So that's where the 17 comes in.
All right. Again you know right place at the right time but uh what an incredible thing to experience was a class of startup. Silicon Valley funding kind of you know games were not a big deal then were kind of literally sold in
plastic packs. the industry tried to take some lessons from music industry, record album style, packaging, artists were the big thing. So, it some of those things didn't play out as we kind of thought, but of course the games industry did play out as we thought, just took a little bit longer. Um, and now it's such a huge part of our media industry.
So, you were there 26 years. I mean, we spoke just before we pressed record. You know, you played a big role in that first FIFA game. Then you're on to Atari and what I remember about the Atari thing and I was quite early in my career at the time. You were sort of transforming into a digital business at a time when I think a lot of people were like digital is that it was like wasn't

really a thing. It was still very much a boxed industry. I think in in was it 2007208? Well, what I I thought what the value of Toro was even though the brand had not had advertising money spent on it for ages, it was the 17th most recognized brand and it carried so much positive attribute, you know, the attributes of that brand and and it' be interesting to see where it is now. It's probably most people have heard of Atari even now. I mean I think of it straight away and and I thought that would be the perfect platform for people to go onto a website type atari.com they play play play games and not ironically is what led me to invest in unity personally we didn't actually end up having the money at end quite a difficult experience I don't feel I was successful there but in the end it was a very good learning because there was a massive set of transitions happening in the games industry and it did help inform a lot of investment strategies from from that period.
Well, yeah. I mean, it might not have worked out, but I think it's like more

of the right idea, maybe at the wrong time or the wrong finances. Interesting. I had a Night Dive Studios on the um show a couple of weeks ago. Um they're they're owned by Atari now and they talk about the fact that when they used to go out there and try and get licenses they can remaster or remake um it used to be a tough conversation and now when they say the name Atari, everyone answers the phone. So, it's uh so the brand still has that power.
It does. They definitely try and it's interesting they've got a new strategy and new new leadership team now. It's very interesting.
Well, so then London Menture Partners obviously major successes with you know Supercell and that promotion all those sort of things and you've personally worked with companies like CD Project and Embracer. I know I'm missing a dozen things in that list but I guess my point is you've seen a lot and you've gone through so many different eras in this industry. Um okay, big question. How does the challenges of the past compare to what we're facing now? A lot of people in this industry are quite young. They don't necessarily go further at batch to know are we seeing something particularly different this time.

Yeah, that's a great question because uh there are a lot of familiar elements. We definitely have been through cycles and and the cycles used to be more defined by consoles hardware. So there were major improvements in performance of the underlying chips and it took a long time for those to get put into the next wave of hardware. So you'd have kind of five to six year cycles. But the majority of the market as we were talking about earlier is actually mobile and mobiles are continuously updated. So there really isn't the kind of platform cliff that uh you have on console. There are going to be some new consoles in the next couple of years. Um but um I think the challenges we've seen is that the the industry is still has a bit of indigestion from massive expansion during the co years where you know we sort of started believing that uh yeah you know all this uh all this revenue growth uh belongs to us and we'll we'll stay. I think you know we are bigger

than we were at the peak of COVID but it took a long time for a long time you know many years of low growth and some markets have shrunk and other markets have grown but we're a proper global huge $200 billion plus annual industry so it's harder now to to keep that growth rate and I think we're addicted to it and when you do your planning and you think about things you know you sort of think it's got to be up and to the right but the up and to the is a combination of dozens of smaller markets and different platforms and consumers that are changing ages and you know you have to then aggregate all that to get that simple number of 200 billion plus that's growing you know I I think the challenge with new consoles and installed bases changing is really about people's time
we are now such a big user of people's time and they have other things that they do and they have been a lot of digital challenges there used If you

were if you we always compete with our time because you know they were we would watch the boys were playing games and then they started drinking then they started going you know chasing girls and then they came back with car games and GTA you know so but that was a everything digital was you know console and PC but now our whole life is digital so now we're competing on everything whether they're watching Netflix or whether they're on Tik Tok. So that's a new challenge for the industry to figure out how to be in that sphere. I think one of the small things I know that there's an element of being a mature industry now and beforehand the growth was just natural because we were so small and now we're so big and when you're big I think there was a time when you would say games can sort of weather recessions and whether this that and the other and I think it was because the industry was very focused on a specific audience and now it's so vast those things do affect us in a way it affects every industry but while I still think opportunity is that there is still generations upon generations of people alive today that didn't grow up with games. And it's not like film and music

where everyone from 100 to whatever experiences this stuff, you know, even my generation, you know, there are people that didn't play games in the '9s and stuff. So, so I'm I always like to think that with each passing generation, the industry should still be growing from from that very very basic and assumption alone, but it's these all these other things competing.
But the industry is growing. I always like when I'm chatting with with people to say just go back to the basics. We've had our best year in the history of the industry. Why are we all so sad? [laughter]
Well, I think it's because there's a lack of money around it. I think that's part of the uh
Well, it is feeling a bit more concentrated and that is I think a charact characteristic of what you're saying, a more mature industry. I was sort of joking to my laughing and my head into my we're mature industry full of immature people. But we're purveyors of fun. Um the fund is very valuable. People spend money very differently than the other kind of fund or media industries. You know, they're relatively

shallow and broad. We're relatively narrow and very deep deepization, deep numbers of hours. The relationship of the product with the IP is, you know, very intensive compared to say
so. So I think we don't touch as many people and it's not as you don't see it in society, you know, when
it's not as ubiquitous.
Correct. Yeah. And I always talk about Dear's product too, but obviously the mega games, you know, when GTA 6 comes out, it's going to make global news and often when FIFA now FC comes out, you see you see that make an impact. But
even that, I mean, I just I just did a piece. It's actually the day we're recording this is when I'm releasing, I did an interview with Hacken Abra at IO Interactive about 007 First Light
and I was trying to say, you know, is there any is no James Bond film?
Yeah. James Bond is James Bond's missing.
We went after Game Awards.
Yeah, I was. So that triggered that whole thing at the Battle Game Awards when they showed the opening credits with David Arnold and I was like prompted me to go, hey, could you get

Patrick Gibson, he's playing Bond in the game? Could you get some of the other celebrities who are, you know, movie stars? You're in the game on Jimmy Fallon. Could you get them on Graeme Norton? Because because it is the only Bond thing coming out and it it is I've played it. It's really good. But they didn't give me a straight answer, but the answer seemed to be, "Oh, we don't want to confuse." And I'm like, "That's that ubiquitous that
Yeah, exactly. Let's just absolutely try. I think it's a I get them on your show."
I don't quite Graham Norton. I'm not quite um have that reach. Um um
you're going to upgrade your wardrobe to radical color.
Yeah, I'll work on it. I'll get there one step at a time. Um we had Owen Mahoney on last. He actually brought you up because he was talking about how he has certain way of saying things. So he referred to the VC's entry into games as being a bit of a train wreck. There are notable exceptions of which you were one of them. Do you agree with that assessment?
It's it's uh in short probably. There's it's very interesting. We obviously reflect on this a lot because we're also

trying to make sure we're doing a great job with investors money and we were one of the early ones to start with a dedicated game focused fund. I remember meeting investors or we we call them limited partners LPs and some of them said you know uh we we had bad experience investing in very sector focused funds in the past and they spoke about telecoms and green energy and things like that. I said the the issue that comes up same same issue with some of the geographically focused ones. The issues that come up is that you're heads down and focused on this one particular industry and then you are forced to select in that industry rather than selecting it against the universe of opportunities which may over or outperform the industry that you focused on. And so I sort of, you know, with my we're I like to say we're pretend VCs are really game industry people that are trying to bridge the gap between a certain type of finance and you know the creative game building and moneymaking industry of gaming and um I sort of

thought about that but then I sort of brushed off thinking they don't understand how big the games market is and we had so much early success you mentioned some of the you know companies like natural motorhood and unity and supercell and uh future play and fend And these were during the platform transition, the massive rise of mobile basically. And everyone was thinking, oh, is it going to kill console? Is it going to kill? No, it just add it. It was an added to the market. It was a market expander.
And uh unicorns were made from that and it attracted a huge amount of capital. And then of course co really upset the world. People were like, well, what are we going to be doing? Hollywood was having to shut down productions and gaming was going through the roof and no one could work remotely. So money poured in, billions and billions poured in and basically teams thought we can just hire anybody and build anything because uh you know if you'd worked at Supercell or Riot, you're going to get funded and

most investors work for the games industry. They were just kind of like you know funding any any of the names that came through. And I remember when we had one of our first mega investments, so like a h 100 million kind of capital raised, ship the game, and you know, it did like $500,000 in revenue that month, and it needed to do like 10 million. [laughter] And we sort of realized that, well, we've been on this project for 10 year, so for five years. And um it's it's it reminded me of why EA was criticized for not investing in new IP. It's like you guys just do sequels. And you realize that when you're spending 100 million on a game, it needs to work. You can't just write it off. Um because if you write it off, you you do that a few times and you're not going to be successful. And I think what we're going to be seeing and the numbers it takes a long time for the numbers to march through many many billions have gone in through VCs into

the games market. And if you just simple math if you need to make roughly you know five times your investment if you think how much has gone in seven or eight billion you have to have 40 billion in exits and we've had a few billion here and there. M I think we're going to see that on an aggregate basis venture has overinvested in gaming.
Yeah.
And that will of course correct because it it you know it does money is like water. It finds the cracks right. It's going to find where the best margins are, where the best rituals are. It may not be in games. It's also you know it just it may revert more to more traditional funding models. We're seeing few things that are different. A lot of VC industry has gone to not exactly project finance, but some kind of user acquisition finance or other kind of more debt-like instruments because they're they want to get their capital back faster. I'm not sure it's any less risky. I think that's one of the issues with that approach, but it's it's it's

trying to adapt, which is another sign it's not working all that well. Yeah, Owen was talking, I think it was Owen, it might have been Matthew B. I can't remember which one it was. We're talking about how you don't really know in games if you got a hit until basically it's here, right? Whereas other industries, you get better early indicators and we've got play tests, but it's not it's part of it. Is that what perhaps a lot of non-games VCs perhaps don't fully comprehend?
Well, and that's why the money's been tight in the last couple of years because everyone's just switched to Okay, show me the metrics. So that but that that's basically the response to what you just said which is true. You don't know and we of course we did all kind of play testing this you know these companies that have raised a huge amount of money your play testing and I remember we used to pay people to like professionally review our games just you know to get to get a mock review and all you know it just never it lines up with reality because there's so many other things you need to know what other things are happening in the industry at

the same time you need to have a good clear runway. So all those things um factor into how commercially successful something's going to be and uh yeah just just kind of going back the cycles are too long. I mean venture can fund losses for a very long time but they know the underlying thing works. If you look at something like uh Uber, right? Uber was lossmaking for I don't know how long a long time, 10 years maybe, but it was a well understood piece of math. [snorts] The disruption against the sort of taxi industry and the ability to outsource the drivers and then build the platform and connect the consumers kind of data was just overwhelmingly convincing that that was going to be a profitable business. It was just a question of when they needed it to be and if they could raise billions and billions which they could from private markets to put Uber in all major cities around the world quickly. That was the choice. It wasn't not sure if it's going to work.

Yeah.
And that that's the problem with gaming. You really don't know. I mean that is a fair criticism and that's why people have switched to other kinds of financing products and just saying hey once you get the metrics you know you Turkey has exploded in game companies they have true
they have a pretty good ecosystem now money is available in Turkey the government's all over supporting it all the VCs are watching Turkish startups and so if you if there's a signal that something's working money brushes in I you saw the loom u guys exit you know to scopy Yeah,
they just shipped the game at exited for a billion.
It's what Strauss Selnick said, you know, he never says you need to make a good game or you need to make a next game. You need to make a hits is he loves saying that and he because there's a difference and I think obviously you talk about VCs VCs
there is a difference. Sorry to interrupt you there. It depends on who is funding it. We need hits in our VC business model but a profitable game.
Yeah. Well, yes. If you've started it yourself and you selfunded it and you're making a million bucks a year in profit,

woohoo. I mean,
you're you're gonna be really happy with that.
Yeah.
Strauss is not going to be happy because he's got a got a public company needs, you know, he needs billion dollar franchises.
Yes. And but you talk about disruption and that's the other thing that you want. But problem with an artistic industry, that disruption could be hard to
Oh,
it's it's almost hard to predict.
Yeah. We're art and science side by side, right? Yeah. where tech and creativity. I mean, it's a it's a fun nightmare. [laughter]
Have you have you had to diversify beyond sort of games?
Yes. I mean, actually, I was I should have brought that up because we we're doing still consumer products, but one of the trends um not just in Turkey, we have we have a a UK company called Rule that's building a finance training game. It sounds kind of boring, but when you say finance, but it's toward Gen Zed and it's gamification around how you're spending your money. It link it to your bank account on open banking. Your

transactions show up. You categorize it through a fun interface and then it's trying to teach you how to save money and basically organize your spending. I say control, but make sure you're making deliberate spending to say, you know, you want to spend, you know, six quid at Starbucks every day, but or would you like to put 100 pounds away a month for uh savings or something like that so you can have a holiday? So, that's interesting. Some of some of the team are former game makers and and that's kind of where we're following the talent. Um
I see
that that's what we're seeing because it's more blue ocean. I mean, it's, you know, a thousand games a day are being released. It's a it's a red ocean. That's super hard.
Yeah,
we we are still doing some games, but you have to be an extraordinary team.
Oh wow. I was going to say be [laughter]
I was going to ask is there any reason to be optimistic about sort of external investment in video games or or is is the industry on its own a little bit, but that last sentence suggests um maybe not.
I would say it's compared to a few years

ago, it's it's extremely difficult. There's too much capital going in. uh there are too few slots that can succeed and we know that data you mentioned Matthew B but there's a lot of data out there that roughly 92% of the revenue is on games that are 6 years or older so
if 8% of the money spent every year is on a new game that means the market that you're competing for when you launch a new game is super competitive um but you know we see it uh we we were at that boards uh together we saw Expedition 33 do well. I mean that took a long time.
Yeah.
Um to to make beautiful job and well all well you know welld deserved but how many of those were there that year you know? Well, I can't work out if I'm seeing this as the model that's emerging or not, but it does seem that new IP like Exhibition 33, like Dispatch, like Peak seems to be coming from,

I'm not going to say even the indie space, this sort of step up that that double A space, which I doesn't really mean much today. But, uh, in terms of quality, but I think it means something in terms of budget coming from sort of that middle ground. And then
you they find their success there and then maybe they can they can move into the AAA space. there's more money that can be invested. You you've got a franchise now. It's a bit more bankable, a bit more reliable. It feels like that is potentially the model that's sort of emerging. Um but I the thing is with the video game industry, we talk about what's going on now. But the reality is all the changes that happening at companies, all the where the money's been going into, we're not going to see that pay off for four or five years.
I think these long long long developments, it's not even so much the money where the the mega games are costing hundreds of millions, right? And you know, [clears throat]
I'm on the board of CD Project.
Yeah. Those guys, wow, are they good.
Yeah,
they care. They their standards, they're super high excellence. I mean, they are kind of market makers around their franchises. But it is an incredible

human effort of hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of people and an equal amount of dollars um that take, you know, such a long time. And I do worry and partly I'm coming from the very you know the only strength a startup has really is being nimble and you know kind of being able to move fast with a new idea and I do worry for the industry if we continue to have these megalong projects. What if you can build something? This is a bit like what China's doing in the car industry. You know why do you need a 5year development cycle? they're they're working on two-year development cycles. Now, in the old days, the output, the quality wasn't that good, but they've gone through so much learning. Um, now you're like, oh, actually, the car is better. It was faster. Chief may or may not be one of the kind of characteristics we look for. I don't think I think you know values in games are a little bit different but um

I think with AI and the small teams you that is the new business model at least for a new IP you you get in you get some beach real estate you start the flywheel moving you get your community you get your cash flow coming in because people are spending and then you need to go big with, you know, you don't have to have a mega team. You have to have more and more AI agents running to help your development be productive.
It's an interesting I, this is a really very niche example, but I think there were bigger ones, but because of the type of games I used to play, it makes me think I think of Time Splitters. Do you remember that shooter series?
Yeah.
The first game of that they made in a year and um they set the studio up and did the whole thing. Yeah.
Um and they made it they just got the core multiplayer game. That's what it was. So they went, "Let's just do this PlayStation 2 launch title. Let's not try and confuse ourselves with stories

or let's just do this." And then people liked it. Oh, there's something here.
But that's probably also what the bandwidth of that team get.
Oh, yeah.
They had an achievable set of goals and stuck to it.
And then once they had something that was like, "Oh, we've got something here. We can now and then the second game, this is something I used to think back in the day, the second game was always what the first game wanted to be, right? Um but but there wasn't the budget, the time or capacity to deliver it. And then the third game sometimes can go off the rails because they try and make everything bigger and better and it's because there's many examples of that even into the into the 2010s.
And I do wonder sometimes if if just focus on doing one or two things really well, don't worry about everything else. Save that for the second game which you can then turn around quicker because you built the foundation of the first game. But um I guess DLC's changed that model a little bit. But I I don't know. I think that's a better way. Well, and I think that is why or that that that kind of forever game, that's part of why you get these franchises that and audiences stick with. I also

see that, you know, you learn the user interface, the combat skills, what or whatever the genre of the game, you learn what it takes to progress in the game. And uh it's annoying to throw all that stuff away and start over these days.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's just how my time gets allocated now. Don't know why I'm even bringing this up, but I was on I forgotten the name of the guy. I was on Sunday brunch about three, four years ago talking about Comic-Con. It was a really odd moment in my my life, but I found myself on the sofa at Sunday brunch and um was it Tim Lovejoy? I forgot. Is that the guy I'm thinking of after when the camera stopped running? He said, "I used to love video games." And I Oh, did I? Did you? Or what were you into? I was completely surprised. He seemed baffled by it. I used to play Hitman. I was like, "Wow, I didn't expect that." Right. And he said, "Yeah, I love Hitman. I really enjoyed it." But then they released a second one. And I thought, I'm not doing that again. And he [laughter] stopped then it and he just went and he got he and for him he was annoyed they'd made a sequel. But I guess
I guess he felt like you know I finished it. It's all done and then they make me do more work.

Yeah. Yeah. And I and I I wonder if that sort of maybe if it was a live service back then it would have uh it would have just been a continuation of what it was. I don't know. I don't know why what you said triggered that memory. Um what other areas of the industry today that you see is what other areas that are more investable today? You mentioned Turkey which I thought was an interesting one.
Yeah, there is Turkeyy's got a special thing going. You know, we were we did a lot of investing in Finland during the original uh platform arrival of uh mobile there. There was there were some attributes of the fact that Nokia had been up there and all that stuff, but it was they always had a lot of skill up in Finland. Um but I think the arrival of digital distribution that meant that that small teams could suddenly have global outcomes and they could kind of continue with that but that's kind of continues to be a strong geographic center of course but the new the all the new successes have come from Turkey in mobile and I think it was Zingga that

put them on the map because they bought I can't remember which they bought first if it was Rolex or Peak But you know they they bought one and then they but eventually people one one was over a billion dollars and people were like what a unicorn in Turkey and uh the the the you know everyone the energy just shifted there and there I think there I'm told that the culture the the development culture is different in Finland everyone's very collaborative and in Turkey people are very competitive and The competitive nature means that a a design a game design team ends up shipping their game having a lot of success but the company acrews that success and the team says well I I built the game. So then they leave and they create their own company and then they have success and then like I built that game. So you kind of get you get what is more typical. You get this cascading of

startups uh with people who are um kind of product that then become CEOs and hacks businesses. I haven't seen that so much in Finland because there so hormones they all stay together and they know they build their games and then the people that leave might have been you know not as good as they might have been fired and then they trying to get uh so you don't kind of get as quite the same multiplication in efforts up there. Um but Turkey has the magic formula right now. There's low uh low costs of grinding. So teams can raise a two or three million and go for years and they just hunt hunt throw it away if it doesn't work. Get back in the game. They're relentless. They're very very good work ethic. They don't want to give up. Of course I'm speaking lots of generalizations here, but it's amazing how how it works. and

then they get signal and then the industry is tuned. Now if you've get signal there's certain KPIs on your um you know kind of your day 30 uh and the rorowaz on your marketing spend people are in there um funding things and even the Turkish government uh will provide uh if you'd like enough money for the startups to get signal but then the big money from global funds will pour it. Uh so they've really set it up well. Uh very genre specific, very obviously in the casual zone, but uh that is of course what people on mobile are playing in in the west.
You do find that happens, you know, like in the UK, we still make mostly driving games, I feel. Um and um Finland, you know, big with their shooters. Frank Gabau was on the show last year and he talked he talking about the Turkish stuff. So that's sort of the geographical where yeah areas become

quite investable. Are there any other like genres or technology or something that's becoming more
I I sort of think there innovations can be a business models so free to play obviously [clears throat] like that. Um there could be genre innovations. So we had a lot of mashups of people trying to put different genres together. Uh that drove growth. I'm hopeful to see that AI is an enabling technology for a different kind of player experience. Uh but we don't I mean it's not going to be a more lifelike chat bots, but that is of course the easy thing to do. Uh so I'd love to just see you know what is an expression of gaming where we look at it and go wow, you know, how how is that? Uh, I'm not sure I'm inventive enough to describe it, but yeah, I think it's going to feel like magic. I think it's going to be something like we partly do

something as a player and then the AI snaps that to a game flow and a logic that works and is fun. Uh, if music were an analogy, you know, you might hum a few notes and then it will create this symphony for you. I think that could be pretty magical. I I do worry everybody says, "Oh, custom game, you know, you it's the whole deck and you'll just go in and say, I want a game about chunking in the forest." And it will, okay, David, shall I use your image? You know, 30 seconds, your game is built and you go play it. I think one of the things is gaming is social now and we want to be able to say did you see level 39 and how did you get past the boss character and I did this and if you can no longer have those common discussions I think it's going to diminish uh the social experience of gaming so I I think we're we're just fantasizing about things so we don't it hasn't worked yet so we're just trying to throw things out there

yeah I do think where AI might be is that is our sort of UGC space Roblox has effectively become our YouTube in a way and And I think and I think the ability for young people in particular to be able to make their own games and play with their friends is is quite a is quite a cool thing um to do. I I generally think Roblox is so much like the playground cuz watching kids play make up games of themselves in the playground. That's what they're doing in the digital space. Yeah. Um I think that's interesting. But I as as you say we had Owen when Owen was on the show he was talking about he thinks AI is going to be the biggest transformation in video games but also he didn't know how. I mean, if he did, he he'd invest in it or make it happen, [laughter] right?
It's already doing what you were talking about with the double A on the budget, double A budgets, not double A production quality. It's irresistible to put in workflows and uh kind of make things happen super fast. And I don't know, like Expedition 33 lost some old words because they used AI.
They had some placeholder textures they used AI for and they left one in or something like that which they then patched out.

I mean, we don't pixeledit the things. We use, you know, we use Maya or we use Photoshop. I mean, of course, we're going to have tools. I don't understand what I think it's a very noisy Well, it depends on how far you want to zoom out um in terms of like is AI going to ruin humanity or is it going to be, you know, the the enabling thing that allows us to have nirvana?
I think the term has been used to describe everything. I think about it in relation to my own my own job. And I've talked about this on the show before, but I I do these shows, I do these podcasts, and this system that I'm using now will transcribe this conversation for me, right? That's an AI tool, right? And it that's existed for years, AI transcription tools, but that's what it will do. And I will take that transcription and it won't be right. It'll get things wrong. It will get names wrong and I'll have to go through it manually and fix it. But it does speed up my ability to transcribe stuff. And then and when I upload this to the Substack system that I use, it will automatically choose clips of interesting things that we said on the thing and it'll go, "Hey, you should put these out as Tik Tok clips or Instagram reels or whatever." And I'll go through it. I thought, "Ah, not quite right."

But and I'll edit it and I'll go that's actually the better bit and that's the better bit. But honestly it t took me hours making Tik Tok clips before. Now it takes me minutes because of these tools. But then I could if I wanted to um go on Google or whatever chat system I could use and go what question should I ask David Gardner about you know and it will come out with a load of okay questions and but the quality of the product will go down if I was to do that because I I listened to your fourth curtain podcast. I I reminded myself of your history. I I sort of looked at the state of the market. You know these are things that I do proper research before those interviews and I think
you're a proper journalist obviously.
Yeah. Well, you know, but that's the thing with AI. A lot of the stuff can help speed things up, but it doesn't actually make anything better. I've yet to see an AI tool that actually makes the product better. It can make you go faster, and as long as you've got somebody with the experience, the knowhow to go in there and fix the sort of midquality AI production, then you're fine.

That's a very good way to describe it of if you're heading in a bad direction, you get there quicker. [laughter]
Yeah. which of so many things we're trying to test to figure out we think we know we need to test. So that that for the back to the kind of big question about BC and gaming that's the potential saving technology because if we can compress getting to this is going to work from 5 years down to one year which is how it used to be in mobile. One of the reasons VC and we made a lot of money in that in that in that era and VCs that jumped in was it was half a million dollars to make a mobile game and you needed to make six of them to find one that worked. So $3 million would get you something that would make you 1050 $100 million and then if you got really lucky like Supercell got multiple billion dollar things uh you know that that creates a foundational company. Now, uh, yeah, if we can kind of get roughly down to similar time, you

know, half under a million dollars to figure out does it work, you can fund teams, you can you can afford a few million dollars risk because the reward is going to be $100 million franchise. So, if you can do that, uh, then then the game is back on.
I've seen so many pitches that more or less is is a threeperson sixperson team with full AI stack or whatever that's going to be different than a week but you know the tech that that's that's part of the problem but then then you end up exacting back to your point which is but can they put the quality the individuals are they still any good because the AI will not get them to it'll just get them quicker to someplace whether it's a good place or a bad place we don't know you still have the fundamental my work as a as an investor is still to figure out is that team going to be able to to nail it? Are they going to be able to understand what they want to build, what their customers are going to love? Um,

and you know, can they even get along and can they get along with each other during the journey? To me,
will there ever be another superale
for? Well, what do you mean by that? Do you meet another multi-billion dollar games company that started from nothing and became very successful or
I guess that's that is what I mean.
Well, for sure I'm not going to be the guy that says we don't we can close the patent office because everything's been invented.
I'm I'm certain uh that it will happen. Uh exactly where the and what the genesis of that is, you know, for Supercell you could say the genesis became mobile. It started out on Facebook, but they quickly figured out that Facebook wasn't the right place. Mobile was. Um I I think I think uh I'm sure we will and it may even be you know back on

um well I we PC I one of the things is they they wanted to build a company and a lot of people just want to build a game and that's the other thing we have to filter for as an investor. A lot of people are just trying to build their game and they don't really have a vision for a company or culture and and that piece and so um that's ultimately what you need to build something big and longevity
and I don't recommend that everyone do that. I mean most a lot of people should just build games and I think we have we'll we'll end up with other financial models for those people to build their game and that'll be fine. I'm conscious of the time. I've taken up ages and it's could have genuinely talked for ages about some of these subjects. I'm probably one of these subject machine and make it so quick.
I have a I have a really good editor in Richard Wilcox who makes very good at making everyone sound good, especially me. I'm very grateful uh for it. [laughter] Um

what is there any what gives you reason for optimism? What is what do you think what makes you uh I I we talked a little bit about you know concerns and the challenges of time and we talked a lot about that but what gives you hope?
Well maybe I'm a bad person to ask that of because I think I trend toward hope. I I I like to learn new things. I think I think but if I go back to the basics and really this is what I still remember. I could probably get you know get into character and recite. But I worked for Trip Hawkins who started Electronic Arts and he was a master thinker and storyteller. And the thing he said which is still playing out. He said the reason games are going to be big is because mammals love to play and they learn through play. And we now have for the first time something that allows us to create

digital play and it will be the biggest thing humans have ever done. And I think that uh we are again that the sorry to harp on about the boring AI topic but it's boring because everyone says it but it is I don't know if anyone else has had this young but I remember when I first played with the computer when I was a kid and my mind was blown by interacting with this thing and we had these very you know kind of fake things like uh uh we we had uh Eliza which you know you chatted with and he chatted back with you. I could say 10 different things, but it was super exciting and it was motivating and I've lived off that for 40 years. And then a couple years ago, again, thanks to the games industry, you know, and we have Demeis and to thank at uh at Google and all of these other guys that did these amazing things, Ch. And I remember having this moment with the computer

and it had that alive feeling. It was it could you could be imprecise. You could be in the zone. It could kind of figure out what you were trying to ask it and it could give you a great answer. Of course, it elucinates. It does a lot of bad things as well. It was just that moment I thought this is the most exciting thing since personal computing started and we are obviously just getting started and it's just an incredible time to have all of this game history all of this new technology that's coming and [clears throat] uh and tons of money because people are want to you know get this to work uh we are going to have to wash through all the bad investments like we did with VR and sports and uh web free and everything else, but humans are like, well, they're either either ultimately so greedy, but ultimately so optimistic. They all keep coming back for more and then we will get there and get something amazing.
Oh, brilliant. I was going to ask what advice you give to entrepreneurs setting

up their video games today. But I feel like this whole conversation has been that
don't give up. Um, but pace yourself, right? Um, but not not every idea is a PC fundable idea, but you have to find the right funding. It might even be your own money. It might be um you maybe need to work for a company, but um yeah, I just say don't give up because it it's
it's super hard.
David, thank you so much for your time. This has been really really interesting. Um I love I love the fact that you're still continuing to drive the industry forward now for I how I don't know how long you've been in the industry. uh 26 years trying to work it out. Don't do the maths.
Well, yeah, since uh basically since Well, I was selling computers from 1980. So, since since 1980, I'd say.
Wow. Well, thank you so much, and I'm glad you're still doing it.
Thanks, Chris.
Thank you to David there. It's a tough job bridging the worlds of VCs with video games, but he's not the only one

doing it. One such company is Griffin Gaming Partners, which has just announced a special opportunities fund, a $100 million fund that provides venture capital investment in gaming for projectbased financing. Basically, they'll fund games and take a share of the games revenue. That's instead of taking an equity in the studio, which a lot of other VC funds do. They've already invested in 15 games. They've named nine of them, but there's some unannounced ones as well, including a sci-fi grand strategy game based on a popular book and TV franchise. I'm interested to hear what that will be. The managing director of the fund is a chap called Tim Bender, who's also the CEO of publisher Hooded Horse. Hooded Horse is best known for Manalords, but they've had a number of hits actually. And Hooded Horse is also publishing some of these Griffin bat games as well, but but not all of them. And in the press release, Griffin MD and co-founder Peter Leven talked about the trans media potential of the fund. So, it sounds good. It sounds interesting. And I was able to have a quick chat with Tim Bender to understand more about it. Here he is. Hello, Tim. welcome to the show.

Hi, I'm glad to be here.
So, this fund, which is a good thing. Um, I think money is a good thing in this industry. How did it how did it come about?
Well, I started working with Griffin a little while ago and we started exploring various things in indie games and we've done a few deals. Um, like there we acquired Play Digis, which is a porter of premium PC games to mobile. um they did like Loop Hero and Subnotica and uh Don't Starve and Dead Cells and such. And so we we've been pursuing this in all these sort of like indie game related things. And then we realized like a new structure would work very well here because there are so many promising studios that either they're not set up in such a way which makes sense to do equity investment or there's not enough being invested to justify all the bells and whistles that go along with equity investment or the studio doesn't want equity investment or the studio isn't ever going to exit because the studio is simply going to aim to exist forever making games in much the state it always is. I mean, there's so

many ways an indie game studio could not be a fit for equity investment. Some will be, but there's so many ways they could not be. And by creating a new way of doing things, we're now able to invest in really, really promising projects from studios that aren't a fit for equity investment, but have a great game that needs funding and that could be mutually beneficial because there's potential to make some money investing in them. There's potential to help them make a great game that is going to do wonderful things for players. And I think from a VC perspective as well, like it's still risky, but isn't the opportunity here that you can potentially get capital back faster as well? Isn't there some is there benefits from the VC side as well? Right.
I think that yeah, that's absolutely right in terms of you're not waiting for a very very long time to get the capital back at the end. Instead, it's going to flow basically from a leak and you invest in games maybe a year, two years, 3 years from release in and different times. I mean different stages. There's promising projects that are further out, promising projects that are closer in, and you know, they start generating returns at a much faster rate than we would in equity, hoping for an eventual

exit.
You talk about share of game revenue.
Yes.
What what sort of share are we talking about?
It can vary greatly [clears throat] because it really depends on how much the game needs and how much has already been invested because what's fair in terms of percentages is going to be very very different based on their circumstances, right? Especially with no recoup terms. There's no term that recovers all the money right away or [clears throat] anything like that. It's instead it's flat percentages. So if you really think about it, the flat percentage of a studio, let's say a studio needs 200,000, they've already invested 2 million of their own money or a student needs $200,000 and that's most of the development budget or a project that is now needing $2 million instead of $200,000 and in any state of how much what that represents in terms of the total. These are all going to lead to very different percentages. The one common thing is is always a minority percentage because in the end this should always be something that is less than 50% always be the minority share and that could be very low percentage or

it could be a bit of a higher percentage but it should be the minority share of it because the idea here is to participate alongside to leave the studio fully incentivized to leave them with all the cash flow that they need to continue to invest in the game post-release and to make the game as best as it can be. So always a minority share but with the exact term differing vary greatly based on what's fair by the particular product's needs and what went into the project before we're involved.
Okay. So what's the connection between Griffin and Hooded Horse?
So uh there is I guess no formal connection in the sense that Griffin is not invested in a divorce. Hooded horse has no institutional investors only individuals. But I guess the connection runs through me and that I work at both places and that we found a lot of projects to do together. So the beginning of this and a natural start of this is Hooded Horse sees a lot of projects. Hood horse as a publisher can take care of those projects and so some of the first ones that you invested as the fund got started were also Hooded Horse published games. Um we knew them well. We knew they would be good

investments. One has released Menace and that went phenomenally well and is showing great returns for them already. So, it made for an ability to know some projects that getting capital in would be helpful for, but it's definitely not intended to be any sort of uh long-term focus that stays there. Instead, the fund is intended to invest in all sorts of indie games. In fact, I would say that a major motivation for me is that whereas with Hooded Horse, Hooded Horse is um so in Hooded Horse, you know, we're very focused on strategic and tactal games. Uh, and then I see a bunch of other games personally that I think are very very promising and I'd love to help the developers out and I'd love to do something to help uh to make them possible. Um, but we can't do in Horse because I don't New Horus needs to stay a specialty indie publisher in its area of expertise. But this is a way that the other promising projects that I see I can also try to help and have an avenue for doing it. And that's really, you know, something that I personally enjoy.
Oh, great. It's certainly obviously great news for developers at the moment

looking for for funding. Are there any particular areas that you're looking at? Are there any sort of particular opportunities that you've identified?
I mean, I think are broadly open to all uh all interesting indie games. It has no genre focus. There are going to be some genre tendencies naturally because every time you're looking at a game, in order for [clears throat] the fund to continue to succeed and to continue to exist and to have a huge funds that go into things, it has to perform well. And so there are genre realities to performance expectations. They're not rigid though. Like the uh I think it's it's a big mistake to apply them rigidly. They're more like tendencies and you're always on the lookout for the exceptions. The thing that maybe this genre is regarded as something that you know has more difficulty, but this game is going to do really really well in that and it's offering something special that it really doesn't matter what genre it is. So, I would say there's probably some genre tendencies um that reflect the market, but in the end, it really is genre agnostic. It's just about the expectations of success.

I always get the impression that VCs, they like to disrupt, right? And if you look at some of the successes that we've had that have come from sort of smaller studios, they are um often games in genres that may be underrepresented or may may not have been done for a while or done in a different way. I guess that's the thing you got to find, right?
I think that's absolutely right on doing it in a different way. Um, innovation is so critical to why people are attracted to a game. If we take the example of of of the one that's released so far that they've invested in Menace, u Menace is a turn-based tactical game sort of sandbox open world mercenary RPG. And these are things that have been done before, right? There are other games like this, but it is truly innovative in how it does it. It models the ballistics. you know, when you're firing, it's not just roll the dice to see if you hit the guy. It's like it's modeling the ballistics all the bullets. It's doing an accurate representation of what suppression means in terms of combat. It's trying to reflect sort of a greater reality has like armor piercing or characteristics of different weapons.

Um, it's truly innovative in its genre and I think that's part of why it was so successful and it did so well at launch and why it is going to be so successful in the long term. So I think innovation is truly important because in the end players want innovative games and in the end everything is about serving what players want
and what levels of budget are we talking about here? I know the fund has 100 million but is there a limit of what you will invest in in budget terms?
I don't think there's a hard limit but there is a range in which most everything is going to fall into and a range in which a lot of things will fall into. So very normal for this fund would be an investment in the, you know, 1 to two or 2.5 million range. Um, that's very normal. But there's also plenty of investments for smaller games because it really is about the size of the game, the amount in proportion to which it represents. There's going to be some investments that are much smaller, only 100,000, 200,000 or something. Because if the game is promising from a very small dev, even a solo dev project, then

that makes sense. And there are going to be investments and there have been investments that are above that amount too for a very very promising studio in the right circumstance. So, I would say that probably most will be between say 800,000 and 2 million or 700,000 and 2 million or something, but there's going to be a lot in the lower there's going to be plain lower run plenty that go above um because in the end it's really about what's promising there. And you don't want to you don't want to do a number of things, right? You don't want to take a solo dev or a twoerson team or even three or four person team that can do it for a couple hundred thousand say like, "Oh, let's make your budget a million now." because that actually can ruin projects, right? That's not usually the way to do things. Um there there's usually a context where things seems to perform and then there are teams that are make something very promising that do potentially need um a bit more, but the tendency is that this is something that you know is is going to mostly be in the center of that range because there's a lot of promising uh projects

to do in that range.
And so what's the trans media element to this? Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely something that we're excited about the possibilities of and that are going to be explored. Um Peter Leven um [clears throat] you know one of my partners there is very very involved in all this and has wonderful insights on how to handle it and looking at the various um various other ways in which we can support the developers is extremely important and one of those is in those connections in in the trans media elements. There is also of course a level of advice and support that we provide generally uh through our team you know talking them through various things about pricing and market decisions and hiring decisions staffing decisions and all that. So there there is a sort of broader amount of support that goes along with investing that that we think can be quite helpful and certainly trans media is is a big part of that.
Okay. Well I'm running out of time Tim but I'll ask one more question. How can developers get involved? So, just duke up the Griffin Gaming Partners website and then scroll down and you will find a button there that that gives you the

correct email and just email in the game. Um, generally speaking, it's just email it in and and and the team will take a look. We'll be glad to take a look.
Brilliant. All right, Tim, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, David, as well. That's it for me today. Next week, we chat with the CEO of Hasbro, Chris Cox, about the company's $1 billion investment in the video game space. We've got a few big interviews coming up actually that I'm really excited about, including at the game business live where we've got EA, Jason Rubin, and Matthew B joining us. If you want to watch these live interviews, go check out the gamebus.com for more details on how to get tickets. That's also where you can become a subscriber to us if you're not already. That is most of our podcasts are free. In fact, the only thing that's not free is our micro podcast that we put out on a Monday. Until that micro and that Hasbro interview, I hope you enjoy today's show and I'll see you back here next week.