Skybound | IP Licensing & Publishing in Video Games

[Music] hi everybody today we're talking with Skybound the company founded by the creator of The Walking Dead or Robert Kirkman starting what The Walking Dead the company has evolved and now represents over 30 comic book titles and creators the company also licenses these properties to multiple entertainment platforms including video games what you'll see in the video coming up are two interviews the first is with Dan Murray who is a president of Skybound Interactive as well as CEO of sky bound stories and Ian Howe who is a CEO of sky bound games we'll discuss the various operating companies under Skybound the overall business strategy and how IP licensing for games works the second

interview is with Cordy Rison who is the VP of production at sky bound and we'll talk more more in depth with respect to how sky bound works with videogame licensees and so with that let's take it to Dan and Ian right now everybody I am here at Skype young and Marie you know how I thought we just start by first having you guys introduce yourselves just you know very very quickly and talk about kind of what you do here it's not about yeah sure so yeah my name is Dan Murray I have two roles here now but I'm president Skype I'm interactive as well as CEO of a new business venture here Skype called Skype on stories which means basically I had a lot of licensed products that are balanced with different partners but we're also doing more internal development where we call Co development actually studios around narrative gaming

space yeah hi opening and he'll and IMC strikeout games which is a relatively new entity over the sky kind of umbrella and we are building operation and just get more high-level picture in terms of sky down overall so Dan you mentioned sky down interactive Skype out stories you mentioned you know Skype out games are there other sort of operated divisions under sky bound and you know what what are those different operator traditions working on yellow sky down is a media company I had the vision for Skype on from the beginning was always to build a media company around the Creator now that creator doesn't have to necessarily just be a writer it can be a game development company as well so it's just thinking of where does the inception of an idea come from and who's the author of that and trying to empower

that creative idea across multiple mediums and then the different divisions and Skybound on the game side it's just a reflection of that so if you think of how games division looks like inside of a big media company yeah we're not reinventing the wheel there there's usually a licensing division there's a publishing division and then there's a studios division we have a little bit of a different take on what our studios division will look like which is sort of what I talked about around Skype on stories which is story based in general Kiki tell me a little bit more about on the game side in terms of the type of employees and like the size of that business what does that look like currently sure you know there's because we have three different components there's some we do have some staff that crosses over between the different divisions and some that don't the the ones that do are usually related to the production when it comes to

managing external parties and also Brad directors when it comes to again managing most of the Yankees with external partners as well when we think about what are the internal teams that we're building those are sort of carved out very specific to the games themselves on my side excuse me directed commercially face so more than one or two yeah but also quite a number of operational people as well involved in taking a game over that kind of that last 10% of its journey to release so through submission to third-party localization QA next cetera so managing that process working with our external development part and manage that process and then we also have staff that handle our relationships with retailers and distribution partners

around the world but also with digital retail partners as one so that we have radio Minister of commercial operations and stuff we're ready the only days of building an organization so it's gonna change it evolve as the company grows yeah and then the stories I know we're starting with all the product yeah specific to mobile you know we've got the new team people that are both you know a production standpoint as well as business intelligence analytics project management that are very well versed in the mobile ecosystem and then in the policy with the PC console business we have other folks versus in that sort of how those different skill sets but in factory the different categories and then you mentioned there's like IP license inside of the business you know this sort of self-published inside of this include a bell inside of the business could you talk to me about on the IP licensing

side and you know mobile gaming is one of the most competitive industries in the world there's been sort of an increasing focus of IP licensing throughout the industry yeah but for the people in our audience you may not be familiar with like how to get a premier IP such as Skype and kind of you know manages could you talk about how that IP licensing side how does it work you know in terms of like that the type of deal structure and then how would people even reach out to you to try and license something yeah so it definitely depends on where it's coming from and what the IP is obviously you know with the house of the walking dead so the Walking Dead is our most well established commercial IP and it's also the one that's draws the most demand so it has sort of a different flavor from a deal side and because of you know there's a competitive field there and and resources that we're looking for half measure out to that and we have to be

fair about all of our partners we tried to take a pretty comprehensive view with the Walking Dead when he came as the licensing it started obviously with telltale and that was the first licensed game at Sky mount and that turned out to be a pretty good relationship a good partnership he fought by the ears I think the difference there is that so my background before I came to Skybound is I was on the game development side I ran this is foundation 9 studios and we made a lot of games about 1200 people a lot of licensed games so when I came in and saw the success that Skype I was having with that relationship with telltale that was the blueprint for how we wanted to approach the conversations from the beginning which was how do we work are closely on the development side as a licensed or and that comes in many

different shapes obviously as a company like ours that started by a writer we have a lot of narrative chops and we've had those and so that's usually where we mean in the most that's where it comes to how do you sort of create a story that you need to the property and they can be done in many different ways in different types of games that you're creating tale tell that relationship was very pure because that's a narrative story driven game which is more closely aligned to a television series than it is a traditional game with lots of different systems so in that case Robert and David Albert the co-founder of Skybound work closely with the telltale folks to introduce a television production model and bring in writers that they new to the process and that was someone innovative at the time of Miriam television productions that goes into a gaming process but I think it's

that's an example of how the conversation started started it was the picture of creative and commercial when it comes to something as big as The Walking Dead because we know that we have to try to want to find partners that have the resources to be able to deliver exceptional experiences when we move outside The Walking Dead we know we've looked at creative teams and we've done a lot of different games with different independent studios with most of our licensed deals have actually been done directly with the people who are making the content the exception being with Scully when we did the Walking Dead murder survival for mobile right we looked at mobile free-to-play in a different view which is you really need a company that can you know basically reach as many users as possible in order to sustain a free-to-play business over time but even then Mosconi they embraced our

philosophy of working directly on the creative development side and they actually empowered us to work with the developer right you go try to build you know a turn-based strategy game into something that felt has a strong narrative spine to it I saw that it felt authentic to the universal and just in terms of like how these just I guess two questions in terms of the deal structure either I assume it's typical sort of they come in the middle in different leather heads that you know there's usually and that's III look at deals as as you know there they are they're just like they're just letters you know there's minimum guarantees there's advances there's sometimes there's platform exclusivity to negotiate around there's rep shares in the back end there's production services when we actually try to think about how do we apply more sort of a code or sort of co-development pieces to the equation

but all those things really come out of the creative conversation first right so there has to be a strong creative reason to try to build a relationship and then sometimes it's a strategic one as well where we see like a new category in gaming emerging and the lequip will take more risk here some of the levers change when you look at the more competitive levers then sometimes the business part of the conversation you know you tends to also you know weigh more heavily into some of the early early discussions and then what are the bigger concerns like from a licensing perspective nasai around the bread approvals process how does that typically work here I mean look we have we always have a production executive that works closely with the team that does weekly calls we try to move away from just you know our intention is to move away from being an

approval organization and much more of a partner where we're working alongside the creation and the development of the game so that those approval processes which are we're always going to have approval was built in taking agreement because we have to protect the rights creator so our responsibility as a media company built around creators is to protect that career right and to make sure that you know that we have clear visibility and what's being made with their property that said we're also try to be very flexible with the studios and developers that work with traditionally a lot of approval processes coming out of large media organizations but as I mentioned when I worked at foundation 9 I saw over and over again a lot of those developers that we that were part of our team struggled often because they were being micromanaged by third parties not necessarily the creative entity that

built the product in the first place so we're trying to eliminate as much of that middle ground and really direct conversations with the teams to try to solve problems wherever they might be and then the approvals process they come in there's always there's always gates that we know that we need to hit and those that are built into the schedule into the timeline and for us talking about schedules is always usually where the every call starts because everything comes down to blocking and tackling and game development and things constantly but you're always trying to kind of build dates kind of marched towards dates and and so as soon as we can get sort of the sooner we have visibility into those changes the veterans of the approval process hopefully becomes less collaboration anybody trying to create content around a pre-existing universe that was

somebody else's creation if you are not beginning with the intent to collaborate then you may as well actually gonna build something completely new so the whole art the whole point of bringing to creatives together whether it be a storyteller and a game designer or a lyricist and a musician is to create something special together so I realize that's a two-way street but I think we always begin with that intent to collaborate from my experience the success always comes down to the people that you're talking to directly on a regular basis as well as on the business side is on the creative side it's just as important both sides have to sort of be aligned because video games are we've conquered hue Canterbury you know it's as big and successful as the game industry has become that only means it's been more that's all yeah super art and it's a

complex endeavor and every time to go into it you're trying to iterate a little further an inner wage sometimes just innovating a touch to create something special and unique is that's that's really hard to do and and so you there's a lot of trial and error and the only way to do that is if you know that the people that you're working alongside have your best intentions as well as you have in theirs and so we fail like there's been moments where we I'd say the thing that has been most exciting about being here is that that willingness to try and fail versus just playing it safe right and that does sometimes it creates some it does create magic when you get it right but it also creating poverty when things don't go well but I'd say the only times I've that it really hasn't got allows when that relationship hasn't quite come to

bear with us that real collaboration you hasn't really been there even though people go into it the person is a despite often best intentions on both sides yeah and I think any any business relationship is is is like any relationship it is it a constant it has ups and downs and sometimes so have more downs than ups and vice-versa there are there are partners I've got through the past development partners publishing powers business partners who I haven't had success with that I would gladly work with repeatedly evenly there are others like that in business with who I've had enormous success with that I wouldn't jump into business readily again so it is a lot of it is down to the people that there isn't a direct correlation between best of intention or best intent and results however we feel generally though that by having the right intentions and adding

some commercial expertise to that some creative spark that is a recipe that more often than not we have something special we're only talking about that this is the development side we haven't even started talking about the commercialization for me and the way the game is now operated by you know mobile games a successful mobile game last five six seven ten years so these games at the own games of this service is becoming ubiquitous across the entire industry I think the long way to be these single player experiences exist but they're more like indie art houses versus the big commercial endeavors are becoming more more like you know an entire business unit unto itself and that really does change the relationship because then you know if you're getting into a really successful business that you're basically both companies are operating along for the long haul so and that's what I mean by

you just start to make something good but Wow even when you get something that's good it's like putting it to service that game I think the best analogy is is if you're you know if you're planning to be a business for the company through a development cycle of 12 months most of us can figure out how to make that period work if you're going to a business relationship knowing that if successful you're gonna be working together to three to five years or ten or ten or one girl yeah that requires on both sides really careful consideration and I think any again anybody's been involved in collaborations of that nature of whether successful or unselect unsuccessful realize how hard those those collaborations are to truly make work and I think a lot of it is of a lot of my time is spent thinking about how to make those collaborations affect I'm a firm believer that that is the way sometimes not the only way there's not

exclusive way to create great games we think is one solid path to making great content so in my mind is just trying to facilitate that collaboration and then allow the people who are really gonna make the difference the space to do their thing but also to give them the support so they don't get distracted by other unnecessary things try to get out of their way and that's all what we're talking that's we know kind of when you talk about staff yeah people that we go we have a kind of a you know because we have sort of different parts of the business now but they have a pretty broad range of people that we employ you know to be part of the team but we don't have a huge staff here this guy man okay as an organization with a very lean organization tenebrous oh yeah and and that's by design because we tried to build a media company that can be more agile being one directly connected both to the creative things that we build but also trying to build direct channels to the consumer and even from the creative

development there's also the marketing and the communication to the consumer that we're trying to innovate around and a lot of that can only be done by finding really smart people in different categories and getting out of their way and not overloading them with lots of management you know and process and bureaucracy we're trying to just stay focused on the things that matter to us which is both the creative product as well as how to communicate today sounds like you know one of the big advantages that you guys have is suppose by the understanding of the artist given the Foundation's the roots of the company as well as having people that have long development history such as yourself yeah but not to linger too much longer IQ licensing but one final question around what I think if art is potentially the biggest problems or conflicts that arise between licensees and license ORS but that's not often talked about a lot is around this notion about you know kind of have a you know

you you mentioned games before but whether it's big or some kind of revenue forecast or profit forecast and when you know when you're working with a development team or studio and those dates aren't in or those revenue targets aren't in like how do you manage that conflict or how do you approach thinking about some of those issues what mean after we cry yeah yeah I mean look it's a great commerce point because it's never easy when you're dealing with projections in business and you know the business the future business of where you're trying to go right on both we in Skybound we've set projections around the businesses and the partners that we have but we know that our partners are doing the same and when things do change as they almost unequivocally do we're always you know moving targets in that direction I'll have an easy direct answer to that other than I think it

does come down to the same thing which is you have to be able to concur with your partners and now in trying to eliminate surprise right is the biggest challenge like if you're not surprised then it's usually I mean it can be painful but it's usually not a problem right you know and that that comes down to the visibility not only on creative development but on you know the health of your each other a business relationship I had a real real world example of this last week and they expressed some concern about a particular issue and I read between the lines as as often is the case as you have to do a business you feel like maybe you're not getting the full story so you go away and you maybe investigate a little further and as it long story short it turned out that they were being completely transparent it which is to completely the spirit of the relationship we have with this partner and they were actually not raising alarm

bell they were just highlighting something that had been owned my own concern for them and they wanted us to be aware it so we would fall warned and potentially forearmed in the case that something came of it and so I think it does come down to there there is a great example of a partner being a great part because they're communicating they're communicating clearly they're able then to keep their partner informed and then everybody is there prepared to be able to deal with the problem together should it materialize and I think honestly that really the challenge is is really not to get to that other point is not to get to the point where you're so far in that nobody can really there is no good decision is just a choice between bad decisions so the gold and the intent is to take maybe a little longer upfront in the getting-to-know-you phase a little bit longer in there how are we going to do this phase and you know then really

approach it in a much more methodical manner and say between the two of us this isn't more gonna go smoothly how are we going to approach this winning you know what is okay what is our appetite for risk what is our appetite for flex everybody then knows what the other party can do and obviously those things challenge over the course a development and therein lies the problem if you're in a three-year development cycle so many things can happen in terms of macro economics microeconomics no marketing so it is get anyone who's been in the industry a while knows how challenging it is however we've both the do a long time and we've navigated the space and we'll continue to do so the great thing is you keep learning you keep applying new new techniques and new there's new learnings in every project that you do and for me that constant kind of constant challenge of having to

adapt to a moving market is what keeps this market fresh and interesting and I think I was as well us to take a fresh approach to content because the business is moving at such a pace we the content side of it also is kind of moving in a pace and hopefully that means that the content with delivering is is it's far more relevant than maybe companies who have got such an aggressive approach yeah and I mean just to that point you know like dates there's licensing especially when you have an IP that has multiple partners you have to navigate Windows I mean the walking dead the challenge dolphin Wanda is just literally trying to give every partners their fur do when it comes to marketing and creating those windows some of those things shift around it's not necessarily affecting us but it's affecting one of our other partners and so we not only can we have to be transparent with each other but we have to also be transparent the fact that hey

looking at the respect what other people are doing over here because they're just like you and now you're having a negative impact and so oftentimes that's the biggest thing but what we try to do in that regard is try to bring those different partners together I felt like that was the best solution and we've had some great success now of actually brokering the conversations between different partners who in the past a licensure would be very actively engaged in preventing those conversations I don't think that's the right way to go should be transparent with your partners and that includes being transparent with the other products and ultimately if you bring those teams together they're gonna figure out different business solutions that we couldn't figure out that will only benefit us because really in the day it's about the consumer and it doesn't really matter what we're doing is if the fans not being served in the right way and the best way to serve the fan base is to create more connectivity

between the different partners that we have it doesn't mean we have to actually make the games connect creatively but we can create different opportunities for the consumer to be rewarded for the fact that they're just a Walking Dead fan and they like playing multiple long Indian games like to make sure that our partners recognize that and take advantage of that and then everybody wins and then just kind of shifting gears to the more interesting side of the business this kind of self self publishing side of the business how are you guys thinking about this in terms of like you know the type of games you guys want to make you know supplies are the slates whether you're gonna do internal development versus you know external third-party development if you can so show the big difference between our two businesses I'll speak for yes I spraying the conversation you know what I'm doing them stories it's very specific to a genre or has its story based games where the story is paramount to the experience in the gameplay sort of they're supported right so that's

much more like what a telltale game had done but we're looking at ways to deliver those types of experiences across all platforms and different ways to do that with different games the instinct is much more a little playing around all kinds of other games because there's lots of different genres to build and so his is a little bit more might open yeah it's it's basically everything but the narrative center so we we talk topsy a considerable length during the the fallout from the telltale closure and clearly I think the first thing to say is we've both both big fans of that genre in particular also a plane or the triassic LucasArts games and they were you know getting to work on some of those games a few years ago as well things like we're in Fandango and David tend to : full throttle Monkey Island games like

that but just for me such a huge part of my gaming heritage so being able to I mean get involved in this narrative space was super interesting for me but [Music] Dan had already kind of made some moves in that space we talked at length about how we were going to approach this overall and I think we felt that actually if we're going to really take control and really start building things in-house we're a company of tell stories so if that's anywhere we're going to start it's probably that so I think what we kind of decided is that story will be you know is less where that is going to live my side of the business is gonna focus a kind of honor everything else in terms of what we're going to build what we're building what we're doing that is yet kind of B to disclose we're kind of talking and working on a number of different projects at the moment we have a number of games still released this year but everything we've been working on to name has been pre-existing content that was developed

by somebody else we have a few things lined up coming we have deaths can be coming out at the end of June it's four we have our being dog collector's editions coming out at the end of the year we have definitive edition coming out in September and we have also skull goes on switch Xbox one can we play to the year and I'm missing one so I'm completely blanking with the enemies of gang beasts I can't even I can't tell you what language is coming because I don't have a definitive date on that so you better learn me some game yeah you can cut that together making police get about it maybe so yeah beyond that we haven't announced anything yet we have again a number of projects that we're looking at but ultimately my my philosophy has been that we have a we

have two things here we have a huge rich IP catalog and I looked at that very much as a catalog of characters and universes and really that's the bedrock of the most great video games it's the bedrock of my sprite movies TV shows my scrapbooks so I think I start with an unfair advantage in that regard because we've got this world to delve into it with with no corporate mandate this has to be the next X or no corporate mandate that we must make a game around this it's really about what gets us all excited so the most rewarding thing to me is going to meet with a game developer and they say oh we love and they'll inevitably mention one of our stories that started in the comment and they will be a huge passionate fan and now far more matter than I ever will and

then they'll say we you know we have a game we what was one of the main and that's kind of what I want to hear and I know when the licensing side that was was the case so in the past that would have been avoided in discussion now it becomes a collaboration discussion well we can bring expertise financing distribution muscle and one of the other unfair advantages that we have we think is warning us is we have so many people who we engage with on a daily basis across many other areas of media most of whom are a direct crossover to jamie-lynns so we feel in terms of the project that we're going to build we start with that huge might be potential huge audience potential if we can then find great teams got a track record of making fantastic product fantastic games we feel that those are the three pillars that really enable us to deliver something very very special and so I

think that philosophy right at this moment is to is anything that we do from a development sign is going to be very considered we're going to take our time and we're going to make sure the things that we deliver are really of the highest standards and are dealing with things that are very interesting and they do them well I don't think we're interested in pumping out six or seven games a year around variously described that way I don't think more probably bought that's not gonna count and that's not what we had to do so it's really more about finding projects that we get super excited about that the creators get super excited about so this one of Roberts creations we want to make sure he this is something that he would want to play use again is he gonna wanna play this is he gonna get excited about it or if it's one of our other hundreds of creators that's a key component force and if they're not excited about it then that normally is a very good sign that projects not going anywhere I'm probably sure we go anywhere okay one final

question for me you know it sounds like you guys got a lot of great things here it's got you know I'm definitely a fan but in terms of how the organization started the relationship with Robert Kirkman did you walk me back to Mike you know how did this how did this whole thing start well I mean skydive started eight years it's almost eight years now but it really started between the relationship of David Alpert and Robert Kirkman David Meno management production company here in Hollywood calls her low confusion and he was one of the first to sort of really look at comic-con as a way to find the next big creator he at that point Sartre glossa you represent wachowski s-- and so the seeds had been planted around the matrix the same time I was working at foundation 9 with dining by the name of John Goldman and that was a video gaming company that had you know basically gone out and raised some money to acquire a lot of Studios back in the early 2000s in one of the

first acquisitions was shining entertainment which built those early matrix games yeah so the connection between David and John had been established and there was already an interest in trying to add foundation not in part of the strategy was to look at video games the the edid and we did a couple versions of that where one of them specifically it was called death jr. and David at that point his clientele you've brought in Gary would have to write the comic books and we made merchandise and everything out of it video game with Konami we never got the game never quite interested to commercial success to justify a television show but that was the idea so it goes back this relationship and Skybound some of those scenes and that can go back to the early 2000s but fast-forward you know a few years after that relationship that started and obviously David having met with Robert that became a different conversation and

Robert with the walking dead they went out and were able to basically go and into the marketplace and get a television deal set up but yet they were able to still retain the rights around the comic book for Robert right that was super important to Robert ended you know to David obviously to make sure that that the Creator tried to protect it because the comic book at that point was very successful on its own and so they started basically making t-shirts they had a desk encircle confusion with a couple couple employees strong Kirkham I think was the first employee and a couple of folks I'm getting sin and grace was there I believe on the editorial side making some more comic books they just started making more comic books and some t-shirts and going out to Comic Con and selling more stuff and and right around that time because the show hadn't come out yet telltale had done some deals

licensing and they had gone to Universal and back to the future in Jurassic Park and a lot order because they were trying to build their narrative in studio take it to the next level commercially and they didn't quite find the commercial success they were hoping for those licenses so they decided to look at comics as something that might be more native to their consumer base and so they identify the Walking Dead is a comic book first and that's where the conversation started they approached David and Robert and had an idea to do a news story inside Roberts comic book universe and then obviously the development takes a little while guess what the television show came out in the middle of all that and everything sort of online perfectly between Skybound telltale and AMC not just as a TV show but obviously the video game icon ik

license video game in the industry at the time and it was a big commercial success and and that kind of really obviously fuelled sky bounds growth and sky down at that point David haggis and Robert really had this idea to expand this company across the multiple categories and then John Goldman's came into the picture he brought me in to help them about the games division but there was already these business units are being set up around that time obviously The Walking Dead be because it became so big that helped us to build real businesses and so that was really the for me the company and a lot of the central themes that were out of that initial conversation that happened back in the early 2000 which was how do you you know build a company around careers and keep that creative voice intact how do you even give transparency to the business

to creators not just financially but to all the creative decisions that are being made how do you empower people in different categories who have experience to do what they do what well and get out of their way and take risks can be able to fail and then finally really that and this is what's really driving the company today is how do you connect that griever directly to the consumer right and that connect that that connectivity is you just found ourselves kind of an interesting place where the entire media industry has been kind of flipped on its head in that regard you know where you have all these channels like this one to talk directly to people and and those will become powerful marketing tools but their marketing tools because they're not really marketing they're they're pieces of content that people are interested in engaging with and that's really the recipe for this connective tissue title

there you know with thank you very much for your time guys thank you thanks everybody on now here with Cordia Ryerson Courtney I could you tell us a little bit about your role here at Skybound and kind of years you know scope of responsibilities what you do hey sure I have recently joined Skybound I joined in December as the vice president of production and some of the comments that I oversee our publishing efforts when we're doing game development and game development with external developers as well as licensing and licensing IP and working with developers who are interested in taking that IP out into the market and story is a narrative you maybe talk a little bit more specifically in terms of whether it's for IP license game or you know a soft public's game that you're working on with an external developer like just

could you walk us through your involvement from like the you know whether it's from the initial concept through pre-production to production like how when and how do you typically get involved on both sides both something like the IP licensing side them from that it's not much excitement I think the main place that it starts on for both no matter what you're doing is with their relationships oh okay you know building those relationships with other industry experts whether they be developers or management companies or people interested in taking an IP for it or publishing the title so my role begins with developing that relationship vetting each other really understanding you know are we how do we suit each other how are we gonna go through trials and tribulations that often arise in production whether that be you know creative alignment or budget or schedules and just really looking to have an honest and transparent dialogue

with our partners to move forward in any position and then of course from there it goes from soup to nuts from initial contracts to approvals to submissions to release okay and then like what you look for from external development side like when you are looking at different developers to build all right well I guess first question does the concept originated from the developer side or from your side and then when you're evaluating a studio what do you typically look for so concept will usually initiate on the other side okay when it comes to IP we're really looking for strong creative partners who believe can deliver and fulfill against the promise of the IP and really showcase what the IP is meant to us here as going down through whatever medium or property it is being released on from a publishing aspect sometimes that involves other people bringing their IPs to us and for their

we're looking for that creative passion behind their own ideas their ability to execute their common alignment on the mystical word quality and kind of what quality means across the board and their ability to deliver on that and for that last part in terms of the common vision of quality how is that typically a communicator do you have a set of emulation targets do you you know what like they're specific documents or anything like how how is that like how do you communicate that message I think so I'd love to start I have a couple of different things that I've learned over the course of my time I really love to start a regardless of whether it's an IP whether we generated in the house or outside is starting with a one-line concept and having a way that you can describe a product in five words or less one sentence that everybody can galvanize and understand so I give you

the sentence of something then you should be able to immediately drop what the kind of content is about below that are the underlying principles those core principles whether there'd be three five seven that really are the guiding principles for the title itself so every day no matter what role you're playing on the title when you come in you understand what the one-line concept is you understand what the core principles are that are guiding it and you can ask yourself of what you're doing is contributing to one of the factories if it's not contributing to one of those factors that's a great place to pause and ask yourself have you climbed into you know have you climbed into a vortex and gone off on a different path and then if you have is it something that really should be considered giving you know kind of our evolution and our fast-paced environment maybe it is something that we need to consider and go back and revisit and that's where it's really good to have a process of alignment always coming

together and making sure that we're aligned and each phase a development going forward and with that comes you know design documents are documents concepts degrees and a lot of that I think you know back in the gay day particularly with game development lots of early milestones are front loaded with piles of documentation and they're used to used to kind of be a joke in the industry which is like uh how much does your game design document way you known if it wave you know five pounds is like I you're good you wrote so much there's no way they could possibly comprehend it but I think those days are gone now especially with the tools and technology that we have I'd much rather see a briefing or concept that just helps people get things quickly and then move right into a rapid prototyping because words can be misconstrued on paper and interpreted differently and it's really when you get into that rapid iteration

of prototyping phase that you understand of what you have is special and how it's in a form and come together and that's really where feedback and alignment happen and then when you are working with for example an external development studio on a self-published title how involved you get in terms of the development you know process or the development team is there are you doing weekly calls or you're traveling on-site and like really getting a grain or you know are you just checking bills maybe if you could kind of talk about what that relationship looks like and how you do kind of your checks and quality you know I'd be great to hear okay well you know okay that kind of goes back to you earlier we're talking about developing relationships people are different and each relationship is unique I definitely prefer to be transparent as possible and work alongside the teams so really work with them as a partner instead of a kind of

publisher developer relationship ever just like licensee licensure relationship and invested and the product as well so being that kind of partner that arrives along a side of is much more opportunity for both parties to yield the best product for it because we figure out ways that we can help each other along the way so in a normal production process definitely do weekly calls with all parties visits as well usually monthly visits whenever there is software executables definitely sit down and play those software executables take the time to read through anything that they've constructed and put together and it's really about knocking down the blockers right so as you go through production long runway something that you thought would work doesn't work and we have those being able to problem-solve together to come up with a best solution is something that is pivotal to the production process then

in terms of like the industry overall we've seen a lot of IP some sort of licensing types of organizations kind of you know do what you guys are doing here at Sky bound which is we've been more strongly into self-publishing and you know but we've seen kind of you know different organizations and different things so Disney is kind of pulling back where they're kind of shifting from self-publishing to just doing licensing NBC Universal is going the opposite direction can you talk to me about you know some of the trade-offs from from IP license or perspective and then what do you think are trends for IP licensing entities with respect to you know whether they go more strongly into self-publishing or not so we'll just start with work our way backwards but that's me so we'll start with the trending of the self-publishing I think we as technology with platforms that are accessible now self-publishing is going to continue to be a trend there are so many ways that

people can do that right that makes sense and make sense especially if you're a small dependable developer independent developer the affordability to push your content on all platforms and have people pick they're not gonna become fans is much more accessible than it was 10 years ago when I think about you know IP in which way it's trending and you talked about Disney and Universal it's a catch-22 right I've seen I've seen both sides of the coin and both the third coin being that I've been involved in products where the IP holder is very much involved and from a licensing perspective and sometimes they get very involved in verticals that they don't truly understand and that can cause a lot of delays and and problems it's really being able to sit back and realize that everybody is coming with

the best interest in mind and sometimes that's just adding in layers of Education and patients to avoid those like you need to be able to selling your ideas for the type of product that you're making for us here at Sky bound and I think the way that NBC Universal is we understand we have experts across all verticals of entertainment that are experts in their fields which enable us to dive in and have that closer partnership so to be more involved and help cultivate the title as opposed to just being the license holder for people the audience who are looking at Steve and you know actually fans of the company or interested in working here could you talk a little bit about you know some of the types of people you're looking to hire and what kind of skills they need to be able to be successful here it's kind of so you know sky bound is a Skybound is an amazing isn't it was a

pretty amazing company consider it and considering its size and all the different verticals they're ones or I think the types of things that we look for here that I've seen our agility passion for the content passion for the IP a strong sense of commitment to the Creator we are creators centric company or and it is about Korea you know fostering that creative environment and moving that out across the entertainment verticals and it's something that I really appreciate here it's not it is a business at the end of the day but it's not just always about the bottom line and it is about understanding that all of this content you know we look at things like in game you know in games started from a comic book series and it was that creator and that creators content that enabled this universe and for everybody to benefit from the universe from fans and companies alike and I think we shared have a kind of

same philosophy of making sure that the creators content is protected but also helping that flourish and expand across all the different verticals so I just have one last question for you so where you're relatively new here but in your time here what did you enjoy most about working here at Skybound two things the people yeah so it's a very diverse different group of people all with different kind of expertise and paths and backgrounds I feel that that's a constant way to learn and update yourself and how people share their stories along the way the other is the contact switching my role is different every day that I come in I'm doing something different from our two hours sometimes for a minute to minute that's an environment that I thrive in and I thrive in controlled chaos yeah and so having the ability to flex across all the different areas that I do and participate in those and contribute to

those is what is very passionate for me okay great well what are you thank you very much for your time you're insightful [Applause] [Music] [Music]