The Games Industry 2024 Survival Guide | Develop:Brighton 2024

Yes. Okay. Been given the thumbs up. I'm Hello. Can everybody hear me? Testing. Testing one, two. Get lots of thumbs ups in the audience. Lovely. Thank you very much. Um, welcome to the games survival guide 2024. Uh, probably the quickfire games survival guide 2024 because we're starting slight slightly late and I'm aware that we've all got lunch plans. Um, so I will do this relatively quick. My bit. Uh, just a quick one if you're not sure who the hell I am. Uh, I am James Bachelor. I'm editor-inchief of Gamester.biz. We are the leading B2B publication in the video games industry. Um, if reading websites takes up too much of your time, we have got a newsletter, the GI Daily. You can sign up for it there. There we go. I've appeased the bosses. Um, you may recognize my voice or face from the GI microcast, which I host with Chris Ding every week. And I never give up the uh opportunity to very sneakily mention that I've written a book, the best nonviolent video games available, all good stores, etc. Plug achieved. Um, I

tried I was really really going to try and do like a very kind of clever intro about the overall state of the industry. I was even Nick uh one of Chris's presentations he's given recently with like some stats about optimism and what's going on in the market. But I think we all know the industry is in a hell of a position at the moment. We've seen 20,000 people laid off in the last 18 months and it's it's very easy to kind of get caught up in the the negative and you know the downside to what's going on in the industry right now. But through it all I have noticed a lot of people are still talking like taking kind of a forward-looking approach taking a more optimistic uh approach. The the you know the common phrase we've all heard this year is survive 2024 survive until 2025 whichever version of that phrase you've heard that's what this talk is built around. Um this talk is unlike talks you mo you any other talk you will go to today uh in that the speaker me will do as little speaking as possible. Um I'm not sure if anyone's come to my previous talks. The way I do this is I kind of got a series of guest speakers uh either on stage or via video. I'm going to

introduce them. They will come up. They've got that was a I thought I saw something on the screen. Never mind. Um I'm going to introduce them. They're going to come up. They're going to have two minutes to give their advice on how we can survive 2024. Um good news for all companies. It's July. You are officially halfway through surviving 2024. So, it's more about surviving the next six months. Um, I've got a big range of people. So, please be a big big hand for um everyone that comes up. Uh, there'll be some video guests as well. Um, I think that that's that's literally all you need to hear from me. Um, some of the people some of my guest speakers may repeat each other. This is the fun part where I actually don't know everything that everyone's going to say. I learn as much as this from you guys do. Um, so there may be some repet repetition, but that just means that the people saying the same thing may be more right. There may be people saying something completely different. They may be right. We don't know. Um, so I'm going to start off because that is more than enough from me with Helmar Vega Peterson, uh, CEO of CCP Games. Thank you very much. Please come join us, Helma.

Uh, okay. I have to time this. Um, so, uh, I thought I would, uh, maybe take you back. Um, so I come from CCP. We're like a cockroach of the game industry. We're 27 years old. We've gone through anything under the sun like successful games, failed games, banking collapses in our home country of Iceland. Imagine running a international game company on E without a banking system. We tried many things, but uh, the interesting survival story is from when we were starting and that might be the most helpful right now. So uh CCP is funded in 97 out of a ragtav spin-off group from a metavverse company called doors interactive. Yes, Iceland was making the metaverse as early as 92 inspired by snow crass all that mumbo jumbo avatars dancing around broadcasted on the internet on 286s. So uh we stopped doing that and started doing something practical like making the first single shirted space MMO ever made in a company and a country and a

team but nobody had made a game. Nobody had even seen a game developer from afar. Um, we were in the internet bubble. It was amazing. We raised loads of money. We raised 1.6 million, which I know is not a lot right now. Uh, and it was raising. Uh, and we figured out halfway into it. We raised kind of April 2000. Uh, internet actually uh, bursts in March 2000. The news didn't really arrive to Iceland the month later. So, we were successful in raising the money, but we figured out we only had enough money to make half of him online. Uh, imagine making him online for $3 million. So, uh, we start shaking up investors the year after. That doesn't go very far. We were able to get uh the Icelandic phone company to become an equity investor. That kind of uh made us survived 2002 u no 2001 sorry uh 2002 we literally ran out of money. We held a staff meeting, say everyone, well, we're out of the money, but we've paid the rent, the door

is open, the electricity is paid for, you're free to work, few of us going to continue. Um, and everyone showed up. We run the company for three months without paying any salaries. Some people didn't even take a salary for a year. Why was that possible? Well, it was this element of like you know it when you see it, the game is coming together. It's going to be awesome. Wouldn't recommend it, but here's one way of doing it. Second phase was selling our publishing right to Simon in the US who's mainly a book publisher but that was kind of the absurdity of the mission. Uh and that was in now F2 to uh string users over to um uh 2003 where we released the game and we now been chasing its tail ever since. We'll talk more about that later. Thank you. [Applause]
Thank you so much. Uh, next up we have Caroline Marshall, uh, CEO and creative director from Interior Night. [Applause]

Hello. Hello. Um, I wanted to start by saying that it took me quite a while and the studio in general um, to realize what was really happening last year. Um, I think like I've got an optimistic bias that a lot of us might have and I'm also stubborn. Um, so initially it was like, oh, it's just a lull. Then you realize, oh, actually, okay, it's it's not great, but we'll we'll see through it because we're amazing or we're lucky. And then towards summer 23, it was like, oh, no, it's really bad. So, uh, pretty awful. Um, and so we did plenty of things last year and this year to make sure we survive and, um, make progress towards our second project. Our first game came out in the summer of 22. So that's a while back already. Um, so we did creative work. I'm sure you all did. Uh, invest in our tech and R&D for the future. Uh, we cultivated our network

and relationships to keep the pulse on the industry, see how is it going, you know, and we even cleaned up our database. It was a good time to do that. But looking back, I think the most uh important thing I did personally uh during that time and I'm still doing now is to listen to my board of directors. Um this might um apologies if it seems obvious, but I've seen friends in the industry who have a studio or you know have a a team struggle to make you know the hard decisions you've got to make sometimes to survive and live another day. And this advice might be also useful for small studio who don't have a board yet. So our board is a group of three people. So three directors. They're just coming we're coming together for board meetings or we we have emails and exchanges in between. B meetings are like quarterly. They're not

friends but they are people I respect and are coming from uh different industries or have got a different skill set than me. Entrepreneurship or business or finance. I'm more of a creative person. Um, and you know, most of the time I kind of don't listen to them because I'm stubborn and they're a bit like the parents with the creative teenager. But bottom line, they see more things than me. Like I focus on the tree, which is the studio while they look at the forest. Um, they have less skin in the game. So they're less they're more objective than me and they're experiencing over fields obviously. Um so they pushed me to make the hard decisions you don't want to make um last year. So we reduced the team size um which is the most difficult decision to make because you're always like but like in over three months like I think it's going to happen. Um but ultimately we had to make the decision. Um we descoped the project as well um because

just to increase our chances to find a partner and to be like to be able to sign something. And we looked at our runway uh to take us well past 24. So it's hard to run a company. I know times up. I'll be really quick. There's so many things to navigate. you know, things that are outside of your control, things that are in your control, and you can't do it alone. So, have a board, listen to it, uh especially when the times are hard. Um, and it's worth giving away a little bit of equity. And if you don't have a board, at least have advisors. Don't do it alone. [Applause] Starting to realize that two minutes per speaker might have been a tad restrictive. Uh, Ella,

let's applaud you as [Applause] hi all. Um, so obviously this year has been really tough. Um, and not only has that created challenges for every business and frankly every individual, um, but in particular for businesses who are early and maybe haven't quite found their path yet or maybe businesses that were going through a particularly challenging moment. Um, the external environment that we're going through can turn a problem that would have been potentially surmountable into one that can become critical very quickly. And you know, ultimately that's a bit out of your control. And it comes down to this, right? Failure is an option. We innovate. We take risks. We do exciting stuff. We do that because we love it. But it means failure is an option, right? Games are difficult even in good times. Getting all those moving pieces together, putting out to the world, and having the subjective success based on an audience is is always going to be tough. Um, and this environment only makes that even more tough. But it's what we do in those moments that I think

really define us. And you know, more companies than ever are going to be facing this dilemma. So what do we do in this scenario? Well, I want to talk to you about what I've been thinking about a lot and actually what I've been acting on, which is pivoting. So this is really the moment to take time to question whether you're going in the right direction and in the right way. You know, has the challenging environment been the only factor um that's leading to your struggles this year or has it exposed an underlying challenge which you now might have an opportunity to address? You know, has the market moved on and you need to get ahead of it. If the answer is it's just the environment, then by all means, knuckle down. There's a huge amount of advice out there. You know, extend your runway, ride it out. But if it's really exposed some other weakness in your strategy, then consider taking this opportunity to adjust, to pivot, to optimize so you can come out swinging um and take advantage of, you know, hopefully the inevitable upturn that we're going to see in the not too distant future. But ultimately, it's a time that's felt a lot of us feeling despair. Um and it's affected the mental

health of many of us. We can't deny that. But there is hope. There is funding out there. There are opportunities even now. There are less of them, but that's going to grow. But it does mean we have to be more competitive. If you want to be one of those companies that really is still today getting those raises, getting those opportunities, and you really want to be ready to ride that next wave, then you know, if you can take this time to really question what you're doing, take advice. I think you know not just look at your you know not take that just from you but reframe evaluate the market think you know are what you do you're doing not just relevant today but relevant for where the industry is going to be in a year and two years and I think if you can do that and really use this time then you have the opportunity to really move forward thank you so much Ella uh we have our first video guest was Ulas Karia I probably mispronounced that uh CTO from IO Interactive who had this to say.
Hello, I'm CTO for IIO Interactive. Id like to give you a couple of advices to

survive in 2024 making games. I will talk about three things. I think three things that I see quite important nowadays. Um number one is that iteration speed with iteration quality. I think um as a studio you need to build agility into your uh development environment and that means that testing early, testing often uh making sure that you build the right infrastructure to make sure that you can actually test the game as often as pos possible and getting feedback from the users as quickly as possible. Try to focus on building a gameplay that is fun, creating a world that is immersive and make sure that it runs on the platform. So it's very important in different stages of the game development you actually focus on creating content that um create immersion and also gameplay that is fun. And the best way to do it is actually focus on the screen and controllers and make sure that your game content your uh ideas is actually not just talks and documents but is actually demonstrable on the screen and g your feedback around that. Um a second uh

topic could be that stay close to your vision. When you do games there will be a lot of influencers from outside and everyone want to pull it to one side. You will listen a lot of feedback from the people but just listen your feedback from the users. The people actually will buy your game play your game rather than listening advices from your investors or the people that has built different types of games. So focus on to your user core audience and stay true to your focus. Lastly, I think um one of the key things that raise money when you don't need it. Often uh studios raise money and then they spend the money and then they try to raise money when they don't have money. So when you raise money, when you don't need money, it's easy to raise that money. So as soon as when you close a round or something like that, just make sure that you start raising money again for the next uh part of your project. Um so don't wait to end. That's also important. And lastly, I think it's very important to have a large network.

Um events like um develop Brighton is really good for that. Get connected with people. Try to know as many people as possible. Try to learn from them. Ask questions. Do not just use the time to sell and pitch your ideas, but listen and ask questions that you can learn from the people around you. I think it's also very very important. Thanks for listening. Next up we have Alexander.
Oh god, don't even bother.
Hi everyone. Horrible last Polish name. Um, okay. So the third bullet point on this panel uh is to leave you with an optimistic outlook on how the industry uh and how to thrive in 25. That's not going to happen for me. Um, I was a journalist uh during the 2008 financial crisis uh and covered all of this before. I am mister. This has all happened before. This will all happen again. Um, and before 2008 uh as some of

you in this room might know uh there was also uh the devastation by the Canadians um who took uh all those jobs as well um previously. So yeah, this is all happened for this is all going to happen again. Uh my business partner is Mike Bethl. Uh an eternal optimist. Um and for my own mental health, uh it's good for me to surround myself with people who believe in goodness and kindness. Um where Mike and I have stayed aligned for 10 years is we assume every game is going to be a flop. Um and plan accordingly for that. Uh then we're pleasantly surprised when everything works out. A long-term benefit of this approach is that things uh when things are good, you can turn up the risk a little bit. Uh benefits, investments, all of that type of stuff. Uh we've always stayed in a very specific field, which is single player premium titles. Uh this has created a consistent narrative with our publishing partners and never underestimate a consistent

narrative uh with any type of investor. Uh if you are doing something good, keep doing it. If you want to pivot, get good at that before trying to get some more money for it because that's an issue. So survival is the current name of the game. Keep your nose above water and what means uh and that means disciplined business practices. Uh and for too many it's too late. And a controlled crash is now what is going to happen uh this year. So controlled crash means take care of your people. uh make sure that whatever money you've got, you're taking care of them and you'll have the opportunity to do it again uh another time. Pragmatism. [Applause] Thank you so much, Alex. Uh next here we have Jude, founder and CEO of Play Mob. Jude, come on up. [Applause] So, I'm probably a bit more of an

optimist. So, that balances out nicely. So, I'm Jude. I founded a company called Playmob. We actually recently got acquired by Planet Play to create a a green powerhouse and and actually the acquisition probably sums up what I'm going to kind of talk about in these couple of minutes, which is basically about kind of partnership and collaboration. So we want to kind of turn the industry green and help game studios benefit from that as well. And we met Planet Play who want to do the same. So we ended up joining forces which will make help us create our green powerhouse. So um but the partnerships and collaboration I want to talk about today are to to help us think outside the box. Um and one of our big agreements is to help studios go green and to help the planet. But actually we believe that we can do that by helping to hit KPIs. And one of the things that we found works really really well and that we've been testing over the past year, Play Mob and Planet Play together have been working with celebrities, brands, influencers, and and this is really helping us, I think, think

outside the box. Um, and all the celebrities and influenc influencers that we work with all want to do good and do something for the planet as well. So, it helps us have a really powerful story to players. We actually find out that um when we surveyed 400,000 gamers that 81% want to do something for the planet and then when you layer that on top with like big voices like this month we're working with the Hoff and in October it'll be Joe Drew Jonas and then we've got other celebrities. We're actually finding this be a really powerful tool for user acquisition and discoverability and so they might not be the the kind of go-to people that you might think about. So, I think one of my big um pieces of advice when it comes to kind of partnerships and collaboration would be don't just go for the biggest names actually go for some of the mid-tier folks, the brands and celebrities who, you know, they they're hungry to get into gaming. You know, when you start to look outside gaming, there's lots of partnerships that you can do with others that can help boost your game, help you be discovered. um because of these partnerships that we've got with the celebrities and the

influencers um we're also working now with Google Play who are doing our doing featuring month on month for a green game category and with celebrities. So the whole thing is starting to grow and and that's kind of gone beyond what we expected it to. But I mean just some stats here just to prove that it's working. So we're seeing about kind of over 60% of um reactivating players. Um we're seeing um more than 6% um increase of downloads for games that are participating and we're seeing about a 500% increase across 30 um games that have been selling items for green causes but with celebrities. So it's a little bit different a little bit thinking outside the box but I think that would be my um piece of advice would be think differently go outside the industry and look for these unique partnerships that can help grow your games. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jude. Uh, oh, blime me. Um, if I didn't manage your name, Alex. This is Stefania Haldier. I'm pretty sure she pronounces her name properly at the start of the video. It's a video

one. This is CEO of the Avalanche Studios Group. So, let's hear what she's got to say.
Hi, my name is Stephanie Alto. I'm the CEO of Avalanche Studios Group. I was asked to give some advice on how to run game business in turbulent times, how we survive 2024 and how we set up for strong 2025. I have four advices that I would like to share with you. My first point, adapt and be flexible. Our industry landscape constantly changes. So, studios need to be flexible and resilient. We must be ready to learn very fast and then to pivot our strategies if needed. and adapt to new market conditions. If I were to advise developers on a personal and career level, I would say work on your adaptability. Try to remain resourceful through turbulent times because sometimes turbulent times bring opportunities and identifying opportunities for improvement and growth

can help you on your path. Then number two, remember our purpose. Even in difficulty, we must remember that our primary goal is to deliver valuable, engaging, and meaningful experiences to players. Making decisions with the best interest in mind helps us cultivate a loyal player base, strengthening our brand reputation and navigate challenging currents. Number three, leadership. Difficult times requires resilient and resourceful leadership. This means listening to players, paying attention to the market, and always having a backup plan. It's about preparing to face uncertainties and being capable of recovering from setbacks. One point on this is to make sure that we keep good financial health and that we plan for good financial health in our companies. And number four, stay compassionate. Our morale and productivity can take a hit during challenging times. So, it's

really essential to prioritize the well-being of our teams. We should keep coming together in places like beautiful Brighton and remind ourselves why we love making games. Connecting with people who have been affected by layoffs or otherwise struggle in the current climate is very important and offering help can go a long way in our community because it's the gaming community that makes us stronger and we are stronger together. Thank you. [Applause] Subtle logo and everything. Um, right now this is going to be interesting. I was trying to find Chris in the lobby. Did he make it in? No, you stood up and I thought you were Chris for a second. Okay. Well, that's one less person then. Um, Chinzyio, please come on up. [Applause]
Hi everyone. Thanks so much for all the advice so far. has been really valuable to hear. Um, and thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Um, I

want to when I kind of like started thinking about this, I wanted to think about a little bit forward um, about 2025. And when we kind of like think about, you know, oh, everything's going to be okay in 2025. We think we tend to think about the financial reasons for that. Um, but I wanted to think about the people side and kind of like focusing it on two fronts. Um first of all with the cost of redundancies what we don't tend to think about is the people who are left at the studios. The people particularly with large redundancies um who have gone through months of uncertainty um and having seen their friends life being completely upended um which you know will have a massive toll on their well-being and it will have that massive impact on their productivity ultimately. Um, so one thing that I really would like everyone to, you know, think about and urge people to look into is investing in people is kind of like thinking about ways that you can bring that morale back, that you can bring

people to back to your studio feeling excited again because this industry runs on passion that is kind of like everything that we have. And if we leave people for such a long amount of time with that uncertainty, we're just going to kill that passion. you're going to kill that creativity because it's not an environment where this can be bred. Um so you know invest in your people, invest in the people that you have still at your studio and make sure that they they are in a place where they can thrive. And then on the other side um of things is that we are losing a massive amount of talent um that are currently you know like like struggling to find jobs because it's just too many people and that may have stories that they want to be telling. Um, so this is a great, you know, like we we hear a lot about people talking about the that like indie revival, like this is a great chance for indie revival, but in order for that to happen, we need to invest in indies. We need to invest in people particularly at that early stage for people that cannot afford to pay for themselves to start a

prototype to start getting to pitching point. So you know like prototype funding kind of like finding ways to support in these at that early stage is very very important. So if you're a publisher, if you're a nindi that's kind of like phone success, um if you're, you know, at any stage where you can reinvest in the future towards people, um this is a really great place to kind of look into. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Chinzia. Next, we have Muyu. This is another video one. Here we go. Video. Uh we've got Muyu, creative director of team choke. And here's what he had to say. So, my advice for surviving 2024 is focus inward and long term. In a time where gatekeepers are all kind of in a stalling pattern, but pretending everything's okay. It's really easy to waste a lot of time trying to operate guessing on what they want or even worse acting on what they say they want when they don't really know. I think you should focus on yourself and your game and your team and really think about what you're trying to

do. So, you know, for example, some things that I've been doing less of, I've been doing less pitch deck iterations. I'm spending less time thinking about features from the most recent indie hit. Um, and instead, I'm spending more time play testing with my community or trying to nail down some marketing language or beats to get players excited about the game. I think another big element for me is finding similar people and similar companies. So, I heavily advise searching for people in big communities, whether it be a big Slack or Discord group or an event like this. So, make sure that you find the people that share your situation and your values that you can swap notes with and grab on to them. Don't just make it one interesting conversation you had at this event or whatever. Make sure that you set up a regular call and you have catchups and you discuss your strategies and what hasn't hasn't been working for you. Play test each other's builds. uh share intel on what publishers are good or not good to work with. And the other thing I will say, it's really important to remember at a time like this, as much

as you're feeling the pressure as a company, the people that are feeling even more pressure are the people on your team. And the people that are feeling even more pressure than that are the people that are not yet on your team and applying and looking for jobs. So, I think when you're thinking about trying to keep your run rate low and trying to keep cost down, don't do that at the expense of your team. And also don't do that at the expense of people applying. You know, make sure to treat applicants ethically. And for God's sake, just reply to all of them. Be transparent with them. Make sure that they can get on with their lives and have a little bit of certainty in a time like this. So yeah, I think my takeaways are focus on your path instead of what you think the gatekeepers want from you. Um, keep your run rate low by making good decisions, not at the expense of your team and your potential team. And don't go alone. So good luck. I think I'm most impressed by how his advice was coming out faster than he was actually speaking. That was that was that was amazing. Okay. Uh Alex Jones,

founder of Silver Script Games, is our next speaker. [Applause]
Hello, my name is Alex and I was laid off in December 2023. You can cheer. No, but of course it's happened to thousands of other people. I worked at the company for five years and it was really my dream job and my foot in the door. So it was really disappointing. But what happened is I started my own company and then we raised nearly £100,000 in grant and crowdfunding. And so public funding was really a lifeline in a time where publishers are not investing as much. So the title of this is surviving. But people were saying the same in 2023. Get through 2023 and then at what point do we start living? I mean, I know that running a company isn't for everyone, but it might be for a lot more people than you realize. Why let shareholders and corporations who maybe don't even care about or really love the industry make those decisions? Um,

yeah, callous decisions. In fact, I never thought that I would actually run a company. It's not something I even knew I could do. Like at school, they don't really teach you those things and I always worked for other people, but I always had games that I wanted to do. I took part in game jams and having never thought I would do it, yet here I am. I'm not saying it's not tough, but I'm far more than surviving. I get to work on my dream project every single day. I know that it's really tough out there for everyone, but sometimes there is a silver lining and that more people might have the chance to run their own studio and in fact they will have been burnt from what's happened over the last two years. So they might actually run them more responsibly and sustainably in the long term. It could lead to a healthier and more stable industry. I know it's happened before and again, but hopefully some of us can start learning from it. Um I certainly know that I'm not going to be selling my company to anyone. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Alex. Next up, we

have I another video one. Andrew Pierce, CEO of Alchemy. I'm sorry, I refuse to call him CE Owl as he insisted.
Hi, I'm Andrew Ike, CE Owl at Alchemy. We are a fully remote VR video game studio headquartered in Austin, Texas. We developed the game's job simulator, vacation simulator, Rick and Morty virtual reality, and Cosmonius High. We currently have 75 full-time employees and are hard at work at our next big day game. As many of you know, the industry is going through a tumultuous time and I'm here to share some tips on how I think about moving forward through 2024 and beyond. At Alchemy Labs, we're in the very fortunate position that we're able to self-publish our titles. To be perfectly transparent, we're a wholly owned subsidiary of Google, but we are still financially viable without their support. One of the ways that Alchemy has stayed viable is by being extremely multiplatform. If you're running a studio, it's good to remember that without your content, platforms are just bad social networks. It's our work that

delivers real value to our players, and you can use that to your advantage. If you have older titles that have even a modest popularity, you can port them to new platforms. It's not free to make a port of your games. It costs time and effort, but you can offset some of that risk. Many times you can get platforms or publishers to pay you to do the port. To be dry and business focused, if you're in survival mode, what we're talking about is cash flow. You need enough money to pay your employees and your expenses. Even a 100% recoupable porting fee might be worth the time if it gets you the money to keep the lights on. My other big tip is to look at how you can grow your audience with your current games. There's almost no game on the planet that has maximized its player count. As developers, we are often enamored with the respplendant glow of working on something new. Suppressing that urge and finding small to medium additions to add to your current titles can breathe new life into an existing game. I'm certain that every dev of even a modestly successful game has a

mountain of suggestions from fans. Update your game and help grow your audience. Good luck out there. I know it's tough, but there is a huge upside on the other side of this if you can figure out your own path forward. Thank you. Okay, Nick Button Brown, founder of the Games Angels. Uh, and I'm going to add last week I was named UK Angel of the Year. So, no, no, come on. I want to Yeah. Thank you. I'm British. just really uncomfortable to celebrate. Um, sorry. Uh, so yeah, I'm going to talk about the investing landscape. 2023 was a show. Um, it really was awful. Deals weren't happening. Every VC that I spoke to was like, "Yeah, yeah, we've got money, but we're just going to hold on to it because we want to keep it for our own portfolio." So, yeah, that was

great. That was really helpful. Um AI kind of came as like this was going to save investment and then it disappeared again because it turns out nobody knew how to make money on it. Uh and then 2024 I started doing a road show with Creative UK going around the UK trying to evangelize investing in creative industries. And I did a slide going it's going to change this year. 2024 is going to be much better. And then as I was in the road show the numbers came out for the for Q1 2024. Turns out it was getting better. It was getting better in March. It was terrible in January and February. March got better. April, May, and June has got better. We are at the levels in terms of preede and seed deals which are similar or much higher than 2020. Let's forget the bit in the middle. Um, but we're back to kind of reasonable levels. So, it's like, okay, so preede and seed deals are happening. Later deals not happening yet, but maybe by kind of the middle of next year. So, I got to go on this road show and tell

people that this was going to happen and then got numbers to show it was actually happening. Um, but what does that mean? So, my angel group has done three preede deals so far this year, which is up from what it did last year, and we have three in the pipeline. So, that's six companies that get to start and get to get going and get to hire people and get to create new business models, new games, new concepts. I feel that that's kind of positive. Um, but I'm going to leave you with a slightly more positive note. We now have a crossindustry movement called Funding Quest, which is to try and improve the financing pipeline for UK games companies, cross debt, equity, government money. We have a whole bunch of projects going on. It's not very well organized. Um, sorry, it's me organizing it. It's really not very well organized. Uh, but it's out there. Things are going to get better. And yes, I've run out of time. Things are going to get better. But we do need help. So, the only way that this

is successful is if people help and make some more of those projects happen. All right. Thank you. Okay. Next, we have Tanya Xshaw. Although, I'm very conscious of the amount of time. I've actually still got a couple of in in the room people. So, I might save that and write that up for the uh the article I'll do on gametry.biz. So, we'll skip Tanya. Sorry, Tanya. I'm so sorry, Tanya. Look, if you're that worried, we can go back and do it like at the end of the session. Gina, please come join us. Right, they complain about them being late. Investors, oh my god, they're the late ones. Blaming Nick. So, surviving 2024. This is the not the first time we've seen this instability. I've been made redundant six times in my 32-year career. This is not the first time. We need to get out of boom and bust. But in 2022, our workforce grew by 21%. It was obvious we were going to have shrinkage. We need to make this better.

But one of the things we're great at is innovating, working under pressure, squeezing as much as we can into a game, into memory, into the time we have. So my solution is fruit salad. It's time to diversify, to make do, to experiment, to scramble, um, and push ourselves. Look at the alternatives. Uh look at the parallels, the adjuncts. I recently delivered a graduate work program with NextGen and Games Republic. It's over there. Sadi, she was desperate to be a 3D artist, games artist. She did a degree in uh games art and she was working in a pub. She came on our course because she knew she needed a portfolio and experience, but she couldn't get a junior role. Why? It's 7% of the jobs out there are junior. So, what's she done? She's joined a furniture company. That sounds odd. She is making the most incredible portfolio of 3D furniture and she is creating a portfolio. So, she's

not missing out when her colleagues and peers are still working in the pub or still looking for a job. She's got experience and um she's got experience and she's got that portfolio. Um I set up a new company called Pitchify to try and help people get investment and for developers to get feedback. I have gone on a couple of um uh accelerators with Barclays and with Games London because it takes me on a journey. It kept me focused. It enabled me to engage with others and to be motivated. So with fruit salad, I'm asking people to mix it up, create new flavors, combine things, work out what you're good at, what you're not good at, and the skill sets that you have. Thank you. Thank you so much, Gina. And that now explains why Gina basically sent me a slide with a picture of a fruit salad, and I now understand why. Thank you. Um, right, never mind 2024. You have nearly survived this talk. We have one more

speaker left. Uh Charles, could you please come join me? [Applause]
I am well aware that we've now run out of time, but mine is 2 minutes. Um and time, so I'll be really really quick. And what I want to say is prepare for the new normal. It won't be the same as it was before. Uh things of course are very tough but it feel it feels very similar to around about 2008 when digital distribution had absolutely changed the landscape and of course we had the financial crisis the double whammy coming to quote one of the conservative ministers but um it it it felt really really grim um but and interest rates will of course be coming down so u disposable income will be going up. It's tempting to say just survive to 25 but I think we actually need to do more than that. I think we need to work out what the effects of AI will be, what the effects of all these incredible disruptive forces will be. Um, so like everybody says, remain super

cautious um until that happens. Um, I won't go into too much. I I've written notes, but stay lean of course. Um, uh, look after your people. All of the things that have been said, keep the vision focused. um you know these big projects done by the great authors um really are not going to be funded um for for for much longer uh as was also said seek out uh constructive criticism for God's sake look get feedback from people you trust from users um while while um praise is wonderful uh what is much more valuable is actually criticism which will allow you to to improve and then go on to focus um on what is important uh and and stick to that. So as I say, prepare for the new normal. Um, in the last great disruptive period, uh, the biggest publisher in the world, THQ, were bankrupt within three years and developers were able to thrive because they could find the niches that emerged that hadn't been seen. I'm I'm

absolutely sure that this is what is going to happen. So when things get better, it will be different. Make sure as small developers that you can really exploit those and it'll be fantastic. Good luck to you all. [Applause] Thank you so much, Charles. Um, I've been trying to take notes all the way through. I was going to like give you a takeaway from each speaker, but I think we've definitely run out of time for that. So, I will give like kind of the through lines I've seen through all the advice here today. Be adaptable, plan for failure, seek advice, mind your finances, look after your team, keep going. See you in 2025. Please give a big hand to all my guest speakers and particularly to the man waving the thumb the times up sign at the back of the room.
Lunch.