...Two of which I'm speaking at. As you might expect, most NY-area game events are aimed mainly at financial and marketing folks.

The MBA Media & Entertainment Conference
When: Feb 10, 2006
Where: Kimmel Center, NYU Stern School of Business, 60 Washington Sq South
How Much: $50, but you must be an MBA student

"The MBA Media & Entertainment Conference brings together the nation's top MBA students and media, entertainment and related companies."

Panels on film, TV, print publishing,etc., but one panel directly about games (on the console transition) and some others that may touch on games.

Speakers include me.

==================
The Wall Street Transcript Presents: Profiting in the Video Game Economy
When: Feb 16 2006
Where: The Harvard Club, 27 West 44th St
How Much: $495 register before 1/16, $895 at the door
"This conference is designed to help you position your company and portfolio for optimum benefit in this rapidly growing sector of the economy."

Speakers include Gamoids (NYC IGDA chapter members) Dan Hart, Eric Albert, Eric Zimmerman, and Paul Marino.

===============

Video Game Financing Forum
When: Feb 23-24 2006
Where: Helmsley Park Lane Hotel, 36 Central Park South
How Much: $1,795

"Financing, investing, and legal issues for video game, mobile, online, and next-generation systems."

Speakers include Gamoids Eric Zimmerman, Eric Albert, Robert Gehorsam, and me; Jason Della Rocca of IGDA will also speak.
posted by Greg at 12:59 PM 8 comments

This year's game presents:

For Betsy: DragonQuest VIII and Puerto Rico.

For Vicky: The Movies and Ticket to Ride: Europe.

For Simona: Candyland.

For Ellie: Fairy Tale.

For my part, Civ IV has weaned me off World of Warcraft. To which end a few quotes and a link:

(On the old GEnie Science Fiction Round Table:)
Me: I recently got Civilization II, and expect I'll lose a novel to it.
Jerry Pournelle: If you only lose one novel, you're doing well.

(At a science fiction convention some years ago:)
Questioner: Do you think that writing novels is what you were put on this planet to do?
Orson Scott Card: No, writing novels is how I make a living. I was put on this planet to play Civilization.

As for the link: here is Electric Fun Stuff's Civilization Reggae.

"Majesty, I present de emisssaries from--Brooklyn!"
"Yo yo yo, what up? We come in peace. We bring you a gift of, yo, whaddawe got? We got... bridge buildin', yeah..."
"Bridge building! Most generous! You be allies for evah."
posted by Greg at 11:49 AM 3 comments

For those interested, I've posted our one-pager. This kind of thing is essentially the business plan boiled down to the basic essentials, codified in the sort of language VCs understand, and is typically used in an introductory email when soliciting interest--either from angels or VCs. And yes, it's sort of crass--but contrariwise, trying to translate the language that developers and gamers use into investor-speak, as it were, is an interesting exercise. Thus, e.g., "death to the games industry!" becomes "a disruptive business model that capture gaming's long tail." Not that either is wrong--in a way, they're ways of saying the same thing: that we need a viable business model that allows game developers to succeed with more modestly budgeted products.

On Monday, I went to Angel Zone, an event for NYC area start-ups and angel investors, along with Ellie Lang, who is currently doing our publicity and marketing. Unlike iBreakfast, it's actually configured as a sort of mini-trade show, with each company having a booth, along with scheduled panel discussions and company presentations. They claim companies are selected randomly to present; we were not selected (i.e., we had a booth, but not an audience for the Powerpoint). Last week, I spent a fair bit of time putting together materials--a vinyl banner for the table, a foamcore mounted poster, business cards. Ellie put together a press kit (the electronic version of which can be found here, althought the print version also includes a Business Week article about the company).

The collection of exhibiting companies was pretty eclectic; one fellow was selling a trick mirror that doesn't reverse your image, another operation was selling premium chocolate. Most were tech companies in some regard; I spent a little time talking with the fellow in the next booth over, Jin Zhao of Jinti, a company that I would describe as "craigslist for small-and-medium-sized businesses in China", which just on the basis of those three elements strikes me as highly fundable. He was surprisingly knowledgeable about the games market in China and Korea (although I suspect he found me surprisingly knowledgeable about the same).

Although chairs behind the table were provided, I spent the 8 hours of the show on my feet. I used to go to trade shows with a sales director who refused to buy chairs for the booth, on the theory that he wanted his staff up and talking with potential customers--and while I'm not that hardcore, he had a point. We did pass out a fair number of plans, I believe the elevator pitch is pretty polished at this point, and there was interest--it's always hard to know how useful these kinds of events are, of course. If anything comes of it, it won't be for a while. You don't walk away with checks in your pocket. However, I spent most of the last two days following up, which is not a bad thing.

In the middle of the day, I had a scheduled call with a California-based early-stage fund to whom I was introduced by a friend (ex-NY, now in LA) who has recently landed funding for his new venture. The story there was essentially: Yes, we invest at the seed level. Yes, we think there's a "long-tail" opportunity in the game industry, though whether Manifesto is the right way to capture that or not we're not sure. And yes, we will invest on the East Coast--but when we invest on the East Coast, it's usally in $5-$20m rounds. Which I understand; smart VCs spend time monitoring their investments, and if it's on the East Coast, that means getting on a plane, and it's easier to justify that time and effort if you have more money at risk. So they go onto my "interested, keep apprised of progress, go back to for the venture round" list--which is fine as far as it goes, but doesn't help solve the immediate problem.

At the show, listening to others, it's clear to me that our advantages are that we are smarter about this process and better organized than most, and that what we're doing is indeed of potential interest. Our drawback, of course, is that "early stage" investors are often not, really; they're "low capital requirement" investors, looking for viable businesses that need modest expansion capital. The usual ding at this point is "come back when you have revenues," which of course is also an easy way to say "no;" later on, it will be something else.

I had, perhaps over-optimistically, assumed that landing the first $100k would assist in drawing in other investors--the problem here, though, is that the first $100k (actually $125k at this point) is from out-of-area investors who don't have a follow-on network, so engaging the NY-area angel community is a different challenge in its own right. That is, an investor locally willing to commit at that level would be very helpful in drawing in other local investors--thus, it's important to continue engaging these people. And getting Johnny connected to the equivalent community in Atlanta, of course.

In general, we need to keep on trying to do everything at once: business development (at this stage, getting Letters of Intent from developers/publishers interested in working with us, partly to short-cut later negotiations but also to have a sheaf of such to wave under the noses of investors); site development (since once we're up and live, we -will- have revenues, albeit probably not impressive ones initially--but then we move up the 'ding' heirarchy); and of course, the pursuit of funding (or as I call it, not when talking with investors of course, 'grovelling for dollars').

I had a conversation with a fellow at a game event a little while ago, who said "Wouldn't you rather be working on a game?" Well, yes, in a way--but I think I can make more of a difference by looking at the business issues, right now. Someone should be doing this, and if not us, who?

And you know--I actually find this a lot of fun. It's not easy, of course, but it's a game in its own right. The victory conditions are clear, but the path from here to there is not, and figuring out how to navigate the obstacles is a challenge.
posted by Greg at 5:38 PM 3 comments

Fatpixels, a podcast on videogames, interviewed Jay Moore of Garage Games and me on the issues involved in independent game development and the indie games movement.

Link above is their website; direct link to the show is here.
Forty-something minutes in length.
posted by Greg at 4:48 PM 5 comments

Woah... I'd heard rumors that EA was thinking about buying Jamdat, but that was several months ago, long enough that I'd discounted them. But there we go. Congrats to Mitch Lasky and Scott Lahman, whose kids will never have to worry about food stamps, for sure.

Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan, the industry's most quoted analyst, is quoted by the Times this morning as saying that the purchase price (of $680m) is "fair." This is the same Michael Pachter who, at a local conference I attended earlier this year, said that he didn't think anyone would ever really be interested in playing games on mobile phones; of course, mobile games was a worldwide $1b industry in 2004, and on track to hit $2b this year--which, along with a shift from Asian to North American and European markets (two years ago Asia was producing 75% of mobile game revenues, now down to under 50%) means that dollar volumes for mobile game providers in the US have grown rapidly and enormously. Pacther's contrasting opinions strike me as... interesting.

Is the price "fair?" To be sure, the only "fair" price is "all the market will bear," and $680m is a modest premium to Jamdat's currently market cap (around $565m). So that's "fair". On the other hand, Jamdat is currently selling at a p/e ratio of 70. And sure, its revenues are increasing quickly, and it's well positioned to be one of the predominant players in the US in the mobile game business. But, well, 70 is pretty damn rich. And at $680m, it's more like 80.

The corresponding question, for anyone who's followed EA's history in the field, of course, is "when do they gut Jamdat?" But perhaps they won't; Mitch, who is staying on, is ex-Activision, and knows how to play the corporate game. And proximity seems to help; San Diego isn't drive distance to Redwood Shores, but at least it's in California.

Does the deal make sense for EA? Hard to say; it is a pricey way to buy into the mobile game, but EA Mobile wasn't going anywhere, and Jamdat does know the business well. And disappointing 2005 game sales means EA could certainly use something to give them a story about how they're going to generate continued growth, which Jamdat provides. But EA's previous forays into, say, online gaming have utterly failed, and mobile does require a set of business connections (to operators) and a mindset somewhat different from the conventional field; EA hasn't shown that kind of ability to adapt in the past.

Interesting nonetheless.
posted by Greg at 8:34 AM 4 comments

Want to own the rights to the Mary Kate & Ashley Personal Planner? Or possibly George Foreman boxing? Bid in the auction for Acclaim's crap. Turok Dinosaur Hunter not listed, more's the pity.

But I want to know--what about the rights to all the old comic books? Like Magnus: Robot Hunter. Hmm?

But of course we now have the new Acclaim, which has about as much relationship to the old Acclaim as the new Atari to the old Atari. Personally, I'd think Acclaim would have negative brand value about now, but then, what do I know.

The new Acclaim will apparently import Korean MMOs to the US. My first reaction is "that trick never works"--it's been tried, and it doesn't work. But apparently what Marks wants to bring isn't PvP hardcore titles but casual titles, persumably like Kart Rider, which make money by selling in-game crap instead of charging a subscription. Okay, maybe--but in the US, casual game players, at the moment at least, like single-player titles, and multiplayer hasn't worked real good in the casual downloadable market. And we do have one home-grown "casual" MMO here--Puzzle Pirates, which is actually pretty cool... But it's not exactly setting the world on fire.

And if they literally import Kart Rider--well, Nintendo hasn't sued over the obvious similarities to Mario Kart, I assume largely becuase any Japanese litigant in a Korean court will probably be lucky to get out of the courthouse alive. The States is a different matter.

So... I'm skeptical, but I can see how Marks got funded. Casual=hot, MMO=hot, "proven business model in Korea." I'd like it to work, actually, but we still have one, count'em one MMO that's worked in both Asian and North American markets: World of Warcraft.
posted by Greg at 5:17 PM 4 comments