CRV and GDC partner to revolutionize gaming industry

Posted by Susan Wu on Feb 21, 2008 in charles river ventures, games

We at CRV are producing a new program at GDC called Startup Launchpad. Essentially, it’s a way for game developers - indie to amateur to professionals within studios - to learn how to become entrepreneurs and to become unshackled from the confines of the traditional game industry structure.

As I’m sure many of you know, many game developers/designers toil long and hard for game studios, only to receive very little if any equity for their efforts. It’s an inequitable system. I was an indie game developer for many years (MUDs, Mods) but I never wanted to join the traditional studio system because of what I perceived to be very inefficient employee management practices.

The gaming industry is at the cusp of major structural change. Traditional retail channels have left industry power in the hands of the few who could create scale to distribute across retail efficiently. Now with the advent of open platforms such as such as XBL/XNA and web platforms like Kongregate, MiniClip, Areae/Metaplace, Facebook, etc, there will soon be numerous channels for game devs/designers to leverage to help them build their own profitable businesses. And also, as players become more accustomed to playing games online or purchasing via online channels, there will be more venues for building new platforms and experimenting with different business models. More importantly, many of these new games that will emerge will be much more lightweight social games, and so entirely new genres of gameplay will emerge.

Bottom line: the gaming industry is at the cusp of dramatic structural overhaul in the next several years. Some of this innovation will be driven by the large game companies (XBL, EA Blueprint), but I expect a bulk of the exciting new developments to come from a crop of startups yet to emerge.
Anyways, I am hoping that these series of events at GDC will foster innovation, creativity, and a sense of what’s possible in the gaming industry. At the very least, I want to introduce game industry folks to the possibility of being an entrepreneur or working for a startup.
You can read more about these events at GDC Director Jamil Moledina’s blog:
http://www.gdconf.com/news/directors_cut/

or at Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17370

The first series of events takes place tomorrow, Friday February 22 – you can read about the 3 Startup Launchpad sessions here.

Raising Venture Financing for your Startup: Tips, Tricks, and Hacks – 9:00-10:00am Room 2004 West Hall
The 1st Annual Startup Showcase – See the 5 most exciting and innovative startups of the year – 12:00-1:00pm, Room 132 North Hall
Lessons from the Front Lines: Startup CEOs share their insider stories – 4:00-5:00pm Room 2007 West Hall

Thanks for reading! I hope to see you there. And keep a lookout for the business plan contest we will be launching for Austin GDC in the next couple of months.

10 Comments

Jeff D

Feb 21, 2008 at 11:54 am

I look forward to seeing what kind of games develop out of this.

Michael Madison

Feb 26, 2008 at 9:44 am

The world is definitely different from when I was a game developer with these more recent publishing models. I remember trying to help keep TriLunar from going under — they had an all-star team of developers and well known artist Joe Madureira; just never got the Dragonkind tech-demo approved by a publisher, though it was clearly a title the world wanted to see.

David Oliver

Mar 4, 2008 at 6:35 am

Susan,

I attended all three sessions and enjoyed them, especially the startup showcase. Like some of the other GDC panel sessions I attended you probably had too many people on your panel given the limited amount of time available.

Some suggestions for the future:

- less people on your panels
- not all panelists need to give an answer to every question. At the game media panel when someone from the audience asked a question the moderator assigned it to only one or two panelists
- I think you posed too many of your own questions, you should allow more time for the audience to ask their own questions
- coming from China it would be good to see more international companies but I understand that this is a U.S. event

Dave

Apr 10, 2008 at 11:58 pm

random toughts:

session based: you can sit in and get out easy.
state: You dont have to start from the beginning all the time, the game evolves.
team based: You are part of a cooperation with real friends.
team/team based:You can team up with other real ppl you dont know irl.
game outside the Game: On your cellphone, youtube videos, webapplications. Enrich your gaming experience with short content/information that you can experience when at work /at the gym/in a kanoe etc.

Other random broken toughts:

Secrets in games for players: Today in big games like wow etc, everyone that have some clue and can surf the web knows everything about the game. If you are able to giveout information and play a Secret Agent Game with ppl that would build suspension. Either trough oposing fractions that if the information comes out that would benefit the other side or with everyone if that information comes out, you cant keep that Big cool weapon or technical upgrade on your Flying broomstick.

There is a million and one things that could evolve games(and all Internet/social/interactive media) from where we are today. All we have to do is imagine.

Dave

Apr 11, 2008 at 12:10 am

I have another great idea for the gaming industri. If you have like EA alot of titles why dont let the characters evolve from game to game. Like for ex: You have this IceHockey dude you made, and then you buy this cool worldwar 2 multiplayer game. ->SWOOSH and you have copied you hockey dude to the WW2 game and because he played hockey alot he has great physic and a special armor(well its plastic but dont tell anyone) with cool graphic and pretty good.
Or if you copied Sonic dude, you get a pet in WW2 game that follows your char and acts as a guarddog that can attack evil Nazis.
Evolving games beyond the game. Standard formats for player characters. Give bonus and achivements to people that buys several games from the same manufacturer and beyond all it crazy fun.