EGD News #13 (Jan 23rd 2020)

It’s Joakim here. Greetings from London, where I was attending the Pocket Gamer Connects event. The industry is growing every year and the venue seems to get more and more packed with people. Hopefully, they’ll soon move to a bigger one 😁

The M&A front is really heating up. Just this week, we heard the news on Tencent acquiring Funcom for $148 million, Stillfront acquiring Storm8 for $300 million, and Scopely doing a big deal where they acquired FoxNext Games from Disney. That is a huge deal, making Scopely one of the biggest players in the mobile free-to-play market. They’re now in control of a Marvel IP based game, after several IP games like Walking Dead: Road to Survival and Star Trek being one of the previous big ones.

At the same time in London, we were having a panel at Pocket Gamer Connects on the topic of how to do good with games. The industry is finally discovering that for-profit companies can have a big impact on the world. We talked about preventing climate change, increasing diversity, preventing the suffering of minorities and wildlife preservation. All with games.

There is definitely a consumer need for gaming products that are doing good in the world. It has taken a while for the whole gaming industry to understand the opportunity. On Wednesday, Space Ape Games held an event called Games For Good, where they had talks by people who’re working to do good with games.

Here are some of the great initiatives out there:

• SpecialEffect https://www.specialeffect.org.uk you need to watch this video (Twitter link) ​
• PlayMob https://www.playmob.com Try out this game

​
Last week I wrote about the book Start Something That Matters. The book talks about a guy, the author Blake Mycoskie, who was in Argentina, saw an idea to sell a pair of shoes and then give away one pair away to the poor in South America. He went on to found TOMS, with the idea of setting out to do something to help people, versus just trying to make money.

The fact is that we still need to have quality games that people will want to play. But the purpose of creating these games can be for the good. Profits and financial rewards for the game developer will be a side product of the efforts. As mentioned on out PGC panel, the opportunity will finally be noticed when a game that does good reaches the top-grossing. I believe it will happen quite soon.

​

Our Latest Article

​How to avoid risks in a gaming startup — Part 2 – In this article, we cover three risks that, if realized, can be fatal to an early stage games company. I will explain how to migitage these risks in detail. First I talk about how developing a big game in scope can cause death to a gaming startup. Then we cover the issues of learning new things for games company founders and staff. And finally, the unrealistic expectations that bold game founders can give praise to, and why these expectations are so hard to avoid.

​

Our Latest Podcasts

​Game Founder’s Stress and Burnout with Anders Leicht Rohde — Anders and I have been having a conversation over email on work, live, stress and burnout for a few months. Then I asked Anders to come on the podcast so that we could share the topics to the gaming world.

These are things that don’t get shared. I believe it’s a part of being scared about how people, including investors and clients, will treat and react to you. But these are the things that so many of us, especially entrepreneurs, face in our daily lives. We have to start talking more openly about stress and burnout

All past episodes can be found here.

A Book Recommendation

​Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor E. Frankl) — This book was written by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, including time spent at Auschwitz. After WWII, he wrote this book, to describe how in the worst circumstances, one can choose their attitude to a situation. If one can find meaning in life, one can bear almost any situation.

What has changed for me when building Elite Game Developers as a company?

My mindset has been changing. Previously my mindset was all-around success defined by economic outcome, or even being famous. Being successful from a superficial standpoint. I learned over the years that these kinds of mental models lead me to make suboptimal decisions. When I shifted my mindset to really focus on thriving in the journey in finding meaning in every single day, focusing on delivering value to my audience, regardless of what happens in the short term. It really liberated me to make better decisions.

Reading books like these just reinforce my beliefs. This book will help you start the journey to discover your why.