These series of guest posts are written by the teams attending the Tetuan Valley Startup School 2010 Fall edition. This post is from the “A Crowd Of Monsters” team, formed by Axel MGarcia& Rafael González… among other monsters.
Last week I talked about the game business, giving some insight on the industry architecture and providing some numbers of the game business.
Today I’m going a step forward showing what are the key points to examine in a game proposal. With that I pretend to give some basic knowledge for investors looking to enter in the game business, so they have some elements to evaluate in a game start-up and know if a game can success. Because sadly, not all games are successful; and not all of them sell five million copies in two days.
So let’s imagine you are an investor and you have the opportunity to invest in a game start-up. Probably game business is a completely new world for you, so you discard it. How are you going to invest in something that you don’t know about it? But wait, what if you are losing an opportunity? What if that game is a great idea with a great team? What about adapting to new markets and opportunities?
I know there is specialization between investors; some of them invest on media, others on energies, and so on. But there are many qualified people in Spain in the media sector, and too few investors focused on media. So there is a gap that should be covered by someone.
I think that to fill this gap there is needed an effort from the two main actors. In one hand, game developers have to understand that they are in a business; that each game is a product and as so, numbers are important. In the other hand investors have to understand that games are a profitable business and as so, they have to know which are the key points to identify an opportunity to don’t lose it.
Ok, so now there are four geek programmers in front of you showing some impressive numbers about the game industry. They have made their homework and the financial section is perfect. Now they introduce you their game idea. You can have a feeling, but how you know if this feeling fits gamer’s feelings? How you know that game idea is going to have success?
Actually you don’t know, but you can guess.
Are they going where users are?
To success, a game has to be where users are. That’s quite obvious, but where users are?
Digital, digital, digital… and during next few years, playing from computers.
Products like PS3 and XBox are a year to start their decline period. They can’t evolve as time goes by, while personal computers do. That’s why personal computers are starting to surpass current generation of consoles processing power, and till next gen consoles appear, computers are going to be the main gaming platform. (Refs.)
For the long term, going digital is the deal. Don’t you think it could be awesome to get a bunch of Valencia orange’s directly from the three, instantly and cheaper? Well, that’s impossible for food, but it’s too silly to don’t do it with software. Retailers are getting angry. They are stopping to earn a lot of money. But they should have seen it… it was so obvious, they have had time but they didn’t wanted to adapt, and now they are losing money. The one who has seen it, Valve, is now riding hundreds of millions of dollars in their face. So Valve, a platform for digital distribution for PC and Mac with each day more and more users, is going to be the place to go.
Also PlayStationNetwork, XBox Live, Apple Store, Android Market or Facebook are on the wave.
Do they show something special?
Games means to live experiences, to have new feelings, to get inside a new exciting world.
A successful game has to bring you to a parallel world plenty of new challenges and rewards that make you feel special as you avoid them.
Game developers have a toolbox with a lot of resources to achieve that, but there is one common component on all the formulas: the resulting game is innovative in something. Can have a new gameplay, a new thrilling story never told or just a new graphic style. At the end, something that make players feel something different from playing any other games. [Video: Limbo game]
However, take care with innovation. Gamers want to play, so don’t give them a Picaso based game with time disruption and a new special eye based control. Games have to look familiar, but with something that makes them different… as any innovative product.
Do they look like going to need marketing for survive or for skyrocket?
Sadly, nowadays marketing is a necessity in any new product release. Everything is too crowded with so many competitors that without some marketing you almost can’t reach your audiences.
A good product would require less marketing, but as we say in Spain: “with more sugar, more sweet”. A good product combined with an impressive marketing campaign can make your product skyrocketing.
Marketing can also be sort of magic solution for a not original product. If something is going wrong on the game industry is that many publishers are being enrolled in a selling race using the money and marketing as their main tools instead of searching for new innovative game proposals. Comparison between Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona can be made here. While one is just buying superstars to make the best team ever, others are growing up the next future superstars. As result, one looks fresher and showed impressive results once superstars have been formed (football fanatics, I’m Valencia C.F supporter, don’t make me wrong 
).
That race is making a lot of similar products to crowd the market and is what explains why those games being original are having big reception from the masses.
So, that’s my brief personal opinion on what should be considered when being involved in a game investment. There are other things to look that are exactly as in any other investment; the team background, the financial aspects etc. But I thought that those three points are more relevant because have some special concepts to take into account that are specific from the videogames context, and because they can help to deal with the volatility that games have.
So, as I said last week: don’t be afraid, play with the monsters. 
