playfish
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Kristian SegerstråleTRANSCRIPT
Five Lessons From Video Games
6 May, 2008Kristian Segerstrale, CEO - Playfish
I’m a games entrepreneur• Co-founder and MD Europe of European half of
NASDAQ listed mobile games company Glu Mobile (GLUU) in 2001
• 50+ games published in $100k-$1M budget range– Own IP, Konami, Sega, Atari, Activision,
Codemasters, Square Enix, ...
• 10+ UK top-10 titles
• AIAS Award, 2 x Game of the Year Awards, 2 x BAFTA nominees...
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Playfish is a social games publisher
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My five learnings from building a games company are...
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Lesson 1 : Think like a CFO• What does it mean?
– Develop a financially led operating model
• Why bother?– Manage risk in hits business– Clear product strategy– Enterprise value
• How to go about it?– Choose financing model (work for hire or venture capital)– Product choice by forecasted contribution– Look for operating leverage
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Lesson 2 : Create great product
• What does it mean?– Create #1s or #2s in categories – the rest won’t matter
• Why bother?– Exponentially higher returns– Enterprise value
• How to go about it?– Attract the most talented team– Specialise in types of games– Love your product and polish, polish, polish– Names, trademarks, logos, characters, sequels
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Lesson 3 kill product• What does it mean?
– Learn to put a stop to a project you love when it no longer goes in the right direction
• Why bother?– Avoid resource drain– Avoid bad product
• How to go about it?– Implement “green light” gates on projects– Take positive decisions with widest input– Make sure that a “kill” is not seen as a failure
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Lesson 4 : Build platform• What does it mean?
– Develop and document tools, technology and processes to constantly improve your efficiency
• Why bother?– Better operating leverage over time– Easier to scale development– Enterprise value
• How to go about it?– Automate everything that can be automated
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Lesson 5 : Budgets increase• What does it mean?
– Be ready to compete with the kind of product you expect to be technically possible in 1-3 years
• Why bother?– Production values invariably increase over time– Early investors reap largest rewards
• How to go about it?– Build/recruit right skills set for 1-3 year horizon– Focus on continuous learning
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Yep. They do.
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A lot of things are different with social
apps.
But perhaps some things are similar?
