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El CEO de FoxChicken Grain fue uno de los ponentes de la conferencia en Barcelona, en la que dio una charla titulada "The Rise Of The Minority Studio: Why The Industry Needs The Underdog". Le agarramos nada más bajarse del escenario principal para hablar de las necesidades actuales de la industria del videojuego.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is my final day at the Barcelona Game Fest, formerly known as the IndieDevDay, and I'm here joined by Phil, who is one of the speakers.
I'm enjoying that this time around I'm talking more with the speakers to learn a little bit more about the conference side of the event."
"You just left the stage, how does it feel? How did it feel with your panel?
It was absolutely brilliant. I've spoken at multiple events over the years, PGC, etc.
This felt the most natural and the audience were really appreciative and attentive.
It was just fantastic and I have to say a big thank you to the team that did all the audio and everything because they were just amazing."
"Fantastic. So let's talk about the topic. It is a very interesting topic to me.
You were talking about the underdogs and how vital they are becoming to the industry in such complicated times.
Which would you say is the key point or your main takeaway here?
The main point of this is that, as we know over the last three or four years, large studios have been shrinking and laying people off."
"What's happening is those people that have been laid off, they are making studios that are creative powerhouses.
They're able to do things that they weren't able to do at the large studios.
They're able to make games that we wouldn't see otherwise, such as Tears on a Pillow, which is a fantastic game about the Nabco in 1948.
We just would not see them if it was still a Microsoft, Sega, Nintendo ruled world."
"So my whole point of this is, look, yes, the state of play is not that good right now, but it's getting better.
There's hope and how to make that hope greater is to actually be the studio that is creating that hope.
The conversations I've had after this presentation have been, I love what you're saying.
Great. Thank you so much for bringing positive energy into the industry, because at a time when it's very, very easy to fall into despair and just focus on the negative."
"It's up to people like myself with 30 odd years of industry experience to be the one to go, hey, it's OK. Not a problem. Chill. It's going to be fine. And that's where we're at.
How have you been working with studios trying to try for this message to permeate and to help them work and to enter the industry and to succeed within the past five years?
OK. Within the last five years, to start with, I was a head of operations of a studio and I would strongly advocate for employing strong diversity when hiring."
"So we ignoring things like gender, economic disadvantage, etc., but looking at the skills and the abilities of the person first and foremost and bringing that forward.
When I've set up on my own with Fox Chicken Grain, what I've done is we work with anybody. We work in a fully inclusive manner.
So it doesn't matter whether you are a middle aged male wasp, me, or you are transgender. It does not matter to us. What matters is, are you good at what you do?
And if you need a bit of training to get better at it, hey, let us help you. If we can't help you directly, we will put you in touch with people who can."
"And that way, you know, the number of people I speak to on a regular basis that are like, well, without your help, Phil, I wouldn't have been able to do this.
I wouldn't have been able to do that. And I think a good example was when I came to needing to hire a business development person. I looked at, I got maybe about six or seven people asked me if they could come and work with me.
And I ended up hiring Kira, who is absolutely awesome. You can always tell where we are at events because we always have these tie dye t-shirts on, whether it's myself or Kira."
"So yeah, and that is how we've built this. It's, you know, come and talk to us. Say hi. I love talking, as you might have noticed.
I love that. I love that already, Phil. So can you share a couple or just one success story that you've worked with as Fox Chicken as of late? I don't know if those games are released or if you can talk about them in terms of the games.
Yes. Most of the games that we are working on at the moment are strongly under NDA. There has been, without mentioning names though, there's been a couple that we have worked on where they were close to the people in the studio giving up and going to work in a supermarket."
"But we worked with them to encourage them, work out what their blockers were, and then find somebody to help them remove those blockers or remove those blockers ourselves.
And a lot of it is down to mentoring, sitting down with the studios and going, right, okay. The biggest problem actually with the majority of them is they set up a studio and become a business later. It should always be you're setting a business up.
That's everybody, right?
Yeah, yeah. Set a business up. Set a business up that is going to be a studio. It's an important differentiation. But if you've done it the other way around, talk to us. We can help you work out how you turn that around and ensure that you're not going to get a visit from the taxman, which everybody hates."
"Or we can help you find your funding. We work with nearly all the big publishers in the world and a lot of indie publishers as well.
Okay, and coming back to my first question, this is the last one. Talking about creativity and how very fresh, very different little ideas can foster and can also work out in this environment.
Have you checked out the games here? Is there any sort of fresh idea that struck you as something very special or doesn't have to be here? As of late, something you saw that can also illustrate what we are talking about?
Absolutely. Here, one of the reasons I love coming to Barcelona and talking to the games industry here is the passion of the developers. It is just beautiful."
"I will always come back to Barcelona and talk to the studios here because I just love it. I love Barcelona as a city anyway.
But here for games, there's several. We've been around several times as a group talking to people and found some that we're like, yes, we definitely want to work with you.
There's some great originality. There's one, I think it's called Gnotted Gnomes. Brilliant. Love that game. It's fun. It's fresh. It's like, yes, I want to play that game."
"On the other end of the scale, there's one called The Occultist, which is like, it's dark and oof, but that is really fitting at the moment because this blows my mind.
I don't know if you've realised this, but at the moment, the games market is really, really opposite poles. You've got the cute and cosy games, such as the Gnotted Gnomes, and at the other end, you've got the really dark psychological horror.
Very little in between, but that's good. That's good. That shows that we've got a bit of diversity. The next big thing in games is going to be something that fits that hole in the middle."
"I don't know what it is yet. I don't know what it is, but I think one day I'm going to go to an event and go, that's the game. That is the one that in five years' time, everybody's going to be going.
It's this, like at the moment, everybody's going, it's a Survivor's like, or a Rogue like, or a Deck Builder. That's where we're going to go. But genuinely, if you haven't been around here and seen the games yet, you should do.
Fantastic. I think that's the perfect way to wrap this one. So thank you so much, Phil. I'm looking forward to meeting you in these events. It was lovely."
"Thank you very much, David. I've really enjoyed talking to you.
Thank you."
