Have you seen a shift in hearts and minds in recent months (with regard to NFTs, etc)? I don’t think we’ll see a shift in attitude to blockchain games until there are enough blockchain games that demonstrate what you can do that you couldn’t do without it. We know we can build a kind of game that hasn’t been possible before, but talk is cheap!
AI is the new industry boogeyman, it seems. What’s been your view on how things are developing in that area of the industry?
The use of generative AI in games is fascinating. Is it a boogeyman? If it is, then I’m happy to embrace it. There are pretty clear use cases that facilitate game production but I think I’m more interested in what new experiences it can create for players. That’s a little more embryonic at this stage, but I’m sure there are some talented game studios cooking things up at this very moment.
You are preparing to speak at Develop:Brighton this year, on the subject of VC funding. Why is it a subject that matters?
For 33 years I’ve asked people for money to make videogames in one form or another. Different game verticals; different sized companies; different countries. One of the anomalies I’ve noticed is that few companies in the UK use venture capitalist funding. Go to the Nordics or to California and it seems the predominant form of funding, where founders
maintain control and IP, but generally in the UK it’s most frequently project financing of one kind or another. There’s no right and wrong way of getting funding, but having had good experiences with venture capital for the last ten years I hoped it would be useful to share what I’d learned in a no-BS, developer-friendly way.
What else are you looking forward to at the conference this year - apart from air conditioning? I understand Justin Glibert will be speaking, who I’ve found to be inspiring. I’ll get my nose into the rest of the schedule next month!
Having established and managed a number of studios over the years, what have been the main lessons you have learnt? I’ve learned that the canvas for the kind of games you can make is larger than you imagine. If you’d asked me what a videogame was back in 1990 then I’d have given you an answer that was way narrower than what I now know to be true. I’ve made hardcore RTS games, party games, hypercasual mobile games, blockchain games and a lot in-between - very different games for very different audiences.
Are you hopeful for the future of the games industry and where predominantly does that future lie? What is the future for the games industry? I’m very happy to say that I have no clue; it’s one of the things I like most about making games.
Any similarities between David Amor and the host of Buzz are entirely coincidental.
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