So when it comes to game development, are you focused on new IP, or are you looking for opportunities where you can take a licensed IP and use that to reach a larger audience? I think it’s more about looking for great studios and publishers and their capabilities. So, not specifically assembling a portfolio of IP, although that’s an interesting concept.
What would you say makes a studio a good fit for what you’re looking for? The usual metrics by which you measure a studio’s success: A team that’s been working together for some number of years, with more than one successful product. If they’ve got some cross-platform technology, if they’ve got a great financial outlook, personnel performance, management systems and so on. All the usual studio metrics. I think there are studios with high potential, but
they’ve got a need for a long term strategic capital partner to help fuel that growth. You can think of small ones, and you could think of even larger ones who have been capital constrained or had some other reason why they haven’t been able to maximise their potential. That’s right up our alley. We want to help people realise their full potential and achieve their future goals.
There’s been a lot of industry investment activity in Japan. As an example, Tencent hired the founder of RGG Studio and were like ‘Make a new studio for us!’ - Is there any ambition to do things like that at Savvy? I think in all regions, but sure. There was an underweighting in the initial strategy around Asia. You can’t build a global games company and be one of the top ones if you’re not focused on Asia and China. I think some of the Chinese companies are focusing on increasing their international revenues which is logical given the circumstances.
Ireland announced a tax incentive to try to encourage developers to go there. Have you looked at something like that for Savvy? When I was at Activision that was part of my remit. Being on task forces worldwide to lobby for industry tax credits in several jurisdictions. I’m from Canada, where that’s probably the gold standard. So I think those programmes are super well thought out. Most of them are well thought out, and well implemented. I think there should be more of them generally speaking, and we’re trying to figure out programmes and tax incentives that are generally attractive for people. When you think about it, Saudi Arabia is doing exactly what Canadian jurisdictions were intending
to do with their programmes 25 years ago, which is to diversify away from having a natural resources and manufacturing base in Canada’s case, to something more forward looking in technology and digital media. That’s exactly what the national strategy in Saudi Arabia is doing, going away from oil and gas into 13 other sectors. The beauty of these incentives in video games is
unlike film, they create a lot of permanent jobs. This is what we had to convince jurisdictions of back when they were making these proposals. It was like ‘Okay. You’ve offered some incentives for years and years, but those jobs are not permanent jobs. If a video game studio comes in and establishes, then those are permanent jobs. That studio isn’t going anywhere if it’s successful.’ You can establish a hub, like in say, Guildford, which is what we’re trying to do in Riyadh. Also the tax incentives help, but they’re not the
full answer. When you’re starting from scratch, there are so many components. You have to work with universities and educational institutions to train up a number of people. In Quebec, as an example, there are 20 universities and community colleges and amazing STEM programmes related to digital media. That’s a long term thing. Nobody’s going to graduate from a Riyadh university with a degree in game design next week. You have to work on that. You have to provide the programmes that provide
financial support, and operational support for entrepreneurs who want to start a company and not just programmes that have a short time limit. Ones that are sustainable. You also have to provide the right incentives for foreign companies to come in, because without leadership and experience, people can’t really train up locally. That’s what Ubisoft does so well. Take your teams and then they go to a different place, and they hire a bunch of people. There are so many different things you have to touch on in order to do it from the ground up.
March 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 47
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