Why London is great for building a global studio - Toby Moore
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Why London is great for building a global studio
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Why London is great for building a global studio - Toby Moore
- 1. Why London is great for building a global studio
- 2. Former CTO Mind Candy / Moshi Monsters (2006-2012) Introductions Co-founder / CTO Space Ape Games (2012-Present) Toby Moore
- 4. John Earner (CEO) GM of Studios @Playfish; Playstation, BCG, US Navy Simon Hade (Product & Platform) Plattform Lead @Playfish/EA; Product @ Skype Toby Moore (CTO) Former CTO @ Mind Candy (6 yrs) Introductions – Space Ape Founders
- 5. • We raised $1.8 in seed funding from the best game investors in the world • We started with a world-class team of 12 in Soho, London • We have many years’ experience making some of the biggest free-to-play games • Our vision: Build the highest quality & most popular mobile games (for gamers!) 5 Introducing Space Ape Games! World class team, world class track record
- 8. Our product philosophy Make games at the intersection of what we like and what market wants
- 9. • Developed in 8 months • 10M Installs / 1.1M MAU • 300K DAU • $19M in Gross Rev. to-date & $20M R/R • Team of 15
- 10. 4. Create condition s for a megahit How do we get there? Cultivate our Culture 3. Diversify 2. Master a category 1. Get a quick win Four phases of growth We are here We are here
- 12. Today: 2 teams, 70 people, 22 nationalities
- 13. Location
- 14. Network
- 15. Diversity
- 16. Community
- 17. Government support • UKTI • TIGA • Games industry tax relief • Tech City • Entrepreneur’s relief
Editor's Notes
- Privileged to enough be the CTO of 2 fast growth companies – Mind Candy grew from 12- 180 people and Space Ape is now 70 people and only 2.5 years old. I wanted to share with you some of the lessons we learnt and applied at Space Ape, as well as some things I think that make London a great place to build a global studio
- First, I’ll give you an overview of Space Ape and our journey to date
- We founded Space Ape mid 2012, just as mobile gaming was starting to really explode. I’d been at Mind Candy 6 years, and John, our CEO had recently left Playfish after it’s acquisition by EA along with Simon, who joined Playfish from Skype. We were brought together by a common feeling that mobile gaming was going to be dominate form of entertainment in the 21st century, and that with the core team we put together, could great a genre defining game
- We raised $2.6m in funding and put together a core team with all the skills that we needed to get an MVP together, along with a basic but homely office in Soho. I’ll expain why Soho more in a bit
- The genre we decided to go after was real-time sports prediction. We believed that the second-screen experience was ripe for an explosion, and in 6 weeks we put together a really fun real-time prediction app that let you play a game with friends whilst watching a live game.
- We put it live and fans loved it, but even with a few iterations, couldn’t get the metrics to where we thought they needed to be by the end of the season to justify carrying on with it. So we killed it. That cost $1.3m. If I’m honest, the team weren’t really passionate about the actual game, although we did have a great time making, learning to work together and built some great tech capabilities. We did kill it really quickly
- So we went back to basics, started rapidly prototyping games that we thought fit in the middle of this Venn diagram. What the market wants, and what we want to make and play. We knew we couldn’t afford to go after another genre-defining play with our remaining funding, and we were all playing Starcraft 2 in the office, and increasingly a lot of Clash of Clans, which is ultimately the prototype that left us feeling we could add some innovation the space and put us on a roadmap back to where we could aim bigger and more blue ocean again.
- Fast forward 6 months and we launched Samurai Siege, which went on to be a $20m business and give us the runway to grow the team and start working on our next title .
- We wanted a roadmap that would get us back to the place where we can afford to innovate and create the conditions for a genre-defining megahit, whilst growing our company with a really strong culture.
- *4x the Capacity *We’re faster, we have momentum. Builds on our tech, but takes it to the next level *Siege shipped to a date, Wolf Ships when it’s done
- So that’s where we’re at today. 70 people in a new office in the heart of Soho, from 22 nationalities
- One of the lessons I learnt from Mind Candy is how much location matters. We started in a small office in Battersea, and when we started to grow were having real issues hiring people. We moved to the Tea Building in Shoreditch and straight away people wanted to come and work for us as soon as they stepped foot in our office At Space Ape we decided to bite the bullet and take an office. It was a higher proportion of our burn rate than we liked, but people really do Want to be near where their partner and friends work Where there are pubs, restaurants and shops on the door step Compared to cities like San Francisco where Engineer salaries are through the roof and they move jobs on average every 6 months. London is a place where people stay in their company for years and move to where their friends are. Other game companies are here Somewhere that’s easy to commute to, for everyone And where there are parks and gyms to enjoy
- One of the key ways we’ve scaled to 70 people so quickly is having a large network. Playfish and Mind Candy in particular, but most of those people have 2nd degree connections that span the games industry. 50% of our hires have come from internal referal. That’s 35 people we didn’t have to pay recruiter for
- The title of this talk is about growing a global studio, and I think the diversity of people we’ve been able to hire relatively easily speaks to that We have 22 nationalities including people from as far as Mynmar, and when we wanted to take Samurai Siege to Asia, we found people that could help us do that already living here in London and sometimes already big fans of the game Refer back to culture pillar
- The community in London is fantastic You have all the companies you need to partner with within walking distance. There are game incubators like PlayHubs Developer meetups like London Unity User Group Mobile gaming conferences like Pocket Gamer We’re also doing what we can to help it out with evens like Soho Social and the Great British Winter Game jam, both events that we’ve held in our office over the last 6 months
- And believe it or not, the government is pretty supportive. I’ve claimed R&D tax credits at both Mind Candy and Space Ape which have really helped with the burn rate of gettinga company off the ground. Last month I was lucky enough to be invited to G-Star in Korea with the UKTI, along with 20 other games studio execs. And then there’s Entrepreneur’s relief that will hopefully help feed success stories back into the system, in the way that it has with the Playfish founders and Initial Capital to keep the industry growing and London one of the best Cities in the world to start a game company in .
- Thanks Very much!