“Quicklook” Assessment of Greater Adelaide's Assets & Challenges ...

• Voice actors are imported from Hollywood because the industry isn’t mature here.
• Team oriented business – no set working hours. Need to work to schedule.
• Traditional project management used.
• Their release target is Christmastime. Print CDs from august to September.
Usually release game in November because of schedule slips. Over 90% of
games shipped very late. All their titles ship on time.
• Grown from 1 team company to a 2.5 team company. Producers = project
management.
• Biggest challenge: dealing with growth and getting management systems worked
out. Should be sorted out in 6-12 months. Challenges aren’t that great, what they
have are opportunities. Limit to growth is management and availability of people.
They might take more risk on publishing more games and marketing. New
markets emerging are wireless games – they have assigned a new CTO.
• They need to employ another r5 –10 people in the next year. Very talented
developers around. They might acquire some software companies – so they can
employ good project management or develop a joint venture.
• Globally: question in the states whether advancing games will be accepted
(Quake for example) because their games tend to be ‘shoot-em-up’ like Quake
• Threat for them is that the introduction of new consoles has wiped out sales.
Before they had a combined based of 130M units, and not it is 50M units. It
happens every 5yrs.- but since they are a preferred company, they are already
ahead of the curve and will be 2 yrs. Ahead of the rest of the companies.
• Staying in games? They don’t worry about the business cycle. He believes that in
20-30 yrs time it will be the predominant industry. Movies will move into games
not the other way around. He gets a lot of exposure into many creative areas.
Employees are happy and excited about their jobs. Every year the bar is raised –
new games are 50% better than last year. Plenty of growth opportunities. Are
moving to wireless games.
• All the character animators are in Sydney. There is another studio on the gold
coast.
• Is there anything the SA film industry can do to train? No – would do it through an
educational industry.
• Now that they are in Adelaide they intend to stay. Would not move the company.
They might need to have an office in US if they get into publishing, but otherwise
no. They have an agent in the US. Sprintcar organization in US licensed to
Ratbag (tracks, team sponsors). When they developed dirt track games and the
dirt track people came to them
• Advice to new startups. They must get a prototype – spend a year developing that
– sweat equity – great prototype might get you a good deal. Start up might be
able to find a private (angel) or put in sweat equity. Need to go overseas and
meet people face to face.
• 70% of the people in the office work 10 till 6. Publishers do test now; they are just
setting up test organization now.
• Other game developers in Adelaide: R3 – specialize in making redemption games
– there are a couple of other very small start-ups. There are about 40 in Australia
– half are strong like Ratbag. One company in Adelaide picked up a group of
Ukrainians and brought them here as a team.
• A few animation companies like Guava, etc. that are very strong.
• They might be interested in strategic alliances, but they have not done a lot in the
past.
COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE
76