This morning I had the most spectacular of meetings with two partners of a VC firm.
They are one of the world’s biggest funds and have financed some BIG Internet Companies.
I hail their scope and size.
In my case, when we started talking about Games2win and what my partner and I see it becoming:
– I talked extensively about how we see the future of Content as APPS.
– I believe that APPS now have their own identity, their own mortality, their own community (if they get popular) and also their own business model.
Examples – the business of an app like Angry Birds is very unique from the business of say, a Talking Tom (Angry Birds does Toys, Movies, etc. beyond just paid downloads)
Credit – Angry Birds
– Our vision, I explained, was to create a new social platform FOR APPS called appucino – whose implementation, I also demonstrated in this game.
THE VC had a very very interesting and different view point.
The more experienced person said, “Alok, why aren’t you building the ANGRY BIRDS of India? There are 65k new smartphones being added in India everyday and people are increasingly playing APPS”.
“Why not FOCUS on India, build a few kick ass games that do really well and make them MEGA BRANDS?”
That question stumped me!
I mean, Sholay or Ramayan or Hum Log were one-off cases of luck, timing and of course creativity that came magically together. Could this be replicated BY MONEY?
Credit – Sholay
– I argued with the VC that there are 1 million APPS in the world now (Android + iOs put together), but the games we can remember are Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, Fruit Ninja, Talking Tom, and…????
4-10 games have become HITS in a population of 1 million games??
– My second argument was based on what I have been reading and experiencing – that unlike BIG CONSOLE games that took 2-3 years to make and probably 20-50 million dollars to fund, the small, snacky, mobile game formats take a few days to create and cost virtually nothing to make (if you are indeed building these games in small garages like a hobby developer).
Hence lots of good to great games are flooding the system.
If the VELOCITY OF CREATIVITY IS SO HIGH – there is little scope of REPEAT Angry Birds appearing!
– Look at the consumers’ mindsets today.
My daughters keep downloading, playing and FORGETTING apps as if it’s a fashion to do so!
They are so USED to great quality all the time (the top games on iTunes change often), they don’t have ANY BRAND LOYALTY left.
So, with disloyal consumers, how will a great Creative Brand get built?
And even if it does, it will be 1 more ANGRY BIRDS of the next 1 million apps to come into the system. That’s not a business, that’s LUCK!
– I also asked him why would an one off wonder be valued? I mean, check out the most valuable LISTED Games companies in the world – Shanda, Nexon, Zynga, etc. etc. – these are all PLATFORM plays that have lots of GREAT GAMES on their platforms that are monetized across zillions of users.
These companies are very valuable for their audience, their network, their cross border promotional triggers etc. – not for an ONE HIT GAME.
But the VC had 2 clear points of views:
– Platforms are competitive and may not be sustainable for long periods of time.
– Companies like Disney create GREAT BRANDS and that will be long term value.
They want to find the next DISNEY OF INDIAN GAMES. NOT THE NEXT ZYNGA OF INDIA.
Well, my meeting ended obviously without any chance of raising money from them, but it did make me question many things and hence this post and a question to end:
Will 100 million Dollars in funding without strings attached, be able to create another SHOLAY, another ANGRY BIRDS?
My gut tells me NO – but would love to hear your thoughts!!!
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Special thanks to Asha for editing!!