Great new interview with the CEO5 Dec 2019 07:29
A few snippets:
Https://www.mcvuk.com/keywords-studios-andrew-day-i-love-the-industry-and-i-dont-see-it-slowing-down-anytime-soon/
“I was travelling last week, and I took the opportunity to visit five major game development studios,” Day tells us, though he won’t reveal which ones exactly, as the work of firms such as Keywords remains highly secretive.
“And I spoke to the heads of all of those studios, and every single one, volunteered to me, that they’re all going to be making more games in the future with the same number of people. Next year, the year after that, and the year after… They said, obviously, we’re going to need more of your support to be able to do that.”
“More and more integrated,” is how Day describes that relationship. “Three or four years ago in our offices, we would never have been asked to do hero assets, certainly not whole levels of the game. And all of that’s evolved quite quickly, so that it’s not untypical for us to be doing 80 per cent of the art on a single game in a highly integrated pipeline."
With the Google Stadia launch this very month, and xCloud, currently in preview, close behind, the new generation of console platforms will be larger than ever, and not simply boxes in living rooms, either. And more platforms creates yet another potential revenue stream for external development services.
“We’re lucky. I mean, we’re working for those [streaming] players directly but obviously, we’re also helping our partners in importing their games or where we’re developing games for them or with them, we’ll be building in the Stadia version, as part of the programme of delivery. It’s a very good position to be in, we sort of know what it takes.”
So has Keywords found the new streaming platforms to be a smooth transition too?
“I’d say it’s been fairly smooth for us. It’s funny, we’re a publicly traded company, so we have investors and they ask interesting questions like: ‘What do you have to do to prepare yourself for streaming platforms?’ or ‘Does that mean you have to go out and hire a completely different sort of resource type, because VR is coming around the corner?’
“And actually, we get taken into those spaces by our clients who are the content holders, but they’re also very often the platform holders. So somebody like Facebook with Oculus use our services, extensively.” In short with both platform and content providers as clients, Keywords should be up to speed before most when it comes to such shifts."
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