if you’ve never seen a LinkedIn live it’s kind of like twitch there’s a chat we’re going to have essentially a live

podcast and today we’re talking about CEO decision making with Alexis grovia

if you’ve not known of Alexis kovak he’s the former MD of Blizzard Korea gamelof

Japan and huge Games been in the industry for like 25 years or something crazy now a fractional CEO and Chief

Operating Officer as well and basically helps CEOs in the games industry kind of build better businesses as a fraction of

CEO and Coach did I get that right Alexis nice scary perfect perfect I

would not have done it better lovely perfect and yeah and today we’re going to talk about decision

making so the way I’ve actually come around is I’ve got the 10 biggest

problems that a studio could have and I’m going to list them out and then I’ve made a little lucky wheel we’re going to

talk about each topic couple questions each and then Q&A from the chat and we’re going to do this for around 2

hours so we’re in for a big masterclass of stories so we’ll get straight into it if you’re new to the gaming Playbook

welcome I’m Harry Fu I’m the host we do weekly podcasts here and my business is

essentially bringing people together that’s through content on LinkedIn and through podcasts and events so that’s my

little intro and we’ll get straight into it so in terms of of what I’m going to

do I’ve made a pretty little wheel can yeah that was my question can we see it

I want to play of course all righty so we’re going to spin the wheel and see what we’re going to

talk about first The Wheel of

Fortune all righty streamlining operation for growth so I’m going to get

straight into the questions first of all operations can

you explain operations in a few words as possible like what does operations actually mean

in the game Studio sense well uh first I would like to make

a disclaimer if you agree with that is because we have people coming from

different area some are production some are business some are working for startup some are working for a well

Advanced startup and some are working for bigger companies so basically I will try to give some uh example uh through

this live and I will try to explain depending on the situation of the companies of course each company is

different that’s why there are some service like the one that I’m offering there is a reason for that but basically

we try to to cover as much as possible so uh the operation is basically the uh

the managing of all the the different department and division of a company that are making the company run and

usually it can go from three to 10 different division depending the

structure of the company and uh the point of the operation is to be sure that you reach what we call the

operational excellence for each of them so basically when you nail all the

different uh Division and all the different processes for each of the division in that case you should have a

company that is running pretty well and you should have the right organization to scale and to continue

your growth okay all righty let’s get straight into it then so in terms of

operations what is the most common bottleneck you see in studios which are growing fast what tends to break F

first so if if we are talking about the the studios one of the common mistake

that I see is that there are many startups that are raising funds for example and then after they say wow I

have this this big pile of of money of cash and basically I have my dream and I

have the dream that I want to to pursue I will do everything to reach it and

basically I will put all my effort all my energy into it so there will be like

iring like crazy without consideration about the budgeting we will discuss later about that um but it will it

will uh s L it will become very unbalanced unsteady company because

instead of looking as a CEO or as a CEO the company in a holistic way uh people

will just look at it from their own perspective many studios um are developed are created by Engineers or by

artists or by game designer or they have different co-founders they are all

working from the co-production so they are passionated about their project about their games and they are just

throwing everything at it without considering that there can be other

departments that are also essential to the growth of the company maybe they are not that apparent or they are not giving

you the reward that you are seeing when you are developing a game on a on a weekly basis but they are as important

if not more at the beginning especially so I would say that

recruiting like crazy having like going from zero to 50 people it’s a very good

way to uh uh to reach the worldall full speed very quickly and then after to uh

to call me and to say Alex I have a big problem can you save me and can you try to to save the company to reorganize it

etc etc so what’s the actual problem that happens so let’s say I want to move fast

I have money so I grow to 50 like what is the challenge of growing that fast like what actually

happens so let’s say that you want to Let’s said that you want to grow um very

fast the first is uh what does it mean exactly for you growing fast is you know

you need to you need to Define you need to Define everything you need to Pace what you are doing most of the time

there is a there is a lack of you know we are talking about objective and goals but then after when you discuss with

with people their objective and goals is always I want to I want to make this game that would be that simple or I want

to release my game in two years time but there is no consideration for the rest

and that’s why uh usually in business uh we are using methodologies like for

example the one that is very well known like okr so objective and key results

that enable you to see what is the objective of your company uh but also to

cut into chunk usually quarterly based uh objectives and you need to know

exactly what you need to do uh to reach the quarterly objective this is something that is extremely important if

you are not doing that that mean that you have the risk to say um I just want

to grow to complete my game as fast as possible but that’s not that easy why

because first if you recruit a lot basically you need to be sure that you are recruiting a players and who will do

that and how will you know second thing is that more people you have in a company more complexity you add to the

company itself so that mean not because you are bigger that you will do stronger

you know so you you know this is something that you can see uh especially right now in the industry it can be

mobile or it can be triaa titles for example you will have the the triaa titles that have teams like 1,000 2,000

people and basically they are never released they are constantly pushed back right and have money and basically they

have the Kno how right so they have everything to succeed and the opposite

um I think the one of very interesting case we had in the industry big triaa

title black mukong was said to have been PA by 40 people and it has sold more

than 20 million units so this is extremely interesting to see that you

have a very large bracket that you can play with and basically number doesn’t

mean going faster it can but there are some condition and basically the condition is that you structure your

company enough so basically everyone knows what he will have to do what he has to perform what he has to reach on a

I would say on a weekly monthly quarterly and yearly basis that’s extremely

important why do you think some companies can produce a game that shows

millions of copies at 40 people then you have other companies who have maybe 400

people and they just can’t release the game like what’s what’s happening there like from the outside looking in they

have all this money yet the game either doesn’t get released and they run out of money like I’ve seen so many studios

recently and I’ve spoken to these people like a year ago like Shark Mop London recently closed down they were making a

game for a long time but now it’s closed before it even got released like why is that game just being cancelled with all

these resources new office going into it like what’s the key problem do you think there

uh so the the key problem I mean it can be multiple factors so to name a few and

we can enter after deeper into each of them it can be the lack of vision of the

company so basically the the company is constantly pivoting to say this is what

we should do this is what we should do we should change we should pivot let’s imagine for example you are a young

company and you bring people and then after you have always some turnover and you have your game design designer your

senior game designer who is leaving the place right and you find another one and basically you have know you are a little

bit late because he was not there so you have a new senior game designer and this guy is saying what the guy previously

was doing is basically is was not good so we need to change and basically you

are pivoting what you were starting and what you were doing in the past few months that’s one way basically to lose

a lot of time and to lose some yes another example is the lack of vision of

the management what are we doing what are we trying to achieve what what is the audience that we want to go if you

are again if you are saying we want to do a solo action game what does it mean

exactly what will be your competition how do you place it on the ma on the metrix and you need to to understand

exactly what you are trying to reach what is the size of the market how do you position yourself otherwise

basically there is always a risk that you realize that maybe you are not that good and you will pivot again uh another

way also is that um let’s understand that many not all of them but many of

the the studios are created by very passionated young people who have their

own view of what they are doing so they have their passion but they can lack

also um I will say the maturity or the experience the the background experience

if they have work in if they have not work in the corporate world is basically

which tools to use if you say for example we want to develop our own tools

then basically you will lose a lot of time and that’s why it’s not it’s not current but it can happen so the

decision that you are making can play a very very big role and then after you have I would say the methodology so

right now for example for people who are working in Mobile I will say that the agile methodology and using scrum is is

extremely important so this is this is a very important way for for people to uh

to do that uh but at the same time you have also the waterfold methodology if

you are working on a bigger game if you have a triple title on PS5 it will be completely different and the I would say

the pre-production can take six months one year because you have the narrative and you need to know exactly what you

are doing and you need to validate with the marketing but again bigger is the compan bigger is the company more people

you have basically more complexity you are adding and more there are some chances that you are losing some time so

here the I will say um the means that you have for your objectives and the

vision of I would say the co-founders the management will be crucial to know

if you will succeed on not if you’re one of the founders now

want to double click on something you said getting your own tools like is there just something that people should not be investing in that you see people

investing in over and over

again I think that uh what I would like the the co-founders is to understand

that when they are uh establishing and creating a company they are basically

establishing and creating a company they are not basically they should their place should not be to be uh m Mr

Producer Mr game designer and basically to put I would I would say it a little

bit bluntly but their NOS everywhere there is no point to recruit some game designer if you always on the back of

the the shoulder of this person tell him please change this please change that same with the artist and to say can you

correct this correct that so um most of the time is the the fallacy trap of of

the managers because it’s kind of inherent power of their order is

basically they are falling into the drop of the micromanagement and and even myself I was falling into it why because

you love games and basically you want to you want to contribute but basically you

can make the the the other team uh lose their time because at the end they are

confused and they they don’t know why they have to constantly change what was already discussed so it’s a it’s a very

dangerous way and I think it’s it’s not the the most suited way to know what you

are supposed to do it’s far better to to think in advance to to build some cases

and then after to know why we are taking a decision why we are moving into that direction or why we are using this tool

or why we are doing what we are doing this is extremely important and this is also super important for the teams

themselves because if you ask them to produce something but they don’t know why they are doing what they are doing

basically you will you will kind of kill the drive the The Passion of the people

because they will be completely disconnected from their own project so it’s not it’s not very

good yeah no I resonate the I

guess I’ve seen that a lot when I was a recruiter the CEO was effectively the

creative director and a lot of conflict came from that but then again some of

these games end up doing well and I wonder if it’s kind of like it’s a

double-edged sword right you need someone who has a big Vision but then you do need someone to actually run the

business as a business as well otherwise it’s like gambling like it could go well but the risk then goes a lot higher

because you put all the energy into trying to make the game amazing and then

if the reality kicks in you don’t get funding or the copies don’t sell or the market is not timed right you screwed so

it’s scary way to run the business let’s see things the the opposite way because

I think that where people are um are falling for it is everyone is dreaming

about creating its own game about working for this company to be

successful Etc of course everyone so basically that mean that we are we are

all at the same starting point right and we can say in a way that we have the same objective right so that mean that

what is what matters is not the ID right it’s the execution it’s always about the

execution so then after as you were telling me there are some people who are

just like they were the CEO but they were acting as a creative director and they are trying to have multiple hat and

that’s possible because it depends again it depends on your means it depends if you are bootstrapping it depends if you

are if you have raised 1 million 3 million 5 million 10 million it depends if you are working for the corporation

world that’s completely different if you have a limited budget or not so we have to take this under consideration and

that’s why I was doing the disclaimer at the beginning however what we can recognize in the in the game industry

and this is of course particularly true right now in the in the crisis that the

game industry is um is suffering right now the game industry is a little bit

it’s entertainment okay so entertainment is not something that is I would say um

it’s not something that you need to live you need to have a roof you need to have a house you need to pay your rent you

need to to eat you need to drink these kind of things entertainment is a little bit different you need to prove the

value of your product to bring people to you some for the music some for the movie industry it’s exactly the same you

need to really bring it so now what we can see from the gaming industry is that there is always the tree hiding the

forest and basically the forest is that behind each extraordinary company there

is always maybe hundreds of startups of other companies have basically went

bankruptcy because basically the execution was not good or basically they were not lucky and this kind of thing

and yes the the tree that is hiding the the rest of the forest is basically it

can be someone who was very well organized very well exe executed or you

can have also it’s more it’s rarer but you have you can have the um another

company that was super lucky to do a project they didn’t know exactly what they were doing and it was success

successful but it was never planned but basically how many people if you remember maybe you are too young for

that hurry but if you remember you rewind the tape like 10 years ago when there was Flappy Bird they have just

done the I remember Flappy Bird I felt very proud that I still had it on my phone when it got uninstalled I was like

I was doing the same I was doing the same but basically Flappy Bird is the tree that is hiding the rest of the

forest is it’s not because one person was successful not trying to be successful that everyone who will try to

do a copycat will try to emulate will be successful the same way so the at the

end of the day is the the best guarantee that you have to be successful is

basically to have an excellent execution and where I want to be very precise with

the with the co-founders and all the people who are funding their own company is that there is a diff there is a

difference between taking care of the game this is one thing and then taking care of the company because as a funer

you are responsible of the company if people after you have to fire them you

have to to to do some layoff it’s never funny for anyone and that’s why there is a tendency to push back but because the

person was considering that we are a studio and this is again this is a

little trap because studio is developing a game but the way that we are creating

Studios right now it’s much more expensive than just working in your bedroom most of the time right so that

mean that you you have all the other consideration of running a company it doesn’t mean that when you are

developing your game you need to have some marketing but you have other factors that will enter into play to be

sure that you have the best chance to succeed in what you are envisioning for

your company yeah

the before we move on to the next topic I want to just dive a bit deeper on the

building a game versus building a business what do you have to say to the

founders like well my business is nothing unless the game succeeds so why

shouldn’t all my effort in into making sure the game succeeds like why is that

not number one um that’s exactly the same as uh

building a house you need to have the right foundation um when I was uh when I

was working in the different companies I wanted to always be sure that I have the

right foundation especially for the administrative the legal and the finance

these are the the three pillars that if you do not have them or if you are not strong enough this is

really something that will put you down eventually even if it’s not on your radar and it’s not it’s not that you

should not put all your energy into the game but let’s say that the people who

need to put all their energy into the game should do it but basically this is

not the responsibility of the CEO or the CEO they they have larger responsibility

and of course if you are a team of two a team of three that’s a different

scenario of course but if you are starting to uh to to scale your company and you are 10 or 20 then basically

that’s not your role anymore of course you can have some review and myself what

I was doing when I was in Game Loft I was always doing a weekly check so I was discussing with the production team on a

weekly basis but also I was working with my business team on the Monday morning to know what they will do so basically

everyone is is well informed what we expect from them so this is something

that it doesn’t mean that one needs to be sacrificed but what I see is that too

many people are sacrificing the the strong Foundation of their company for

the only purpose that they they want to focus only on games and there there is a

reason for that the the main reason that people are doing that is because

everyone and I’m talking about everyone so including you me everyone we have a

tendency to do what we like to do and it doesn’t mean that what we do or what

what we are doing because we like it is the priority number one it doesn’t mean that this is what we are supposed to do

there is a there is the a difference between what is needed for the company

what is the most impactful what is the most relevant and what you enjoy to do and if you enjoy to make games then

basically you should make games but basically you should not be CEO uh you

know there was there was some very good um very good example here it’s it’s very big but I think that’s why it’s makes it

even more relevant so you know they were the two co-founders of Riot games and

basically this guy were working to uh to develop and to work and to to to make

League of Legend evolve Etc but after a few years both of them they decided to

to remove themselves as the position of CE and CEO and that was very of course

they are the president the chairman Etc of the board and everything this is their company they have the the they

were the majority shareholder until 10 cent was coming I think but the point

here is that they said you know what being CEO and being CEO is not that

funny and it’s it’s true it’s not that funny so unless you are a little bit masochist but it’s not really funny to

look at accounting and discuss finance and legal Stuff Etc but this is this is

necessary for the companies so what they decided they say we want to do games we remove ourself and we will go to develop

new games in a kind of R&D section because their passion was about game was

not about accounting it doesn’t mean that they are not the they are the boss

but they let people who know exactly what they are doing and people who are good at that and who are not into

developing the game do this job so I think that’s that’s showing a very high

high level of maturity of course there is the the the budget and basically the

revenue generated by League of Legend is so important that they cannot they cannot play with such a budget with such

a with such a big Scale Company but also I think that they are very wise

to do that not everyone is doing it yeah sounds like a difficult choice but I can

already think of a couple people who would love to work on the game but are stuck in that CEO position and then

neglecting the stuff they need to do right until it bites them later so I think it’s an important

Point all right we’ll move on to the next topic let’s do this and everyone in

the chat if you just joined this is going to be interactive if you got any questions related to this we’ll tackle

them kind of as we go and any we don’t tackle throughout we’ll tackle at the end as well all

righty I’m going to share the screen are you ready boom ready go for it all

right which one is it

it’s going in order all righty so is it done on purpose or not magic

magic sweet so smart budget allocation I feel like this is very topical and

especially in your experience because from my understanding you’ve managed $100

million budgets before big budgets okay

so I’m a founder I’ve come to you Alexis I’ve done budgeting but

honestly I’ve not spent too much time looking at my budget what’s the first thing you tell this founder when it

comes to like optimizing a studio budget first I will ask you um basically how

much budget do you have right now okay did you raise what is your budget

exactly okay let’s do it play please tell me it’s a ro play yes it’s Interactive

yeah yeah let’s let’s do it all right so I have $1 million okay what is your uh what is

your project exactly what are you trying to achieve right now I want a new double a Unreal game

trying to build the first vertical so I can then get funding which is going to be another 5 million I

expect okay and how much time do you give to

yourself I want this ready by summer next year summer next year so you

want to do your prototype in basically in seven eight months that’s it yeah what is your team how is it

structure all right going deep on this role play but let’s do it no no no it’s it’s just it’s basically it’s just

showing that the way that we are working is always by funel so basically you

start uh you start by asking yourself about what is my budget and basically

from this budget this is exactly what I was speaking before is you have your

vision you have your or your dream or your aspiration and right now for you it’s you want to reach your prototype

and basically you will have to Define what is a prototype for you you know that you have said this is a this is a

vertical slice so now what is interesting is that this 1 million you

will have to cut it into let’s say we are in we are in November so let’s say

eight months so you will have to cut it in eight months do you agree yeah I agree so actually sounds

big but break it down monthly it’s not big but in fact yes that’s that’s kind

of my point but you should not agree with me because basically what you are just saying is

that you did not keep any money left you are just considering that this is one of

the that is happening a lot people are thinking exactly the same way and they say I have this money I need to achieve

by that time so basically I would just put everything into it right and and

basically then what if it’s not happening what’s happening to your company because let’s not forget that

you were asking you were asking is okay can we uh can we raise uh we want to

make a vertical slide to raise money interesting interesting topic so yes if

it’s work fantastic for you very happy for you but if it’s not working so basically you fire everyone and you you

close everything so you see that’s the beginning of the problem is it’s not in

the management is not about it’s a little bit different in a way that the

CEO has a vision the CEO is supposed to to basically to drive the strategy the

vision of the company or the the view of what they want to achieve or what kind of product of course or what kind of

company they want to build and maybe we will be able to discuss later about the vision of the companies but uh usually

the role of a CEO is to look much more I would say there is the good cup and the bad cup the CEO is much more about being

the being the bad Cup and the the CEO is to look at from each element from a

different perspective it’s much more to be challenging and to say you you know what if we are in November and you want

to achieve that in in uh in let’s say in August then basically we should we

should have enough money for a year at least so let’s not let’s not consider

that we have a year and then after there will be basically who we should recruit

and who should we work for and what kind of tools we should use and this is becoming very interesting because as

your budget is very limited again you were saying double and then real Eng so

you are not going a small I would say you know you didn’t you didn’t tell me hey Alexi I want to do a a fun casual

game or something like that on Unity you say I’m hurry I’m doing dou a on unreal

excellent excellent and you want to reach your vertical slice why not if you

have already all the IDS in place but that will not be the case so you need to

what will be very important is that you Pace your spend and the way to Pace your spending is you

need to grow your team progressively and you need to consider that the first

people that you will recruit to work with you especially because you are small they need to be uh a players for

you I will explain later about that but they need to be a players for you

because they will become in a way your senior game designer it will bring your

vision to life and same with your main engineer your senior engineer that you

need to recruit we will act if the company grows maybe as a CTO later on so

you need to have people that are extremely resourceful and people who are extremely good at what they are doing

because the team will be very small at the beginning until you have defined the

the different elements and you can start to scale a little bit with more people

uh you can bring also an artist to start working on the vision but you should not

go full speed from the beginning do not recruit 10 people that would be a big mistake and basically if you are pacing

your budget through the year it should be it should be okay then after what

would be interesting is that you are considering your company okay Alexi told

me to to do it in uh to Budget on 12 months but we want to achieve that in

eight months so basically what do we need to do to able to achieve that this eight months considering that Alexi is

asking us not to to blow away all the money right away so this is this kind of

exercise that is super important to do no that makes sense because I

pictured it actually I have this budget I want it by that outcome I will spend it every month but then the reality

kicks in if you do that then you literally it’s very risky and from what

you know yeah you know there is one thing that is that people need to to understand of

course when you are small it’s more complicated but um the bigger are the

companies more structured they are and usually you always see a CEO and a CEO

together and we are very different kind of personality and again good cup bad

cup and I think this is completely natural for a fer this is completely

natural for a CEO to be extremely optimistic I mean I mean if the CEO was

pessimistic the company will go nowhere because there would be no vision and it would not be able to attract people so

people will be interested in in getting into this vision and to be uh to be successful with it right so the role of

the CEO is to be a little bit the guy who said whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa don’t don’t be a little bit too much ecstatic

let’s let’s think a little bit let’s structure let’s put in place some processes let’s organize some some

objectives on a monthly on a weekly monthly quarterly basis and let’s work

so we what we are doing would be the most impactful with the little means that we have or the means that we have

it really depends curious when does a COO enter

the picture when it comes to a studio is it from day one like any size should have someone with that mindset or is it

when you get to a certain size again it depends on the it depends on the the fundings it depends on how much money

you have people usually have different options so I think you were mentioning before most of the time when you have a

small startup you will have a CEO and usually you have not it’s rare to see

one person you have two or three co-founders and basically they will separate the roles and most of the time

they have multiple hats by themselves right so you can have as you were saying

the CEO is the CEO Plus on top of that he will be the creative director you can

have the the CTO of course that is the main engineer you can have basically the

the C the CEO can be someone who is working with let’s say for example the

accounting the legal the finance depending if it is outsourced or not then after you can have other other

possibilities like small company using fractional CEO CEO or strategic advisor

like I’m doing because basically they cannot afford a full-time CEO but they

want uh to prevent what usually I call the mismanagement so mismanagement is

the I would say the daily and the recuring mistakes that the companies are doing you know it’s not something that

will kill your company but over time it will become a very very big weight uh on

them so it’s a very good way to say well I need your help to basically what is

your view on this to be challenged and to know what would be the best action what would be the the the best um I’ll

say the best um options that I will have and usually it’s really to to take a

step back to pause things and to think over instead of jumping into conclusion

right away and that that’s much much more the role of a manager perfect no I think we’ve cover C

budget honestly and unless this is there one thing you want to say regarding budgets that you want to get off your

chest budget um I I would like people to consider that budget is something that

um you cannot say I’m using all my budget or is everything will go well I

understand that there is this optimistic view but I I really want the the funders

the the CEOs to be extremely careful when they are managing it is basically

they need to to have the right foundation to structure well their company and basically to always consider

is what’s happening in case of this in case of that you have multiple multiple

option most of the time running a company is there is I can see there is a TV

saying I love this budget RPG and I like it too because at the end of the day you

know the a company a company is is a kind of a game by itself so you are in a

constant every day at Crossroads and basically you need to you need to to ask

yourself uh what is the best direction to take and how do you manage that then

basically you need if you are going you know I I remember myself first time I was going to the Grand Canyon you know

at a certain level you know there is there is a board saying you cannot move forward if you do not have X amount of I

don’t know B of what or liters of you know gallons water these kind of things

so basically that mean that when you reach a certain Crossroad you need to be prepared a company is exactly the same

so basically um I I would like the funders uh especially of the startup

because the other one most of the time they know they should take some time weekly on a weekly basis to discuss with

their person in charge of the finance whoever it is it can be Outsource it can be their accountant can be their I don’t

know tax experts it can be their admin manager whoever it is but basically they

need to have this exercise constantly because it it can Sid track very very

quickly without realizing no I think yeah definitely

well said I like the Grand Canyon comment awesome let’s move on to the

wheel again we’re back to the wheel let’s go and everyone in the chat

remember you can tune in with any questions I see a couple people putting questions which I’m collecting so let’s

spin the

wheel decision making for leaders

okay give you a noral question because you’ve actually um you wrote about this

once on LinkedIn on how to make decisions so when it comes to making tough

decisions what is step one like should you be talking to people like as a CEO

when you have a tough decision what is step one I would say that I mean the tough

decision it depends if you have to to fire people it depends basically if your tough decision is based on the result of

something that was happening or it’s much more a cause of something so it’s

it’s it’s completely different and I think that taking a tough decision um is is

basically uh reviewing a situation and looking at the different options this is

what it should be because a tough decision is not something that should be based on the reaction theough decision

should not be based on the emotion but it should be based on something that is

uh overthinking I would say in a way so of course again you have you have a

needle and you have this spectrum and basically too few is not good too much

is not good either you need to to strike the right balance especially um if you

are a small company because you cannot you cannot lose your flexibility or your agility because that this is what makes

you better than the bigger ones so this is something that is very important uh I

will say as an example and this is something that I I I really like as an

exercise when I was in in blizzard is basically um what we were doing to

communicate new IDs or new decision is basically we had to to build a business

case so basically you couldn’t send an email to a manager let’s say for example in in our

Vine basically just to say uh we decided to do this or to do that for these Sports

it’s not possible basically you need to say okay there is a business case and

this business case these are this is the topic this is what we would like to achieve these are the pros these are the

cons this is the conclusion and I would like to have your approval on my

decision and why is it super important and super useful because it’s it’s forcing people to

extracts from their emotion it’s forcing people to not react or to jump into the

conclusion and it’s also uh forcing people when you have the pros and cons

to force in way the discussion with the different stakeholders what you are doing let’s say that you want there is

something very important you want to to kill the game to make a new game or you want to change the the style of your

game then basically you cannot take unless you are a tyrant but you cannot take the decision all by yourself

because after you will lose your team so basically you need to to onboard your team but it’s not really if you if you

take a step back it’s not really about onboarding your team it’s also about challenging your own belief you should

you should always challenge yourself you believe something then after you need to confront the team and this is is where

basically it can be through a brainstorming or through a um a business meeting uh let’s not do too much meeting

but basically if you have the right meetings then after you can consider all the different elements and then after

you will take the best option what you consider it doesn’t mean this is the best what you consider is the best

option for the company considering pros and cons give you I give you an example

when again it’s it’s in blizzard there was some consideration because when we

uh when we release Starcraft remaster we decided to make a giant party and we had

a different option and no one agree with the different option and one of the biggest option is that you have a very

very uh you have the Main Place uh that is going to the uh to the Royal Castle

uh in seul on the other side there was pan Beach and basically that was completely different setting different

type of organization and uh some people wanted to go in SE where this is

extremely meaningful because this is the capital city because this is in front of the royal Place etc etc other people

wanted to do pan Beach and basically it became a a topic for weeks until

basically uh we took the decision to go for pan Beach and this is what happen so

you can you can still find some pictures I don’t know if if it’s still there on my LinkedIn but it’s quite easy to find

and at the end it was an extraordinary event and uh but basically it was not

the best way to go for that was not to say this is what we is basically it was much more to challenge yourself and to

com so you are not taking the decision by yourself I think that I was talking

about the the crossroad before a company can say because of the covid people are

working remotely but now we can see the opposite many companies like there was a big case with Ubisoft recently asking

people to come back to the office of course in the Apple was doing the same but for the game industry it can create

some tension some people can say okay we are we are shutting down the office or people work remotely or worldwide or not

um or we need to kill this game uh these kind of things like that but there is no

reason to how would say to to force or to basically to work in the vacuum I

think this is always the the big danger of the management to say because I am the manager and I have this information

I consider that I know exactly what I have to do it’s much better to consult the people who are around you because

they will give you a different perspective on it yeah no I think this is in the

nordics I found that this happens quite a bit the kind of democratic way of making decisions before we move on to

the next topic I’ve heard some complaints sometimes where they spend

too much time speaking to each other to make a decision and I think the more

East you go I know there’s some examples where like in Korea they might take months to do a presentation or something

I heard that one case where they just take so much time to talk about making the decision before making the decision

how do we prevent that from happening we know we need to talk to the team and make sure how do we avoid going in

circles um I will come back to uh to the okr I think this is what is basically

your uh what is keeping you moving forward because you know that you have

you have certain deadlines and these deadlines what is super interesting about this

exercise and this is something that I like to do with my clients is this is something that we are beding together so

uh you you did that that was your choice to create this objectives and basically

to do that you wanted to achieve this result buet point one by one and you

know there is some obstacle in the ways and you know that there is something it doesn’t change the fact

if you do not succeed quarterly basically after you need to review them

and to understand why you did bad so you can do bad maybe once but you should not do bad twice or three times but there is

also the point that because you are cutting them in pieces basically after

you can constantly cut them more depending on the organization if you are

working agile way and you know that there is a there is a problem because uh

every two weeks you are not moving forward and in your in your game development you know you have a problem

it it really depends on on each company but at least if you have your objectives

you need to keep them and not taking a decision you’re right can really uh put

a company in a very very bad situation most of the time not taking um not

taking decision is is coming from the companies who hter I’ve seen it more

into the big companies than in the small one yeah and because they are in a routine and basically they they cannot

really change this routine and they do not want to to leave it because this is

you know a routine is very com comfortable per se right so this is why

they they just want to continue this is why some companies are not innovating anymore this is the lack of decision is

the result of I would say an organization that is not functional anymore or a company that is not running

into operational excellence well said love it okay let’s

move on to the next topic how are you feeling Alexus feeling good feeling

good this is we’re just swatting these um questions I like it all right because

you know myself I’m more of the evening type of guy so I can uh yeah can always do it at night no

problem and here we go driving The Innovation literally I was I was

thinking if I should rig it to come up with Innovation because you just said it but hey yeah that was a nice transition

you push the button eight and here you go hey it works out all right so

Innovation yes tell me tell me ask ask your

question I have so many things to say about

that I’m just because there’s two ways to look at it I feel maybe you can help me here like you have the example of a

large business which they just need to invest in it and make sure they don’t fall behind then also from the small

business I feel like you cannot survive unless you innovate otherwise how can

you possibly compete with the big business because they have all these economies a scale this is like the

angles I’m attacking it so maybe we do both so if we start with a small business how does a small business

innovate in games

today um it’s more a matter of um of size um but you can do it you can do it

in any way I think there should be uh depending your size you should have

always you need to some people who are prototyping in a way so

always always always basically it’s keeping keeping things fresh uh you know

that um whatever you are doing you you can work in a very big games imagine the

guys who are working on the new GTA for 10 years imagine people who are doing a mobile game for one year two years Etc

at the end of the day they are losing uh not losing their focus but basically there are so much into it that they need

also to be refreshed and I I will give I will give you

different views um and I have I have a tons of example when you are a small companies

or a small setup because for example when I was in in huge gamps uh we had

the company was pretty big but basically the Berlin office was much smaller so

there was uh a team that was working on the main game or the main games and

there was also some a little bit smaller team that were basically prototyping

that were constantly prototyping and their idea was basically to bring new IDs to prototype them and to see

basically more or less what sticks to the rest of the company and also if they

if it’s kind of validated it goes to the next step where basically they can they can do some check in term of kpis and if

it fits the market market and you can go deeper but the idea was really to prototype and to keep that to keep the

agility of the company and also to to have some people who are not saying that

the company is not is just about that but you can have one or two other people doing that if you tell me that you do

not have enough people because you are really small I think that this is giving the luxury to people kind of things uh

to think about different things uh in a way uh again in um in in a huge game uh

I was doing an exercise that I really love with the team is that uh every of

course there was the covid so we were not always together but when we were together there was a fantastic exercise

every every Friday we were meeting and we were doing a brainstorming so

everyone from the production and myself I was joining and other people were

joining uh prod product manager project manager Etc and we were discussing about

new game IDs and when you are giving the freedom to people to bring idas because

this is what they are afraid they are afraid that to say that the boss will say oh you know what is you should focus

on this you should do this you should do that when you put the brainstorming into your process then basically it’s

becoming a kind of a role game and basically you leave people the freedom

to dream about something something different and to refresh also that’s why

myself I was doing it at the end of the week because it’s a little bit I think

it’s a nice way uh to to end up the week with something that everyone is

exchanging and talking about game and talking about the passion let’s do a survival game let’s do a sports game or

or anything like that and uh I think that the management is super important

here is uh you need uh you need to give

the freedom uh to people to be able to speak out to create to bring IDs but

also as a company you need to be able to reward uh people who are taking some

risk uh you know talking about Innovation is taking some risk so again

we come back to the previous topic pros and cons not it’s not because someone is

proposing something that it needs to be accepted however I think that it needs

to be considered and basically the the voice of everyone should be heard it

doesn’t mean that it will be selected but the voice of everyone should be heard uh so everyone feel at least

rewarded by the company that well my voice is important in this company and I

want to be around um if we are discussing about uh I would say larger

companies if you don’t mind before we move on to the large company someone asked a question about small

companies so the question is from Alex coroso how can a small business survive

if for example proper R&D is required to in order to innovate so it’s

expensive I think it’s uh it innovate is okay so innovate it can be an ID and an

ID is not it doesn’t mean that it will be expensive you can have extraordinary

IDs that when they are released everyone is saying oh why we didn’t think about that before is the case of pal world at

the beginning of the year was a very good example it’s an ID but there was nothing preventing anyone worldwide to

do exactly the same it’s basically Pokemon on steroid with with

with with becoming a kind of a shooter um but just that the important thing

here is that you need to consider um to reply uh you need to consider your own

situation it’s innovating is not only about spending money innovating is not

it doesn’t mean that you have a R&D Center or you are not focusing on

basically what uh what you are doing most of the time but it means that

innovating you are bringing you are opening the gate of new IDs and you know

um let’s say for example that if you are doing what I was saying before the the brainstorming you will have some people

bringing some idas and maybe yeah you will not do for example a sports game because you are doing I don’t know RTS

or whatever but maybe maybe there will be some gameplay mechanics because people will go deep and they will get

passionated that you will be able to bring to your game or it’s so or it can

be in term of business model model you know uh Innovative means is it the ID is

it the business model you know I was in Japan and uh working for Game Loft when

uh Japanese were bringing the gcha and you know gcha is coming from you know

the the machine that usually is in front of the convenience store there in supermarket in Western World basically

you are just putting a coin and that’s it they just brought it I mean that looks so simple that was an innovation

that in a way kind of reshaped a lot the mobile game industry

so you can innovate in a different way just by observing the world around you just by discussing with people or

throwing IDs you know you can uh you can throw 500 potit on on the board and to

see exactly what is important um but I think that what is important in that

case is that everyone can uh can can have its own voice can bring idas

because um it doesn’t mean that one I how can you say that one ID is better than

another one and there is the thing also is that the gamer uh The Gamers that we

are we are conditioned to play in a certain way uh there was a once I was seeing a I was seeing a uh a game design

uh video that was super well made that was years ago and the guy was explaining

and he was saying why is that in the the in the shooting game we have always you know this kind of wood box that we need

to kick or to shoot to get more ammunition or more weapons it’s there is

always a wood box everywhere is and you know it became a kind of we are conditioned by the game that we are

playing so we cannot really innovate so if you are small if you can do a game that is much

more simple that is not Innovative and being very successful because just this is a good game and I think that you do

not have to reinvent everything but you can bring your own Innovation something

that is that is making your studio different from the from the other guys and this is something that you need to

to take some time to think about is uh going to the vision of the

company lovely hope I anwers your question Alex which I’m sure it’s giving

you some food for thought and before we move on to the large companies I very specific spefic questions do you know of

any examples of large companies doing Innovation well and if so why do you

think they’re doing it well that’s a very good question that’s a very very good

question um yes I know

well I know when I know that there are much much be uh uh much more many

companies doing that but the one that we cannot escape from is a Nintendo this is

the absolute company that is innovative constantly it can be the basically the

the game pad it can be the game play itself the scrolling element that they were doing with the with the first Mario

it can be everything that is based on music the way that they were using the the hardware the software the DS that

you can use as a mirror you know as a reflection when you are playing the games uh the way that who are using the

mic to to blow on it and these kind of things they are gigantic they are making billions and basically they are

extremely Innovative again there is no one that was prevented to use the second

screen of the 3DS as a mirror there was no one preventing people to use the mic

there there was nothing like that so the limit is here this is what is important

and that’s why I was saying it’s important to have a players when you start a studio uh the senior game

designer that you will have will be an extremely important person extremely yeah and the way you are working with

this person so you work in confidence and basically you are very open to listen what this person has to

say would you say Nintendo is innovative because of a

players um something excellent you know when I

was working in Japan everyone knows it is extremely extremely I’ve never seen

in my life extremely rare to see some uh

coming to your desk a resume of someone coming from Nintendo because people working Nintendo

stay is in Nintendo I have seen resume coming from Sony PlayStation from

Microsoft from from everywhere of course except Nintendo I’ve never seen that

and um are they a players or are they becoming a players I think this is a

kind of a mix but what I will say in in that case Nintendo is a is very close to

a blizzard and the blizzard is what really strick me when struck me when I

when I came to the company was the absolute passion but I would say it more

the absolute love of the employees for the company that was absolutely crazy I

mean the I will say if you have the and this is what we call a players is people

who are highly skillful but it’s not enough but they need to be highly engaged in your company in your vision

and basically when you have that this is the the brand value the power of the brand and the I would say the power of

the quality of what you are doing in term of games well basically people would just join

you and this is where you will be able to be the most Innovative in a way it’s

uh because the respect of the employees for the company is so high but also the

other way around the company has very high respect for its employees so it’s a

it’s a respect both ways and this is the best way to be

Innovative yeah I love that you need that respect both ways what do you think is the best way to show respect to your

employees if we ignore money for a second

um you need to be

um you need to be empathetic I would say

and uh I think that you need to be a very good listener

uh uh this is uh

well I can’t hear you Alexis we just had a sorry sorry it was because I was not

touching my screen so I had basically the screen to show respect yeah to so

basically to uh to show respect you need to be very empathetic and basically to

be a very very good listener that’s extremely important and this is also a

lesson that I have learned from from blizard is in game L we are much more into the the action much faster Pace but

basically if you listen well to the people if you discuss with them that’s very important then in in the daytoday

you need to be very clear with people that their opinion matters and basically

people are free to talk I have um I will not name them but I have visited some

companies that uh and I have worked also with some companies that was like the

complete silence you know when you enter a room and you have 50 people and

basically you can you know as we say you can hear a fly and you can yeah you can

you know the the needle that is falling is likeing like this you really do not

feel well there is a lack of energy and you feel that people are kind of in

chained but it’s it’s not only being a and Shain to their desk is and Shan in their mind that they cannot communicate

freely with their colleague so basically you are creating invisible worlds everywhere this is what you want to

prevent absolutely because you you cannot have only something that is um

without life is uh you know it’s at the end of the day we create games again

games are not something that is necessary in life it’s entertainment you br you make games to bring pleasure to

people how can you bring pleasure to people if you are not having pleasure yourself that’s extremely difficult

right it doesn’t mean that you do not have to be serious in what you are doing but it doesn’t mean also that you cannot

work into um I would say a very nice condition and that’s why the importance

of the office but also the communication is extremely important so value the opinion of others value the freedom of

of speech of opinion other people be empathetic and be a good listener for

the managers I would I would say are the the very main rules and again also you

were saying except from the salary but you have to to consider also that that

the compensation is an element that is extremely important because when people

are well paid I always consider myself that I wanted to to pay very well people

when I was working in the different companies because if you start the relationship you can disagree with

people about the compensation that if you find a good agreement is basically you know that this person will be will

will be 100% focused to its task to what he’s supposed to do either in term of

game design or whatever if his consideration is spreading a little bit everywhere and saying yeah I’m not paid

exactly what I want so it’s it’s difficult this month so I have to be careful if I want to go to vacation is

like your mind is somewhere else so you want to be sure that you as a manager

your responsibility is to be fair but basically to show that you value the people and this is also one way many

companies right now bigger companies it’s coming from from Google they are putting football and ping pong tables

and coffee free for everyone you can put as much coffee for free for everyone or

you know breakfast or you know orange juice box or whatever if you are not paying people well does it make you a

good manager I think that people will prefer to have higher salary and less coffee in that sense um but one is not

preventing the other one but as a manager you cannot say as an excuse we are not paying you well but basically we

have a fantastic uh ping pong tournament every Thursday afternoon

I think it’s not correct to the people because we live in real life at the end of the

day yeah I think well said I was thinking about that like even if you can negotiate a 10% saving on someone’s

salary but if that cost will be them looking away or looking how they can

make more money than the 10% you saved you might have lost 40% of attention or

something like that yeah moving want a row one a row all

right we’ve got a few more topics I’ll make a quick pause to just to mention to

everyone who’s staying here uh because we’ve been going for an hour 15 minutes and we pretty much not lost any viewers

which is impressive so a quick reminder connect with Alexis please um

Alexis could you quickly share what you do for people just elaborate a little bit um what you’re helping clients with

right now in case someone’s listening yes so myself uh if you go to my uh to my website you will have all

the information so this is Ace Consulting group. Biz and basically I’m mainly offering a service of fractional

CEO coo where basically I’m helping uh the companies uh to do the right

decision making I’m supporting the management team into uh structuring into

putting the right foundation into reviewing their business putting in uh reviewing their business through due

diligence uh putting in place the okr are putting the right actions preventing

the mismanagement so basically they are on track to scale their company to

prevent the mistakes that could be done also to challenge them and also to help

them in their gross path that they are going to and we are always working

together as I would say as a collaborators as a Partners this is the best way to work and uh more we are

working better it is because we can really know very precisely what they

want to achieve uh so usually I’m saying to people do not see me as a as a Magic

Ballet see me as a partner see me as someone that is here to support you to

be successful with your company you have a dream and this is one of the question

I’m asking if you had if you had a wand what would be your wish what would you

like to to wish for what would be the you need to Envision what you want to do and what is the

image of success in your mind and then after let’s work together to build the

success together this is exactly what we are doing and after on the side I have

another service this is Executive coaching and U Executive coaching is uh

you many different cases myself I was I was manager in the corporate world for

more than 20 years country manager managing director general manager uh I

have done that a lot I have recruited more than 250 people unfortunately I have also done many layoff and I know

the situation of different companies different sitze different people so I’m trying to help for example the managers

who are blocked in a situation but they cannot go to HR or they cannot talk to their boss and they would like to

discuss about it to to have a second opinion and to challenge themsel and to know what are their options also some

people have been laid off and they’re in a transition and they want to gain some clarity so this is what I’m trying to

provide giving them some clarity in their life so they can achieve their dream that’s extremely important and

then after this is supporting the management again this is acting as a strategic advisor to know that they are

um they are piloting their company the best way as possible driving the the

right initiatives for the company to create outstanding companies for their employees and to create fantastic game

for the users amazing and the best way to get in touch is LinkedIn and your website right

yeah there is a there is a cly so the people can book calls with me there there is a book a Clarity call on top

and they can go right away to it amazing I’ve put the barcode there in the corner

if anyone wants to scan that they can have a look there you go amazing all righty we’ll get back into the topics

and we’ll do these rapid fire Alexis and then we can answer questions from the chat yeah sure let’s do it okay sharing

the screen here we

go okay a players players yes we we already

um touch the touch the the the subject so um a players are people who are uh

highly skillful people uh because of their background because of what they can achieve sometime you can measure

it in a in a better way than others especially for the engineers but um I

would say that they are highly skillful but it’s not enough but the a player will be the person that is highly

engaged to your company you have your vision you know what you want to achieve you know that and I think that for the

funders and for the the startup owners you know that it would be extremely difficult the P would be very very

complicated it will not be that easy it doesn’t mean remember what we were saying before three hiding the forest it

doesn’t mean you do not have some exception but for most of the people it would be a kind of painful uh the road

road to death in a way before you know arriving in the paradise and basically

succeeding and uh being successful and having the the game award but it will be

extremely extremely painful so that that mean that you need to be sure that the

people who are joining you especially at the beginning you need to see them as

partners they will be the foundation of your company you need to have people who would be stickers um to your vision

people will say yes I Believe in Your Vision I want to be with you or they can be also risk taker why not it’s not a

problem but basically they they are saying yes I want to take this this

chance in my life to be successful and I want us to be successful together this

is extremely important so the engagement if you have someone you know if you have to make a choice and saying well you

know this person is highly skillful but motiv motivation is a little bit at zero

and then you have someone with a little bit less skillful but super engaged into your company select the second one by

far because you have also um you have also a lot of people right now who are

kind of job Hopper it depends also on the on the generation but some people we

will always try to to move you know I would say like jump from one salary to

another and moving every six months or or basically they will just use their time to search for the next job to the

next job to the next job this is not the people you want to be around this is not the people who will make your company

successful so their engagement about what you are trying to do is extremely

important uh and everyone has a different way to uh to uh to recruit but

uh I know that uh right now when you have some HR they’re

asking very um how say question that are very check I would say checkbox in a way

you know and uh one of the problem with that is uh my opinion is that for for

the HR is everyone is checking on the net what are the top 20 question that HR

are asking and what are the top 20 reply and that that people are replying you

know these kind of things you know because you in a in a recruitment so it’s kind of complicated because at the

end you have just people who are just here to find a job and we are not passionated about your vision so of

course we are saying that this is this is much better to have to have people who are um who are driven but what you

are trying to do but who are also curious about your company you know have they did they check about your website

did they play your games to which extent Etc what do they know about you what do

they know about your company what do they know about your co-founders that’s extremely important and the other way

also is something that I like to ask myself to people is their background because background is asking people to

tell their story and storytelling is yes it can be an art but basically you can

see if people are genuinely honest in what they are saying because you cannot

fake it for 10 years of 20 years of what you have done and the second thing that

is super interesting to me when I was recruiting and I think that I have a success rate of more than 95% with that

is basically when you are listening to people you will know if their mind is

working very well if they are fast you know if they connect the dots very

clearly if they are very rational people you you will understand their personality through their

but also through the way that they are telling their story and I have recruited fantastic People based on this exercise

tell me more about you tell me more how did you arrive in this in this

consideration into this into this this room of of today while you are hearing

for the interviews and just by discussing with people you can you can

connect if they are the right fit for your team one thing that is also very important I’m not saying that against HR

but I see too much right now I see too much manager that are disengaged from

the interview process like you have HR and number two and number three and

number four and you know what then after if it doesn’t work it will come back to HR why didn’t you why did you recruit

this person why did you push this person to me or it will go to the Head Hunter hey why did you uh ask this person

person this person was not good you know what you are the manager you are the funer you are the CEO the CEO take your

responsibilities there are too many um I would say there there is too much bad

management right now where people do not want to take their responsibility your company is your responsibility okay your

game is your team okay your company is your responsibility the people that you are recruiting is your responsibility so

don’t put that on someone else at the end that’s your decision I know it’s becoming a kind of common Trend right

now to ask everyone to have a round of 10 or 15 interviews you don’t need to

have 10 or 15 interviews that’s completely craziness you should be able to do it if you have a test in two or

three round maximum all of the rest is basically it means that you are not at

your place as a manager you cannot take any decision and you are just trying to delute the decision to everyone else so

basically if something is exploding it will be the the fault of no one and it will be basically everyone

will be n you know it was the guy basically no it was the manager you are responsible take your responsibility and

also basically what makes a company rich is the people the people is the most

important thing this is the resource of the company so yes you can say no you

know I have a I have an real engine yeah but you can you can create your own engine yes you can go to Unity etc etc

you can CH engine but people is something that is very very precious that’s the resource that will where the

Innovation where basically the work and basically keeping your deadline will be

made so basically I would recommend to the manager take it very seriously you

can do basically the uh the the first call can be done for the HR just to be

sure like kind of a filter but then after the manager should right away the

person who will be responsible of this person should come right away uh in the

interview and take care of this person and the person should take the responsibility this is what is being a

manager so don’t put that on other people but then after you will you will

understand as it is your responsibility you will take it seriously as it is your responsibility and you take it seriously

ly you will absolutely want not to miss and you will go for the player by

yourself that would be your best interest yeah well said I want to share

a story where because I’ve been part of a recruitment processes from let’s say

like 15 Studios so it’s and I got to sit on the interview in the background it’s interesting to see how different people

do it some do have five six stages and the manager comes very end and other

ones it was the opposite where the manager was like the first one for half an hour and then it was a group one with

the tech lead for example which was slightly more technical I preferred the second version because when I did

candidate feedback calls they used to always say what I always I asked him

what did you think of John like the interviewer for example then they unload like oh I liked him I could see myself

working with him blah blah blah but if that’s not the first interview then they

cannot get engaged in the process until they meet the manager and if we’re building a players usually they have

options so I think it’s also a point of like actually convincing the candidate

the manager needs to do some selling of the vision and it can’t be anyone else than the either founder or leader of the

team they’re going to be working in it’s like a big thing that I think a lot of Studios can have as an opportunity to

improve yeah I completely agree this is this is just bad management because

managers who are disengaged and who put the responsibility on other people where it’s not it’s completely abnormal people

should take their responsibility if the manager is not taking responsibility then you have always some

problem later on but no one wants to be nailed for it so it’s completely anormal

but you know you have so many problems like that for example when you have a very long recruitment process it’s not

only the number of inter viws but it’s how many months people are taking how many times how many time have you seen

some some interview process and the company is telling you well we have we

have nothing in mind it can take six months or one year until we find the right person so first thing first okay

unicorn doesn’t exist that’s why we call it a unicorn is like it exist in fairy

tales it doesn’t exist so stop with that and basically what you call Maybe the

perfect candidate is maybe for you but maybe not for another person is maybe good for this company but not for this

company that’s why people have a different personality that’s why the world is very rich of personalities

because everyone is different but the other thing is that when you are a manager and you are interviewing you

should go quite fast because otherwise you are you are basically um uh

forgetting about the first people that you were having in interviews if you are starting to meet 10 and 20 and more

times you take more you forget about the first one it doesn’t mean that they are bad but it’s becoming kind of unfair to

them and it’s becoming an advantage for the later one but it doesn’t mean it

will be the right person for your company so you have this kind of vast and basically you have to be extremely

careful as a manager again okr if you have if you need to recruit

let’s say a CTO then basically put it in into your objectives put it and you have

your deadline and you will activate and basically this is what you you know that this is something that you need to focus

and move forward you know your priorities if you don’t put things into priorities then they are not your

priorities that’s as simple as that super well said I love it all

righty I’ll be ready for another spin of the wheel let’s do it let’s do it

yeah oh there is less and less know yeah I’m removing them as we go you are

removing them

interesting H very important relevant to what we were saying but a bit different

so yes we want a players but how do we hire for culture fit I’m just going to ask you that question how do you hire

for a culture fit H again you need to check about first your vision and then

the personality that fits or not I think that the one way that I was saying is

basically to be to be sure that they are engaged uh but also to know um so it’s a

it’s a little bit complicated here because you can say that if they are meeting other people from the team they

will better understand the culture of the company uh I think here for me the

way that I’m looking at it I’m coming back to what we said previously manager

should be responsible for the hiring but at the same time I think it’s extremely

interesting if you can put in place in the process of the recruitment that the interview the

person who is coming the candidate can discuss with team members to ask a

question about the company not to you as a manager because you will you can hide the fact or whatever you want but

basically they can ask the team how is it and you bring different people into the room so you know it’s a good way to

to do it as an exercise because in that case you you do not say yeah this is the

interview this is what we decide if you are basically HED or not you need to

remove the pressure from the candidate and basically for the teams to basically

you are just here to reply and to give your feedback about the company and this is Al very good because basically that

mean that you trust your team to say good things about your company which is

which is a very good way for the manager to challenge himself because that mean that you trust your team and you believe

as a manager that you have put the right structure the right company so people

are proud to work for your company and basically will not say bad things about your company and that you are a good

manager you can be strict but fair or you can be oh it’s extremely working

hard again it depends on the culture of the company and the culture of the person you need to Define also what is

your vision as a company and in that case you will know exactly the type of person that you want I have seen

myself um I would say uh more uh I would

say more differences based on uh how would say

based on the culture the origin culture of the people from which country you

know you can have the culture map uh done based on the company and why that

is because many companies are missing to create their values and their mission statements and their vision and because

there is no vision no values no mission statement basically what’s becoming the driving factor is basically the type of

people that you have in the companies some companies are extremely good to be International some companies are

absolutely not International but what what you know is that myself you know

first time I arrived in in Berlin my in my first company what was new for me I

was coming from Japan you know so it’s mainly Japanese people in Japan right um

but here it’s like everyone was coming from a different country so being French

myself it was like reading some ICS and everyone different cultures different

way of of talking and different way of looking at things you you cannot have

people are very different when you have we have a if you have American

citizen if you have a Russian if you have a Ukrainian if you have Latinos you know you can imagine between east Europe

people and between Latinos like French Spanish and Italian that’s extremely

different type of culture so this is playing a very very big role and you

need to objectively to look at that it doesn’t mean that the person is not good

or it’s basically nothing like that but you need to understand where you are and

the way that people are working in the country you cannot change the culture of the of the country I can tell you that

in Japan basically uh I will say that people working in the office the office

is the second family this is like the company is so important

and people are leaving for their work is that’s not the same in the western world

is basically for most of the people the the the work is one way to pay the bills

and to do something that they can enjoy if they can not everyone can can have that but basically uh the job is here to

support your life where is basically I would say Japan and Korea it’s even

worse than Japan I can tell you like there are crazy working hours that’s

incredible I had to stop some people in Korea but basically they are living for

work and they are living for their company most of the time and up to put thems in danger so it’s very different

you will not change the culture of Japan or the the fure of Japanese and this is the same way everywhere so you need to

compose with that it’s a it’s a very important but then after on top of this

on top of the culture of the person you have the culture of the company and this is something that you be you need to be

very good at I would say at deciding what kind of company you want at the

time you are creating it of course you can always pivot depending the situation and some companies are doing good or not

um but basically you need to have in mind uh what is the company you want to create many people are considering

Studios a studio is basically dreaming about the product that I that I am

envisioning but please do not forget your company is what kind of company do you want to create because the company

is supposed to create multiple games the game will be the game but the company will create multiple games so this is

very important to Define at the beginning what what you mean as a cultural fit what is important for

you perfect we have a question from the chat so from Alex again about culture

before we move on to the next question in your experience is much more common

cultural fit hiring someone similar to the current team over a cultural addition people different from the

current team so the question is in your experience do people mostly hire

to I guess more of the same culture or do they people are looking for people to

bring in fresh air someone from a different culture what do you think about those two ways of looking at it

excellent uh very good question uh very good question um in my experience what I

have seen this time it’s revers because I said that there are many managers not doing a great job but here I think this

is where manager can be very good because the manager if you know that you want to have a very International uh

company you you know that you need again and this is the same uh you know when we

are talking about having more women into the gaming industry or more inclusivity

and you want to have a panel a different range of people to to have more it’s not

only variety but to enrich your company and this is something that the manager again is responsible for I think that

for many manager they are doing pretty well and here in that case what I have seen is most of the time people working

in a team they are in their vacuum they are in their way of thinking and they are not thinking in term of management

or in term of they do not think holistically about the company and people will have a tendency to to mtic

basically who they are and basically they would like to have other people who look like them who have the same taste

and that’s why when you are in a in a meeting they say oh you love Nintendo I love Nintendo too so we should you we

should take this person or what kind if you are an artist what kind of art do you like and here this is becoming like

or is it 2D 3D Pixel Etc and uh you know everything is is based like that but I

think that the manager has a very high responsibility uh on that I can see that

people have a tendency to group also another thing for the startup that is very interesting this is much more

complicated at early stage you have many people uh especially for the artist and

the engineers who are bringing their friend to the company oh I know someone who is great as as a programmer and this

is natural and there is nothing bad about it so yes you can have in one of the company I was working

we had the engineers it was essentially not all but essentially it was East

European people so it’s like because they were East European people and

basically they were bringing their friend and they were grouping and they were working very well so it was not a

problem but then after again what kind of vision or what kind of company you want to create will play a bigger role

but I will think oh I can see that there is my friend vibor who just joining perfect and uh and basically uh this is

um this is the thing that where the management has to be careful I think again the manager has the responsibility

to say how diverse the team should be or at least not to be Bas in the recruitment process so everyone is

welcome and everyone feels welcome once he enters the company that is extremely

important that everyone feels values for their opinion what they are bringing to the

company beautiful lovely we’ll get straight into the next points so we’ve got four more

we’ll do rapid fire these ones Alexis and then we can do some Q&A let’s go rapid fire to say that to a

french guy that’s

impossible as

well okay yeah so let me think of a

question for you so in terms of cash flow there’s the obvious one like how do

we manage cash flow but my question is going to be this you have a budget but

then you have cash flow they’re different correct yes yeah

so is cash flow overlooked and how can CEOs change that uh cash flow is not

overlooked but usually it’s not prioritized the right way and

uh the the game industry is an industry that is based on cash flow it’s basically is inherent

the game industry is you release a game the game need to be successful or it can

kill the company and this is something that is happening a lot that’s why you are seeing that okay um I was reading

this morning on game Industries there is a there is a studio somewhere like they just release a game and they just went

bankruptcy and basically because if the game is not selling it’s killing your company that’s it so cash flow is super

important and I think that everyone should should be aware about that and then after there is there is a very big

difference is that when you have raised you have done your fundraising and you have some money basically it’s how you

are pacing the spending where you have to be extremely careful you should not spend your money before having some cash

flow and basically if you are not selling a product if you have nothing and you have burned all your money

that’s not wise and that’s not good either so you need to to consider both

in that case that’s very important you need to have someone in finance to be

your partner and to look at the numbers on a weekly basis and you need to look at basically your p&l you need to look

at your spending you need you will have always some uh some fixed cost and some

uh cost that will variable cost that will change constantly and then after you know where you stand in term of cash

flow for the studios that they didn’t release a game yet then of course you do not have any so you have to be even more

careful for the one who have a cash flow then that mean that you need to keep it alive in a way either by doing price

reductions some time to time doing the like I think that this is this Friday that there is the Black Friday if I’m if

I’m correct oh yeah so so it’s coming at least very soon um you can have the

price protection with the with the distribution you can I mean there there is so many different ways and for the

mobile this is the live operation based on data and analytics how you manage your game and how you make it more and

more successful and bringing more people and making the balance between the user acquisition and basically the revenue

that is generated to have a nice profit margin this is what is important so you

need to look at them both basically the cash flow and you need to look of course

at your pnl and basically your um your uh what you have your your Finance uh

either it it was coming from someone else from a corporate or basically what you have fundrais it’s very important to

look at that beautiful before we move on to confirm you

said everyone knows that cash flow is important but sometimes they prioritize it in the wrong way and then you said to

partner with someone in finance so when it comes to prioritize is that by having an accountability not partner but

someone whose pure focus is cash flow in theany like should the CEO have someone else help them can you expand on that

yeah most most of the time you know I was discussing about the the foundation you need to have someone who is acting

as your CFO and basically that is bringing light to you about uh what’s happening in the company um when I was

in um in business school we were doing some exercise that was fantastic there was my teacher he was saying um if you

are very good at numbers you can pilot a company just by looking at the number you know exactly what’s happening in the

company if you have a very well structured analysis of your Finance you

know who is coming who leing what you are paying for people leaving the company what tools you are paying you

will have everything you have a screenshots boom you understand everything about the company and this is

something that is uh that is very important I think that um for people if

we are discussing about cash flow if you have again and

different uh options if you have a cash car well basically you need to nurture

this cash car you need to be extremely careful and to take care of it because this one will finance the other project

but basically be extremely careful about it in term of Finance in term of live

operation in term of user acquisition in term of branding also don’t try to make

it too much or to ask too much to people uh uh I can give you two two games that

are a little bit suffering that have been suffering this one is game of war

that was Game of War on mobile that was number one in us and then now is maybe

top 200 or something like that is really down because basically they lost the

trust of their player so if you are trying to milk your players like crazy

and basically you will lose them uh so this is something say exactly yes this is MMO yes RCS and yes and you know the

game was fantastic I was playing it a lot so I know exactly what I’m talking about but they lost me because basically

they were not managing their Community they were not managing their players uh the right way uh the second one I will

say is uh for example you know what’s happening right now with the Assassin’s Creed license and shadows that was

pushed back and this is something that is also very difficult so you need you

need to be very careful that when you are managing your IPS when you are managing your brand you need to be

careful to manage them well in all the different ways term of community in term

of p in term of branding in term of the way that you are monetizing on these IPS

the pace of release etc etc it’s not just one thing you have to be careful

yeah absolutely um did you see that someone from Assassin’s Creed I don’t know if I’m hallucinating they wanted to

release a new Assassin’s Creed every six months yeah yeah I was reading that this

morning I I was wondering if it was a joke or not uh why is it a

joke because this is exactly the opposite of what they should do is basically that’s you know why I’m saying

that first there is a lot of fake news of course but then uh then what you have

what you have to be careful is that you have all the people who are saying you know what Star Wars Outlaw was it was

full of bugs it was not well finished etc etc so it’s not what you call a AAA

title or even a quadruple a title for some of them so so basically you cannot

say that okay we understood you we will release even more so I that’s why um I take uh this

with a with a with a grain of salt you know this this piece of

news yeah I’m actually looking at a Reddit post now um because they do side

projects as well like they do remastered spin-off games so who knows who’ll be interested to see all righty we’ll go back to the

wheel I’ll be a good podcast there is there is an interesting question from

add about reading the data is uh uh uh

is and is putting it back again yeah so so basically

um yes Ali the the difference I make is here I’m talking much more about the pnl

and I’m talking much more about the finance of your company I’m not talking that much about what you will say the

data and the kpis which is different you are right that the way that to read the

information is extremely complicated and there is a basically data analysis

that’s why there it’s always a department data and analytics because basically you can say you can have the

number say anything you want in in some ways is it good is it bad you can play with these numbers and this is also a

problem to to convince the VC because this is a game of I consider this this

number is good and what about this but then after there is the reality check the reality check is basically what are

your fixed cost what are your variable cost what is basically your cash flow what you are generating with your game

what is the cost of the team of the game um that is basically generating your cash flow is it too much not enough and

uh how are you uh how are you basically um optimizing your sales uh how are you

working with R&D basically to to bring some Innovative elements uh how much

money are you putting into into your next game well basically this is the kind of thing that you need to look at

and usually these numbers are quite real because they are money and basically

this is a kpi you can say yeah 38 39 we are making some progress but here you

know when you are in the red well basically you are losing money with your company you will run into a big problem

from the banks and from your employees very quickly so there is nothing worse

to hear companies that thank you and that are

basically not paying their employees again this is a lack of maturity of not

taking uh their responsibility at the management level maybe because they

didn’t knew so that’s why I’m always saying the the the foundation is to discuss the numbers with someone who can

help you that’s extremely important beautiful lovely clarification

we’ll move on back to the wheel we got three more and then we can yeah lovely

let’s go let’s

go excellent good question all righty we spoke about the importance of vision I’m

going to ask you this question what is the mistake the number one mistake that people make when crafting a vision

I don’t think um I think that maybe one of the mistakes I don’t think that there is a particular mistakes but I think

that one of the mistake is to confuse the vision with some objectives and

basically some some goals or some some key result that they want to achieve

that’s a little bit different for me the the vision is the highest is basically

um trying uh you need first to to Define your why what what is the why of the

company what are you trying to do with your company um most of the most of the

good way to think is okay I’m trying to solve this problem or I’m trying to bring this solution to the world or to

the people or I’m trying to bring this vision of gaml that doesn’t exist in term of innovation for example that’s

some possibilities but what is important is your vision should be based also on

your values this is something something that is extremely important and what I have seen that you know you were saying

why some companies that are very big are still Innovative and Etc I think because they have very high values is basically

they are they are very strict with them and uh again I’m sorry that I have to

always bring back blizard but that was the case there was the they have their eight values and your values will become

your beon whatever you are doing um you know is you you can do

um uh I think that was um um naughty dog

that was doing a Jack and Dexter and uh and basically now they are doing last of

us and I don’t think these game are the same but I think that basically their value Remains the Same is basically to

to reach for excellence and uh there is values is something that is higher than

when people are coming to your company they are coming to more than XYZ company

they are they are coming to a vision and that was the same for for blizzard when they are saying game play first is

something that this is the first one and you understand how important this is for

them and then after the second one for example is commit to Quality when you have that as your value

that mean that you cannot Sid track if you are sidetracking you need basically

to uh to take a brush and to remove your value do you want to remove your value

so it’s very important um if you are doing this exercise as a vision uh you

are you are working on your vision your why but then after in the how and basically what you want to commit as a

company if you have if you are in between co-founders or if you have a small team you can do some Retreats and

you can work on these values and you can decide this is what we want to do and

why we want to do it and how we want to do it and this is something very important because you will not change

from that there are some there are some people who are saying we want to create

the biggest social network or we want to empower I don’t know for example the

people to create for example let’s say Roblox but if this is about quality then

basically you need to stick to it you cannot just play with the terms because after people will just nail you for that

it’s like oh are you really about the quality I I would consider that um when

you are joining a company or when basically you are looking at a company try to look at what they are producing

what they are saying in their PR what are their games but also looking at their values is uh this is something

that is extremely interesting and you can see that some companies that are doing extremely well they have some I

would say very uh core values that you would not be able to enter the company

without them or without sticking to them if you want to just play with them it

will not be accepted yeah no I had that when I went to Barcelona recently I went to someone

we both know well um Thomas L’s Studio game house one of their values is making

games that women love to play yeah and you can’t just go in there and be like

all right I have a new idea he like no we’re making games that women love to play which has a lot of pre filters

which comes from the type of people who are going to come in the mentality they have and I think what you said like

because they’ve been doing that for so many years it’s going to be hard to compete because they’ve had that core value

right yeah my mother is still playing one of their game each time I go back to France like maybe one once a year she’s

still on her iPad and she’s still playing in say are you still playing this game that’s completely crazy but

that mean they are doing a good job that mean they know their audience and they know how to do it another example is

when I was visiting the R&D Center of blizard what really surprised me is how

dark was this place it was like I I I was of course I was in a way that that’s

it’s not ironic but this is kind of beautiful in a way I was visiting the team of Diablo and basically it was

super dark it was like a cave you are in the dungeon and I said wow there is

absolutely zero light that’s completely crazy and they say yeah because basically for the artist there should

not be one ray of light that is entering because basically it will change the

perception of what they are drawing they want to have the again commit to Quality

after everything is B subjective you can think whatever you want about their game

but basically the way that they are creating their games is like

uh craftmanship is is really the way to do it is really taking every small

details and basically it has to be as dark as possible so they they have the perfect coloring so if you want to play

Diablo the best play at night in the dark a lot

yeah then you have it as they intended it um I’m going to ask a question which is

a bit more personal um because I think it might relate to some people here who have smaller Studios and then we move on

to the next topic so I’ve started a business in April and as you were

talking about culture and the vision and the values I haven’t really written them

down or communicated the values to my team which is my brother brother and now I’m starting to think that is a mistake

and I was like okay what value should I have and then what came to me was bringing people together because

ultimately that’s what I’m doing my question is if I say my values is

bringing people together should I be measuring out like metrics and then

holding myself accountable to those values and making sure that the metric isn’t like money related otherwise it’s

kind of like well you it’s not really a value if it’s just about money right so my question is should I be measuring

metrics against my values my opinion it’s only my opinion

absolutely not you should not it’s basically the values are outside of money

consideration because basically the money is um is kind of a trick that is

changing everything people act differently with money and basically if you put the money into it that will

change what you are doing we are facing difficult time so basically we have we

cannot commit to Quality anymore that is not acceptable the value should be correct and should be the same whatever

you are super rich or you are super poor there is no reason that the values is

it’s it’s exactly like if I if you are telling me for example since you are saying that you are working with your

brother family first okay then basically what kind of kpi do you want to bring to

your brother is like uh is you you know that’s the problem the values it’s for me it’s

transend just the thing about the money you can have an and again you can have

an excellent quality game made by one person because you have to put things

into consideration that’s very important and of course people are much more vocal

when you have a team of 1,000 people and the game is full of bugs there is a reason because there is 1,000 people so

what is your value is something that you should stick whatever is the size of your team and you can make an excellent

good quality game that is not costing a fortune that’s it so money should not

affect the no way you see values and no because because the value is here and

this is your beon in what you are driving your initiatives this is something that is important but the Val

needs to be General enough so basically you cannot pinpoint uh oh this is based

on this kpi or something like that or whatever will happen I will change my mind and I will pivot and it’s not that

easy usually the the values are engrave in a way beautiful all righty we go back to

the wheel two more spins let’s go

okay strong company structure I think to

answer this question I keep going back to this but like what do people get wrong about

company structure like what’s the big thing you see that gets wrong well basically if if you are if you are doing

your startup and you are you are studying it people see it as a kind of either as a friends club or basically

an extension of the family or so that mean that they are not taking their their company seriously as a vehicle as

an entity and this is something that is that is dangerous and they they consider

this is a friends and family playground and this is not this is not very serious

so that I would say this is the biggest mistake H what’s the

solution the solution is the following sh think right the answer

is basically when you start your company and this is something I was reading

recently and this is more about entrepreneurship you start even if you are the only one of your company you

make the organogram the O chart of your company

in 5 years time you do it so let’s consider that this is you Harry okay and

you will do this yeah you will do this exercise let’s say we are

202 you will Define what is the the company of Harry By

2030 you will create the O chart with all the different department division all the different people and you will

tell me about what’s the point Alexi and here comes the point is basically it’s forcing you to put in place the

structure of what you would need and what you are trying to put in place second thing is that and you will say

that’s a little bit stupid but not that much you will see you will put your name everywhere so you will have your blogs

for example you need someone that is I don’t know Community Management for

example or like PR and basically you will put your name you will put Harry Harry Harry Harry you put everywhere and

now you will know your structure and by knowing your structure you will know what are the prior ities in term of

recruitment who you need to recruit and basically your game your game of life

what I said before a company is a kind of role player kind of game in a game of life it’s basically you will have you

would have to complete your structure by 2030 and you will have to fill it out

and basically you will know that this is the correct thing because you have created the the chart from the beginning

started with yourself doing everything so basically you are doing the webinar

you are doing the podcast you are writing you are doing the Community Management you were doing the accounting

you were doing absolutely everything you were putting water on the plants etc etc

and progressively it will not be you anymore and you will know progressively you will replace your name by others

people name so this is the right way to put the right foundation second thing

that you need to put in place is the the right foundation for a company so of

course we can say it depends but basically you can never play with uh

admin legal and finance so you need to have these three pillars for your company it doesn’t mean that you need to

recruit it’s better if you can afford if you can afford do it but basically uh

you can always have a lawyer as someone that you are paying Outsource but I will

say for admin to manage everything that is contract all contract based

partnership recruitment employees Etc discussing with the bank etc etc if you

can afford take someone for ad me that was the first person that I was one of the first person I was recruiting when I

started in Japan it’s extremely important and then after the finance

because you will be able to know what you can do and also this person will help you to to prepare the pitch deck if

you need to do some fundraising and to to make you think in a different way the

the CFO have a kind of magic is basically they always considering we should not spend money whereas the CEO

of a kind of another magic is always about spending money so and you have the

CEO in the middle we saying that’s not wrong what you are saying uh that’s not

wrong what you are saying that’s not right and that’s not right put Pros cons we decide what is the best course of

action and that that would be the beautiful I started doing that in my

head I started making the business in five years and I realized I was like

wait a minute what do I want to do with my business and then I went back to my values and then I started thinking of

departments which I haven’t thought about till today and now have actually got me thinking and I literally just did

that in my head in 20 seconds so I can imagine how doing the exercise properly would make a big impact like I was

thinking about I need a head of events I need someone to do this this and this and I’m like well I’m nowhere near that but now I know I will need it I will

then you know build the structures in place so you need uh you need to make it

a reality so for you there are two things is first uh do uh do a vision

board you do a vision board and you will put it on your instead of your actual wallpaper you put your vision board is

basically what you imagine could become your life and your company in the next

five to 10 years whatever I don’t care if you have a private jet a Ferrari or you have nothing you just

have Crocs which would be terrible in five years time but basically or it’s golden gold Crocs yes basically yes and

and gold gold Crocs for example but basically you need to have a vision board of what you are going to second

second thing is that you need to create this all chart and to have it so

basically you know the step that you need to take to go into this vision board the O chart is basically the I

would say the kind of consequence of the vision board that you will put it in place and the people are coming because

basically you are driving your own initiative your own objectives and you are you are driven by your key

results yeah and I think an important thing I’m thinking out loud like maybe I want a small business

but I realized that not everyone needs to be full time I imagine you could have a

fractional person in each of these departments so yeah so that’s because I

was thinking the objection here is like well I don’t want a massive orc chart but if you just pretend you did then you

can see what you can kind of Outsource which is nice you know what you know what I was

saying before is that the a players are highly skillful people and very engaged

engaged with your company or with your vision so this is what is important I never said in in any way that they are

full-time or no fulltime or they basically there what is their contract or what is their salary or anything like

that so keep that in mind and basically you should be good and then after when you have to when you need to have

someone full time you will have someone full time yeah no beautifully said

lovely um we’re going to get some questions in the chat now and we’ll stay on for a few more minutes before I do

that one final very short two minutes on this on in terms of Market needs so I’ll

spin the wheel even though we have I just want to I just want to reply tog who is asking me the question why I

became a consultant I think that is um that was something in a way I don’t know

if it is a kind of a destiny but when you are saying leading a bigger organization first you know um a career

is a journey and you never know which direction it will it will take so I am

absolutely not against the corporate world it doesn’t mean it will not come back to me maybe it will come in a big

way or in a small way I absolutely do not know but this is something that I absolutely wanted to uh to do as a

Consulting service because I think that having worked with so many different kind of companies from the smallest one

to the biggest one there are some big problem of management right now I think that there is a lack of good Management

in this in this game industry and that’s why there is so many layoffs yesterday I was reading that

21% of people were um fired the past year in the gaming industry in Europe

This is tremendous this is gigantic and this is not normal it’s people should not accept that for normal uh the second

part of my explanation is that I have worked for startup in Berlin I have

worked for Studios being part of bigger companies I have worked for entities

being part of bigger companies I have worked for Gigantic companies like bda1

billion like blizzard $2.5 billion so I think I have I have worked a little bit

in all the different direction um when I was working in Japan I was always

replying to the Japanese I would be in Japan for life then a few years after I was in Korea then after I said no I will

stick in Korea then after I was back in Japan and then after I was never planning to be in Berlin because

basically I was I’m not German I never visited Germany I do not speak German

and this is one of the reason I want it to come because I knew nothing about it so I said this is interesting because

that’s a little bit my uh my way of life is to to challenge myself so I think

that right now my project is to bring value to the companies and to the people

uh by bringing my expertise and my background there are few consultant in the video game industry not that much

and I think this is a mistake maybe we are a little bit too much in advance I don’t know it will there will be more

and more people but I think the companies will really gain from having more expertise and bringing more

maturity in fact in most of other Industries you have always a ton of

consultant it doesn’t mean they are the one taking the decision but they are here to bring some values and different

opinion it can be a being part of the board of directors a strategic advisor

it can be consultant it can be a fractional CEO Co it depends but basically there is some value in having

some mentoring coaching strategic advisor that’s for sure beautiful well

said I’ll get the final the last one what was the last one tell me I closed

it let me find it second um understanding Market needs and Trends so

let’s just chat about the market what do you think about the market going into 2025 in terms of how should one

understand the market I think that right now there is

there is a lack of innovation because of the big budget I think that when you

sorry I said oh wow I didn’t expect you to say that so there’s a lack of innovation because the budgets are too

big yeah many startups who dream too big at the beginning and they should start with something that is more reasonable

because a dream that is you know before running you learn to walk and before you

walk you know you are just on on the floors when you are a baby so that’s exactly the same for the company if you

are trying to do too much at the beginning that will really that that can kill your company so you need to be

extremely careful about that um and the market trend is

basically I think that what is missing right now is that there is not enough manager playing games or being

passionated by by games um especially for the bigger companies there is a

complexity to the organization you have more and more people who have absolutely nothing to do with the game industry who

are just here to manage the numbers and then after you have project that are not

you do not I don’t know how to to say it you do not feel

the soul yeah there is a lack of of Soul there is no heart in this kind of

products so it just like they are just doing as a kind of a copycat and that’s

never good like that so this is something that is I think is

bringing some problem but again it’s it’s coming back to uh to the vision um

the trend I do not want to say that there is a trend because um I I can see

of course I’m I’m reading the different site and everything and we can see many things but who was planning to have pal

world to be successful no one who was planning to have L diverse two to be

successful I mean there there was L diver one right no one it’s like so

there are many things that were not planned to be successful that became successful it’s like what about Roblox

and I think that right now we are calling it the game industry for a reason it is an industry there is enough

segments and I think that myself I do not want to enter into the guy who is

like with this crystal ball and saying this is what will happen this is what will happen why that is usually these

guys are just surfing on the trends and two or three years ago everyone was

excited about nft now everyone ate nft until there would be something happening

good about nft and we say of course we should Sol that way same with the

blockchain same with I don’t know the ugc and same for all there is no bad IDs

it’s the implementation the execution of the ID and what is the value for the

players what is the value for your company based on your

vision I like it do the game that you want to create but don’t start by

telling me we are 10 people we want to do GTA 7 how would you do it Alexi we

have $1 million be realistic in your goals that’s very

important yeah yeah well said okay I’ll have a couple questions before you sign

off for the night but first of all big thank you because you’ve given me two hours and 20 minutes on thank you it’s

always long with me you know I’m very famous for that yeah but yeah I’ve I’ve literally marked um for clips for my

editor later 1 2 3 four five yeah like 12 so for me this webinar is a fantastic

chance to interact with people it’s a fantastic chance to to basically to bring as much value as I can to help

people and to try to to give them I cannot say that they will take right

away some decision but food for sorts at least and that will be a big win for the

night and uh and then after if we can if we can make the best of it in term of

learning that’s fantastic I’m I’m very happy for it no thank you and thank you

Mikel for the nice words and Ali so yeah just I’m curious you said leaders aren’t

playing games do you play any games yes but less and less because I have my company also to take care of so

that’s something that I this is something that I really regret so that’s why myself I’m going more and more into

Indies before I was playing longer games I was uh in fact I was playing the games

after completing them so you know when I did a Red Dead Redemption 2 when I finished the story I continue for an

extra month for an extra 100 hours oh you played Red Dead wow I tried to play it but it was too long but you managed

to finish it no because when it’s a good game it’s never too long and same for Witcher three it was 200 hours and

Assassin’s Creed origin it was 200 hours downloading all the DLC but uh there was

something about Red Dead Redemption wanted to get lost into this this world now I am much more the the type of guy

who is playing the the type of game like Stu Val of graveyard keeper that’s I

like the this kind of game like that very simple I like the Indie Games you know honestly that’s why I I like also

to work with a startup because I think that they are it’s refreshing what they

bring it’s very very refreshing uh this is something that usually is driven

passion and whatever is their mean I mean we have case they are doing

absolute wonders absolute wonders you know there there but there is some games

know it’s kind of burning my finger that I I cannot play them it’s uh I feel I

feel very bad for for that um and um I think it was um I’m not sure if it okay

we are the six so maybe it’s today uh that it is released there is a game that is called and

that is that was made by um a French team of 30 people and it’s based on the

book that it’s it’s becoming kind of RTS with ANS

and sorry is it called Empire of the ants is it uh I’m

wondering PlayStation 5 two days ago yeah it was made by to five yeah ire of

the ends yeah exactly so this game is done by your team so you were talking before about your $1 million project the

B title this is exactly what you have 30 people does done with unreal five it

looks outstanding and very original this is what I would say to reply to the

question before very Innovative in a way to do that in a very organic world uh

instead of just the playing guys and that’s it so I I think this is I mean

can you imagine that a team of 30 people have done that no

and you know the game is like that inside the game is like that inside this

is what this is the actual game this is not trailer or anything so this yes I

have I have to say that uh let’s play more kind of game like that because they

are bringing so much to the game industry yeah it’s it’s very Innovative I like to have experence but

also um of course I have everyone has its own favorite

I’m there is some games that I’m very careful not to play like MMO because otherwise can never stop to addicting

yeah yeah I was the same with I like I like to change games I’m

making few exceptions so you know that there is a Witcher for under preparation

this one Whatever is the the console it will be released 56 if it is on ps6 I will buy a

console the console just for this game because this is this is

the the best game I have played in my life now beautiful I actually uninstalled

Hearthstone recently because I was playing too much so I go through phases I was

playing Hearthstone and I was doing like an hour or two a day and how do you have

time to play how do you have time um exactly I don’t so I uninstalled

it you are you you you had too many things to do no but I think this is this

is super important and and in a way you know when you have a company that is well structured well organized then

basically you can you do not have to be the guy who is doing everything uh by himself and this is a little bit our buz

our situation because we have a new new companies but this is something we want to extract ourselves so we can come back

to what we love playing games yeah and yeah we’re working on it

perfect we’ve actually kept a steady view account for two and a half hours which is amazing so I’m going to end it

there for Alexis’s sake and everyone at home but yeah I just want to say thank you again Alexis everyone that’s stuck

thank you for everyone that stuck around to the end please connect with Alexis he’s kindly mentioned he’s happy to have

a couple chats with people that have come so if you just DM him for that Clarity call take advantage and everyone

at home thank you you’ve been listening to the gaming Playbook you can follow the podcast on YouTube or wherever you

listen to podcast to see the recap and if you haven’t already um you can connect with me if you want to find new

events like this or if you just want to chat but thank you again Alexis and have a good night everyone thank you very

much thank you everyone thank you