Dev to Dev S03 E02 - Jay Powell

speaker-1: What ho folks! Dev2Dev season 3 continues with episode 2 with a conversation with someone I'd never met before, Jay Powell. Jay's had a really interesting journey through the industry and I think Jay brings a perspective to the show that I haven't really had since Andy Roberts in season 2 episode 10. Both Andy and Jay have their own publishing labels and they were involved heavily in indie game development so I think this is a topic that I would like to cover more so it's great to get... additional perspective in season 3 following on from Andy's in season 2. Jay's been very focused on the business side of the industry, working with publishers, working with developers, indie developers in particular now, and I think brings a perspective that I haven't previously been able to have on the show, so I think this is a really good opportunity to learn a little bit more about what the business side of making games is about, both back in the day and now in the modern era. Jay's had some really great experience both building international contracts with developers when global publishing didn't exist to working closely with indie studios and through his indie game business show and through the power group that he runs, having this opportunity to really support and help creators build things and find publishers and make games, working with publishers and with his own publishing label. So this is a really good insight. I really enjoyed this conversation. Jay had some great anecdotes and some great perspectives, both on the business and on crunch and burnout. And I think there's some really thoughtful conversation in the middle here about some challenges he had with working. too hard in an industry that he loves too much, you could argue. We all love it too much sometimes. So I hope you really enjoy this conversation as much as I did. As always, Dev2Dev, usual places, usual plugs. You know where we are. Patreon, all the socials except X, clips, links, blogs, websites, any opportunity I can to help people discover the show, please share it if you can, it really helps. I have a new mailing list, ooh, mailing list, and I'm figuring this out as I go, that you can sign up to on the website. So yes, please like and share. please tell your friends and again if you know anyone or can think of anyone that you think would be on the show, Jay's a great example, Jay reached out to me directly and asked if I could be on the show and in exchange I'm gonna be on his show as well so please help if you can, I really appreciate it. But enough of my waffle. As always, let's sit back and listen in to another episode of Dev2Dev with Jay Powell. Hey Jay, thank you for jumping on this call. We've never met before, so I appreciate you reaching out and wanting to jump on the pod and have a conversation. I'm excited to dig into your history and what you've done. I always like to kick this conversation off with my favorite first question. What first inspired you about video games?
speaker-0: ⁓ Lord. So I'm pushing fifty and I've been playing games since I guess I was about seven or eight. it wasn't any one thing, really. The irony is I think if there if I had to pin it down to one thing, a after I just said that there's no one thing. After I had to pin it down to one thing, my sixth grade reading teacher, language teacher, whatever you called it back then. was a huge fan of The Hobbit. And I read The Hobbit for the first time at that age. And I think that's what pushed, you know, a lot of, you know, because it was just takes you to a different world. And it's a fantastic story. And there's action and there's all this other stuff. And all of that translates to games. So I've I've I've been a fan and and been a player of games since I was very, very young. I did not have a console until I actually started working in the industry, ⁓ because my mother was a teacher and she said, You have a computer, you don't need a Nintendo. ⁓ so yeah.
speaker-1: Okay, interesting. the kind of the exploration of the world, the, you know, the going to another place maybe was what was the inspiration. So you said you started with kind of computers. What any particular sort of genres that really took you to do? Did you play socially? Like how would video games, how do video games kind of weave their way into your life?
speaker-0: I mean back then there was no playing socially. I I predate, you know, Steam and IOS and all of that. I don't think there was ever, you know, of course there's genres now that I prefer. But back then it was ⁓ my god, what can I get my hands on? What can I play? You know, it was I started with the Commodore sixty four and There was a sub silent service and Jupiter landing are the ones that come to mind immediately. But yeah, back then it was okay, what what can I get my hands on? What can I play? What can I do? You know. I snuck off ⁓ from a school trip one time because there was a a babbage's or a game stop or whatever it was in the strip mall where we stopped for, you know, school dinner or whatever it was, and bought my first, you know, Mortal Kombat game so my parents wouldn't know that I that I had this hyper violent, you know, w whatever at the time. but yeah.
speaker-1: Huh, and when did he grow up?
speaker-0: In the middle of North Carolina, so for those of you who aren't in the US, if you look at the east coast of the US and there's a big hump in the middle of it, that's the eastern edge of North Carolina.
speaker-1: Got it, okay. And whether it's anybody else in your family kind of into video games, any siblings, any other cousins or anything?
speaker-0: Not nearly as much as I was. My dad had a copy of Flight Simulator at the time, which I was not allowed to touch under any circumstances. ⁓ my mom, no. ⁓ my brother a little bit, and so I would say he, you know, even to this day is a you know, he's got three kids now too, so it's he's a casual player, but no, I was the one that went off the deep end and this is what I loved and what I did.
speaker-1: Okay, so it really got under your skin. was really, was it your sort of main hobby? Did you have any other hobbies that competed with it or was it just all video?
speaker-0: No, that was it. I mean not th that wasn't like my only hobby, but that was by far, you know, th the biggest one. I played somewhat competitive golf when I was younger. God knows I can't do that now. but ⁓ yeah, it was re reading would be the second, the close second. So just, you know, reading books, reading stories, reading all this stuff and playing games. And that's that That's basically what it was.
speaker-1: So books and video games pretty much defined you with a little bit
speaker-0: Classic nerd. Yeah. There's just no other way to put it. Straight A's in school, loved reading, loved playing video games. I mean, they don't fit much better into that archetype than that.
speaker-1: Yeah, very similar to myself. Was there a point in those early days where you thought you wanted to get into making video games or were you just kind of happy being a consumer and just playing them?
speaker-0: I was actually a very avid programmer back in the day. But let me let me let me put a spot on that. That was in the days of basics. Okay. So, you know, it was you know, we would get these magazines, you probably remember this. You get these magazines and like the last page was a code and you know, you typed in all that code flawlessly and you didn't p it up because if you did, you had to start over. There was no edit button. And, you know, when you were done you had a game that you could play until you rebooted your computer and the RAM was gone and then, you know, that was it. I d I seriously looked down that route. And then when I got to college and realized that programming requires a whole lot of math, that's when I was done. I was you know, that was it. That was finished. ⁓ it I don't ever think that there was a time when I was like, ⁓ my God, I need to get into the video game industry. Even in college, it wasn't like that. I got my first job almost as an accident. And it was I was always planning to work in tech in some way. But no, there wasn't like some deep embedded dream of of working in the game industry. But I mean that that was the early nineties. So there wasn't really, you know, what we have now anyway.
speaker-1: Yeah, it certainly didn't seem like a reachable goal, right, to actually get to make video games. It always felt like they were kind of made by someone else and like you just got to play him. That's definitely how I felt. ⁓ Yeah, so you went to kind of the University of North Carolina, but and you studied English language and literature, you nothing techie. You focused on maybe the reading side of everything.
speaker-0: Back to my reading side, basically. Yeah. took one programming class and even then that was in Pascal, which at that point was already a pretty much dead language, but that's what they were that's what they were teaching. ⁓ and that's where I figured out the whole, ⁓ my god, there's a lot of math in this, and I'm not that's not me. ⁓ but yes, ⁓ English literature major, you know, over the last year. eight years or whatever of doing our podcast, I've learned how many more of us there are and I'm like, aha I'm not alone. You know, I I too read in college. That was all we did. Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: And yeah, so you graduate ⁓ and then when do you sort of find your way into sort of the first sort business development role that you had that was in helping devs and publishers ⁓ produce and develop? How did that happen?
speaker-0: So keep in mind, I had one business class in college. I t I took intro to economics. I'm pretty sure I got a D in it. So I just barely passed. when I was when I was in college in the summer, I was a resident assistant. And I don't know what that's called in in Europe, but it's basically the student in charge of the other students, you know, on the hall. And it was fantastic for your parents because you got free room and and food and everything else, but you didn't actually get a paycheck. So if you wanted to do something fun, you still needed your own money. And I was working the desk one night and opened up the student newspaper and there was a advertisement said, Hey, come play video games and tell us what you think. Today we would call that a junior scout. Back then there was not a there was not a word for it. I was an evaluator. That's what it was called. So I took that job as literally a means to get beer money, you know, so I could go out on the weekends and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, I was an evaluator for several months, and then the intern who was in charge of that program at the company that I was, you know, at graduated. And so the two owners promoted me to be that intern who was in charge of, you know, y all all the evaluators. That's where I got the first taste of, ⁓ my God, this is a job. I can, there are people that do this. And so when I graduated college, you know, I stayed with them for, you know, a year and a half. And I graduated college, they offered me a job. Still knew nothing about business. Not a thing. ⁓ but I learned it all, you know, by doing it, you know, for the next eight, 10 years. So yeah, it really was a, you know, ⁓ here's a general classified ad in the student newspaper and thirty years later here I am talking with you. So yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, that was the genesis that crafted a career. And talk to me about that journey. you know, how did you go from being ⁓ this evaluator into actually helping big studios with their business and bringing these things to life?
speaker-0: So the main part was just basically showing that I knew what I was doing during the internship. You know, so we would play a game for like forty-five minutes to an hour, and then we would fill out a form. And the whole time, you know, I'm filling that form out and I'm looking at, you know, the the owners and I'm like, well, you should ask this, and you should probably ask this. And so, you know, it was showing value basically as as an intern, as a lowly minimum wage person at the time. When I started full time after college the this was a very small company. It was, you know, the two owners and then I was number three. And that was that was it. And so we were all in one room in what they called an office park, but it was not an it was three mobile homes, you know, connected by hallways that that we were part of. And it it was very much a a learn by doing type thing. So Way back then there was no digital distribution. So if we had a game, you know, that we wanted to get worldwide publishing on, we had to do twenty to twenty-five different contracts because every country had to have its own contact. There wasn't anyone, you know, at that time who was like, We do global publishing. That didn't exist. so it was that's where I learned a lot of the business and the sales stuff. And where I learned contract. I do not have a law degree. I, you know, we have a a corporate attorney just like everybody else. But I make their lives a little easier in the fact that I can say, okay, look, this is not normal. That's normal. This is not normal. ⁓ so it was it was very much a, you know, learning on on the fly type thing. And because it was a small company, you know, I literally saw every part of the business. And so Someone would call and say, Hey, I need to speak to invoicing. And I'll be like, Okay, hold on one second. Lloyd, we gotta talk to invoicing. All right, good. All right. So, you know, there we go. ⁓ it so it was a really, really good learning experience. And it also instilled a ridiculous work ethic in me at the time too. ⁓ but yeah.
speaker-1: That's amazing and so Octagon, that's not a publisher I've ever really heard of but it sounds doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, yeah, but even from that time, like I don't remember it being... But it sounds like you had some big contracts with some big studios, big...
speaker-0: I know, but th so Octagon wasn't a publisher. Now we we turned it into a publisher about eight years in, but we were an agency. And so I did the very first North American distribution deals for this little company called Paradox. ⁓ did the first publishing deal for for High Wemont Studios, which is going on still to this day. the first deal for Starberries, and that was like one of my How good are your sales techniques? We sold a development publishing agreement to, I believe it was Crave at the time. There was no playable demo of this game that that Starbree was creating. It was simply a mirrored cube floating down a hallway. And it was it was one of the not that impressive these days because you have, you know, Unity and Unreal and all this other stuff, but for a homemade engine, that sold the entire project. So we did that. worked with People Can Fly very early on, did a publishing deal for DICE, which was the last game that they did before they they published, you know, Battlefield 1942. So it was a lot of that, meeting people, you know, you know, from around the world, learning how to, you know, market these games. It's like this game is like this plus plus. And so we did that for I did it for seven or eight years. And then we ended up transitioning, you know, it was the same people, but we just stopped doing the agency stuff at Octagon and we created a casual game publisher called MERSCOM. And so that's what I did for the next three years. It's like I built one of the industry's first digital distribution networks because doing casual games in the late 2000s. wasn't free to play any of that sort of stuff. It was a nineteen ninety nine game with a one hour demo and you had just like going country by country, you know, ten years earlier, you had to sign a distribution deal with every single website. And so, you know, built w you know one of those, you know, from the ground up. And then when that company that company didn't go away, I ended up actually just quitting that job. after about ten years. And then shortly after I did that, they got bought by Platum Playtum got bought by Disney. And so yeah. But it was the it it was time for me to leave that company.
speaker-1: Right, that's fascinating. you like say that early days of a lot of Scandinavian studios, it sounds like. Yeah, and I guess like they were probably also trying to figure out how on earth you distribute a game in a country like the industry was so, you know, the whole deal, the whole way that games got distributed around the world was so primitive back then. I'm guessing it must have been a huge opportunity for you to let both sides are probably like, let's figure this out as we go.
speaker-0: Well it really was, yeah. I mean, that's it. That's what it was. I mean, ⁓ without naming names, we legally, this was not done illegally, we legally sold a publisher's game to their own distributor, you know, in another country one time. Because and that's why I laugh when you said primitive, because I never thought of it like that, but that is honestly the perfect word. Because that publisher did not understand or know their own distribution network. And neither did the other company, apparently, because they bought it. But yeah, we we we we s basically sold a company their own game.
speaker-1: Yeah, because I guess you're literally trying to figure out how you get boxed copies of these games into all the big retailers that involves a lot of connections. You know, it's not like somebody from Scandinavia can rock up to someone at Walmart and go, hey, I've got some games. like, you know, you had to that I'm sure was a great opportunity to kind of learn that side of the business. You know. both as it's developing itself. I imagine its development and your development were kind of running in parallel, right? You were sort of figuring out as you go and getting stronger and stronger as you went through these deals and got more experience.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's I mean there was no methodology, there was no training course, there was no, you know, anything like that. It's like here's the problem, solve it, figure it out. And that's what we did.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's what you had to do and made it happen. Yeah, I guess in many ways it's sort of analogous to working from 2D to 3D, right? When we were first building 3D games, a lot of designers were like, I don't know, like, we'll just do this. And he just kind of figured it out on the way you kind of stumbled across these ways of doing it that was successful and you carried building on them. And that sort of built the generation of like, this is how you make 3D games. And it like you had a similar thing, but for distribution, like this is how you built a distribution network. But then you switch to digital. So like you've done all of that with the physical, the actual physical boxes and then you ship to digital. talk to me about that. how do you, did you apply the same philosophy and just switch the medium or like how did you navigate that?
speaker-0: Honestly, yeah. I mean that was because it was very, very similar. You know, you have one game, you need twenty contracts for it, you know. And so in many ways it was actually easier because most of the major websites that were selling games, and we're talking like real dot com and big fish games and I win and you know, they were usually based either in the US or in Western Europe. So you was easier to get on the phone with them because At that point, we email was pretty, you know, standard. But when I first started, it wasn't. It was like you need to do a deal in Brazil, you need to pick up the phone and dial Brazil and, you know, get that thing done. But it was very, very similar. And even to this day, you know, we've got the new publishing company and we're looking for partners to distribute the games in like Asia and South America. And the woman on my team that I've been working with off and on for 25 years, it's we're literally doing the very same thing we did 20 years ago. And fundamentally, it doesn't change. Technology makes it easier, but fundamentally there's there's there's no you you need to identify the people that are possible partners and then reach out to them with a kit and say, Hey, this is the game, this is why you should, you know, buy it or sell it or or whatever. Let's do a deal. ⁓ so yeah, the fundamentals have never, never changed. ⁓ but it's the it's the technology and the way that we get things done these days that you know that helps a lot of it.
speaker-1: Yeah, and I would imagine the digital side, like not having to do with all the logistics of actually physically shipping the products around and dealing with that side of it must have made things simpler in one way. yeah, that's fascinating. so yeah, you're so most common, not to go and kind of ended up sort of rolling together almost, but shifting in focus. Yeah. And you're covering a lot of platforms at that time as well. You mentioned a lot of mobile stuff, but I'm guessing also a lot of the sort of digital. games on the bigger platforms like XB Alert, SBA and...
speaker-0: But yeah, back then we literally handled handled everything. Today we've moved out of the or I've moved out of the mobile space. ⁓ and part of that's because I'm such a gamer. I'm not a big free to play gamer. And so I was like, ⁓ you know, I'm old. Let me pay for my game and just play it. Leave me alone. but I mean th the reason I left was very much a a hard lesson in mental health. you know, which we didn't have. Nobody talked about it back then. But, you know, what had happened was the owners, those two owners that I started out with, you know, ten years earlier wanted to grow the publishing side and they've gone they went and got investment funding. And unfortunately, you know, or done it, that's a full-time job. So all of their work fell to me. And so there was about a year and a half or two years where I was responsible for acquisitions for the publishers, ⁓ publishing company, ⁓ all the distribution as well. At the same time, I was producing two one or two games and managing as an executive producer two other producers who were each doing, you know, two to three games apiece. And it got to the point where, you know, I was. Stressed out. I was getting sick. I had an ulcer. I was puking blood at four in the morning. You know, all that kind of wonderful stuff. And at the time again, no mental health, anything. It was like suck it up, you know, and and and do what you need to do. And we didn't have the technology to really effectively, you know, log in remotely. So we we could do it, but ⁓ my God, it was so slow. You know, you could do 10 things normally by the time you did one on that VPN. And so I would be waking up at two or three in the morning not being able to go back to sleep and driving into the office. And so when everybody else got to the office, I'd already been working for six or eight hours. And you know, they ca it came a time when they had gone through what they had raised and you know, one of the owners came into my office and said, Hey, look, we're gonna have to do some layoffs today. And but you're fine, just stay in your office and keep the door shut. And it's like everything clicked at that point. And I went, you know what? Give my job to somebody else. I ⁓ I quit and left. And you know, my wife being the you know, we've been to married for twenty three years, been together for like twenty five, she came home and I usually got home way later than her. And at the time I was making way more money than a you know, twenty year someone in their twenties needs to be making. And she came home and opened the door and I'm sitting on the couch playing, you know, NCAA football, whatever year it was, and she's like, Why are you home? I'm like, ⁓ I quit my job. Is is there a plan? I'm like, there's most of a plan. She's like, All right, let's do this. And, you know, we we carried on. But that was a that was a very hard, hard lesson in taking care of yourself and then what's actually important and what is less important. That was a very long answer for that question.
speaker-1: That's a great, I love that. That's such a great story. mean, you know, a horrible thing is to go through, you know, it's a perfect indication of some of, and imagining for you having built, you know, been a part of this business since it sort of really got going, it's really hard for you to take that step back and go, wait, is this too much? Like, I, can I handle this? And I imagine for your wife as well and your family, right, trying to navigate, you have to work these hours and being so committed to this job. I think it's a great indication of what one of the... There aren't many drawbacks about making video games, but I think one of them is that you can lose yourself in it, right? It sounds like you lost yourself in that career and more pressure, more pressure, more pressure, like, well, this is what I gotta do. I'm just gonna take on more pressure and get it done. And then you sort of had to pay the price. At some point, you know, it came calling and you had to pay the price.
speaker-0: It it's you know, it's one of those things that I I try to teach developers and ⁓ anybody else in this industry to to this day. And especially when the whole crunch conversation, you know, comes up. Yes, crunch is a horrible thing. It sucks, you know. But in some ways, with the big giant asterisk on this, so I don't get completely, you know, destroyed online. And I'm a part of this, you know, we are our own worst enemy sometime. Because I had that mentality back then of ⁓ my God, this is what I want to do. I've been doing this for almost ten years. This is what I love. I if if I quit or I do something else, somebody else is just gonna take my place. And, you know, I have to I have to keep doing this. And, you know, that's where I see a lot of a lot of folks in this industry to this day, and their mental health is just being destroyed. And they don't realize that, you know what's important. And it's even worse now since the ⁓ the industry is in such a, you know, place for lack of a better word. because, you know, back then it's like, okay, look, if I quit this, you know, horrible job, I'll find another one. Well now it's hard to find another one. So you're stuck in these situations where you're killing yourself, you know, to get things done, which is not healthy. But then again, hey, we work in games and it's awesome. And it's just a it's it's a horrible circle. And I you know, I was very much a part of that, which is why I I get it. Some people you go on Reddit and somebody's talking about their their their job and it's sh it's like, well just get a new job, just quit. And I'm like, you can't that's not an option ⁓ you know, today. You have to keep that job that you've got as much as you can, but at the same time, do you complain? Do you push back? And if you do Are they going to just replace you because there's a thousand other people that want your job? And so it's a very, very tough conversation. It's very it's something that's very, very indicative of this industry. And it's part of it, part of it, not all of it. Part of it is because we love what we do. Because honestly, God, would you be doing this as long as we've been doing this if you didn't? I mean, we don't do it for the money. That's for sake. You know, it's it's very much a A issue in this industry that does not have a very easy answer.
speaker-1: Yeah, I agree. It's very much a passion driven industry and you know, I'm similar. I've spoke to people recently and you know, lot of what I say is I love what I do, but it's just video games, right? I'm not saving people's lives. I'm not changing the, you know, I'm not making big political decisions, right? It's just video games, right? So to your point, like you said earlier, there's a point where you just have to go, that's enough, right? I've, you know, there's more important stuff.
speaker-0: I would say that line is definitely when you're waking up at three in the morning and throwing up blood. That's
speaker-1: That's a great line to draw.
speaker-0: Good indicator right there. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, if you need a concrete line to draw, it's if you find yourself, you keep blood. I love it. ⁓ So you quit. So you quit that role, you know, that role that's basically defined you by the sounds of it for a long, time, you know, taught you everything you've known. What do you do? Where do you go?
speaker-0: So when I told my wife there was part of a plan, it wasn't necessarily a lie. Two of my friends from that company had been laid off for quit, I don't remember the exact circumstances, and they had started a little thing on their own. One of the guys was a excellent producer. you know, he had actually he was somewhat retired almost because he had sold his development studio to Ubi, believe. ⁓ and the other guy was super, super young, fantastic designer. You know, and they were do they they had created what we would now call a production house, but that didn't exist. But they needed a a biz dev guy. And so perfect, there we go. So we started a s company called Digironin Games because we were digital Ronin. And I did not come up with that name because if you look at all the companies that I'm in charge of, they have really basic. names because I have horrible at that. But what we were doing was essentially, you know, developers thought we were a publisher. Publishers thought we were developers. The reality was we were somewhere in between. So we would work with National Geographic and Disney and Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. And they would say, okay, look, we need this type of game. And then we would design and do the production of it in-house And find an experienced studio somewhere else, anywhere in the world, in the US, you know, in Europe, South America, wherever, that could actually do the coding and the art and that that sort of stuff. And then we put it all together as one big package and, you know, delivered it. And we did that for for three years. It's like we did some we didn't do anything groundbreaking, but a lot of the, you know, very simple, even Flash games, we did some of those. But, you know, if it was a GBA or a, you know, DS licensed game, sometimes, you know, we were the ones that were doing that. And then we tried to do, you know, that jump that so many other developers do, where, okay, you've been doing contract work, but now you want to make your own stuff. And, you know, we decided, okay, we've got some money saved up, we're going to do this. And we were going after that casual because we that that hidden object stuff was like really still in a big boom. And know, I told the guys, it's like, look, we're gonna be just another company doing hidden object games. And do you have to remember back in the day, Big Fish Games was the literal big fish in in that industry. There were so many of these games, they were launching a new game every single day, Saturday, Sunday included. And so, you know, I'm like, we gotta stand out somehow. So did a bit of research and Said, okay, who plays these games? And it was women 35 and older. That was the known demographic. That's what you were targeting. And so I came up with a list of like 10 book authors that fit that same demographic. And I've started cold calling agents. And the majority of them had no idea what we were talking about. And then I hit one and the, you know, assistant, the PA, was like, ⁓ my God, this is awesome. I love these games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like, okay, we're in. So we licensed the New York Times bestselling author and made a game off of her novel. And it did pretty well because I mean it was like this is how you do licensing. She's promoting it to her audience. Her audience is the same audience that plays these games. We didn't get rich off of it, but you know, it did, it was profitable. It did pretty well. And then my two business partners, you know, decided we should do fully original content. I'm like, guys, this is not. gonna work and you know two versus one. And so it didn't. It's like we released two other games and neither one of them, you know, did much of anything. And at that point, I was like, look, I can't keep doing this. You know, I had a family at that point. It was just, you know, we had our our son. And I'm like, I have to have a real paycheck coming in. And so I left that company and ended up, you know, creating the Powell group. At the at that point and that was back in twenty ten.
speaker-1: Hmm. Right. Okay. Interesting. So at that point, know, you've sounds like you found some success with that company. But like you say, kind of the challenges of being human making games, right? You've got kids, you've got more responsibility, you know, encouraged you to make a shift and break away from that process that you'd sort of establish with those folks. ⁓ Talk to me a little bit about the licensing stuff. I'm always fascinated by that role. You're kind of trying to find that right balance between, especially if you're also working with another developer as well, right? You're trying to find that balance between satisfying the license holder and giving them what they need, but also building something efficient and building something that will be profitable to you. How did you go about doing that process? there any horror stories, any sort of successful examples of where that came together?
speaker-0: Say there were horror stories, but you had to keep in mind back then games were not the defined media that they are now. And so I had been working with licenses my whole career. You know, I was fortunate enough, and this is gonna age me as well, when I went to E three the first time, they were in Atlanta. They weren't even in LA. And we were working with Simon and Schuster Interactive, and so they had a North American sales pipeline. But we did all of their international, you know, publishing deals. And they were working on a game called Starship Titanic, ⁓ which is Douglas Adams. And I was fortunate enough to have dinner with Douglas Adams. You know, talk about geeking out, you know, you're 22 years old and you're having dinner with Douglas Adams. so it was it was less of the contract stuff. It was a lot of basically translation. Because license license did not know how to work with licensed source. And so it was a lot of translating this is how the game industry works versus this is how the movie industry works or this is how the book industry works or whatever it was. And so there were, you know, a whole lot of those conversations, you know, that had to happen. And you learned where where the the tough points were going to be. We had a client one time, and it was run by a friend of mine. So this wasn't like some random what you it was it was one of those companies and you know we're working on a game for them and they kept coming back. I just need this change. I just need this thing. And it's it's not something that was ever big enough to need its own change order. But this is where you learn to do change orders and why I absolutely impress that onto developers to this day. But finally I got tired of it and I didn't have any contractual way to go back and you know do anything. But I told him Okay, this is the last little thing that we're doing. The next time you call me, even if it's to put a registered symbol at the end of your company name, I'm gonna charge you five thousand dollars. I never got another request, you know, because you just at a certain point you have to put your foot down. We had a a woman that was working with a nonprofit for a very big athlete. I mean super big athlete. And when we sent her concept art for the game. She lost her mind over the color of the buildings because those were not the right colors. And we're like, that is such a tiny thing to fix. And it's like we're not even making the game yet. We're in, you know, pre-production. This is and so, but that's where I, you know, that's why I say a lot of it just really came down to translations. Like this is how things work in your industry. This is how things work in our industry. And mm managing expectations between the two. You know, explain to somebody, we've got a gold master candidate. You can't come back and say, hey, we need another level or we need to do it's like, no, your opportunity for comments was six months ago. It's not going to happen. So I there weren't that many, you know, absolute explosions. ⁓ I did piss off the Smithsonian Institute by accident one time. Because I referred to what we were doing with them as I think I said we've partnered up with the Smithsonian. Well, partner, I didn't know this at the time, is a really big word. And so they were livid because it insinuated that we had some sort of formal, deeply embedded partnership with the Smithsonian Institute. And I'm like, that's not what I meant. That's not. They wanted. A full retraction and you know, they were gonna personally email everybody that was on our email list and tell them that that wasn't true. And I was actually on my way to a buddy of mine's bachelor party. It was like a six, seven hour drive to get down there. You know, once again, American, that's not really a big deal for us. they and I talked them off that ledge. I'm like, look, this didn't go to CNN. I think you're, you know, overly worried about something you don't need. This went to a bunch of game developers. Okay. This is not that and so I I did find they talked them off that ledge, but you get that phone call when you're driving down the interstate and it's like, ⁓ great. I pissed off one of the greatest museum, you know, organizations in the world. That's nice. Fantastic. But yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, that sort of angle of trying to figure out how to translate one industry to another industry, the fundamentals of what it means to make games to people that maybe don't speak that same language and don't have that same experience. I can see how that's a huge challenge. And I'm guessing every client was different, right? Some were super into it. Some had like, well, like, what is this? I don't even know what we're bothering. I'm sure it was kind of a big spectrum of challenges.
speaker-0: Some of them were were absolutely fantastic. When you did a deal back then with Nickelodeon, in my opinion, was the best because you did a deal with them, you got an entire character Bible. And it was everything down to the RGB codes for Dora's shirt. My favorite part was when we got the list of things that we could and could not have Dora do in a game. Which really just makes you want to have Dora do those things because, you know, you're so used to her. ⁓ but some of them were really, really good. at that time, Nickelodeon was the absolute standout best because they came into it, they understood what you needed, and they just delivered it in one gigantic file. And it made things a whole lot easier. No one else at the time was nearly that organized.
speaker-1: Yeah, I guess maybe Nickelodeon sort of saw the benefit of having video games, the people that that was bringing in, the connection to similar markets. And yeah, I guess they were ahead of the curve at that time, I'm guessing. OK, so yeah, so did your own in and then you go off and form your your own endeavor. Talk to me about what inspired you. I mean, you mentioned that you kind of felt like it was time to leave that group and go do your own thing. And what were you trying to do?
speaker-0: I was trying to get a job. but yeah, because if you look at if you looked at my career and you're like, wait a minute, you left one company where you weren't making any money and you started your own company from scratch, that doesn't really make sense. The reality was I was interviewing for you know, all these jobs. I was interviewing at Microsoft, I was interviewing at Amazon, you know, places like Mattel down in LA. And, you know, after about the fifth time of Not, you know, I flew out to Amazon twice. And I'll, you know, that's the other coast for me. And did their little thing where you sit in the interview room all day and they just pipeline people in there, talk to you. Did that twice and didn't get, you know, a job. And I know why now. There was a there was a woman that came in as part of that, you know, hell day type thing. And She comes in and she's got her laptop and she sits it down and she's like, I'm not ignoring you. I'm an engineer. This is just how I take notes. And I'm like, look, I've worked with engineers my entire career. I get you. Don't worry about it. Not a problem. And we went through the whole process. And at the end of the interview, she looked at me and she's like, I'm gonna be straight with you. You have everything that you need to be able to do this job and do this job well. But you will fing hate it here. And I'm like, You don't know me. It's like how what? How d how dare you? Yeah, she was right. Because we ended up we ended up working with Amazon, you know, shortly after that on doing flashcard games for the e Inc. Kindles at the time that had this is right about the time the the fire was about to be launched and all this other stuff. But she was right. I mean, it was like there's no way, you know, I could work in that environment now because it's too much Red tape, and I'm like, okay, I'm used to, hey, let's do this. Do it. So yeah, you know, she was right. But the what finally clicked was okay, if I get one of these jobs and I relocate my family all the way to the West Coast, where the cost of living is four times as high as it is where I live. And then somebody has a bad day on Wall Street, and you know, we see it. all the time now. It's like, ⁓ well, you know, we're gonna lay off a thousand people. It's like, okay, well then I'm stuck in Seattle or LA or San Francisco. And I'm not gonna be, you know, happy there and I've dragged my whole family. I was like, so let's just let's just figure something out. And at the time I was doing business consulting for a consulting firm. And, you know, this company's whole niche Was doing free-to-play monetization, optimization for mobile games. And I'm like, look, if there's a business to cater to a niche that specific, there's gotta be one for literally doing what I'm doing now and doing biz dev consulting. And so that's where that's where the Powell group got started. But yeah, it wasn't. I didn't immediately jump from one no paying job to the next no paying job. There was a a thing in between, but it was yeah, it w it was a a learning experience.
speaker-1: Yeah, mean that point about moving family and know, taking those, those are huge. You know, as much as you might want to get one of those jobs, right? It's not you, just you, right? You've got connections, you've got family, you've got friends, you've got your kids in school, you've got all those challenges that, you know, in one way, you know, this industry is so global and there is so many opportunities to just explore the world if you're lucky enough to get a role like that. But on the other hand, you've always got to balance that, you know. wife and kids are going to be happy, my family are going to be happy where I live and we're going to be okay. I've done that. Are you okay being kind of isolated in a new country or a new state or the other side of the country for you and navigating that can be challenging.
speaker-0: Yeah, it wasn't something I wanted to do.
speaker-1: No, no, don't blame me. And yeah, so the power group, you've been doing that for a while and doing that consulting and it sounds like you're doing a very similar thing, know, kind of helping teams and developers kind of figure out how to market and build their games.
speaker-0: I mean, but we've done it on a on a much larger scale, which is why we've grown as much as we have. so it's not just developers. It's like we've done you know, we've worked with publishers. We've d we did scouting for publishers before the world of having an internal scouting team like really took off. We've worked with government agencies prepping them for conferences, you know, mentoring, you know, groups within, you know, those provinces or or countries or whatever. Yeah, we've done work with with developers. We've done work with universities. And so it's a lot of it's like one of the criticisms I got from a good friend mine, which is why we've toned down our website a lot. And he said, Look, man, nobody knows what you do. It's like you do so many different things that it's not clear. And I was like, ⁓ okay, that's good feedback. And so, but but that's really the situation when you you have to be nimble. to survive as a consulting firm in this industry, especially for sixteen years. So if you look back at what we did when we first got started, it's pretty wildly different than, you know, what we do now. And even, you know, I'm good I'm good friends with the folks at ⁓ at Meet to Match. And, you know, Fedor and Osgar literally destroyed one of my, you know, one of my distributions, I mean one of my One of my streams for money. I my brain just left me there. ⁓ revenue streams. Literally just d destroyed it. Because one of the things that we used to do was we would work with a government agency, come in, meet with all the developers, you know, understand what they have, what they're doing, what they're looking for, and then we would go and hand manage their entire schedule for GDC or, you know, like the previous iterations of Gamescom and all that sort of stuff.
speaker-1: Right.
speaker-0: And then Meet the Match comes along and just completely screws all that because it's like, ⁓ here's a web platform where you can do that. ⁓ but yeah, it's it's it's very much a case in understanding the the bigger side of the industry and where you might be able to fit in and where there's a need, and then working from there and just month after month, year after year, you know, be ready to switch gears.
speaker-1: Yeah, it's fascinating opportunity to kind of get such a diverse experience working with all kinds of different companies, different projects, different endeavors. The scouting side is always very exciting, interesting to me as well. How do you go about navigating that, trying to match games with publishers and stuff like that? How do you navigate that?
speaker-0: First off, you have to have a absolute world class scouting team, which, you know, I am fortunate enough to have right now. They are absolutely fantastic. ⁓ I don't understand how they do what they do. It's something that I've just labeled as witchcraft because there's no other explanation that I can come up with. but for a couple of years it was a very it was a big part of what we did and we did it for, you know, very small indie publishers all the way up to, you know, global publishers. you know, looking at this sort of stuff. And so you have to really deep dive in on not just what the company says that they're looking for, 'cause you get that if you just go to a scout for one of these, you know, bigger studios now, ⁓ we want something that's easy to play but hard to master and it's engaging. And you get ten minutes of nothing when they describe it. So you ask why a lot. I don't like this. Why? And you know, we would literally get through and we would have some companies that are like, we just want to try it for a month. And I'm like, no, because it's gonna take a month for me to get what you actually want out of you. And I know this because I've done this half a dozen times already. So, you know, it's a it's a situation of really, really getting into that and then having a team that can, you know, not only understand that part of it. But say, here's something that you didn't say you were looking for, but you will probably like. And that's what, you know, my team is really, really good at. So, you know, it was never ⁓ you know, we would we would get the clients that were like, Well, how do we know that you're not showing better games to somebody else? Which in theory is a very valid concern. In practice, it never happened. You know, even running scouting for five or six publishers. No two were ever looking for exactly the same. We never got in a situation where we sent, you know, multiple, you know, a single game to multiple publishers and they were all interested. You know, everybody has their their niche. And so it's a big, big case in listening and understanding. ⁓ and but the but ninety percent of it is having a a world class scouting team. And we did and we still do because they're the ones that are doing the publishing scouting now. So ⁓ but but it it gets back a lot to that translation thing. Understanding what they're saying and then translating it in your head into what they actually mean.
speaker-1: Yeah, I was gonna say it does sound a like a similar level of translation. And how broad are those publishers that you've worked with? I presume they're not just game developers, right? They're...
speaker-0: ⁓ no, they were all the they were all publishers. I mean, everything from, you know, indie publishers that have been around for ten years. And, you know, I had one call me and he's like, Look, I've just come to the realization that you know a lot more developers than we do. And I'm like, I'm not being arrogant, but yeah, we do. and so all the way up to ⁓ multinational publicly traded, you know, companies that are doing multi platform, you know, all sorts of stuff. And it was but it very much was a let's get into it. And so we had we would keep ridiculous notes. It's like one company did not want to see pixel art games and another one didn't want games with color palettes that were too cheerful. And so we would get into a very, very tight, you know, section of what they wanted. And inevitably we would sit down to these green light meetings, you know, in in the mornings or or whatever, and my team was going through here's five games that fit what you want, and then here's one that you would say you didn't want, but you should look at. And nine times out of ten, it was that last one that really got everybody's attention. And so, ⁓ there's a a lot of differentiation in in things. And that's probably where we started doing our biggest move away from mobile, because it's just Mobile games, and and somebody's gonna hate me for saying this, mobile games are less about making something fun and more about making a colorful little spreadsheet that that makes a lot of money. And that's we're like, that's not what we do. That's that's not the fun part of this industry that we love. We love finding these little niche indie games out of the middle of nowhere and going, ⁓ my God, with a little bit of hand holding, that can be fantastic. And so that's what we did.
speaker-1: Yeah, that's cool. And I imagine there must be a lot of, you must feel a lot of responsibility as well when you kind of find these four five games and you kind of, each one, right, you probably only one of them is going to get picked, but you're trying to represent them all evenly, trying to give everyone a fair shot that you've picked out. There must be a lot of responsibility to kind of manage and balance that, you know, both from the developer and the publisher side.
speaker-0: J you have to be very clinical because if you get if you let your if you let your brain get too far in it then and your heart too far in it, yeah, it gets complicated. ⁓ but you have to break each one down and say this one is, you know, appealing for this reason, this one's appealing for for that reason. I mean, the reality is we weren't showing anybody anything that wasn't capable of being published. ⁓ and and that's where the the early stages in the back of my mind of this publishing company that we started a few months ago started forming. Because I'm very, very much of the opinion that there are more games out there that could be published, more good games exist than there are publishers to actually publish them. And so at that point, that developer has to rely on themselves to self-publish. They don't really know how to do that, and the game ends up not being a success. And so when you're sitting down and you're looking at ten or fifteen different games, you really have to break it down to the to the fundamentals to understand which ones to pitch to what publishers. And you do, you have to give everybody the same shot. You know, it it's not a situation where it's like, ⁓ well, we're gonna show this one to this client, but we're not gonna show it to anybody else. Like, no, that's that that's that's a level of you know, specificity that we weren't being paid enough to handle. And so
speaker-1: Yeah, and so now you've got your own opportunity, those games maybe that don't get picked by a publisher or that you see as a great opportunity that with Blue Ridge you can publish yourself. That's cool. So you kind of got both bases covered then. You kind of got the ability to kind of scout and pitch for larger publicists and then the ability to kind of find gems in the rough for yourself and drive them forward.
speaker-0: That's where that nimble part comes in. Yeah. Because there's not there's not a role anymore for us to do that sort of stuff. Because what happened over the last four or five years is publishers have, you know, brought together their own scouting teams. And, you know, the possibility or the probability of showing any publisher these days something they haven't already seen or something that they don't know about is is so small. So we actually stopped doing that probably three years ago. ⁓ because there just wasn't there wasn't a need for it. You know, and COVID had a huge part in that too because when COVID hit, all of a sudden you couldn't send your scouts to, you know, twelve, fourteen different conferences a year to look at pitch competitions. Everything had to be online. So all the publishers, some already had it, but some didn't. All the publishers created submission pages. It's like submit your game here. At that point, you know, what value does an external scout or even an agent, you know, have at that point in time when every developer has the technology available to go straight to a publisher? What are you doing? You know, what what are, you know, so COVID killed a lot of that. but the fact that You know, and I know a lot these scouts. I go to these conferences with the scouts and they're fantastic people and they're brilliant at what they do. And it's like I'm I'm not gonna sit there and look at you with a straight face and it's like, hey, I can do this better than you know, this person and this person and this person. Realistically, you can't. Every everyone has the whether or not they know how to optimize that and they know how to do it, that's a whole different thing. That leads to the to the indie game business stuff and to the online classes that we do and all that. But The opportunity exists for you to do that. You know, all you need to do is the work, basically.
speaker-1: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. And so I'm curious, you know, in these multiple years, Jo, no doubt looking at a lot of games, you know, helping to build a lot of games, has it changed the way you play games?
speaker-0: I mean it's it changed in the fact that I don't play that many mobile free-to-play games anymore. but God no. I'm still my I have this eight foot window in my office that looks out, you know, to a couple across a house across the street. And the the husband at one point said, Man, I see you at night. You're working like all hours. I'm like, dude, I'm not working. Playing games. It's like I am, you know, I still do that. I still love doing that. I'm just don't have as much time to do it anymore. And so yeah, I'm still very much still very much a gamer. You know, my son's fourteen now, you know, we've all been playing games. If the family's getting along too well, then we bring out things like Mario Party and Mario Kart so we can, you know, vent frustration on one another in a healthy environment. ⁓ but no, it it really hasn't. I play the same types of games that I've been playing for for twenty or thirty years. I still love them. I sometimes overly criticize some of them because of things in it, but it hasn't really changed how much I still enjoy it.
speaker-1: Right, yeah, and you mentioned your son plays now, you've kind of, it's a family endeavour. Yeah.
speaker-0: I think the first time actually I don't think I know the first time I ever dropped an F bomb on my son, he was about eight or so, I think, and we were playing one of the overcooked games. And I literally looked at my elementary school and just like what the f are you doing? You're we don't we don't play overcooked games in general anymore.
speaker-1: It's tense game man, you gotta be together.
speaker-0: Stay on your side of the kitchen. Why are you doing this?
speaker-1: Do the plates, I'll do the onions!
speaker-0: This is not hard. I know you're eight, but deal with it, okay? Yeah.
speaker-1: Yes, that game is not for the faint-hearted. Okay, yeah. you sort of, it sounds like you've worked with a lot of developers as well, Jay. Like have you, as you obviously mentioned, the early days of basic programming, like actually making, being a part of the construction of games, does that ever appeal to you? Or have you found the kind of the role that you've taken on just gives you enough of an input into the way games are made that you feel that you're connected?
speaker-0: I know that I am old enough at this point that I can't explain a lot of the stuff that's in games anymore. I look at code that people write and they're like, Yeah, we'll do this. ⁓ my God, that means nothing to me. It's like I am I am that far out of it. The the places that, you know, I'm able to add input very much fall under, you know, the business, the publishing things. Okay, okay, you have this type of game. But it's going to be compared to this. And this is where you need to find a differentiator, or this is where you need to find a different genre, or you need to tweak your Steam tags, or, you know, something along that. I did design for a little while back when we were doing the, you know, the casual hidden object games, because quite frankly, it wasn't that hard back then. You didn't you didn't need a graduate degree in in games design to be able to lay out the order for a hidden object game. ⁓ Course I did programming when I was much, much, much younger. And I did producing. And that's the reason I have a production team that is world class now, because I don't ever want to do that again. You know, I know I have ADHD. Don't put me in charge of organizing sh. It's gonna be all over the board. ⁓ so it's it's very much, and we do a lot of this with a lot of the young studios that we meet through especially like government programs. It's like I've spent a lot of time in Brazil and Ecuador, you know, I I just came back a couple of months ago or about a month ago from Colombia and you sit down with these teams and you say, Okay, I see where you're going with this game, but here's something you need to keep in mind. And a lot of it comes down to explaining why a certain genre isn't their best option. Because there's like four genres that publishers just avoid. I mean, not counting sports and racing. But, you know, platformers, metroidvania's puzzle games, you know, visual novels. And it's not because they suck. It's because there's so many of them. And so that's what we'll sit down and do. But, you know, coming straight when you're a young developer, those are some of the starter genres. Those are those are the easiest to get a hold of, the easiest to do, and that's why there are so many of them. But, you know, you you come and you have to explain the Hollow Knight problem to them. And that is where Developer makes a Metroidvania, you take it to the publisher. You're going to sell it for the same price Hollow Knight or Schultzong is. And so the publisher's like, okay, they can buy your game, which is unknown and doesn't really have anything that stands out, or they can just buy Hollow Knight. Why are they buying your game? And a lot of developers, you can't you can't answer that. And so that's where a lot of our feedback comes in now. It's like, okay, I see where you're going with this game. Here's some advice on the design side to make it stand out a little more. And here's some advice on the business side in terms of which publishers you need to be talking to. And so that's that's as far as I I like to go anymore because it's the the industry has evolved ridiculously in 30 years. It's like I know I'm not a world class game designer. The f I would never claim to be that. ⁓ but sitting down and, you know, helping these teams, you know Get to the best part of is my game sellable? Is it marketable? That sort of stuff.
speaker-1: And that sounds like there's a lot of your focus now, yeah, is kind of, let's say, helping young teams to find their why. I mean, there are so many, how many games are published on Steam, like over a thousand or something, a week or something. It must be interesting to kind of help people navigate that.
speaker-0: It's it's a it's a change that I've seen in my career in the last five or ten years. It's, you know, less about let's go out and make a ton of money and more about, look, I'm getting older. I don't want to work sixty hours a week anymore. What do I enjoy doing? I enjoy working with with young teams because they keep me interested, you know, in the industry. They their excitement and passion is what counters my old man's cynicism of why am I still doing this? This is you know, horrible. ⁓ but yeah, it it's over the last five or ten years it has in my mind, you know, transitioned a lot into how can we help the next generation? How can we keep them from making the mistakes and keep them from having to learn the way that we had to learn back in the day. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, take advantage of all that discovery of how games get made and published that you've sort of gathered over the years and help other folks make something great. Last question. If you weren't in video games, what would you be doing, Joe?
speaker-0: What I have no idea. This is all I know anymore. You know, this is when I was young, I wanted to be a marine biologist. But, you know, these days, realistically, if I weren't doing what I'm doing right now, I would be doing there's actually a role at universities for me at this point, which is part of the reason we started doing the online business school. It's like because we're seeing us do all this sort of stuff. And that's honestly where I can see me being in in fifteen, twenty years. I'm never going to retire. I know that. You know, I think a lot of us in the industry know that. Now there will come a day when I'm doing a lot less work than I am right now. But I can't leave this industry. I adore this industry. ⁓ so that's probably where I would end up. ⁓ I don't God, it it thirty years in, I don't know what else I would possibly possibly do. It's part of the reason I'm still here. It's like I can't do anything else. It's like this is this is my life at this point.
speaker-1: Yeah, you bet the farm on video games and what a great place to do it. Well, thank you, Jay. Great conversation, great journey. mean, just hearing some of those early stories about some of the developers and developers you work with and figuring out how on earth you get the games across into other countries is awesome. And all the work you do now helping people navigate this very complicated, very complicated, oversaturated market is awesome. So yeah, thank you for your time.
speaker-0: Appreciate it, man. It's awesome.