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"You've seen it all!" - An insightful chat on the video game industry with veteran exec Adam Boyes at DevGAMM

In Lisbon, we caught up with former PlayStation VP, former Iron Galaxy Studios co-CEO, and current head of Vivrato, to talk about the evolution of third party relations and platforms, the current needs and fears of the dev community, and much more.

Audio transcription

"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is day one at the DevGAMM in Lisbon and I was looking forward to talking with you, Adam.
You were here last year, we didn't meet, we didn't talk, and some things have happened ever since your presence here.
Your panel last year was very different to this year's, but this year's, I couldn't attend, sorry about that, it was just over, was very fresh."

"I think it was a very interesting approach and format to it, and you were talking and tackling the different challenges that are affecting the industry as of late.
What can you tell me about the first approach you gave to this panel, or to this workshop?
Sure, that's a great question. I think one of the most important parts was, we see so many negative headlines in the world around us, in the industry, you know, cultural shifts and societal challenges, global economic changes, and so what we really want to focus on is solutions."

"So we called it Rally to Recover, how we sort of take the biggest problems in the gaming industry and work towards solutions.
So the vision that everyone had to do is everyone had to come up with a new headline from the year 2030 of what's an aspirational headline of where the state of the games industry is.
And there were some amazing ones, worldwide incredible profitability for the games industry, more graduates than ever before working in video games."

"And then what happened is, once we had the 20 different headlines, every person had to vote on their favorite three.
So at the end of that, we basically broke the team into two sides, and each one was given a new role.
Because I think part of the important challenge of what we're facing in the games industry, we don't often think like other people."

"So if you're a developer, you have to think like an investor, or a publisher.
Or press.
Yeah, or press, exactly. If you're a platform holder, you have to think like an educator, an advocate.
And so, it was really fast, we broke the team into two different groups, and then they basically had to build a five-year plan backwards."

"And at the end we held a press conference, where they had 90 seconds to present their headline, how they got to achieve that goal, how all the different groups interrelated and worked towards that solution.
Because I think that's what's really interesting, like that village approach to solutions in the games industry, is all about why we founded Vivrato as well, our consulting company."

"And I guess it was a lot of fun as well, to do that, and the role playing and the whole thing.
Did you enjoy it?
It was actually funny, at one point someone that was role playing as an investor started playing a video game on their phone.
Oh, it really makes sense."

"And then a publisher started cutting off a developer and not letting them talk.
And so there's a lot of real-life dynamics at work.
It's very believable.
And also, which would you say was the main takeaway?
You were trying to find solutions, you mentioned several headlines and several roles that you took."

"So which would you say was the main takeaway?
The main message that perhaps we're going to be looking back at when it's actually 2030.
Yeah, that's a great question.
The winning two headlines, one was small devs are now the new mega meta, and they're the most profitable sector of the gaming industry."

"And the other one were jobs in the video games industry is all-time high, unaffected by AI.
And so each one of them had to build what does that solution look like, and how do we contribute towards that.
So the team about job growth was all about, okay, what constraints do we need to put within AI, so it isn't replacing creative jobs, but enhancing and empowering people."

"Because of course, everyone knows AI is here to stay.
So it's really fascinating to see how the different groups, how the educators worked with the publishers and platforms and investors to sort of build that solution.
On the other side of things of where small indie devs are now the future, okay, well, what does that mean?
How do investors allocate things?
How do we find out about communities?
And so what was really the most interesting takeaway for me, it's just to watch everyone play in different roles and think outside the box of how they would regularly approach."

"And then the takeaway we gave to everyone was they have to reach out to somebody on LinkedIn from the role that they role played as to learn more, to spend 30 minutes with them to learn more about their perspective.
And then we're going to create a little email group for us to sort of share findings."

"I missed it and I'm regretting now.
Okay, so you mostly tackled current industry challenges and problems and issues.
But of course, you've been going with the industry for a long time, you go back a long way.
From your time at PlayStation, which if I'm correct, ended at 2016 or so, you were VP for third party mostly, right?
So what would you say has changed in the relations with third parties by console manufacturers in the past 10 years or so?
Yeah, that's a great question."

"I think first of all, what's changed rapidly is digital adoption.
When I joined PlayStation, I think the number of digital sales were about 15% of total sales.
And then when I left, I think it was around 70% and it's probably higher than that.
So the first was like, how do we now do digital distribution, right?
So we were just on the cutting edge."

"It was brand new.
How do you even do it?
How do you approach it?
So that was a big thing that changed now because now it's the norm."

"Now we have decadence.
We have 18,000 products releasing yearly on Steam.
So it's much, much different now.
The other thing that's changed immensely is at the time, independent developers didn't really have platforms."

"And so when we launched the PlayStation 4, and then of course, across our friends up in Redmond, launched ID@Xbox, we saw a new embracing of indies and putting them on stages and really sort of featuring and focusing them.
And so now because that's become matured, the rules and the game has changed a lot, right?
So I think the way we see the platforms evolving is now they're sort of commodity businesses where they have a massive amount of products."

"They have to choose which ones they really celebrate and put out on display.
Whereas when we were doing it, we were breaking new ground.
So it was more of a pioneer phase and now we're on a maturation phase.
It's why we see like private equity coming to invest in video games industry."

"That's always a sign of a maturing industry.
It's also why we see sort of turnover and change a lot with how we attract people, how we do user acquisition, even the TikTok generation, how they discover games.
It's not about followers anymore. It's about virality."

"So it's a lot about the methodology is changing.
And publishers, I think, are trying to evolve to capture what that looks like.
Okay. Also from that time, let's talk a little bit about games.
Yeah."

"I think I remember you being on a stage at E3.
You were, of course, presenting some of the games coming to PS4.
It was back in the day.
And yesterday at the dinner, we were talking about some of them."

"Shenmue, you also dealt with The Witness, if I'm correct, which is one of my favorite of all time.
So is there any anecdote, any developer story, any story with these games that we know and love that you would like to share now, looking back 10 years or so?
Absolutely."

"I think one of the most important lessons that I learned at PlayStation was I knew what I liked, but sometimes it's hard to understand what the public likes.
So two of the things I'm most proud of is, first of all, as our developer relations and publisher relations team, everyone on the account management team felt very empowered, and on the marketing team too as well, to find things that they love."

"So when Nick Suttner approached Jonathan Blow to create The Witness partnership, or when Shane Bettenhausen was advocating for Rocket League, and I was like, guys.
And they're like, we love these things."

"And the publisher team as well, right?
They're dealing with Electronic Arts or Take-Two.
So the first lesson I learned was really empowering them to tell me what they think is cool."

"That was important.
And the second thing we learned is social media at the time was a useful tool.
It was.
Was a useful tool."

"And so we used the hashtag #Buildingthelist, and that was actually where the Shenmue project came out of, right?
Because Gio Corsi, he was running third-party production, and he started this awesome sort of hashtag, and then people would just sort of vote every week."

"They'd tell us what games they want to see on building the list, and that list would grow and evolve.
And so the more and more Shenmue approached us, and people talked about Yu Suzuki."

"I remember having a side chat with Phil Spencer after we had announced the Shenmue 3 thing, and he said, congratulations on working with Yu Suzuki.
And so it was really nice to be able to work with him and bring his vision to mainstream."

"Because I think that's the thing.
Some people just need advocacy and support, and I think it's important in our industry to support our legacy and the history, but also the innovators and the future thinkers."

"That has changed a lot.
And it's also now, as you mentioned, Phil Spencer, it's also nice to have Chris Charla today.
We saw his panel. It was very interesting."

"So you leave PlayStation 2016, if I'm correct.
Then you join Iron Galaxy as CEO, if I'm correct.
Yeah, co-CEO with Chelsea Blasko.
Co-CEO."

"And last year you were talking about that.
It was eight lessons from eight years at Iron Galaxy.
Looking back at that panel that I didn't attend either, what can you tell me was the takeaway from that one?
It's very different."

"As you just said, the context is very different when you leave PlayStation.
Absolutely.
Yeah, the thing is you have a large impact on a large amount of players, and you go to having a large impact on a small amount of employees."

"And that philosophically changes a lot.
Really tapping into the culture of the team, ensuring that everything that we do really honors that, the values of the company."

"So it's kind of like you're taking a zoom, you're zooming into the needs of the few to understand the impact you can have on the world at large.
And that changed our approach in how we developed game concepts and did pitching and stuff like that."

"But really it was about listening to the employees, listening to the industry, showing what we were worth.
We ended up working with Riot Games and Blizzard and Naughty Dog, and we worked on Tony Hawk 3, 4 Remastered."

"A lot of that was driven from the passion of all the team members at Iron Galaxy.
I think some of those projects, you just think maybe the best team win, or maybe they were looking for the cheapest team, but sometimes it's the most passionate."

"So I'm really proud about a lot of the projects we worked on because it just goes to show that people trust us because of our passion.
And then I think in the end the results of the games really, really shine."

"And so that's an important part of it too.
Okay, so you've seen it all.
You've seen it from the publisher and from the hardware manufacturer's point of view, and also from the studio point of view."

"What would you say hardware manufacturers or the third big ones, the three big ones, should do today dealing with the studios that they are probably not doing as it would be optimal to them?
And I'm talking about Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo."

"Of course Xbox is detouring more towards service-based and multi-platform, but what can you tell me from the studio point of view you think they are lacking as of today?
That's a great question."

"I think it's one of the big fears people have about AI, for example.
It's like, oh, it's going to replace all interaction.
I think what's critically important is to understand that at the core of every studio there are human beings."

"And at the core of every middleware provider, every engine provider, every platform, every publisher, there are human beings.
And so ensuring that there's still a pathway to be able to connect with human beings, and that's what I love about DevGAMM here in Lisbon and different shows like this."

"We have people from Unity and Unreal here right now that people can meet with and discuss with.
And as soon as companies try to constrain that department or really sort of break it down so they're not having those human interactions, I think the developers start to suffer because they don't feel like they have a human connection to a platform."

"So ensuring that if there's new hardware coming, that disclosures are fast and frequent, that they have points of contact, that in order to get registered for the platform, it's an easy, I love that Chris Charla this morning walkthrough, here's how you become a developer for Xbox."

"Here's the link right here.
The more we have of that, the better.
I think in a world where you can choose any platform to release on, I think most developers are defaulting to PC because it's almost like just I can do it myself."

"It's DIY.
And I think the more publishers try to put constraints or aren't as accessible, I think what we're going to see is less adoption because it's just easier for them to go to PC."

"So I think it's critically important for publishers, platforms, middleware companies, and engineer companies to really keep that human face and that account management team engaged with the industry."

"And to deliver dev kits as well.
A couple of indies told me - Absolutely we didn't get a Switch 2 - I've heard it too I don't want to name anybody, but they don't have them."

"It's just a comment, they don't have them yet.
All right, final one.
You discussed and tackled problems in the industry during your workshop, but you also do that in your day-to-day basis at Vivrato."

"So what can you tell me you guys have been doing as of late or you are planning to do entering 2026?
That's a great question.
So Vivrato is a video game consultancy."

"There's 10 of us that work together and we work with developers, publishers, platforms, investors, middleware companies.
And we try to drive towards solutions that are sort of future-proof."

"The next 10 years, what does it look like?
I think there's a lot of consultants that are being hired from large organizations, these big industrial complex sort of consultants that have been helping gas and oil."

"And I don't know, I've never seen their name in the credits list of any video game.
So my idea was like, if I brought these 10 people together that have all worked on teams, built games, built businesses, we can really help developers, publishers, investors, and platforms drive towards solutions."

"So we've worked on all kinds of arrangements with different companies, but it's really, if you have a big problem you're trying to solve at your company or you want some ideation or some workshops, like that workshop I could do, we've done before at different companies, then you can reach out to us."

"But it's really, I love it so much because it brings me so much energy looking at the problems that we're facing as an industry.
Any projects or collabs that you can mention that you can disclose now that you've worked on or are working on right now?
That's a great question."

"A bunch of them are mentioned on the website.
I never like to single them out because they're usually hiring us to sort of solve solutions.
But we've done everything from AAA product reviews a couple of years before release comes out."

"We've done pitch preparation.
We've done sort of a revenue review, positioning, branding, go-to-market planning.
So really depends."

"Some publishers need help of just increasing their reputation within the development community or they want some feedback on a portfolio approach."

"So for developers, a lot of them are like, what do I do to scale?
How do I raise money?
How do I sell my company?
Or how do I take it private?
So it really sort of changes."

"But I'd reckon everyone to go on my LinkedIn, Adam Boyes, and you could actually book a chat with me and we could talk about the problems that you're facing and how we can move forward together."

"Fantastic, I enjoyed this chat with you, Adam.
Thank you so much for your time.
Enjoy the show.
Obrigado.
Obrigado. Thank you very much."

""

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