Elite Game Developers Podcast

Daniel McLaren is the Senior Manager of Live Operations at ArenaNet. I've known Daniel for a while now, ever since he was working in a games company here in Helsinki. He then moved back to the States to work on Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Daniel is one of those people who really love the industry and the people who make games. We talk about culture, hiring and dealing with hard times.

Have you every wanted to know what gaming VCs think? In this webinar from March 2020, I went through the most important things that gaming investors will think about when they meet a game founders and when they need to make a decision — to invest or not to invest.

Michael Cheung is a General Partner at Makers Fund, a venture fund specialized in gaming. Makers Fund has a mission of enabling smaller teams to do big things, by providing capital, access to our global network, and strategic guidance. Michael sits on the board of several games companies, including Dream Games, BetaDwarf, RedHill games, and Klang Games.

In this episode, we’re going to listen to the recording from a webinar that we here at Elite Game Developers organized in February of 2020. The topic was "How To Get Investor Money For Gaming Startup”. We had a presentation in the beginning and then some time for Q&A from the participants to ask questions. Why did we want to talk about raising money? Loads of people have been interested in getting my feedback on their game company pitch deck. I’ve identified many commonalities in the early stage decks that I want to cover with you. I’ll also talk about what investors are looking for. What are the signals for them to invest, and how they make those decisions?

Today I’m talking with Emily Greer, the co-founder, and CEO of Double Loop, a mobile games company based out of San Francisco, California. Emily got into gaming when she co-founded Kongregate in 2006. Emily has seen all the sides of online gaming, all the way from the early days of Flash gaming portals. In this episode, we talk about female founders, data-driven game development, culture, and team, and what it’s like to raise money from investors.

Today I’m talking with Bertrand Vernizeau, the investment partner and CEO of Game Seer, a project financing fund from Germany. Game Seer focuses on the PC and console market and they are in a very unique position to help developers in the more traditional space of gaming. We’ll now hear more from Bertrand himself.

Today I’m talking with Ken Go, the Co-Founder and CEO of DECA Games, based out of Berlin, Germany. DECA is a games company that hosts live games that they've acquired from other developers, who first developed and launched the games. These games include Knights and Dragons, Crime City, Modern War, and Kingdom Age. Will now hear more about DECA Games from Ken himself.

Today I’m talking with Eric Lagier, the managing partner of byFounders, a venture capital firm based out of Copenhagen, Denmark. byFounders is a “for founders by founders” venture fund built on the foundation and backing of a strong Founders Collective, comprising a significant group of some of the most successful Danish & Nordic entrepreneurs investing in and supporting a new generation of globally ambitious Nordic and Baltic entrepreneurs. byFounders have recently done several gaming investments, and we’ll now hear more from Eric himself.

Today I’m talking with Dan Greenberg, Chief Design Officer at ironSource, an app distribution and advertising company based out of Tel Aviv, Israel. Dan shares insights into ad monetization, ad creatives, the future of hyper-casual and why ironSource is getting into mobile games publishing.

Today I’m talking with Simon Hill, the General Manager of Voodoo's UK studios. Just a few months ago, Simon's company Gumbug merged with Voodoo and his company became their UK studios. In this episode, Simon shares his learnings from game development. What short game development cycles and getting out of the door quickly has meant for his efforts, and what he's learned from hyper casual.