E3 and similar events have been criticized for years by both ordinary viewers and people from the industry. On the eve of the new exhibition, a big emotional thread on this topic was written by the head of Raw Fury and a scouting specialist Johan Toresson. He explained why developers and publishers should stop spending money on big events.Toresson’s thread appeared in response to criticism of the E3 media portal by Matt Brown, senior editor of Windows Central.
He pointed out a lot of bugs, security issues (including the password system) and confidentiality.
The head of Raw Fury turned out to be even more critical and called for completely abandoning all big events in their current form.
head of Raw Fury
Thoresson urged industry employees to pay attention to Peru, Vietnam, Rwanda, Taiwan and other developing regions. According to him, this is the only way to find new talents, the lack of which representatives of some companies like to talk about.
“Stop sitting in the same bars in the same cities with the same people,” Thoresson wrote.
He noted that investors should stop looking for talent in the same regions as all other companies. Paying attention to small markets may be initially unprofitable, but Thoresson is sure that just one hit from developers from the listed countries will pay off all costs.
The head of Raw Fury also believes that companies spend too much time on endless meetings. Instead, you can start sharing your knowledge, expertise and connections with other studios. This will help small teams gain a foothold in the market. “It’s much more fun, I promise,” writes Thoresson.
Finally, he turned to developers who are confident in the benefits of short meetings at such events. Thoresson noted that sometimes studios do get contracts with publishers after small negotiations in hotel rooms. However, the percentage of such transactions is so small that small teams should not spend their time and money on it.
Lastly; getting signed because you had a 15 minute meeting with a tired scout in a hotel room is a pipe dream. It happens, but the meeting to signed ratio should deter you from spending any large amount of cash on those types of meetings.
— Johan Toresson // Scouting @ Raw Fury (@jtoresson) June 7, 2021According to Thoresson, publishers are much more likely to sign the developer not because of a personal meeting, but because he has a good game with an interesting concept.
He added that face-to-face negotiations can be beneficial, but you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on flights to Los Angeles or San Francisco.
“Most investors have emails that you can write to for free. Or a Twitter account is open. Most likely, the percentage of successful pitches in this case will remain the same, but you will not have to spend money on shoddy hotels and incredibly expensive food at exhibitions, as well as your time that can be spent on polishing the build,” concluded Thoresson.
This year, the E3 exhibition will be held in a fully online format from June 12 to 15. Microsoft, Nintendo, Take-Two, Devolver Digital, Ubisoft and many other gaming companies are announced as participants.