Shift by Alberta Innovates
Shift by Alberta Innovates
Empowering Alberta's Game Innovators
Can Alberta's gaming sector truly double its impact by 2026? Join us as we unpack this bold ambition with Adam Brown from Alberta Innovates, alongside gaming visionaries Matt Toner of Shred Capital and Michael Liebe from Booster Space.
Together, we illuminate a strategy to capture a significant share of Canada's $7 billion gaming market, and the innovative approaches fueling this growth. From nurturing tech talent to fostering a collaboration-driven ecosystem through initiatives like Scaffold Program, Alberta is setting a new standard for the gaming industry.
Listeners will discover cutting-edge funding strategies designed to empower creative minds and small studios. Our episode delves into the pivotal role of weekly master classes and alternative financing options like Kickstarter. Hear directly from industry leaders on how to build impactful companies and craft high-quality Kickstarter campaigns that resonate with audiences. As these professionals share their expertise, we explore how Alberta's gaming ecosystem balances creativity with the professionalization of developing entrepreneurial skill, fundraising and marketing to ensure both individual and communal success.
As the conversation unfolds, you'll witness the crucial role of networking and ecosystem development in Alberta's gaming scene. Through strategic partnerships and global outreach, Alberta is building a resilient groundwork for long-term success. Discover how Alberta's game developers, bolstered by a 65 percent success rate with the Canada Media Fund, are navigating challenges and seizing opportunities. By embracing entrepreneurial education and community-building, Alberta is not only enhancing its own gaming industry but positioning itself as a formidable player on the international stage.
Shift by Alberta Innovates focuses on the people, businesses and organizations that are contributing to Alberta's strong tech ecosystem.
Alberta's gaming industry is leveling up and grinding XP for a legendary quest to take on another boss, the dreaded Dr Inconsisto. Backed by Alberta Innovates, a groundbreaking program is building co-op alliances, powering up local talent and setting Alberta on a speed run to double its gaming sector by 2026. Learn how we're doing it with style a bit of bear wrestling and plenty of know-how. Sit back and settle in. Welcome to Shift. Learn how we're doing it with style a bit of bear wrestling and plenty of know-how. Sit back and settle in.
Adam Brown:Welcome to Shift.
Jon:I come from an era of video game arcades, where you pump in quarter after quarter playing things like Centipede, Pac-Man, Asteroids and Q-Bert. But let me tell you, today we're talking about Alberta's interactive digital industry because things have changed and we're diving specifically into how it pertains to gaming. So who I've got today is Shred Capital's Matt Toner, Executive Director and Program Lead of Scaffold, based in Calgary, my colleague Adam Brown, Manager Opportunity Development at Alberta Innovates, based in Edmonton, and Michael Liebe, CEO and founder of Booster Space. Michael also works with Kickstarter and he's based in Berlin. Gentlemen, good morning and good evening to all of you. Hello, hello, guten Abend, Hello, welcome. It's nice to see you all. So let's dive in first, and I'm going to get Adam to set a little bit of context. So, Adam, can you provide us a brief overview of how Alberta Innovates is supporting the gaming sector, focusing on the funding of Shred Capital and the creation of Scaffold through the Ecosystem Development Partnership Program?
Adam Brown:Thanks. I guess I'll start by saying that Alberta Innovates is focused on growing Alberta's tech sector primarily, and supporting other key sectors like clean resources and health, and ag for the province. We're focused on the nurturing of new technologies that can transform or create new industries to help that overall goal of growing Alberta's economy. And so the gaming industry is a beautiful fusion of tech and creativity and it really epitomizes all of the amazing opportunities of the time that we're living in. And the gaming industry in Canada is forecast to be worth $7 billion by 2027. And currently about one in seven Canadian gaming companies are here in Alberta. So we'd like to capture more of that potential and we'd like to grow that number of gaming companies in Alberta. Alberta has a strong history of gaming and development in the province. Of course many know that BioWare was founded here in the 90s and we have many great studios, large and small, like Inflection Beams and Peam Dog here, and terrific talent working at those studios, and so we've levered the ecosystem development program to do some work in this area.
Jon:Okay. So first off, those are significant numbers when you talk about, did you say one in seven companies are based in Alberta? Yeah, by some estimates as best as we can figure. Okay, and $30 billion in the next couple of years $7 billion by 2027.
Adam Brown:$7 billion.
Jon:See, I got all excited. I went right to five times that.
Adam Brown:Yeah, it's growing.
Jon:Right. So bringing in Matt with Shred Capital and having them start the Scaffold program, I think it's going to help significantly with that. But, matt, I'm not going to tell the story. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the current gaming landscape in Alberta and how it compares to some larger jurisdictions in Canada and we'll also bring Michael into that and what it looks like globally?
Matt Toner:Yeah, sure, I mean I'm lucky in my career. I've done all things digital, I think, over the course of the last 25 years. I'm kind of dating myself. I remember the arcade days of yesteryear all too well. A lot of quarters went down the tube back then.
Matt Toner:I was really drawn to the game industry in vancouver when it began really expanding about 20 years ago into other disciplines where I was bringing in creators, composers, writers. The form was really maturing. It wasn't just kind of the 16-bit splendor that we'd been accustomed to. It really was seen as Hollywood 2.0.
Matt Toner:So I've worked in New York and Silicon Valley and Vancouver, Toronto and now here, and it's really interesting what Adam said, and he and I discussed this before we came in. I mean, we're investors, we want to build investable companies, and in Alberta you had these big tent pools like your Biowares and your Beamdogs and whatnot, and they're like 100 feet of nothing. And then this very dynamic indie scene, you know the indies being kind of smaller, you know garage band, bootstrapping companies that are launching these really interesting titles. And that's where, when Adam and I spoke, we said listen, we can help here, Because as an investor, we approach these problems with the investor's mindset and so we're looking at how do we train these companies to think a little bit bigger in terms of their fundraising, their deal-making, their investor relations. How do they feel comfortable to position themselves on the global stage? Position themselves on the global stage.
Matt Toner:If I could, I think the one big breakthrough scene and it's only been about a year has been the confidence of the companies we're working in. We're putting them in meetings with big Hollywood companies. We're putting them in front of investors hundreds of investors to pitch their games. The transformation there is remarkable. Many of them have said I never thought I was ready to do this and now they're doing it as a matter of course. Really, yeah.
Jon:What's the magic sauce there? How are we taking these, or, pardon me, how are you taking these companies that, as you said, I really like how you described that. We've got the big companies and then there's like 100 feet of empty space, and then there's like a hundred feet of empty space and then there's the you know, the indie developers.
Matt Toner:So you're taking those indie developers, drizzling some magic sauce on them and well, I think the breakthrough john in most people's mentality and we're just seeing this now.
Matt Toner:The first few months, you know it was a little bit of tough going to change people's perceptions of things. But one thing we've done really well with the Scaffold program it's kind of like a venture studio model is we've brought in people like Michael that are international experts top of their game People from Kickstarter in Europe in Michael's case, people at Meta and Microsoft and right down to very successful micro-indies in the United Kingdom and we infuse their perspective and their knowledge and their expertise into this Alberta fabric and it's like planting I don't want to compare Michael to fertilizer, but it's enriching the soil, the crop gets stronger. And this really came to a head with Game Invest West last month, which was the first investor-focused summit of its kind in Western Canada. That looked strictly at games and the Alberta folks and Michael can speak to this better than I. They really showed well against that international delegation and that investor delegation we assembled. It wasn't amateur hour, it was primetime well, that's fantastic.
Jon:So now this, this uh event that was last month. You say it was in, that's correct part of the advanced venture forum you know, okay, let's, michael, let's go right over to you then, because I, I I'm really curious what your impressions, uh, were of of those alberta gamers. And you know as uh, as matt saying it wasn't amateur hour, these guys came in and they, they were rocking it. So what, tell me what your perspective was like when you started interacting with them?
Michael Liebe:so, um, yeah, let me just say at the beginning, I've seen a lot. As matt also mentioned, I also organized events myself and also in berlin area, in germ in Germany, supported in a similar program, actually by networking and bringing together different companies, matching them with investors and funding bodies. So then when I was first introduced to the studios, that was actually online through some workshops and then later on site in Banff, and there is a certain eagerness I would say that you can feel in the companies. They really want to deliver, they want to play with the big guys, they want to succeed, not just try out and just do projects, which is a very big difference.
Michael Liebe:I'm currently also evaluating projects for a German program companies for a German program and a lot of them are focusing on one game right and not on building a company, and that's something I see different in the people matt and his team brought together or educated them to think also like that yes, you are there to build games, but you are building a company that is building games, and not only one game, but hopefully several games, and potentially also in a network with other studios and friends and partners across the globe potentially, and I found that pretty outstanding that they all have this mindset, that they want to build a company that does games and that they also don't want to do it alone and really are asking for help and asking questions.
Michael Liebe:That's a big difference. Also, if you talk to people on stage right and everybody is there silence, and yeah, yeah, okay, thank you. Can you send me the presentation later? No, I don't send you the presentation. It's your job to listen, to take notes and to process what's going on and ask me questions and make the best out of the time for me and for yourself. And the companies that are in the scaffold program are really doing that. They're really um, investing and listening and and asking great questions, so I see a big potential there so now, when we, when we talk about these companies, how, how many are we talking about?
Jon:Matt?
Matt Toner:What does Scaffold have in its stable right now? Well, I think the next cohort that we push through and our cohorts generally are about 20 different founding teams. The program runs for about a year, so there's a bit of an overlap, kind of a shelving thing, between them. Our goal is 100 companies through the program by mid-25, pushing into 26. And the idea is to we set this moonshot goal of doubling the size of the game industry in the province and really it's about taking those GarageBand indies and making them into companies, because it's great, you can learn a lot sitting and working with your dorm mate and kind of building games. But the big move is actually hanging out your shingle. So that's our goal and so far I think we're we're tracking.
Matt Toner:Right now I think there's about 70 companies in the program. Next cohort starts in January. That'll take us like right up to the a hundred founder mark and so far we did a survey on our KPIs and I shared this with Adam last week and I think 30% of the people that are in the cohorts already are reporting success in either negotiating a big deal, raising financing or developing relationships with a potential licensing partner. So that's pretty good for one year. 30% are saying, okay, the needle's moving, that's great.
Jon:Yeah, that seems significant. Yeah, yeah, so okay, and, as you said, that's tracking and it's ambitious, you know, doubling the size of the ecosystem. I want to go back briefly to what Michael said about how the teams seem engaged to build a company. So I imagine that's part of what the scaffold program is helping these companies or these designers start to think about, think more broadly than just a product. Can you speak a little bit to that and how that looks?
Matt Toner:yeah, of course, yeah of course I'd be delighted to um, I guess michael did put it very well like some people approach it from more of an artistic point of view. Uh, naturally I have a game I want to make. I'm inspired by a game, or I've worked for a big triple, a studio or studios. I've been hired and laid off, and hard laid off, and I want to do it my way. Uh, for the first time, with peers, with friends and people I've worked with and I think that's been the big differentiator for us is showing them the potential of building something that lasts, not just a project, but something that is capable of producing repeated good works. And what we try to do is we're bringing people in these weekly master classes that we hold. We do them via Zoom and we'll bring in like a Tyler Sigmund from Red Hook Studios or a Sean Woods from Alpha Dogs. These are people that started other similar small studios in different parts of Canada and have had the ups and downs and backs and forths and led to the big exit, and they talk about it as being like a life-changing moment, not just for themselves or, in in the case of Alpha Dog and Halifax, for people in that ecosystem, the community, but also for their employees, the opportunities they give for them to work on bigger projects and do bigger things and not just be kind of working paycheck to paycheck or build and build.
Matt Toner:We bring in people from Silicon Valley, new York, to kind of bring out what Henrik would call his sad hammer. Henrik is one of our guys from Europe. He calls it his sad hammer. He's Swedish, maybe it's a Thor thing, I don't know. But to give them initially some very frank feedback. When people would initially start talking about their companies, they'd say I'd like to be able to work full-time on my games. And they would just do the needle scratch, stop and say, not interested. How are you going to change things? How are you going to build a company in Red Deer? How are you going to build a game that's going to change people's perspective? How are you going to get me as an investor in silicon valley, excited? So we're really trying to kind of expectation set. Like you know, try to get, try to get bar raising.
Jon:There's part of their mentality well, you know, as we're talking about this, I can't help but thinking. You said the word creatives. Um, you know where you've, you've got. Uh, you see this a lot in music, a lot in art, a lot obviously in video games too. People just doing a one-off, whether it's a video game or an album or whatever it is. How you know, when it becomes this kind of this thirsty, this hungry artist, this kind of mental picture that we have, you have to suffer for your art. But commodifying an art is not necessarily a bad thing If you can turn that into your full-time gig and there's people and networks to help you build that like Scaffold, like the work Michael's doing as well in Europe and Adam's doing through Alberta Innovates. I think that's a real neat perspective in how we're moving the dial perspective and how we're kind of moving the dial.
Matt Toner:Well, one thing that's interesting as well and maybe Michael will speak to this is the role that alternative financing can play for an industry like Alberta's. You know we are not AAA dominated Quite the opposite in some ways and Kickstarter has been like one of the initial. Here is a way to fund your dreams with people that are dreaming the same way, and Kickstarter, I think, has had a real renaissance of late. He and I were talking about some numbers when he was here in Alberta and I was like, oh my gosh, you guys have. You guys are back in a profound way, and that's, I think, really good news for companies here in Alberta that can work with guys like Michael to really understand how to use that platform.
Jon:Right. So, Michael, let's dive a little bit into kind of the Kickstarter model and what that renaissance is looking like.
Michael Liebe:So, just to be on the safe side, everybody knows Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. It's project-based and reward-based. It means it is a game and you give 10 Canadians and you get a game back. That's the project and that's the reward you get need to get back. If it's not funded, nothing happens. Um. So no, no credit cards are debited and no game is made. Um, that's the idea.
Michael Liebe:What we see is that today more than ever, kickstarter has become part of the funding puzzle. I call it or actually we in the scaffold program tend to call it that in general is that you never only have one source of money. No matter which creative project you do right or company you build, you always have your own money, your friends, fools and family, your grandmother, your neighbors, whatever. Then you have investors, you have the bank, you have public funding and you have the crowd through crowdfunding and then later also the sales that give you the money back after shipping. Kickstarter has started as being what the name says an initial ignition into the creative process and showing demand. Yes, this idea is great. People want this idea to become a reality. 2007, 8, 9, up until 14 now, with the whole industry evolving, becoming more mature and also the different sources of funding also increasing, like you have in Alberta or Canada, public funding programs. That helps a lot to allow people to add Kickstarter at a later stage in the project development and the marketing process. So this is something where we also see a professionalization in general within the smaller studios on how they approach their fundraising strategy, including, at the same time, the self-marketing strategy, including then their marketing to consumer strategy and kickstarter then being one part.
Michael Liebe:Today, the quality of how the campaigns are built is amazing. Like you can't just go there and say, hey, I want to do a game, here's my text, this is me, me. I'm awesome, it will be great, trust me. No, you need a video, you need GIFs, you need a full story. You need to also share your funding story like how did you get the money to get where you are now?
Michael Liebe:And then ideally, you only need like a year or one and a half years, two years max to actually then ship onto Steam Steam, the world's biggest direct distribution platform for video games. There you do then kind of early access, which is a bit of an open beta program where people buy in in the early stage of the game and then after five years, you really go out in full development and we see a change, a lot, and this is what I think Matt was trying to get to. With a healthy ecosystem of like-minded people who are sharing ideas, you can be ahead of the game because you have to be creative. Today, after the pandemic and after the global financial crisis, the world is different and it will continue to be different and it will evolve differently than it had evolved up until now. And this is where Kickstarter, hopefully already, is playing a bigger role. But also thanks to the people Matt's bringing in, or the Scaffold program is bringing in, this funding puzzle can actually become a full picture at the end and games get made.
Jon:I love that notion of the funding puzzle. Sorry, go ahead, Matt.
Matt Toner:Oh no, just to speak to that and Michael nailed it. Really, when we first started here, people were just thinking I've got to get a publisher. If I don't get a publisher, I have to self-release and that's it. Now we did a session at Platform Calgary as the run-in to Game Invest West. Suddenly, people in the mix were talking about how do I do bridge financing? How do I work with my commercial bank? There are these federal programs that we're tapping into, what's working, what's not working. So suddenly you've got this very rich diet of options, including working with Kickstarter and whatnot.
Matt Toner:And part of the way you work with people like Kickstarter or the big corporates or Silicon Valley folks is you bring them here. You make a personal connection with folks, and when we were at Game Best West, you know one of our founders is also a certified trail guide, so we took some of our international delegates on a series of hikes just to show them some of the natural beauty, and this turned it into kind of an interesting. It's not just a pitch event, it's a bonding event, it's a let's make some friendships, and people like to work with their friends. So I know, Michael, you weren't as challenged as you hope to be on the hikes, but there's some great photographs of you folks tackling the lower foothills at least no bears?
Michael Liebe:no, uh, running elk we were. We were hunting the bears, but they were smarter than us, um, so they ran away and hid they kept themselves scarce for sure.
Jon:No, but that's what's great. Yes, well, I'm glad. And was that your first time in in bam? First time in alberta?
Michael Liebe:yeah, sorry listeners, before um I got invited, I didn't even know alberta exists, um as a province. I knew calgary, um as a city and banff also as a city and Banff also as a city, but I didn't know the bigger concept of Alberta. So, yes, I learned a lot. I did my research also and checked on some stuff and and was really excited it was great and how they also organized it with the bonding and friend stuff. So one of the cohort studios, like a startup guy, picked me up at the airport in calgary, took me out for dinner on the way and then we actually landed in the hotel. So these things were amazing. And still today I'm whatsapping with the guy left and right about beers oh, that's fantastic.
Jon:Yeah, no, I. I love that. You want to do business with your friends and you know when these things come from a genuine place, you know, a friendship and care. I think it, you know it just deepens those bonds. I want to dive in a little bit to you know, matt and Adam, how did we through the ecosystem development partnership program? How did that relationship begin? Yeah, why don't we start with you, adam? Did Matt reach out to you?
Adam Brown:Yes, I believe. So I believe Matt reached out first and I hadn't heard of him before and we hadn't done much work in the gaming sector before.
Adam Brown:But, as has been discussed, alberta has great talent in the gaming industry, currently has great talent in in the gaming industry, uh, currently, and and we have post-secondaries that are graduating additional uh, great talent every every semester, and so, um, when, when matt came and and offered something that we didn't have, uh, articulated in the ecosystem yet, it was really intriguing to me.
Adam Brown:So there have been disruptive layoff cycles in the gaming industry in Alberta specifically as well, and so we had seen that, and you know, major employers have grown and contracted and, as is a somewhat common story in in Alberta, you know, we felt somewhat at at the of of that and and that, uh, you know, game developers in in our industry didn't have control over their destiny as much as they they could, perhaps, and so, um, I I think what Matt offered was access to global capital, but also something that he and Michael have been talking about bringing in expertise from around the globe to work alongside our expertise to raise the game for the whole ecosystem, and often it's not about there not being enough funding in the system, and it's certainly not a question of not having enough talent, but knowing how to navigate, as was mentioned, from Kickstarter to the other funding mechanisms and to know how to do that is really overwhelming initially, and so I think the first or second conversation, matt described a venture studio model that sounded somewhat familiar to us but had key markings, like you know.
Adam Brown:We think that one of Matt's theses, I think, was, you know, alberta could be getting more of the Canada Media Fund and that could fuel a lot of the initial stages of growth. So that was attractive. And then bringing in partners with Shred Capital and folks like Michael really rounded out what would be not just a training exercise or a learning exercise but a helping exercise, and so that made my ears perk up and we continued conversations after that. And, yeah, what's your perception?
Matt Toner:yeah, well, you were talking about. I was just asking myself the same question, like how did we? And we were introduced through a contact at university? Actually, I just went to my email, went to the first one I could find from you, which is like august of 22, and that's what it was. It was a connection from somebody through universities. Uh, you, you might not know this I'm still pleasantly surprised by this. University of Alberta has the second most published papers related to games and AI in the world. Wow, it's not even close right Number two, right behind, I think, santa Cruz or somebody like that. So, so again, you've got this potentiality built up here. So it was a pretty, and I talked to the people in the space that said you know, something is going to happen in alberta, but someone's going to kind of light the match right, and this is before we came here. I don't know if we're going to be taking credit for lighting the match, I mean, you know, but maybe we're helping kind of move things in that direction, you're streaming on Astro Radio now.
Matt Toner:Hopefully I got a little better than that, but I want a flamethrower. But that's just me. So one thing that I mentioned was the Canada Media Fund, which is sort of the first check, often written for Canadian game companies. And you know, when you talk to Michael or you talk to our European colleagues, they're like there's nothing like this, we don't have access to that. That's an amazing program but historically and I know Valerie Crichton will want to grab me by the ear when I say this most of the money has started to drift towards, overwhelmingly towards Toronto and Montreal companies, to the point where people in Vancouver refer to it as the Montreal Game Fund because so much money's gone there.
Matt Toner:So we've really made that a point of like. Okay, we want to make sure our folks don't give up on it, that they're aware of it, that they pool their knowledge, that we help them to focus it so that they're sharing best practices. And you know we're looking for some stats right now. But I know that our win rate's gone way up with our Alberta companies. The industry average is about 20% are successful. Our Alberta companies that we coach and show them how to approach it. Success rate of about 65%.
Jon:Okay, so define success. For me, that's getting the Canada fund.
Matt Toner:Okay, Building an application for different levels. There's all different levels. We're still moving up that chain. For most people, the success rate globally is 20% of people who apply not quite get money. People in Alberta that we've been working with the success rate is closer to 65%.
Jon:That's really significant. That sounds like you're lighting a match. You're lighting a flame.
Matt Toner:To pick a different metaphor. I want to break the casino. We'll see if we can pull that off.
Jon:My original question. I come from a marketing communications background. The question behind how did you meet? Was how did you hear about the ecosystem development partnership program? And to hear that it's you know, in the ecosystem. You're talking to people at the university and they, hey, have you met adam, have you?
Jon:This is what I love about this notion of networking and knowing people who know something. Who can you know? Like this is how things, um, you know, when you have that community of people that are talking, you know and then obviously, like you, matt, you seem to know a lot of people. And then now you bring Michael into the picture. Michael knows a lot of people and we start to see a real proliferation of the ecosystem. And, if I may really quickly, last week we had done a podcast with our colleagues from Thin Air Labs and a company called Chasm Consulting and we're speaking about the ecosystem and the sectors within the ecosystem touting their own stories. So it's important that your clients, you know, within the scaffold program, are also talking about their stories on social media and stuff, because that's really starts to leverage, but it's it's almost like narrative as the rising tide well, we actually just to speak that quickly.
Matt Toner:I don't want to hog the conversation here, but very much agree with what you're saying. And can Canadians in general have this humble? We don't really talk about stuff as the way we should, frankly. So we actually saw that in our participants. So we brought in this woman from New York called Amanda Goetz that I followed online, extraordinarily talented young woman who talks about building your company in public, so through social channels.
Matt Toner:So she gave a 90 minute legitimate masterclass, probably the best one we've done, highest turnout, no one dropped off the call and she broke it down Like here's exactly how you do LinkedIn to grow your business. And she basically said like you know, within Scaffold you have a natural what's known as an engagement pod in the industry, where people help reinforce each other's message. They help amplify each other's messages. So I challenge people in Scaffold let's form an engagement pod. Let's let you guys start reinforcing each other's message, sharing and liking and boosting and commenting on it. Let the algorithms do the rest and we're starting to see some progress there. But I mean these folks. And she said God bless, amanda. She said right off the front this will feel icky, you know, telling your story and talking about yourself and right.
Matt Toner:Oh my God, Painful, painful, painful. But she just gave people permission to feel icky, basically saying we all feel this way, but we have to do this now.
Jon:And I think too and again not to belabor the point, but I think when you get people talking about their stories, other people look at that and they go oh god, I see myself in that. So you're sharing, it's a knowledge translation, it's knowledge sharing as well. Now, michael, do you see that, does that sort of thing happen in in europe? Do you see where you know you get, you get startups uh, in in in their networks, helping, helping you know, thrive through narrative. And I don't mean to change the speed entirely on you guys, but this feels relevant to me as well.
Michael Liebe:Yeah, definitely it is. So there, canada and most Central European cultures are pretty similar. I need to just speak for the Germans now. So, yeah, for us it are pretty similar. Let me just speak for the Germans now. So yeah, for us it's very similar. We don't brag publicly about what we do.
Michael Liebe:Self-marketing is bad and nobody wants to do it, and that's what you have marketing people for, et cetera, pp. But everybody knows that the world has changed and you have to have your profile out there and you have to be visible out there. So, yes, we are trying to do that, and there is something like Sorry, my kiddo wants to join the conversation. That's the next generation. Yes, there's something like informal collectives we see popping up and forming in the indie scene, specifically where you have in Germany and Berlin, saftladen, for example. That's actually an office where 20 studios share a space together, all game developers, and then they have a public website, they have a Steam profile like a curator, they have social media and they really incentivize to share everything.
Michael Liebe:Just a number, because also, numbers are always strong. So, on Kickstarter video games, the success rate to reach the 100% funding goal you set is an average 25% globally. Hold your breath If you have 10 backers only 10, that's us plus our families then this average success rate already is at 50%. If you have 25 backers so one workshop in the Scaffold program, all backing this campaign, average success rate is already at roughly 65%. Rate is already at roughly 65 percent. So the mistake most people do is not even go to their neighbors, to their classmates, to the fellow fellows they are like in close contact with, and just put it out there and hope for the best right.
Michael Liebe:Another statistic is Steam, the digital distribution platform I mentioned earlier. One game out I don't know 5,000, just random number. No, I don't really know the number. Now, two games out below 1,000. So like really having the stamina to build a game, publish it then also, while doing the first game, thinking about the a game, publish it then also, while doing the first game, thinking about the second game, building a community around it, your profile as a studio around it, and then publishing the second game. I don't know a fall of 80%, 90% down of studios who actually achieve that. So it's mind-blowing if you think about these numbers and what they actually mean. You invested five years of time, money's, talent, into doing your first game and then you, sadly, you know, crawl into bed whatever, instead of using this opportunity to have topics to talk about, build your business, fundra, fundraise, etc. There's a lot of things that Scaffold is doing really well, actually, in educating the people to be aware of these topics and support it's about being entrepreneurial.
Matt Toner:Picking up these tools that are there is so much easier than it was when I got into this business 20 years ago. My God, you don't want to become a grant writing machine and just well. If the government doesn't fund me or the publisher doesn't take my phone call, I'm done. It's like no, no, pick up these tools. And we see this happening. People are asking questions on our Slack channels. Can people tell me about this? We set up a Discord to do that. Is it working?
Matt Toner:So if the community here starts to become self-resilient among the founders and we're seeing evidence of that already then it takes on a life of its own. You will need a scaffold to keep pushing. If we do our job correctly, it'll start to take off by itself, and if you start to see successes, then that is what's really going to drive people. One step, adam, I don't know if I shared with you, is that the kind of mid-tier companies in the scaffold program are beginning to hire many of the solopreneurs that joined our program Because they bonded through these events, through these masterclasses, they've learned a bit from each other and the solo guys have said well, I've got so much more to learn, but I like these dudes that are working on this game already. I'm going to join forces with them and help them make their game better. So that's the knowledge transfer that we need in a health ecosystem.
Jon:That's the solution we want to see happen, yeah yeah, so how long has the program been running now? Is it over a year, just over a year?
Matt Toner:Just over a year.
Jon:If you had a game investment.
Matt Toner:It would have been the year mark, I think Okay, about halfway, About a year.
Jon:Okay, about halfway, about a year, okay. So now you've got the next cohort starting this January, and I'm sure we'll have some listeners on here who either are building games or know someone that's building games. If someone is interested in learning more or participating in a future cohort, how does that work and what does that look like?
Matt Toner:What should they do? The best way would just be to hit me up on LinkedIn. That's the best way. Come, find me right there, I'm easy to find. And then what we do is our team will look at them and we look at kind of where they are in the spectrum, like you know. How far along are they? What do they need, what do they bring? And then we go through an onboarding process where we see what they want to get out of the program.
Matt Toner:Because in some cases people come to us and we're like well, you know, there isn't really an alignment yet, for whatever reasons. Maybe they think they're too far along and they need to focus on their game launch. Full respect for that. Or maybe like, oh well, you know, I'm still in university, Maybe I'll, you know, learn a bit more before I jump out. Complete respect for that.
Matt Toner:But generally we find a good fit and then we slot them in and again, we try to keep it manageable for people's professional schedules. We try to model it after a program I did at MIT actually. So we do the Zoom masterclasses of the main bread and butter. We try to run those at lunchtime-ish so that people can make room in their lives for it. So it isn't a distraction, it's additive.
Matt Toner:Now, occasionally we have to move things around a bit because, as you can see with Michael, it's late night in Berlin In the master class last week we had a person coming from Tokyo. We do sometimes have to flex a bit because if you want to get the best person and that person is based in Sydney, you've got to work on that a little bit. But the really interesting thing I've found and Michael is certainly a great example of this is people really, when they understand what we're trying to do people at Meta, people at Microsoft, people at big companies, Tencent, Kickstarter they may know me already, but they really want to be part of what we're trying to pull off. They really want to be part of, like seeding, this next generation with their connections and their ideas and what they've learned, uh, coming through it. So I found that very uh gratifying that oh, I'm sure it was that kind of positive feedback loop yeah, that's, that's really cool.
Jon:Um, so, really quickly, when you, when the founder, reaches out to you and says you know, here's where we're at, this is what we're doing you've illustrated a couple of cases where they've you know, maybe they're staying in school or they're doing something else with a launch, do you ever get to the point where you're like there's nothing we can do with you guys. At this point, I suggest doing like advice is there, you know another?
Matt Toner:direction. Like, generally speaking, we want them to give it a try. Right, generally speaking, we want to get them into the first cohort and we try to make the first terms there's four terms. We try to get them that first term and let them see, because you know, I think there's and look, I've done a lot of this stuff over the years, like I've worked on canadian, like business development when I was running the trade office in new york and stuff like that, and you know I used to have to advise my canadian clients when they come meet people in these startup ecosystems that are really thriving, I'd say, look that the guy with the cargo shirts and the ponytail, he might be the decision maker. The guy with the suit might be his lawyer. So I definitely don't want to be prejudging people. I don't want them to prejudge themselves.
Matt Toner:I want them to give it a shot and surprise us and maybe surprise themselves and then we find out what the potential might look like. So what's next? Well, I think and Adam and I have talked about this a bit I think we really and certainly based on Michael's feedback as well and other people that have been involved we want to do Game Invest West in 25 and 26. Because some of these companies are just starting now. They need a bit of time to mature, to really be ready for that opportunity. We had a great crop of 10 companies that we brought with us, but we want to bring in a bigger delegation next time and give more companies more at-bats. We may do more work in the run-up in Red Deer and Lethbridge and places so that it's more integrated into the main event. So the first one worked well a bit of an experiment, but it worked really well. So I think we have a good formula. I think right now it's just making sure the next year we have three people like Michael and three people like John Polson and really bring more people here. Because the experience of the delegation, unfortunately, is a little bit like what Michael had mentioned is the wasn't really sure about Alberta, what that meant, because Vancouver, montreal, takes so much of the spotlight, but we're now. We have a great story to tell and getting it on the radar.
Matt Toner:I know what you say, john. Would I want to be on the cover of you know wired magazine, I guess. But would I rather that 10 of our companies were having meetings in the boardrooms of 10 big corporates? I'd rather that you know so that. That that's more. My philosophy is getting those partnerships in place and having people at Amazon games go oh right, alberta, you know it's on our radar. We like what they're making up there. We've got partnerships up there. We've got people paying attention to it. We know what we're getting when we go to Alberta. That's the goal.
Michael Liebe:What's super important in my experience is consistency and longevity.
Michael Liebe:I think you call it in English is like it's not only a program that runs for one or two years, not even three.
Michael Liebe:The biggest mistakes I saw happening in Europe also in Germany, where we had programs that ended after a year or even like the longest running public funding for the government federal fund was four years. Developing a video game takes three to seven years, so you won't even be able to see your results if you end early. So the super important thing is to have these things running. You don't necessarily need to grow yes, what Matt said, that's a good, stable number, but it doesn't need to be thousands of people coming from across the globe to Banff, but it's more important that you're out there consistently at the same events like go to Gamescom every year with the same group with the same brand, invite a couple of people every year again and then have them talk about it for five years in a row. That's how I would say these kind of things are successful and not just a waste of money in the end especially publicly wasted if you don't wait until the labors of the fruits of the labor can be paid.
Jon:I think that's a great point. Yeah, consistency and longevity, and people then become to understand that this is something that happens in the ecosystem. You can build things around that. Yeah, I think that's that's really well said in the ecosystem.
Michael Liebe:You can build things around that. Yeah, I think that's uh, that's really well said, and I think it was mentioned earlier um with um, just try it out and find out. This spirit I think also us um old white men need to um put into these programs as well. Um, what do we know what the future brings? We don't. We know what the past, why the past was amazing or shitty or whatever, but what's happening next? Nobody knows. So if we create frameworks, rather than um setting the goals for the companies but creating frameworks where they then can thrive, um, I think then then we are up for a bright future with these studios yeah, yeah.
Adam Brown:So I think for us, john, we expect to see some really promising new ventures eventually come out of this and lots of funding received and some successful games come to market ultimately, as Michael just said, that's going to take time, but I think the overall effect of that is going to be much greater capacity in the province and more evenly distributed so that we have a more resilient gaming community.
Adam Brown:We hope, and so you know, after this project ends, for Innovates when our funding ends, I think you know, first of all, matt has already secured some Prairie Scan funding so we get to extend the scope of this a little bit through federal matching, which is great.
Adam Brown:I think our suspicion is that, you know, the needs of the ecosystem might be different once it's matured like that and we have more firms and they're doing great things and, you know, perhaps talent is a bigger needed focus or, you know, I think we'll have to reassess in a couple of years.
Adam Brown:But I think also, you know, what we're hopeful for is that we might get some specialization out of this. So once we have a sturdier gaming industry, we might see what you know areas of momentum build up and what specific, you know unique capacities we have in the province, and so Matt and I have talked about this, and you know, john, that we have amazing artificial intelligence expertise in the ecosystem as well. Earlier this year we saw Artificial Agency, a local gaming plus AI company, do a really big, successful raise, and so, you know, I'm hopeful, maybe, that those two technologies, those two communities, could create some momentum together in the future. And so we'll have to wait, and you know we're seeing really exciting green shoots from scaffold in the industry right now, but I think the future could be even brighter, and I don't know that we know what it will look like exactly yet, but we're tracking it closely.
Jon:I think that's the exciting part, and I'm going to leave the last word to Matt.
Matt Toner:I would just agree with what Adam said basically and, john, I think you put it really nicely. I mean, what I find exciting, what gets me out of bed in the morning with this one and helps drive the whole thing forward is we're building an ecosystem here. I'm not going to say from scratch, but with all the turnover and changes in the industry that we've seen over the past year, it's rare you get a chance to kind of come in and all the DNA is kind of available to you. You know, what do we want to build here? We don't have to build what's been built. We can build something more international, more partner focused, more focused on the new advances in AI that weren't even on the radar when Adam and I first started talking, which was not that long ago. So to me, like what we built here could be special and we have a chance to do it.
Jon:Thanks for joining us today on shifts. On behalf of everyone here, I'm Jon Hagan. You can find us online at shiftalbertainnovatesca or at any one of those fine streaming services out there. Have a good one you.
