David Braben talking about FDev generally, and Elite Dangerous specifically (timestamp 6m05s)

cheesenbiscuits

cheesenbiscuits
Working on ps5 and they wanted to do something with dinosaurs before they were approached to do Jurassic park,possibly preproduction for ED?
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
Robert Maynard
YouTube transcript:

YouTube Transcript said:
so I'm very excited to introduce to you David Bradburn chief executive of frontier developments today for our AGM investor update David and I have known each other for seven years now the VCT first invested in fronted abutments way back in 2013 actually just two months before the company floated on aim and I was introduced to David in an unusual way normally when we make an investment we introduce our broker one of the brokers in London but actually almost uniquely with with fronted above us I was introduced by a very long-standing now long-standing friend of mine who happens to still be chairman of the company David Gannon and I was having lunch with David gammon one day in Cambridge where he lived and we're fronted abundances based and we were talking about companies that we thought were interesting and he was saying well you know turn of the company we're going to flow to it because it won't be of interest to you as soon as I said that of course there wasn't interest to me and so we we spoke about it for a while and interesting liam is one of the I was thinking about this earlier it's one of the strange things are at the time back in 2013 video game companies were something of a masculine role name and that really reflected the experience of investors with video games companies in the period between 2000 and 2010 when there are a number of listed a man quoted companies are all of which founded interesting these smooth and so that it was it felt like it was going to be not a walk in the park to flow to video games company back then and the reason that I got so interested in the company very quickly was his they began explain to me how there was a sea change going on as a result of the advances in digital technology that here the game developers were had a window of opportunity to become video game publishers and that's really been the journey of frontier developments over the last seven years and what we cannot discuss so David looking back over this period I'm curious to ask you torski when you look back what was your experience of floating like what were the had it how do you reminisce on that now it was I remember signing inordinate numbers of documents great big piles of documents where you see new versions of them and it's just not practical to read the mental moon having said that though the process was probably less painful than I was expecting in that I remember engaging with a lot of people I think there was a lot of there was a lack of interest in our sector for at least a year or so even after we floated it and it was only when they started to see the front he was performing that we were growing and we were doing sort of what we said we would do and I think some of the things that we said back then people roll their eyes a bit oh yeah right they also know like our ambition is to be the highest quality company most respected living with what we say and you know and this is sort of rolls-royce not forward we're going to make things that were memorable and I actually think looking back that's what we've done yeah we've one after the other we said when we would do it we've done what we said we'd do each of them has done slightly better than we said it we thought it would do which is good you know so we're on a really good trajectory and actually if anything the transition that we mentioned and staff rightly so the move to digital as in our case we mostly through that transition almost all our sales of digital and I think this kovin issue if we're allowed to talk about this has actually accelerated that because what's happened is a lot more people now have moved to digital who might not have done so so quickly and actually are really engaging with our games because this type of games we make have hundreds of hours of of interesting play time in the live life and I think that is exactly the sort of thing if you're going to be banged up in a flat for weeks on end at least you want something compelling and interesting it also has a bit of a social element to it as well as obviously chat on my to your friends in Washington so I think in terms of sort of going back to the question you know for me even though ironically at the time we did we hesitated because the Kickstarter for these and being a lot more successful than that actually we thought it would be which is great that's fantastic they're getting wrong but what we didn't want to do we were most of the way down the altar to us by floating and we decided to go through it anyway nothing that was the right decision because it meant we could accelerate things and then actually we've not look back you know it's been great for us to be really good you know I'd like to think that our relationship with investors is still very good I think we've continued to keep people posting to what's coming as best we can even though occasionally we've done our own essence which were a little bit of sort of word puzzles like we did with the announcement of Jurassic world yes and value for practical reasons that people with time so I did see and I think it was quite a fun guessing game I think since planet coaster came out the skepticism II eased quite a lot and then it was really put to bed when we announced Jurassic you know these they saw that we had a cadence that you were delivering within all said we do and also the games were performing people saw them for that with their own eyes going back to the top of the steam charts and any other charts that that might have digital sale and you know that we have made on digital or even the Jurassic which we did do on physical we did a digital first launch so that the people who weren't sure which they wanted before no so that and that's so much better anyway yeah but I think you know overall I think the experience wasn't a bad one and I think what we've also done is we've laid the path to quite a few other companies who would have found it a lot harder ya know interesting I'm certain maybe we should just talk a little bit about the games that you've written as a business since the float and obviously the first one was elite dangerous which is very personal to you where you'll see became very well known at university for writing the original game with a friend and and probably little did you think that this many years later you would be still producing versions of that game but tell you that the first the first rewrite was very successful and I know I understand there's a major new chapter coming next year and but how do you you have a very long personal journey with this game is it still very special to you does it still think it's still very special I mean I've always had I've always loved astronomy looking up at the stars and just the feeling that you know have small earth isn't all that sweeping and to be able to communicate that in any medium actually is really good when it's very rare in films that you get that feeling forever so yes I'm really proud of it and still very close to it you know the though he's listening elite dangerous actually the original early-access came out seven years ago he's in seventh year so it's an amazingly long time ago that was that first help alpha in December 2013 you know and after that it's gone from strength to strength to be first one sorta console first Xbox and Playstation and we got we said there's an update coming later which it was previously during December we just push it into the new year because that's actually sensible because there have been some slight delays and very good but only probably only small numbers of days weekend but I we're just wanting to be sure you know because they're so close to Christmas we don't want to push it right into Christmas and have fun um having said that you know it's a game very close to you know we just think carriers is in beta at the moment as you may or may not know that's going out very well our first public beta on console which is quite an achievement because it's much more complicated to do it on console because of approvals Microsoft and Sony both have to be involved and because we're dealing on the same servers on all the platforms it has to be update at the same time so there are some technical challenges there as well fantastic and then there was planet coaster came after that and another very successful one time development yeah planet coaster came out on time in November 2016 and actually that was the other thing I think there was skepticism because at that point the go to Costa game was roller coaster tycoon 3 which we had developed that with guitar back in 2004 and I think where there was skepticism is that we could go with what was basically new IP roller coaster tycoon brand was not owned by frontier it was only by Chris Sawyer and Atari and we did look at taking it over that is practically speaking it wasn't practical and actually we were confident it wasn't the brand it was the quality of the game and I think within a day or so it was really apparent that's exactly what's happening now even to the extent that the day before we released Atari announced a game called rollercoaster tycoon world as a notional sequel which didn't even compare favorably to the other case in 2003 never mind that casement so I think that's gone from strength to strength nowadays it's the game in close the game and has been pretty well ever since we release so that's really good and it goes to the strategy as well and we did say at the start was to identify underserved areas in the market that we can do a great gaming and do a great gaming it because then you've got a really good chance of owning that sector even if it's a little bit nice they're still quite big issues especially when you think that we're selling to a global audience now and not necessarily whether we're not going to go head-to-head with Call of Duty because to match that you need quite a big investment and I'm not actually sure your better return you know if anything looking at last game by a fortnight did where they did again has some functionality a bit like this person shooter but quite a different style of game is actually taken away quite a big slice of their audience in Activision before that by hiding with AE and the coordinate a battle royale mode to Call of Duty and that's been quite successful for them so that again is that arms race and arms races can be quite expensive because you have to do them quickly and so the fields we're in where we're actually away from that real fierce competition and the strategy and we've seen it now it kind of close there over those years since we released it we're roughly quarterly we've been bringing out expansion so we stay ahead of the game it's quite hard for people to challenge that if you look at the amount valuable which content that's in that game yes at some point I suspect we will want to do a new version the same way we did really close to typing three but you know it's a very good good business model for us and we've announced it's coming to console now you know so there's a good throughput of things there and I think the other thing is we've learned because we're learning every day and we're learning now as how best to do things under the lot of them but with planet coaster we started off doing quarterly updates and we actually noticed we noticed pretty quickly we didn't smile when you do the updates is really important and the sweet spot is computed just before a holiday period because that way you can get people who it's an established word-of-mouth just at the point where people expect to be buying game there whether it's Thanksgiving whether it's Christmas whether it's Easter is good and also there's summer sales season to do so what we've done is rather than being actually found the quarterly we skew them a bit so there's the updates tend to come before those holiday first and that has that been a bit of a kick up in the sales so even if they're not uniformly spread through the year you're now seeing that we've don't you jurassic we've had a number of updates and similarly we finance ooh it's still early days but we've got those two big updates and they have been doing incredibly well for us particularly the South America pack which by the way was produced on the lockdown release on time just before Easter and you know that's done really well for us and I think it's partly because we've locked down as being multiplied on savings you know it's been really good to us and we've seen various different sort of characteristics that have changed you know we look at that we see all our sales graph you see our so through the week and you can see the periodicity the weekends Friday night Saturday night really good Sundays pretty good and then it dips during the week it's always been like that but actually nowadays very not to see those days you know I think we might see it as people start to go back to work we might say it's starting to reappear like we did in China we've seen things reappear in China but interestingly sales in China have been higher since they've gone back when they were beforehand so I wonder if you know more people have bought PCs as they went into lockdown and you know so I think and we already know that gaming is quite sticky if you build up a great group of good friends in environment whether it's in the pub or whether it's in a game I think you're more likely to want to try and keep in touch with them yeah they're not to be anecdotal not scientific but we certainly have seen positivity in the countries that move there's a lockdown eases and there's an amount of watching the space you know it's still early days we don't know exactly what the claims are that's going to be but you know it's good for us in the fact that work from home he's actually working quite well for us do you find that you lose indeed productivity with working from home oh um we lost unfortunately the good thing was we actually moved to working from home about a week before the locker and is it enable that we're moving over 500 people and making sure they've got the kit making sure about network connections of the EPM or lots of things and there's actually a lot of almost removals type work taking workstations very picky people don't have cars and also making sure insurance network all those sort of things are sorted but having said that I think we see different people are more efficient than others there is I think we see we're seeing the range some people are probably more than one representative if you compare working from home but I think that the team looks at is probably below 100 percent but not vastly so not the norm percent as we see with a lot of furlough companies and I think part of it what worries me is the longer term which is mentoring younger people yeah then we've got graduates who probably only being at forums here a few months very keen very able people and there is an effect which people usually don't like to admit where they slide alone across to their colleague friend that's a good I can't quite figure out how this thing's working well if you make it a bit more formal with a team scores in school Zuko you're more likely to Ruggles or longer before you make that call yeah you know so I think there are things that we haven't got enough metrics on here but I think team leads are probably actually we find there are fewer distractions but those dysfunction can be very big more yeah yes yeah so the office is not dead it basically will want to go back in time I don't I don't think it is but I think there probably will be more home working afterwards once we once we've established some people actually we have got really good internet connections at home for them others haven't yeah we've given people 4G John dongles know lots of thing but for some of our heavy work station work that's actually slows things down quite a lot so there's a sort of semi geographical effect as well so you have to look at that but having said that yes I think things will change they won't be the same and actually we have completely changed the way we work I mean one of the great things of our industry is it's so fast moving anywhere it always has been you know new technologies come along with currently dealing with PlayStation 5 and xbox next example you know their continued that things are these new ways of working new new retail channels as well which you've gone through and so working from home is just another adaptation we've had to make and we made it really relatively quickly in small number of weeks and then we planned it out and then we started moving on home the team at this time and worked out how people engage with the service whether it's better using VPN with the workstation at home versus screen you know desktop to Mike working yeah and I think we've got a way of working that's working ok it's getting better I think for some people they're finding it a bit of a struggle that's the other thing psychologically yeah you know I'm sure you have yeah I think it feels ok for certain period of time but not forever I think what a lot of people are itching to get back might be both visit came back to to the big server collection points that happened in 2017 the company when first of all you were you signed up what was not named but would later became named as - I think world as that as a licensee approached by Universal Pictures - to take on this task of writing the game for their next episode of the film and I think that in a way that was that was when the market really changed its perception of the company from developing games that you'd you new versions engaged it a little bit all to really having this - being an engine of new games and this was something that looked scalable and clearly exciting and it was going to take you to an even bigger audience and of course the other thing that happened in that year was $0.10 invested in the company and 10 - something like 10% of the company and those two things I think the market up to the potential of the business you know first of all what was it like getting the call from Universal and was that a new experience or was that something that had those kind of things happened before oh yeah we we had quite regularly talked to people in the in the Hollywood area I mean we've done quite a few licenses but on a smaller scale if you think what we're doing the Ghostbusters in planet coaster people that was Sony Pictures you know and I think they work quite well but I think what was ironic is we were wanting to do something the dinosaurs anyway and it just came in almost the perfect perfect time and we engaged with them they're they're great people to work with it's been very very positive experience and hopefully for them as well you know and our relationship with them is really good and so I think we you know in our minds this is the funny thing we're always at least two years further on because the things that we're signing now I mean actually you've got some cited it because obviously forming the wrong and then gave workshop um you know those details obviously we've been walking's them for quite a while and there are other things we're looking at in the future that are really exciting and interesting where you can see how the business scales and of course the third-party publishing actually being a publisher for other people is something that I think is really getting a life of its own and the beauty with that side of the business is easy business was the easy part of the business to scale because recruitment in that area was not particularly confined the key thing is that we publish good games that we can be proud of that we think you okay mark yeah do you think this is the window of opportunity is still open for developers to become publishers or is a if the barriers to entry now risen quite a bit I think I think it depends you need a leg up to do it now when we became publishers we there was that window actually which David Cameron referred to because we could see it opening we could also see it closing and that was the other reason to go to market to make sure we had the ability to do that and the plan always was to do it on our own ticket with our own games and then potentially add to it later you know that was one of our potential upside down lines other people's games even back then although we didn't shout too much about it because it doesn't you know it wasn't current at that time I think the key thing was there were very few digital publishers at that time compared to now and also if you look at digital portals likes being like Xbox Live PlayStation Store they were nowhere near as noise as they are now it was possible for a small company and that the problem is actually not just size it's number of product one products more company that has something that appears in this game Jasmine dribbles down again firstly that's not terribly interesting the valve to engage this company with on Steam and also engaging with customers it gives it's harder now the beauty with the sorts of games we're doing is we've got updates roughly quarterly and that means actually News four is much more often than that so that's already a big head start and then as soon as we had our second game plan on Kosovo you have much more of a throughput of information then we started talking once we started talking about Jurassic you know there was and I think that that point onwards we could cross the hump and we were there in or turning we had we started doing publisher sales was revolve we could you take overs of their homepage more a sniffing and it reminds me talking to one of the third-party publishing groups they said to me they had never spoken to a person whereas we speak to them most days yeah and that's the difference so we can talk about what what's becoming how things aren't working can we change this on the page yeah and it's that that the people who have been published there was they get that relationship benefit because they can participate in their steam sales I mean we had a publisher say all over the Easter weekend which was incredible for us and part of why we ended up nudging up the numbers but that was a frontier publishers sale over the Easter weekend which would have been great anyway but that's a good magnifying effect because of clothing that's quite early on in the rock down field where people were still scratching their heads and where they should spin on Wednesday yeah yeah absolutely and maybe a good place to finish would be I know you'd have a wonderful vision of the future and what you want the company to do over the next 10 years could you maybe just talk a little bit about that yeah it's not it's not changed hugely but I think in five to ten years time certainly some 10 years time I imagine there will be something like a dozen media companies and none of them will knows anything about it into death in the same way if you wind back 10 years or next links and there will be some familiar ones as well but we want to be one of those companies we will also be unrecognizable by the way but I think actually we're with fairly unrecognizable when we floated when we first gently you know we were quite a small company then we've had we didn't have a lot of development firepower we didn't have a lot of cash we've now got a lot of cash a lot of development by how we now very well known in the industry also recruitment for us now it's better than it's ever been and actually during during lockdown we've recruited a lot of people and you know we haven't engaged within any following or anything like that even with people that we could have further because I think the key thing is companies like us we shouldn't be taking those things no we are doing incredibly well and we're very proud of that but also we're trying to make sure that we treat our staff baby well you know by having well being széchenyi lawyers who thing people they can talk to you privately just because I think some people are struggling with it more than others people who sadly quite young people who might be working in the same room that they're sleeping just because they were in sharing house and they don't have a lot of space and you know and they go outside for one walk a day and then yes or no you can be one right now but you know I think that gets the people and so we tried to look after people and we've tried to run events and evening the film like tonight for example where people are watching the film but they're all getting to chat about it while they're watching me it's really to try and keep that feeling a community during which would otherwise have been served by things like our canteen and our ask the work activities which sadly we can't do it in them maybe we will be able to do them in a few weeks time who knows yeah fantastic David it's great to chat to you thank you very much for taking part in in this conversation you're very welcome thanks big thanks for having me investing by the way and to all your investors its regional well I should toss all the thanks for investors because you've been amongst our most successful in us it's been a real privilege to be an investor in your company thing indeed thanks for great no thank you

English (auto-generated)
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Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
ObiW said:
Just off the phone talking to my investment broker, who just said to me "that would be an ecumenical matter".

Food for thought.
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Swoops down, pulls investor heart plug

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Arioch

Arioch
Interesting that David mentions they like identifying gaming areas that no one else is creating in and then establishing themselves in those niches - specifically name-checking CoD & Fortnite as being pointless to compete against...wonder what that means for EDO?

From Robert’s big old Slab’o’Text (and a bit of clean-up):
“it goes to the strategy as well... to identify underserved areas in the market that we can do a great game in and do a great game in it, because then you've got a really good chance of owning that sector even if it's a little bit niche - they're still quite big especially when you think that we're selling to a global audience now and not necessarily whether we're not going to go head-to-head with Call of Duty, because to match that you need quite a big investment...looking at Fortnite, where they have some functionality a bit like this person shooter but quite a different style of game has actually taken away quite a big slice of their audience...then battle royale mode to Call of Duty and that's been quite successful for them so that again is that arms race and arms races can be quite expensive because you have to do them quickly...the fields we're in we're actually away from that real fierce competition...”
 
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Jethro49

Jethro49
Found that :

I mean I've always had I've always loved astronomy looking up at the stars and just the feeling that you know have small earth isn't all that sweeping and to be able to communicate that in any medium actually is really good when it's very rare in films that you get that feeling forever so yes I'm really proud of it and still very close to it you know the though he's listening elite dangerous actually the original early-access came out seven years ago he's in seventh year so it's an amazingly long time ago that was that first help alpha in December 2013 you know and after that it's gone from strength to strength to be first one sorta console first Xbox and Playstation and we got we said there's an update coming later which it was previously during December we just push it into the new year because that's actually sensible because there have been some slight delays and very good but only probably only small numbers of days weekend but I we're just wanting to be sure you know because they're so close to Christmas we don't want to push it right into Christmas and have fun
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Great ! an update is coming !

um having said that you know it's a game very close to you know we just think carriers is in beta at the moment as you may or may not know that's going out very well our first public beta on console which is quite an achievement because it's much more complicated to do it on console because of approvals Microsoft and Sony both have to be involved and because we're dealing on the same servers on all the platforms it has to be update at the same time so there are some technical challenges there as well fantastic and then there was planet coaster came after that
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Wait... ah well, sorry... that was just the FC update...


However, interesting to see that for the FC update, one of the technical challenge at Fdev was to set up the PC+console beta. Among balancing tritium and LTD mining I guess.
 
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