Joe Wee

Forgive me, I want to repost this Games London update to do a classic LinkedIn 'reflect and tease' post. But hear me out. For just over eight years our Accelerator and other programmes (like the Pitch Training Bootcamp of old and now Game Changer) have supported new games businesses with workshops, mentoring and more. Today we pass another milestone as we kickstart the second Game Changer cohort with their first workshop, hosted at BAFTA 195 Piccadilly - fittingly the location for our first bootcamp back in 2017! - we've supported over 150 games studios with these programmes, giving them fast-track insight and connections. Well done again to the 2024 Accelerator cohort and thanks to our speakers, mentors and partners. Giving promising new businesses access and learning is so crucial to ensure emerging games studios can be sustainable and successful. Good luck to the Game Changer cohort who start their journey today (we'll be officially unveiling the cohort next week) - you're another ambitious and promising cohort. That said... there's now a bit of an oversupply in these programmes, we've got to admit. After we debuted the Accelerator in 2020, there's now similar programmes up and down the country. Brilliant! But there's nothing in the market to help studio start-ups convert to their first successful release, right? Publishers and investors faced with industry turmoil (or at least the perception of it!) are increasingly demanding that prospective developer partners have released at least one game on their own stead before starting a conversation. So now we're cooking something up to help businesses go from 'accelerator graduate' to successful debut launch. More news in Sept. Watch this space.

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No squatch sightings last weekend...but wow...what a week since. A massively productive one for The Glitch (on all fronts), and apparently some other things happened around the industry as well...huh. Alright...let's-a-go: OMY@C 🤘 ⛏ - Metallica will be in Fortnite soon. The event is called "Metallica: Fuel Fire Fury," and it will kick off on June 22nd. The San Francisco band got on the Fortnite Festival stage yesterday - so if you're curious...hop on in there. RIP Cliff. RIP Eddie. 🍎 - Apple's WWDC was this week...and their formal entry into Ai was the big takeaway. "Apple Intelligence," was the name they landed on. Essentially, it's Ai integrated through every aspect of their various OS's...adding personal context to everything. My first reaction was...do I want that though? On one hand, this feels like the first real indication of where consumer Ai is headed...on the other: privacy? A big part of Apple's presentation of their Ai is "setting a brand-new standard for privacy in Ai." So...they're well aware of the line that's being crossed. Apple's 5-minute video overview (on their site) shows you how "Ai for the rest of us" will work...and it's easy to be cynical about it. A squirrel DJ...cool. Custom emoji's...neat. Still...you should watch it. When app devs finally start building for this though...look out. PREDICTION: iPhone 16 will be the best selling iPhone yet. The 6 sold 222M units total...71.5MM units in it's first 3 months...so we'll know by year's end how this crazy statement is trending. 📺 🎮 - Mike Verdu will soon be leaving his role as VP of Netflix Games (and starting a new role with the company). Speculation is rampant about what this means for the games unit. It's possible that it means...nothing at all. I'm still massively bullish on the gaming opportunity for Netflix. My personal opinion is that transmedia is the biggest, most exciting play here...but I've also heard there are internal headwinds on that. 🤷‍♂️ 🍷 ⛵ - I'm not going to Cannes...again. Maybe some day. I'll drink rosé and look important at home...again. I'm not bitter. 📺 🎮 - Follow Friday: Two nerds with a webcam...that you absolutely should be following if you're in the games business: 1) Chris Melissinos (Principal Evangelist for Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Video interviews with games industry legends, deep retro dives, and discussions on the top news. 2) Alexander Seropian (Founder/CEO of Look North World) - Host of "The Fourth Curtain," is always a headliner event. 📺 - Palm Royale (Apple ). Kristen Wiig as a social climber in 1960's south Florida. So good. Save a grasshopper for me. 🎵 - Spotify's "Daylist" - pull the throttle back a bit with your list names though. "90's Indie Twee Friday Afternoon," might be accurate...but it's embarrassing. 🎮 - It's been 2 weeks since I picked up Hogwarts Legacy and Vampire Survivors...haven't started either yet. THAT's how busy it's been.

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We're releasing all the data from the #workshops we held earlier this year to build Scotland's National Games Strategy. I'll be breaking it down, prioritising it and using that to create the recommendations for the final action plan. We have 11 topics from What are games and where do we fit (sounds simple, but it's SUPER important) to funding, finance, education (that's a biggie) and more. Follow along and make sure you're a part of this. #ScotlandsGamesStrategy #games #Scotland #videogames #ecosystem #data

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Does the⌚market and #Roblox have untapped potential? We think so! A study has found 41% of GenZ have come into possession of a luxury watch in the last 12 months. Over 1/3 feel watches are a better investment than gold, fine wine and property. The data also shows that since 2021, 54% of GenZ have increased their spending on luxury watches. Sotheby's estimated 30% of its sales in 2023 were from buyers aged 30 years or younger 🤯 Is now the time for #watchbrands to move into Roblox? Seems like there's a lot of potential there. What do you think? Comment below... Wolfpad Gaming Ltd is a gaming culture agency helping brands in their digital gaming journey on platforms such as Roblox, Fortnite and esports. DM me for more info or check out our website (click the 'visit my website' link on my profile above) 💪 #gaming #watches #genzmarketing

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Right, it's been a while so let's do one of my favourite things: hawk my newsletter to the lovely LinkedIn punters. Video Games Industry Memo comes out every Thursday morning with the mission to explain games to you in 15 minutes flat. Each newsletter is stuffed with: 🤔 One big read that unpicks a topic shaping the industry 📰 Five news hits to help you get across the news agenda 💼 The job movers and job vacancies in games worth checking out 📅 Events and conferences worth keeping an eye on 🎮 And three video game releases to play over the weekend The feedback on VGIM from my 1450 subs has generally been tip top, with readers describing it as "the gold standard of industry newsletters" and "like having a conversation with you every time I read it." Get subscribed to the newsletter ahead of tomorrow's edition, which looks closely at the fortunes of Embracer Group 👀 https://lnkd.in/eEd6mCPM

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🚨 I'm looking for work in the second half of this year and want to talk to YOU about it 🚨 Yes, you have heard that right. Half-Space Consulting has done gangbusters since it launched in October 2023, working with 14 (!) businesses including major game developers, service providers, regulators, NGOs and trade associations to help them successfully tell their stories to the games industry. And while a good chunk of my time between now and the end of the year has been swallowed up, I do have some availability between July and September that I would love to fill to end my first financial year on a high. There are three main ways I can help your business: 👨‍🏫 Educating your business about the games industry landscape from a commercial, policy, media and cultural perspective through workshops, reports and ongoing consulting advice. 🤔 Developing, or reviewing, your strategies for engaging the games industry to ensure that you're telling a story that resonates with the audience you need to reach (and that you're choosing the smartest tactics to reach them). 🗣 Communicating to your audiences by creating reports and other written content, organising events and setting up one-to-one engagement opportunities such as calls, lunches and dinners. My clients have described my work as "the go-to for strategic communications insights" and "invaluable", while saying I'm "great to have around" and that I perfectly "understood their needs". Pretty good, right? So if you do have work that fits the bill OR you just fancy having a chat with me about ways we could work together, contact me either via LinkedIn DM or through my email address on my profile. In the meantime, here's a photo of me having a lovely old time with David Lilley and the Roucan Events and Content Ltd team at London Developer Conference. Just imagine how much fun we could have together if you hire me 🤔

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