I’ve received a few messages asking about Caviar, so thought I’d share some background. For over twenty-five years I've been fortunate to play a small role in the games industry, contributing to games, speaking at conferences, and building partnerships (and friendships) around the world. Many of these have been forged through overseeing external development relationships, a key piece of AAA development that accounts for ~40% of game budgets. As enjoyable as this has been, the complexity of finding the right external partners can be a very real problem. AAA games often require hundreds, potentially thousands of external resources to deliver, but the issue lies in the multitude of factors that need to be considered. Budget and availability are just the starting points; developers need partners who understand their game's genre, are experienced with specific hardware requirements, and ideally the same tools and game engine. Then there is scalability, style and vision compatibility, not to mention potential language or timezone barriers, security requirements, etc. etc; the list goes on. This multi-faceted decision-making process is often overwhelming, and the existing methods have been totally inadequate to address these complexities in, quite literally, a world of opportunity. And it’s not solely about finding the right partner. Where time is always of the essence, if it takes six weeks to find a fifty-person co-dev team, that’s three-hundred development weeks lost. Show me a game team who wouldn’t want that time back in the schedule! My aim with Caviar is to empower developers and service providers alike, to bring predictability and efficiency to an often frustrating area of game development, and hopefully expose thousands of partnership options that otherwise wouldn't wouldn’t be visible. Globally, AAA game development depends on hundreds-of-thousands of external partners supporting the industry - some working in large companies and others as independent contractors - composers, actors, technicians, translators, testers, engineers, artists, musicians, researchers, producers and designers - and they all bring different viewpoints, experience, flair, passion and backgrounds - and as an industry we could benefit from embracing more of this diversity across the board. This initiative is deeply personal to me. I've seen the struggles, felt the frustrations, and, like many others, have envisioned a better way. Game Caviar isn’t just a platform; it's a commitment to improving how we create games, and ultimately helping developers increase the odds of success. It makes sense to de-risk when embarking on any creative or financial endeavor; my personal goal is to help developers and service providers forge the most meaningful, creative partnerships possible, because wins like that are also wins for gamers - and for the industry as a whole. If you’d like to know more www.gamecaviar.com (best viewed on desktop) or get in touch [email protected].
Bobby Liauw
4mo
I’m loving this already!
Founder of CaddySpace | Director @ Concept Art House | Strategic Partnerships & Operations
9moThank you, Jason, for building a great product!