Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think investing in gaming startups is about getting a return from a 100m or 1b company.

It's about investing in games. I think an individual game is analogous to the typical startup. Minecraft is a $2.5b one[1].

Here's a list of 11 games grossing $3b or more: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-11-top-grossing-video-....

Riot Games had $1.3b revenue in 2015, and has had VC funding. I think that's what you're asking for.

[1] http://recode.net/2014/09/09/game-on-why-microsofts-2-5-bill...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games

You put it in a much better way :) As you said it's about investing in games, but expecting to create a financially successful game on the first try is kinda unrealistic. So I think the better plan is to invest in a team that has a methodolgy to build games that have chance to be financially successfull, and let them build and test at least 5-6 games. This is like a startup pivoting and trying to find the product market fit. In gaming business this confirmation is quite straightforward, you do limited play testing for a prototype, and decide if you'll continue develop the game according to test results. If you do continue to develop, you release the game for soft launch with limited features and limited marketing budget. If the game has enough retention, you have a game that can become financially successfull. The studio follows this procedure and iterare till finds a game market fit :)

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