Chris Deering - Lessons from the Games Industry for Platform Strategies

Chris Deering has worked at the helm of the computer games industry for decades with the likes of Atari, Sony and Codemasters. He spoke about mining the lessons from his long career in the gaming industry to digital strategy across industries.

In this talk, Chris looks at the ways the games industry has worked and connects the learnings to thinking about digital business strategies in general. A platform play is a key business model, which Chris sums up with “Build the highways, collect the tolls”. From printers and ink cartridges to game consoles, and now Facebook, the platform play is a well-developed business model. Chris goes through the best of “Game creator’s Folklore of Old”: you have to get your platform decision right, you have to define your break-even units, and you have to engineer the equivalent of the ‘arcade game addiction’ that used to keep kids coming back to the coin arcades. There are lots more - watch the video to make sure you don’t miss out on any of them.

Chris also goes through the mega trends that have affected the games industry, and how they affect business models in general. Chris rounds up the talk by sketching the various platform plays that are feasible, and that startups should think about.

Watch more great talks from HackFwd’s Build events at Passion Meets Momentum.