Jon Goldman is chairman and CEO of Foundation 9 Entertainment, the Irvine, Calif.-based video game development company that followed a different path by sticking with the cool stuff of making games and leaving the business of publishing games to others. (Update: Goldman announced March 16 that he will become chairman of Foundation 9 and James North-Hearn will be its new CEO.)
While most developers grow up to be game publishers – who market, distribute, and publish games – Foundation 9 is a rare company that has amassed a lot of firepower but remained a developer. I caught up with him at the Dice Summit in LasVegas last month, just before he was about to take off for the gym. I saw him again at the Game Developers Conference, where he was constantly greeted by other developers. He is casual and approachable, but very serious when it comes to the gaming business.
Goldman says that focusing on development quality is a good business in its own right. Foundation 9, funded by Francisco Partners, is now the largest independent game development company in North America, with 10 studios across eight different locations. The company handles game development for a wide range of publishers and developed more than 60 titles in 2007. At any given time, it has more than 35 projects in the works.
Q: In the earlier days of gaming, everyone assumed that the only business
model that worked was being a publisher. Game developers would grow up
but eventually have to expand into publishing in order to be viable.
When did you first think about the idea of succeeding as a company
focused only on game development?
A: Long time ago. I remember talking about this formally with others at GDC in Long Beach and had thought about it previous to that. In every other media industry, there is great value to making content - the market values top authors and singers, for example. Meanwhile, we don’t want to destroy our client base by competing against publishers, so I
saw a great opportunity as a pure play developer.
Q: Has that idea gotten better over time?
A: Well, the idea is simple and hasn’t changed as a concept, but we are seeing plenty of benefits that we hadn’t foreseen, just the ability to do more things than we could as smaller developers. Read the rest of this entry »
