Leader of revolution in video game industry

Charles Cecil, who created a multi-million selling adventure game series, is the headline speaker at next month’s Venturefest Yorkshire, the annual innovation showcase for young science, technology and creative businesses.

He said the video game industry is going through the same process of change as the music industry and highlighted the role played by the musicians Radiohead in 2007.

“Radiohead gave their album away and said ‘pay what you think it’s worth’,” said Mr Cecil. “They were pioneers of this idea of actually breaking the model.”

Last summer his York-based company turned to US website Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects, to help pay for the fifth instalment of the Broken Sword franchise.

The digital “democratisation” has allowed independent developers like Revolution Software to produce games profitably for the first time and Mr Cecil hopes other companies in other sectors will be able to benefit in the same way from new distribution channels.

Revolution set out to raise $400,000 from Kickstarter in a bid to develop a game independently of publishers for the first time in its 22-year history.

The company’s 30-day appeal raised $900,000 from 15,000 backers, including many hardcore fans, in just 15 days allowing it to “break the cycle” of developing products at a loss, said Mr Cecil.

“In the traditional model, where games are sold through retailers, independent developers get about seven per cent of revenues, but against that is offset development costs, localisation, quality assurance and anything else the accountant decides to include,” he added.

“It was impossible to earn any revenue. It was exactly the same as the film model. People call it Hollywood accounting – actors never actually earned any royalties. It was the same in music.”

Being able to access funding direct from the end users has allowed Revolution and others to break free.

Mr Cecil, who was awarded an MBE for his contribution to the UK video game industry in 2011, will use his speech at Venturefest to talk about how record labels, film distributors and video game publishers seized power by taking control of distribution and the impact this had on independent companies.

“Games are leading the change,” he said.

“From our perspective, we are delighted.” Industry executives less so, he added.

“Under the old model, you would pitch a game to a publisher. The publisher had to decide whether his customer, the retailer, would want to stock it, among very competitive shelf space, when the game is published in 18 months’ time.

“The publisher, the distributor and the retailer are between you and the audience. Their prime responsibility is to their shareholders.

“Since we have used crowdfunding, our responsibility is to our audience and our prime customer is our audience. It’s a much purer relationship,” said Mr Cecil.

He will be joined at York Racecourse by the bestselling author, Richard McCann, whose personal life story has helped thousands of people in the business community change the way they think and act.

Mr McCann lost his mother to the Yorkshire Ripper and resorted to drugs to cope with the tragedy but after prison he managed to turn his life around to become one of the busiest speakers on the circuit.

Tony Hardy, Venturefest chairman, said: “This year’s programme is all about sharing the real life experiences of some incredibly inspiring and successful entrepreneurs.

“As well as hearing from Charles Cecil and Richard McCann, delegates will be able to pick up DIY techniques for getting their websites noticed, learn 20 ways to make more money online, find out how to deliver a successful pitch, discover how to exploit social media in their businesses and find out how best to negotiate an equity deal.”

Twitter: @bernardginns