Man, it has been a long time since we did one of these.
The thing is, for us to really be able to deliver on a global games episode,
James has to spend a fair bit of time in the country that he's talking about.
And for the last year he's been mired in Games For Good work
And busy, spending all of his travel money trying to make things happen on that front.
So, he hasn't really gotten to embed himself in a game dev scene anywhere until recently.
But a few months back, he was asked to spend some time in Norway,
looking into how to grow the Norwegian games industry.
which means we can now competently talk about games from
a country that doesn't get much acknowledgement for the work done there.
And it's even better, because this turns out to be a very interesting case, if you look at it side-by-side with our 2
previous segments, on Brazil and Mexico, as Norway struggles with basically completely opposite challenges.
So let's dive in! First, let's talk about the fact that there's actually, already,
games coming out of Norway: Among the Sleep, Teslagrad, The Secret World, Dreamfall Chapters,
Fun Run, and, the upcoming Owl Boy all come from developers there.
So it's not like Mexico, or Brazil, where the industry has to be built completely from the ground up;
rather, the problem is that, while game development is happening in Norway,
very few of these companies actually break even, and, even, the number of developers getting products out
and generating any revenue at all, is completely dwarfed by the number of companies
that fall apart before they ever launch a title, or get trapped in a cycle of doing "For Hire" work for
other industries, and you can't have a games industry unless you can pay people to work on games full-time.
So, let's take a look at the essential questions: First - Is the Norwegian market big enough to support a games industry?
Frankly, the answer here is simply no.
Norway has a total population roughly the size of the San Fransisco Metro area.
In Latin America, we saw the opportunity to grow a games industry by
catering to an undeserved market, the local population
But, you can't support a games industry by developing for a nation
that's smaller than the big cities in most of the major markets.
This means that Norwegians are immediately going to have to compete on the world stage.
Second - Is the economy developed enough to support a games industry?
Absolutely! Norway is one of the Scandinavian Wonder-Economies.
They have one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world; miles ahead of the United States!
There is no question; their economy is robust enough to support this type of high-tech industry,
and to have an internal population, small as it is, as a ready market.
But, this economic strength comes with both some unique advantages, and some unique disadvantages.
As for the advantages, the Norwegian government works heavily
to help promote new industries and to support Norwegian cultural activities.
Additionally, they're always looking to get people interested in and to create new high-tech jobs,
outside of the already thriving oil sector. This means that many of
the developers there are able to survive and to get better at their craft with the backing of the government,
even if their first games aren't major commercial hits. This government backing should also help to underwrite
high risk endeavors which otherwise might never get off the ground-
like the creation of a specialized publisher to help work with developers in the region.
Additionally, health care costs are almost completely covered by the government as well,
meaning that it's a little easier for small indie companies, as employees can take the risk
to work on games while not worrying about what will happen if they or someone in their family gets sick.
But, all this economic power comes at a cost. While there's no universal minimum wage in Norway,
the lowest paid workers James could find were McDonald's employees
who were paid just north of 20 dollars an hour
This means that the cost of living in Norway is incredibly high,
which in turn means that even if you're running a lean
Hand-To-Mouth Indie company, you're going to have to sell a lot more
units to keep yourself alive than you would in places like Mexico or Brazil.
Third- What about education in the area?
Norway is one of the best educated countries in the world
with low tuition costs and insanely high rates of people going for postgraduate degrees.
This means that they certainly have a deep pool of people with technical skills necessary to create games
Additionally English is taught very early on and is highly emphasized
so a large portion of the population are nearly native English speakers.
This is important as if Norway is going to compete in the games market
it's going to have to do it on the world stage rather than just in Norway itself
and that means releasing games in English
and focusing on, rather than simply localizing for, the English language release.
On the other hand, Norway has just begun building out game development courses as a subject of study
There are a few schools working on Curricula to train game developers,
but these schools are young yet and are still working out exactly how to approach the topic.
Additionally, they don't have the wealth of industry veterans
that places like the US or Korea do to help with these programs.
Alright, so that's the basics. Now let's talk about some of the uniquely Norwegian issues facing the game industry.
First everyone is a developer.
There's no one handling any of the infrastructure or support which is so essential to forming an industry.
There's no marketing or PR. There's not specialized legal departments
although the government actually provides free legal help to startups, which is great for cutting costs.
And, there's no distribution or specialized QA. In fact, many of the companies barely have anybody in place
who does what we'd call management or business
Second, anybody with the skills to make games will make a much better paycheck and have a much better
chance at not simply being met with failure by simply working for the oil industry
This means that talent is often siphoned off and that companies sometimes get distracted
from their core projects by contract work from oil companies
Third right now venture capital in Norway doesn't understand the world of games.
Oil and real estate there make for easy
solid return investments in fields venture capitalists there already know,
so raising capital for games is a pretty hard sell.
Fourth, Janteloven.
I love the level of equality in Norway.
I think it is amazing; but sometimes even that has its downside.
There's a concept there called Janteloven,
which is basically the idea that you should repress the desire to stand out,
as your success might make others feel bad.
That you should aim to keep pace with the pack rather, than to be exceptional.
Unfortunately, founding an industry requires that people be exceptional,
and there are times where you just have to be bold and say I'm going for it.
I have got a great game here, and it deserves to be on the Playstation so I'm going to give Sony a call.
This janteloven attitude often keeps developers from making the most out of their games,
keeps them from promoting them as much as possible,
and from going for big publisher or distribution deals.
So how do you change the Norwegian game scene from a scene to a full-on industry?
Well first off, nothing's going to happen without infrastructure.
If I can name one thing that I think would really make this happen
It would be to have the government put some weight behind building a publisher in Norway,
Fully understanding that it's going to run in the red for a few years.
Without a protective internal publisher that can give Norwegian games the marketing, management, PR, and distribution they currently lack,
any progress will be severely hampered and no external publisher is going to give them the special attention they need.
Second you need the development community to welcome working with people who are not games people.
People in finance, capital, and on the government side of things can actually be amazing allies for this community,
but only if the community embraces them and helps teach them why games are an incredible cultural and economic tool
rather than turning away from them because they haven't dedicated their lives to this medium in the same way we have
Third, game companies have to become more efficient about production.
Though a publisher with external producers would probably solve this.
And, they have to start getting past the idea of janteloven.
Companies in Norway aren't just competing with other companies in Norway,
so Norwegian companies have to stop thinking of selling 20 to 30 thousand units as a success
and start looking to move enough copies of their games that they have a little left to put in the bank
while being able to pay everybody for a 40 hour work week at Norwegian prices.
You've got to be able to keep the lights on long enough to make your next game.
And finally, Norway has to continue to embrace its existing tradition of making games that are different.
It'll be years, if not decades, before Norway can really compete with the US and the way that we make Triple-A games.
But if you look at all the games we mentioned at the start of this, they're all a little bit different.
The biggest advantage Norway has is that it is creating an industry after the rise of digital distribution
where it doesn't have to compete for shelf space
and thus can compete on innovation, rather than just marketing budgets.
As they grow the industry there, if they can avoid the trap of trying to emulate the US market
and instead figure out what a Norwegian game industry is on its own,
I think they have a good chance. I'll see you next week