David Edery was participating in the Indie Studio Games Survival panel at Casual Connect USA in San Francisco when he mentioned, “There isn’t just one right answer to the question of whether or not you should work with a publisher. You have to look at who you are and what you want to do. If all you want to do is build games and have no desire to look at financial statements, then you should find a publisher to provide some adult supervision.”
Discovering Games as a Business
David Edery, Co-Founder and CEO of Spry Fox, became interested in games early, playing them obsessively as a child. While in business school, he decided to study the games industry closely and realized it was on the verge of huge changes, such as free-to-play and digital distribution. It seemed a good time to become involved. His love of making games and his preference for being his own boss keeps him in the industry. However, if he could not be making games, he would certainly be involved in a startup with a social angle, such as alternative energy or education.
David spends the majority of his time involved with either work or his family. However, he enjoys reading, usually fantasy and science fiction, and vegetable gardening. Occasionally he goes on a TV-watching binge, currently the most recent season of Arrested Development. And he also enjoys both folk music and heavy metal, depending on his mood.
Skillz of the Mad God
Among the accomplishments that bring David satisfaction are co-founding Spry Fox and helping to create games like Triple Town and Realm of the Mad God, but he says if Spry Fox hadn’t entertained people with various games, someone else would have. He reminds us, “Free fun is not in short supply these days.” He insists, “I am still working toward the accomplishment that will make me feel like I really made the world a better place – a game that fundamentally enriches and improves the lives of the people who play it. My greatest fear is that I’ll never get there.”
The Right Team for the Time
Finding the right team to build a company with has been David’s biggest challenge, but he feels that with Spry Fox, he has succeeded. He says, “It was a matter of slow, methodical relationship building and evaluation. Almost everyone who is a core member of Spry Fox is someone we have worked with on one or more projects before we made them part of the company.” And David and Co-Founder Daniel Cook worked together on multiple projects before deciding to start Spry Fox.
As CEO of a small company, David is responsible for, as he puts it, “a little of everything: negotiating business deals, working with our distribution partners, collaborating on the design of our games, community management, you name it.” But since most of his career has been in various startups, he is used to wearing many hats.
Free-to-Play is Here to Stay
Although David believes it is impossible to predict what the games industry will look like in five years, in the short term, he knows F2P games will continue capturing market share away from traditional games, and that F2P will continue breaking into new game genres. He is also sure mobile and tablet games will continue to be huge, so many people will fail to pay attention to PC. And yet, PC has been the birthplace of recent huge hits like League of Legends and Minecraft. So David will be working on many F2P games, but he will make sure they are cross-platform titles that work on both mobile/tablet devices and the PC.
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