The coolest little bit of this that doesn't come across in the talk notes was in the background having one of the Massive Black founders, wearing this giant drawing tablet slung across his neck, making in real time a kind of Photoshop montage of people and dollar bills.  Yay Photoshop skills!

Jason Manely

Massive Black

2002 built conceptart.org.  Built a large online art community to support industry education and promotion of creativity.  100,000 members.  Grown a lot, now opened a non-profit school in SF to teach new students.  Run art workshops twice a year. 

Massive Black started in 2002.  Put together the best talent, the industry will have no choice but to work with us.  Knew that the industry was headed towards outsourcing and it seemed like a good thing to get started doing.  Made a top 10 dream list of clients then targeted those companies.

First job paid 6 grand.  Helped that Black Isle had promoted Jason as an artist.  Bootstrapped from there, drawing in more talent.  Working with id, Blizzard.   Hellgate London.  First project was 3 million dollars worth of work and wasn’t going to work in a fully remote fashion so moved everyone together in SF.  Got involved in a big project but just decided it was the wrong project.  Like an actor choosing their roles, developers need to choose the right jobs, creating new IP and not licensed IP for MB. 

Trade the money for not being jaded and burned out. 

Huge growth working with some publishers, double size and first project in 2 months.  Fast growth leads to struggles in quality and relationships.  Took on too much too soon, learned some hard lessons.  Emotionally a bit like Lord of the Flies.

3 types of companies to acquire: coming to lift up your skirt, take the info, then do it all without you.  Second type wants to get your for nothing.  Big publisher came in, get dependent, then work goes away and you become vulnerable.  At your weakest point, offer to acquire, get bought for payroll and that’s it.  Third type comes to “steal your company”.  “If we get the head, the body will follow”.  Gain key management.  Advice: talk to the biz folks but don’t let them in your building and make sure you have non-solicitation and mutual NDAs.  Finally some will pay you if they have no other choice, and that’s the position you want to be in.

Business isn’t typically fair and decent.

Went on to gain 105 clients and 155 projects including Transformers movie.

Industry in two parts: assholes and non-assholes.  We want to work with the non-assholes.  Original chose to work on “big name” projects but now they value creative fit and building a larger client portfolio to find those good folks. 

Nurture your consumer base into a community!  For the most part the industry is failing to do this.  A great opportunity is for the developers to create these, the devs are the rock stars of the game.  Developing this community early lets you reach into this group later to sell them things, etc.