The goal of Amazon Games, the game publishing and development arm of Amazon, is to become a world-class top publisher in the game industry, says Laura Naviaux Sturr, GM, Operations, Amazon Games. The studio has launched three chart-topping titles so far: New World, Lost Ark, and Throne and Liberty.
At GameBeat Next, Naviaux Sturr spoke with Stanley Pierre-Louis, president and CEO, Entertainment Software Association (ESA), about the studio’s future portfolio and the ways its investments will come to bear over the next three years. That includes titles like the upcoming action brawler King of Meat and a new collaboration with Maverick Games on a future narrative-led, open-world driving adventure game, and big-swing investments in IP like Tomb Raider and The Lord of the Rings — and looking for breakout opportunities.
“The industry is at an inflection point right now,” she said. “We want to take two to three big bets a year and figure out the ones we can dial up a few notches. In our portfolio strategy, we need the blue chips with the dividends, some growth opportunities and engines and then taking some fun experimental bets. If you fast forward 10 years from now, what is Gen Alpha and Gen Z expecting from their gameplay experiences?”
Generating growth through IP
Media giants like Warner, Disney, and even Netflix are seeing great success exploiting their IP across media streams, and that’s a big part of the Amazon Games’ strategy. They’re all growing IP to take to transmedia, as well as leap at opportunities to secure established IP.
“Big IP will always matter, always carry with it this extraordinary fandom,” Naviaux Sturr said. “The big ones in the video game world are trying to get that commentary out of the depths of the internet into real-life experiences or through film and television or theme parks, like what you see with some of the very biggest video game IP. That’s an interesting vector in terms of finding new growth.”
For nascent video game IP, careful planning is crucial during the creation process, such as giving secondary characters potential for their own stories, considering what a prequel might entail, making sure the story could move throughout the timeline of your world in a compelling way and more.
“It’s more of the franchise planning at the outset that I’m seeing developers be very smart and strategic about. Look at how IP is being invented from the corners of the internet,” she said. “You have the Alexa Fund as an early investment vehicle at Amazon. We invested in a company called Superplastic. Their whole thesis was, how do we take Unreal and this ubiquitous technology that presumably will become very common, a skill set that a lot of developers have, and invent IP through social media?”
Demographics, attitudes and IP
In this year’s ESA study, “Essential Facts About the U.S. Video Game Industry,” they looked at Gen Alpha’s playing dynamics for the first time, and found that 79% percent play video games, with Gen Z’s numbers not far behind at 76% — a massive addressable market of people who love games. The average age of gamers is increasing over time, suggesting that more and more folks are lifelong gamers, playing not only new titles, but the titles they grew up with. Bringing those consumers along the journey of an IP they love requires some strategy, Naviaux Sturr says, which depends on the maturity of the franchise, consumer expectations and what the fans want.
With early-stage IP, there’s a lot more flexibility in the ways that you can expand and grow. But big IP holders like Roblox and Amazon Games, which see players across generations, have hard decisions ahead of them about how much player agency you’re going to allow this generation to have with your IP.
“In these user-generated worlds, micro-communities playing with a few people, watch parties — they expect to be able to have different rule sets and modify the game and do that in a way that feels very modern, seamless and easy,” she said. “For most of them, the common denominators are that they’re online, they play highly social experiences, and typically competitive ones, and some form of PvP (player vs. player). It’s my personal belief that this will still be their expectation 10, 20, 30 years from now.”
But she points at other statistics like the 53% of gamers who want single-player experiences. Addressing those consumers will require developers to challenge conventions: does every single-player game have to be 30 hours long, or have a single ending, and so on, and what will these games look like in the future?
“Our capital is always in terms of long-term value creation,” Naviaux Sturr said. “We’re taking that long view in making these stories, characters and narratives, and allowing them to come into these various spaces, whether through transmedia or the game itself, and telling new stories that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”