The Escapist Presents: Joystick Labs: The First Five

[Team Hollywood]

Joystick Labs: The First Five

The Escapist talks to Juan Benito of Joystick Labs and the five game companies selected for their first run.

Watch Video

 

[Fightgarr]

What a cool concept for a company. Good video.
Those little guys are the kind of companies I want to be doing art for in the future...

 

[Electrogecko]

Interesting stuff. I can't help but question my current college major. I know everyone thinks they can do it, but I truly believe I could be a great game designer.

Great music. Heat Man?, Tal Tal Heights, and what was that third one?

 

[TrogzTheTroll]

This tickles my taste buds... of KNOWLEDGE

 

[Valagetti]

Awesome! All the people in the video had either a pony tail or facial hair... or both. Thats the true mark of a game designer!
I don't like casual gamers n' gaming, combine that with portable consoles, eg: iPhone = money spinning! Though the guy at the start who talked about how he doesn't like gaming right now as in, the story side of the piece, seems promising!
I hope game designers focus on that more, instead of making another Mario or COD.

 

[beefpelican]

This is a cool idea. I kinda wish they had spent more time talking about the details of the games they were making though. It was all very vague.

 

[Killerbunny001]

The idea is very nice, but how does Joystick make a profit with this model ?

 

[MasterSplinter]

In my country there is this sort of something similar thing. It's called a business incubator. They take small teams with projects of high added value potential. That means that teams that have a software related project are more likely to be admitted (also they have to pay money, I'm not exactly sure on the how they deal with that) and therefore there are currently a couple of independent game developers over there.

The overall atmosphere of the place is very cool and slick and all of the companies have unusual names like FoxyHouse, Make IT Work, Quimera Factory, Trojan Chicken, etc.

They even organize the only videogame making contest of my country once a year (this is the fifth year), me and a couple of friends participated for the second time recently but lost, that doesn't mean we won't try again next year tough.

 

[Calobi]

The idea is very nice, but how does Joystick make a profit with this model ?

How much do you invest and what does Joystick Labs get in return?
It depends on the team size; $6,000 per founder, or up to $18,000 seed funding per team. We also get a modest equity stake in your company in exchange for funding it, and a share of the money generated by the game or app you work on at Joystick Labs.

 

[Moffman]

Good company, dunno whether I agree that these games are "different" a couple nice ones, adding story to casual games and teen girl audience, which let's face it, has been neglected.