Future Perspectives: Dylan Collins

Gaming entrepreneur Dylan Collins discusses the flux in entertainment’s fastest growing sector and positives in the Irish economy with Stephen Dineen.

“The one big thing that is really very notable,” Dylan Collins tells eolas, “is everybody plays games now. Certainly 15 years ago, there was a real stigma attached to playing games, and that simply does not exist.”

Collins is Executive Chairman of Fight My Monster, which makes the same-named online game for 8-12 year old boys. He founded his first start-up, Phorest, during his college days in Trinity, when studying business and politics. After Phorest he and fellow students set up DemonWare, an online games technology firm.

“Probably the first thing that we saw that we really jumped on was this notion of people playing games with each other across the internet.” The experience was “only ever going to get bigger”, and formed the nucleus of this venture, which was subsequently acquired by Activation Blizzard.

“I think, as with a lot of successful start-ups,” he reflects, “if you make something that is for people like you, whoever that is, I think you’re always in with a pretty good chance because you literally are the customer.”

Gaming is in “a big state of flux at the moment,” exemplified by the shift to gaming on mobiles and the use of social media platforms. Everyone who grew up playing Xbox and PlayStation is now “looking for the next thing, but the next thing is not going to be as obvious as another Xbox or another PlayStation because people’s usage patterns have changed.”

He explains: “People want to play things on the go, they want to play games for like five or ten minutes as opposed to sitting down and playing it for two or three hours.” This explains why “probably the biggest focus of gaming right now is on mobile [phones]” and trying to translate game experiences into a mobile format.

“I think there are question marks as to what the hard core gamers are going to do, because they’re certainly not going away,” he adds. The challenge “at a macro level” is trying to provide “serious games” to these gamers, regardless of location.

The industry will “start to fragment more and more” as people “choose the platforms that they want to consume on.” He adds: “But it’s a $50-60 billion industry, so I think that change may not be quite as quick as it has been over the years.” In July, game and entertainment research firm DFC Intelligence forecasted that the global video game market will grow from $67 billion in 2012 to $82 billion in 2017.

Critics of gaming argue that it contributes to social problems such as sedentary lives (and consequent health problems) and the socialisation of violence.

For Collins, “there is always, and should always, be a healthy opposition to kids and people just sitting down and playing games.” However, it is not the only contributor to problems such as growing obesity, he defends. “The cheapest food is generally the most unhealthy, so the poorest parts of our society tend to eat the worst.”

The gaming industry is not just a global phenomenon but is also expanding in Ireland. Approximately 2,500 people work in it here, a fivefold growth since 2004. Collins has a strong vantage point to see indigenous and foreign direct investment. He is an ambassador for Enterprise Ireland’s International Start-up Fund (because of Fight My Monster, he divides his time between London and California) and is also Vice-Chair of the Government’s clustering development team for the sector, tasked with driving the creation of 2,500 new jobs by the end of 2014.

Three “simple things” are needed domestically. “One is on the marketing front: there are still not enough companies and people in the world who understand just how central Ireland is to online gaming in Europe.” Money, with “competent people” spending it on “the right type of messaging,” can fix this. The R&D tax credit needs to cover game development entirely.

“And after that, it’s very much [about] getting out of the way,” he adds. Ireland has attracted companies such as Electronic Arts “by accident slightly more than design”. He states: “We do run the risk that by trying to help, [and] helping badly we actually do more harm than good.”

Positives for the economy that he perceives include the entrepreneurial spirit among the new generation. “I’ve never seen more start-ups than I do now. I think it’s a super time.”

The perception of Ireland as a place to do business is “by and large pretty good”. The Irish economy “represents very specific opportunities, for example, gaming,” he states, but not enough companies know this.

“If you think about a lot of the companies that will have located there,” he reflects, “they do it because they’re expanding into Europe, because they’re big financially or because they’re making an acquisition”. Yet there are probably “a hundred times as many companies who are one step below that category, and they’re the ones we can be reaching out to.”