With layoffs and budget cuts happening across Electronic Arts in 2008, Michael Gluck was let go from the internal research group. The problem for EA was they still desperately needed his services despite losing headcount. Michael was running a play test group inside EA that brought in outside gamers to test very early versions of games. He brought in gamers, supervised gameplay session, and then administered surveys designed to help game developers refine they mechanics and improve the game. Most of these games are being tested years before they will ever hit shelves.
Without a full-time role at EA he set up a company and started pitching the same groups he’d been working for within EA. His model was simple: better results (higher sample sizes), faster results (days instead of weeks), at a fraction of the price.
Seems easy enough right? It’s not.
Qualitative research companies have been around for decades. The established players are deeply entrenched in research groups of major companies. They’ll charge anywhere from $20k-$50k just to get started. And the results take weeks and months to get back. VGMarkets prices start from $3k-$5k and they’ve completely disrupted the market.
After grueling all-day play testing sessions they crank through the night and pump out results within 24 hours. “We have no business hours," Mike says. "We have a day shift and a night shift. If we finish sessions on Saturday afternoon you’ll have an email with results by Sunday night.”
With the cost and time savings, it allows companies to do play test session 2-3 more then they would with the old model which you can imaging dramatically improves the results and ultimately the product. "We've had games do as many as nine separate sessions to test the game. Generally games go through about 5-rounds over the course of the development cycle."
The founder Michael Gluck is a relentless hustler. Not only is he a concert videogame music pianist, but he has managed to get a customer list that would make Client-9 blush. EA, Activision, Zynga, Ubisoft, Capcom, 2K, Sony, and many more. Anyone who is anyone in videogames has worked with Michael in the past few years.
“It’s all about focus. We decided to focus on the videogame category. We didn’t want to become like Nielsen and do everything. That focus allows us to find insights that the generalists just can’t, and it's made us the best at the type of research the videogame companies want."
While he keeps a very low profile, he is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable persons in the videogame industry. He gets access to all of the top games as early as the concept phase where a game is just a series of screenshots. Of course he’s under the strictest of NDAs considering these companies continue to use him over and over again. Mike is one of the most influential people in the videogame industry because the tests his company performs help green light or kill projects that gamers get their hands on 2-3 years later.
Two years ago 100% of his business was with console game companies, that’s down to 70% and dropping quickly. “Social and mobile games are getting regorious testing now. That’s the future of gaming and my business.”
When I spoke to him this week he was literally sitting on South Beach. He’s gone from laid off, to the CEO of a multi-million dollar company in four years. When I asked him about Venture Capital funding he said not only hadn’t he taken any, but he wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about doing it. “I put in $10k of my own money on the first project and made back $20k. I kept putting it all back into the business and eventually I could afford to hire people to do my job and focus on getting new clients. ”
Michael is the type of person we’re going to write a lot about. All substance. Hard work and risk taking have him turning an industry upside down. He has been profitable since the week after he was fired and now employs 30-people. #Winning
