Scouting Out George Benjamin Jones - Dev Scout at Unity

Interview & words by Hugh Wybourne

We’re changing pace a little bit today to speak with a really unique member of the wider G.G community, and someone that I met at a G.G Dev Drinks earlier this year. He told me about his work as a developer scout for Unity and how his job was basically to help budding devs become big successes - hopefully, at least! The very same George Benjamin Jones came to have a chat with me in a sunny courtyard in Brighton whilst the Develop conference was on last month. He works at Unity, and whilst he couldn’t provide any official perspectives or opinions for the company, I wanted to hear what his personal insight could tell about the current state of the games industry. 

So much has changed not only since Covid, but over the last year as well. The industry has seen layoffs and financial tightness impact its ability to take risks on innovations, new ideas, and projects that normally might not be considered uncertainties. There’s so much going on all the time out there in the dev world, and whilst I consider myself fairly plugged in I knew George's unique insight working with indie developers would lead to a fascinating conversation...

So, tell us who you are and what you do?

[GBJ] My internal role is Associate Client Partner, I work with the sales team running support and scouting. I’m more of a networker keeping an eye on the industry, figuring out what games are coming out, what developers are popping up, who I should be paying attention to and connecting them to the right people. We have the Made With Unity programme, highlighting games on the blog, doing what they can to give devs resources, help and a boost where they can. I come here to network and catch up with people, especially after the year they've just had. It's good to figure out how people are and see where the games are at and see the new ones, then go back and write up some notes to keep an eye on things. We keep in touch and see what we can do to help. 

George is referring to Develop:Brighton where we met for this interview, a large UK games developer conference. For a lot of people in the industry, events like Develop and G.G Fest are a proper meeting point, an opportunity to touch base with the industry as a whole, meet old friends and make new ones and - in George’s case - gather vital info on how devs are doing. 

Are more people wanting to make games now than there used to be?

[GBJ] Yeah! In my opinion, with the way the games industry continues to grow, particularly over the last 10 years. And because of decades of material that just keeps piling up and the accessibility of YouTube and online learning platforms, it is consistently easier than ever to make a project. Even if you have the most basic idea you can download Unity and get going. There's external software like Twine and Ink that people use to just throw together a narrative and make it interactive. It's very easy to learn how to use those tools and build something. You don't even need to make it pretty, just put it together and put it on itch.io and share it with other people. It's this constant cycle of exploration and knowledge sharing and as that continues to develop the platform keeps exploding. I think It's becoming easier to do something by yourself if you have an idea, to do it as a side hustle with your day job and ship it and see what happens. 

I often hear stories of indie hits and successes, with immensely creative games exploding off of free platforms like itch.io, where constant GameJams and online conferences breed an immense amount of talent and potential. Despite this, we spoke a lot about the seemingly impossible task of discoverability and how, a lot of the time, an incredible game doesn’t necessarily translate to success and visibility you’d expect for its creator. Nonetheless, multiple  communities exist to promote each other to the best of their ability, and George’s work revolves around exactly those types of groups.

What’s it like maintaining the relationship with the collaborative communities you’re inherently attached to? 

[GBJ] I can only speak for myself in my dev scout role, it's a big industry that's had a tough year and I turn up to these things like G.G Fest and Gamescom and just make sure that people are able to keep making what they're making comfortably and ship it where they want to ship it’s about making sure people are comfortable doing what they love and they know who to go to if they need anything. Just being a middleman, that's my goal, someone who can point them to the right person or the right resources. I focus so much on the micro scale, on the day to day and making sure each dev is okay. 

Throughout our talk we kept coming back to what it’s like being a solo dev or being part of a small team trying to make it against the overwhelming size and funding of the AAA companies. There are a lot of potential ways to make it in the games industry, but that potential doesn’t necessarily mean success. 

How do you think potential developers view the AAA and indie game scenes these days? 

[GBJ] That's tough to say. I've been in the industry for 3 years and I don't work in dev. I'm not a technical person, I'm not out here releasing games. I think it’s mainly the scope, and the resources needed for that scope. The industry hit a rough spot but a lot of indie devs and small-scale publishers have exploded and filled the void a little bit, so there’s also a lot of external support available for indies and AA developers. We're still in a period of beginning to see some of the impacts of Covid on the games industry, so it's gonna be a way until we see the longer-term changes it’ll bring. It’s certainly tough for new folks to land a role right now, and that will influence what they decide to work on for a bit. We’ll always have the scope difference, and weighing-up risk, creativity, and stability. 

Indeed, at the moment very little seems certain in terms of what will work and what won't. Despite the size of the game making community at large and all the engaged and passionate voices out there promoting quality games, it seems many factors feed into what makes a hit - including player's available money and time. Like television channels fighting for viewing ratings. I wondered if George had a knack for spotting a hit game after a few years doing his role at Unity.

There are l000s of new games released every year, how are you supposed to find the best  ones?

[GBJ] Discoverability is a nightmare, has been a nightmare for quite a few years. Look at the stats for games being released year over year: a couple 100 a year is now 1000s, and you can’t possibly play them all, watch footage of them all, or read about them all. A lot of people rely on creators, TikTokers, YouTubers – folks they trust and resonate with when it comes to taste in games to highlight their top picks. I’ve had a couple discussions this week about how a lot of the industry isn't taking TikTok seriously as part of the promotion and discovery cycle, and that's a shift it’ll have to reckon with soon. I personally follow the traditional press and I put a lot of stock in writers, in a lot of the same people I’ve been following for years. If you know your own taste with some granularity then that certainly helps, but you do have to be willing to trust the opinions of the people you watch, read, or listen to.

I really latched on to his mentioning of creators as being part of the games journalism and promotion cycle. Whilst I do scrawl through itch.io and Steam Next Fest when it’s on, I've also discovered a lot of my favourite games through content made by streamers/creators of all sizes. Even if I don’t personally buy the game, I love seeing how much creativity and experimentation exists out there. This conversation then pivoted into our favourite studios and designers, and that old question of auteurs in game design.

Do you think that as the creator-centric way of promoting games becomes more prevalent, creators and auteurs will become more of a selling factor?

[GBJ] I think so! On the AAA side there’s something they miss when it comes to auteurship. Look at Eric Barone of Stardew Valley, Lucas Pope, or Sam Barlow of Her Story & Immortality. Sam built a fantastic team and their name is prevalent but not at the cost of everyone else and that is super important. It's a trust thing, you see their name and you know they're working with good talented people. And I've always seen it more as a marker of style than quality. 

Particularly when you look at someone like Lucas Pope. There's an artistic throughline with his games even if they all look and sound different. I think there's this different perspective and reception to auteurship between Indie and AAA partly because of the team sizes. Lucas Pope is largely solo, so he can do a lot more on his games than any one individual at a big studio can. It's naturally a very different scale of contribution and presence. 

It’s a fair point George makes, and one that lands as Lucas Pope is a personal favourite developer of mine. On paper, you would think that artists with a strong vision and dedication to quality would receive all the attention they deserve but it seems it’s rarely that simple. When you look at the raw numbers, it’s usually the same names each year exchanging sales records and media marketing attention. 

What is it about the big bi-yearly releasing game franchises that keeps them so successful?

[GBJ] I think it’s a legacy of quality and fine-tuning. People have loved the big franchises they play for a long time, and on individual bases there’s often not a lot of competition hitting the same beats, so you’ve got these established audiences excited by the prospect of playing more of their favourite games, and that audience being bolstered each year by the marketing and new technology and all the possibilities that come along with that. Big teams expand, new studios open, development gets streamlined–all these things that can make releasing an entry yearly or bi-yearly more efficient and more exciting. They make the releases feel like an event, like they always have. And linking back to my previous answer, we see something not too dissimilar to film where an individual’s contribution becomes more of an exciting selling point; “this person wrote x game and now they’re writing ours!”, that sort of thing. I find it really interesting watching how those big games balance trying new things with refining what’s established and loved.

Despite the vast chasm between the two spaces, the sharpest ideas from the indie scene always seem to feed back into the mainstream content engine eventually and there are people like George in every company whose job is to pay attention to these learnings and track what's resonating with audiences. I’ve always enjoyed watching and predicting game trends, and I figured if anyone might know what could pop off next it would be George!

What indie games trends right now do you think might find their way into the mainstream (i.e. psx graphics, artsy supernatural puzzle games, unique horror mysteries)?

[GBJ] It's funny you mentioned the PSX thing, the question of mainstream reaction is always hard to judge and I don't know if the throwback stuff is gonna happen more often, but look at Crow Country. It's hugely successful and it nails the aesthetic and the memory of playing those games while still feeling like a modern game. It doesn't feel like you're playing on a 30 year old controller with no analogue sticks y'know. There's always gonna be space. We had the indie boom at the end of the 00s with tons of pixel art, PSX and N64 throwback happening now and we’re just repeating. Maybe in a few years it’ll be the PS3 yellow filter. 

George had so much insightful knowledge to share and we want to thank him and by extension Unity for having a chat with us! We highly suggest planning yourself a trip to the next Develop: Brighton next year if you can, as there’s so much going on and so many wonderful and talented people to meet! If you’re an aspiring developer or a creative trying to break into the industry, keep going, and hopefully you’ll get that attention you deserve soon. 
Don't forget to keep an eye on Guildford.Games too! We're busy finalising our plans for the next G.G Festival - and it looks like it's gonna be the biggest EVER! 
Thanks again to George from us here at Guildford.Games for his time!