Why ex-Sony boss Shawn Layden is assisting Streamline Media Group go worldwide

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Streamline Media Group, a game services corporation in Malaysia and the U.S., is providing itself a increase in the worldwide gaming market place by signing up Shawn Layden as a member of its advisory board.

Layden is the former chairman of PlayStation Worldwide Studios and former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America. Since leaving Sony in 2019 immediately after 34 years on the job, Layden has grow to be an adviser for game businesses.

Streamline Media Group has more than 200 personnel focused on companies such as game outsourcing, art, testing, and other services. And it has focuses on carrying out remote work for other businesses, and for the reason that of the pandemic that has grow to be a crucial challenge for the expansion of the game sector, which has seen lots of delays of triple-A games in the previous year.

“Streamline solved for this problem years ago,” Layden stated in an interview with GamesBeat. “They know the challenge of remote distributed development and how to work with your partners, your teams, the stakeholders, and even have a program in Sri Lanka and artists in Stockholm, which will all come together and collaborate in this platform for Streamline.”

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A wealthy background

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Layden will advise the corporation on its all round worldwide approach for video games and enterprise. Layden was most not too long ago the chairman of PlayStation Worldwide Studios and previously served as CEO of SIE America, and Executive Vice President, and chief operating officer of Sony Network Entertainment International.

Layden’s profession began in 1987 in the corporate communications division as the assistant to Sony co-founder Akio Morita. He played a essential part in launching and operating the PlayStation consoles more than the last 20 years.

Asked why he was advising, Layden stated he believed of it as a way to have an influence across the sector, beyond working for one corporation. He worries about enormous expenses that are increasing for game development, and how to get the complete sector to embrace practices and technologies that can hold these expenses in verify.

“It’s going to get extragalactic pretty soon,” he stated. “Some of our game production mythologies haven’t changed in 25 years.”

Streamline Media Group CEO Alexander Fernandez stated in an interview with GamesBeat that he believes Layden can aid the corporation as it tries to provide social-financial mobility for present and future generations via video game careers. Streamline has tripled its income in current years, and it is expanding into new territories.

“We need to get different people in the industry. And that’s how you make a game like Parappa the Rapper, made by Masaya Matsuura, a professional musician,” Layden stated. “It’s moments like that we have to find a way to create an onboarding opportunity. I talked before about the cost of game development is just escalating. And that trajectory goes to a really, really bad place. If you’re not talking about more voices, more variety, and diversity, you’re going to get sequels, you’ll get copycat games, you’ll get the same stuff.”

Layden believes the game sector has to be ambitious and sensible on these matters, and it has to disrupt itself ahead of other industries will do it to gaming.

“We have to be our own disruption, because if we don’t do it ourselves, sure enough, someone who’s non-endemic is going to come in and they’re already at the games,” Layden stated.

An entertainment metaverse?

Street Fighter V

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The lines involving media, entertainment, technologies, and video games have converged into the metaverse, Fernandez stated. Now is the time to construct a sustainable structure about it that progresses the evolution of small business models and welcomes more persons, voices, and talent to shape it, he stated.

Layden’s part comes on the heels of Streamline’s worldwide expansion into the Americas, with headquarters in Las Vegas and a recruitment drive for software program engineers and game developers. With diversity and representation at its core, Streamline is actively recruiting applicants to help the industry’s development though also transforming classic companies via the implementation of video game technologies.

Streamline’s small business divisions involve game outsourcing firm Streamline Studios, Streamframe, Streamline Games, All Pixels, and Day Zero.

Streamline’s extended road

1627394409 866 Why ex Sony boss Shawn Layden is helping Streamline Media Group

Image Credit: Sony

The corporation basically began in the Netherlands in 2001, and then it set up shop in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in 2010. It has expanded to Las Vegas, Europe, and other components of the world. And it has worked on games such as Street Fighter V, Final Fantasy XV, Oddworld Soulstorm, Outriders, Gears of War, Death Stranding, Pillars of Eternity, BioShock Infinite, and Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow.

“We became lensed into the concept of the metaverse blending media, entertainment, technology, and gaming in the past year in a project we did with Balenciaga, bringing their fall 2021 fashion lineup to the rest of the world and to their consumers,” Fernandez stated. “From there, we began to realize is that ultimately, this expansion of our of the games industry, the entertainment side of our space, is going to be met also with the expansion of the enterprise side of video games. And we’re extremely excited to finally see that happen.”

At the very same time, Fernandez began speaking a lot with Layden, who worked with Steamline Media though he was at Sony, exactly where they worked collectively for a dozen years across corporation lines.

“We began to realize that there was a lot of overlap where we saw not only the talent and diversity perspective, but from a commerce side and what is the future of the games industry,” Fernandez stated.

The new reality

1627394411 441 Why ex Sony boss Shawn Layden is helping Streamline Media Group

Image Credit: Irrational Games

Layden became extremely interested in how Streamline Media’s Streamline Studios game outsourcing division handled remote work.

“I stepped away from Sony at the end of 2019. And before I could get back into the world, as it were, all of us were struck down by the coronavirus pandemic, which means working from home,” Layden stated. “Alex created a really valuable asset for remote work. We were looking at a world where not everyone’s going to go back to 2019. The old days of the working model are in the past. It’s sealed in amber. We can observe it, we can poke at it, we can study, but we can’t get back to it. And I think the future is going to be for those companies who have the  ability to adapt to the new world order coming out of chaos of the pandemic and looking to find ways to make their employees happy and motivated and enriched to come back into work in collaboration.”

Layden stated the pandemic gave businesses the spread out the workforce remotely about the world.

“And this also opens up the ability for more people to participate in video game development,” Layden stated. “If you don’t have to get to the Silicon Valley to be part of this world, but you do want to be part of it, and you have the skills to do that, you can do it. We are now creating a world where everyone can participate from almost everywhere. And I think that is the key to unlocking the game industry.”

Fernandez agrees that it is a terrific chance to get more diverse persons into the game sector.

Layden and Fernandez also discussed the consolidation of the game sector into a handful of substantial players. This force can harm the industry’s diversity, and the way to buttress against that is to locate more onramps for persons about the world into gaming, Layden stated.

“The diversity will only increase if we increase the number of people who are participating,” Layden stated. “That’s what the pandemic has given us — a chance to press pause and realize how we’re going to re-create the workforce around these new restrictions. And then the happy outcome of that is we can get more people in now. We can get people in who never thought they could get here. We can connect with them. We can give them tools, we can give them teachings, we can bring them into this.”

Layden thinks that is a net positive. Outsourcing firms like Streamline have a precious commodity in the talent and educated game development teams that can be place on big projects. While the game sector has grown, it hasn’t been as excellent about the development of new talent, Layden stated.

“If you really want to have a sustainable pipeline, you need to invest in talent that comes from anywhere,” Fernandez stated. “You need to be going to places like Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the emerging places of our own country. In the end, that’s where the talent is. They are raw talent that want to participate, but they need access to the markets. From a standpoint that the social economic impact our industry has is a story that everyone gets to experience, if we’re willing to be brave enough to go out there and connect with these people.”

Fernandez also believes in enterprise gaming, or the usage of video game technologies in non-gaming fields that will perpetuate and construct careers and essentially transform the economy, he stated.

“We need to realize that we are expanding our market and we’re growing this new part of the economy,” Fernandez stated. “It’s new GDP that effectively hasn’t been seen before. And our industry is leading this.”


Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz

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