Investments

If you know anything about me, you might say that I have an unhealthy obsession with video game companies, particularly their inner workings. I do a significant amount of digging into financials, business practices, employee posts, public boards, talk to industry employees, and listen to chatter from the industry.

I've written a lot about Activision, Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft in the past. But, what you might not know is that I also frequently invest in video game companies. I won't invest in something I don't fully understand however. Investing is like gambling, except you can have an edge simply by doing proactive research. Activision, EA, and Ubisoft.. their futures were fairly certain in the beginning. I've owned stocks in ATVI since they were $10-11, Ubisoft at $5, and EA at around $15. I had invested in Tencent back when they were 50 HKD too, and I've written about them many times in the past due to their relationship with Blizzard.

You won't find me investing in much other than entertainment, gambling, electronics, and gaming companies.

Now one company that I have been following for a VERY LONG TIME is Guillemot Corporation. I was initially interested in them back when they manufactured video cards, but was surprised when they acquired Hercules. Shortly after that time, the company lost a huge amount of value and they've been quiet for several years. These days, they just do a little amount of sales and they own the ThrustMaster line of gaming joysticks. It is a small, but profitable business. But what many people don't know is that this company was the birthplace of Ubisoft, and they acted as the gaming company for a short time, before splitting off and creating the Ubisoft Corporation as a separate entity. If you look back at ancient versions of the Guillemot website, you can see their old game releases.

Takeovers you say..

Back in November, there was some industry chatter about several different movements taking place within the Guillemot Corporate family, especially within the Shanghai Ubisoft management structure. Something big was happening. I suspected that it might have something to do with fears of a hostile takeover by Vivendi. They already snagged the Guillemot family's Gameloft, and many experts believe that Ubisoft is next on their target list. My suspicion is that key employees, and potentially licenses/contracts, are being juggled around companies within the Guillemot sphere of influence in order to protect themselves, or at least create some obstacles, in the event of a hostile takeover.

Guillemot Corporation was really their only other public company under their complete control, so I purchased various stocks at around 1.30 EUR. I think something big is going to happen here, including some assets being moved from other Ubisoft facilities to this one. It's climbed about 0.20 EUR since then, but I honestly think something big is still going to happen in the near future that will drive up public interest and value in their stock. And even more events taking place until the end of the year.

Of course, this could just be Vivendi attempting to drive up the stock price of Ubisoft, before selling it off. They haven't fared too well in the gaming industry, and it's something they should abandon. Nothing increases stock prices more than increasing your stake in a company, spreading rumors and then denying them.

And you mentioned something about "penny stocks"?

But now my attention is on a smaller public gaming company. It's a penny-stock too, something I've never really invested in before. It was a Canadian company called Imperus Technologies Corp., who renamed themselves to 'Tangelo Games' (currently at $0.04) after acquiring Diwip Ltd. out of Israel, and Akamon Entertainment out of Spain. There's really nothing to write home about these companies, they don't create anything too special or unique like the big guys, but they have a lot of experience constantly pumping out small gambling and casino games for mobile devices. And, they are very successful. Currently, the company is very profitable, but they are also massively in debt from previous investments and decisions.

There are two primary players in this company that interest me: James Lanthier (CEO) & Vicenç Martí (previously owned Akamon and was made President of Tangelo).

Vicenç owns another company too, called 'Billy Mobile' that operates in the exact same building as Akamon Entertainment. Interestingly, just a few weeks ago, the offices of Billy Mobile were raided by police in Spain. The operation was related to mobile telephony fraud. =]

From what I dug up however, it's only because of their very aggressive marketing (too many text messages to users who complained.) They'll get off with a slap on the wrist and a small fine. But, that Billy Mobile company he owns looks like it's going to be highly successful. If it was a public company, I would have invested in it by now. I think it's going to make big waves, but only in certain countries where their aggressive strategies are still legal. And, I suspect that Billy Mobile will be utilized by Tangelo Games in the future as well. Billy is Vicenç's baby, the golden son, and where I think most of his efforts are currently being placed. He sees it as a billion-dollar company, and he's not wrong.

Now the CEO of Tangelo, James Lanthier, he's a different creature. His primary passion isn't exactly creating video games, but rather increasing the value of entertainment companies, and then selling them off as a complete package. He's into acquisitions and being acquired. Two men with different drives. From what I see, James has been working on reducing company debt - so I don't think there's going to be any problems here. It's a highly profitable business, really just running on old titles at the moment, that will be able to pay off the debt within a reasonable time frame.

And from the developer stand point, the teams are all still busy and hard at work. They aren't developing new games, but rather porting over all of their existing libraries onto a new platform (Unity) so that it can be supported on new devices. New graphics, new engine, and more devices of simple casino games that have worked. There is currently a hiatus of game releases, however there is going to be a huge rush of titles being released simultaneously at the end of this year.

So, what we have is a hugely undervalued company, with very little investment risk, a flood of titles coming out at the end of this year and early next year, and managers who are driven to make the company valuable enough to be acquired. That sounds like a reasonable investment to me, and if you also want to make some money with little risk, I would advise investing this company at the $0.04 rate or under before the end of 2017.

Much has changed within the past five years leading a better level of comfort, I guess you'd say.

For example, the public is much more aware now of the type of internet harassment and intimidation that takes place. And, there are more laws slowly appearing to protect internet users from cyber-bullying. Back when I started, death threats and attacks against female bloggers weren't well known of at all, and the term "misogyny" just started to go mainstream. So at least now it's a known and public issue, making it more difficult for aggressors.

So, what's all happened in the past five years?

• A handsome rogue leaked confidential NSA information, verifying what most rational thinkers in the world already knew.
• We were all supposed to die of Ebola according to main stream media.
• We were all supposed to die of the Zika Virus according to main stream media.
• The Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House failed.
• Blizzard pulled off the best Legion marketing stunt ever when they turned the Olympic pools green.
• Various game developers successfully hyped extremely disappointing games. The gaming media agreed that they would never be fooled again.
• Project Titan was cancelled, and scavenged to create a successful TF2 clone competitor.
• All of the big names have left Blizzard.

A little bit about me during the past five years:

I've been doing consulting work with AAA developers and publishers, helping them sky-rocket their wealth. And, I've launched three very successful titles that I designed. Occasionally, I have some free time on my hands, and decided to fire up the old blog. I haven't decided what to write about yet, if I write anything at all, but I thought some old readers would at least appreciate the nostalgia.

If I do write about something, I will try to make it original content. I dislike re-posted garbage, and opinions on trending news items. I can't talk specifics due to non-disclosures, but I may enjoy writing about the gaming industry from a general development or finance side.

I love the work of indie developers, so I can definitely provide some useful advice and strategies that they're currently not aware of. I may even review some indie games who don't know how to market themselves.

Who knows.

I'll try this out with comments disabled. It'll be better if people can't send "messages" to me directly. I've gone back and cleaned up the blog, removed irrelevant posts (e.g. exploits and gold making that no longer apply), and tried to focus it some more. Unfortunately, it looks like some old imgur links have died but I can't do much about that.

I felt the itch to make a quick update to the blog, because I absolutely love it when employee drinking and cameras combine inside game development studios. During a recent Blizzard Office pub crawl, David Luong (Senior Cinematic Artist) captured candid photos within the studio of people, offices, food, and.. stuff that would be considered internal-only secrets.

While taking a photo of a camera set, he also accidentally captured a high resolution (7360x4912) photo of their in-progress Warlords of Draenor cinematic story board.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ackdoh/11053742104/in/album-72157638070235813/

Going through his history, you'll find other interesting information about life inside the Blizzard offices. For security reasons, many of these pictures (particularly the ones showing ID badges and internal IP addresses) should probably be removed or fixed.

Production Timelines

These storyboards tell you a lot about their work behind the scenes. How long it typically takes to create a cinematic video, how it fits in with other cinematics they have been working on, and it can give you a good idea of when the game will the ready. After all, the game won't be ready until the cinematic is finalized and ready for showing.

Based on the story board, it looks like this is just the beginning of the cinematic, or possible just before the half-way point. Development of the cinematic apparently takes several months, and this doesn't look like it will be completed until around July or August. If that's the case, we're likely looking at a release date of the game sometime in Q4 2014. My bet is November, since releasing games in December has grown unpopular with Blizzard apparently.

Cinematic & Game Prediction

Everyone pretty much knew the game name long before Blizzcon, so the game location set in Draenor was obvious. What we learned from the disappointing in-game trailer (which made it seem like the game was being rushed) and the panels is that Warlords of Draenor. Metzen has promised that this is going to be "THE MOST KICK-ASS EXPANSION SET" ever created however.

It takes place after the Siege of Orgrimmar, where Garrosh is put on trial but then escapes as time travel is somehow used within the game. No one really knows any details of the story from the panels though, other than that it incorporates heroes from the past.

We can see that the cinematic has Mannoroth and blood dripping scenes, so this is definitely the Mannoroth blood ceremony that's taking place on the planet of Draenor. If this is the Mannoroth blood ceremony, then Gul'dan and Grom Hellscream are also present and the cinematic will take place about 35 years in the past. It shows orcs travelling to the ceremony (torches by night), Mannoroth's green blood, and tons of fire, smoke and explosions at some point later. In this cinematic though, that there is an attack sequence during the drinking ceremony which never happened in the original history, so this appears to be about a different version of history taking place. So something goes wrong, Garrosh likely intervenes somehow and changes history, and none of the Orcs will drink the blood - meaning that Grom and all of the other Orc tribes will maintain their brown color in the next expansion pack. It sounds very cool, it's a very well known and historic event. There have been many rumors online about time travel and Garrosh, so I suspect that this is probably the Iron Horde, led by Garrosh, attacking the ceremony to make changes to the future. There's a "glaive blast" sequence which would be Mannoroths weapon and ballista being destroyed, and Grom's Gorehowl will probably make an iconic appearance in the upcoming cinematic.

None of the Raid bosses have been announced yet, but the cinematic definitely provides more insight into what to expect. For example, Gul'Dan and Mannoroth will definitely be bosses, and that means that Archimonde will likely be present as well. Probably as a Raid Final Boss, which makes the most sense. And we can expect several famous historical enemies, like Killrogg Deadeye - my favorite.

I've hunted around, and this is a ton of brand new information that no one is aware of. It'll be fun to watch the fans get really excited about seeing Mannoroth again. I've sent these leaks to PC Gamer and Joystiq, maybe they'll pay attention this time. It's been a while, but I seem to recall a publisher or two that would take all credit for my information and never once mention the source. I sent it to Kotaku too since they love this type of stuff. I know.. ewww gross.. but garbage clickbait websites are the only places that gamers visit these days sadly. Haven't heard anything back yet. And, I'll drop some hints on reddit sometime in the future too.

The Only Other Thing Out of Blizzcon 2013

Last years Blizzcon was cancelled so this was supposed to be the big one: a redemption story to make up for past events.

Unfortunately, the feeling I received from most goers was that Blizzcon was once again a disappointment as they only re-summarized things that we already knew about. The one, and only thing, that attendees were actually excited about were the Updated Character Models. Nothing new was really announced, just a rushed WOW expansion set.

The one thing I absolutely hated about this Blizzcon though was a comment made by J. Allen Brack. A question was asked if there were any plans to create Vanilla WOW (or other expansion) servers.. a question that has been asked many many many times over the past several years. However, his response was just asinine: "No! And, by the way, you don't want to do that either. You think you do but you don't."


It's fairly well known within the company that he always hated vanilla, but I didn't expect him to make such a public and foolish statement. You can see it for yourself here by skipping to the 30 minute mark or so. He's been against the revival for some time, even working actively against it, but he's completely wrong. If Blizzard were to ever launch Vanilla WoW Servers, it would do incredibly well. I think the number of users returning would completely shock upper management, and their servers may even be unprepared for it. It's sad though when the Production Director for World of Warcraft vehemently demonstrates their lack of game design understanding and why the original game was so addictive.