Sega veterans form publisher-agency hybrid Alibi

gamesindustry.biz:

Sega veterans Jarvis Crofts, Luke Greenaway, and Mark Dallamore have formed a new publisher-agency hybrid, Alibi.

Based in London, Alibi draws on the three co-founders' experiences in data analytics, publishing, and more to help support developers in pitching and publishing games.

GamesIndustry.biz spoke with two of its founders, CEO Jarvis Crofts and CSO Luke Greenaway, about the formation of Alibi and why they believe a publisher agency hybrid is a sustainable way forward in the industry.

Alibi formed at the beginning of last year after Greenaway looked back at his time working in the music industry. He noted the importance of scouting in that industry, and wondered why it wasn't of bigger importance in games.

"You live and die by the success of your titles, the same way record labels do with their artists," he notes. "I had that idea in my head for a while, and when I left PTW I thought, 'You know what, I'm going to build this out."

"It's obviously incredibly challenging because there is no science to making successful games, and I think publishers struggle to be sustainable because innately they almost feel like hedge funds," Greenaway continues. "You have to have a quantity to balance the successes from those that aren't going to succeed. And I think the way we looked at it was actually, you can do this better."

Crofts, Greenaway, and Dallamore have over fifteen years of experience in the games industry. Crofts worked as a data analyst at Sega for a decade, moving from a junior to senior position on the publishing side before moving to Curve Games to head up portfolio and strategy.

Dallamore worked at Sega for six years as a project lead and product launch executive, with experience in product development. Greenaway worked in QA for fifteen years before moving outside the industry working in music software and business development. He then came back to work for PTW as director of commercial strategy.

Greenaway adds that publishing is high risk, which is why he wants