Vision
Four major changes are taking place in the games industry today:
Games Audit Ltd's aim is to meet the increasing demand for these services from the growing number of banks, games funds and completion bonders who are entering the games industry. There is also a growing requirement for these services from publishers who want to improve the management of their external (and also internal) development teams.
Furthermore it is expected with Playstation 3 and Xbox 2 that development and marketing budgets will increase again under pressure from the format owners and from retail. More diverse and wide-ranging funding schemes need to be put in place to achieve the higher budgets required.
More Complex Business and Development Structures.
Models such as the one illustrated above mean an increased need for Auditing, Reporting and Project Management.
We're the "eyes" and "ears" of the bonder, bank or financer.
One of the common challenges facing financial groups entering the world of games is they invariably do not have expert knowledge about the games industry to effectively make investment decisions and then cannot effectively monitor their investment. Worse still when projects go wrong they do not know how to fix them. Games Audit supplies this expert knowledge and forms a bridge between the world of games and finance. To be more specific Games Audit offers a wide range of practical services including technical and operational due diligence, digital asset management, software reviews, milestone delivery tracking and many more.
Additionally Games Audit Ltd can work "hand in hand" with a Legal firm or a firm of accountants carrying out their auditing tasks by searching out and supplying specific information to aid them in their tasks.
Getting the project completed if there was a disaster.
Games Auditing project management skills can be used to keep a project on track and to spot problems early, and in a disaster scenario use its management skills to save a project and get it to retail on time.
Longer term vision:
Much longer term it is anticipated Games Audit will use it's wide project management skills from the start of a project to act as an Executive Games Production company to fully manage work across all fronts including commissioning / managing external companies. (In the same way that Movision Acts for Curzon Capital in the film world).
Biography - William Latham
William was CEO of computer games developer Computer Artworks Ltd from 1994 to 2003, hit games produced included The THING (Playstation2, Xbox and PC) which sold in excess of one million units world-wide and was Number 1 hit in the UK and Germany. The Thing was published by Vivendi Universal in USA and Europe, and by Konami in Japan and the Far East. (The Thing game was the sequel to the cult John Carpenter Film - The THING starring Kurt Russell.)
He has a wealth of experience in games development and games business and has managed (and closed) contracts valued $200K to $5m with Microsoft, Nokia, Atari, Vivendi Universal, SCi, Sony SCEE and Virgin Interactive. He has direct experience in film rights negotiation, copyright issues, HR issues, games negotiation, digital assets management and games technology development.
From 1987 to 1994 he worked for IBM in their Advanced Computer Graphics and Visualisation Division at IBM Hursley near Winchester, and his Mutation work achieved world wide recognition at SIGGRAPH and other events and a number of IBM patents were published. He was co-author of the book 'Evolutionary Art and Computers' published by Academic Press. William has an MA from The Royal College of Art and a BA from Oxford University and regularly gives public lectures and interviews in the press.
In 2004, recognising the ongoing increase in games budgets and increasing new investment from financial organisations outside the games industry William founded Games Audit Ltd. Games Audit Ltd is a project management and audit operation for the games industry and offers a wide range of services.
