10-14-07

Less than half of small businesses survive four years. A handful of the 2,000 video game titles released each year become hits.

What are the odds against Baton Rouge's Nerjyzed Entertainment Inc., a black-owned video game developer?

Nerjyzed Chief Executive Officer Jacqueline Beauchamp said the thought of failure never entered her mind.

"It was never a part of the thinking, that success would not happen. I knew that it would," Beauchamp said.

Besides, as a black woman, Beauchamp faced longer odds every day than Nerjyzed, she said.

When she and the other founders of Nerjyzed (pronounced energized) formed the company in 2004, they focused on the opportunity, not the obstacles. Computer and video games generated sales of $7.4 billion in the United States last year.

"Sports was actually the No. 1 genre of games that are actually played," Beauchamp said. "So within that category, we looked at basketball, baseball, football - which one would we target first? So we narrowed it down to football."

Madden NFL by EA Sports, dominates the sports category. In 2006, gamers purchased more than 6.5 million copies. EA's NCAA Football is the dominant college football game.

But Beauchamp and the other Nerjyzed principals, all graduates of historically black colleges and universities, felt NCAA Football failed to capture the excitement and atmosphere of their schools' games. Nerjyzed decided to create a game to do just that.

Black College Football Experience, or BCFx, features the music and the halftime shows of the university bands, whose rivalries are just as intense as the teams'. Nerjyzed's game targets students and graduates of the historically black colleges and universities. The company is in the middle of a 12-week tour that brings the game, through a customized bus, to students and alums at those colleges. More than a week ago, the BCFx bus rolled into Southern for the homecoming game.

"We wanted to make sure we took this to where the target demographic, as well as our target audience, would be able to experience the product firsthand," Beauchamp said. "And to let them experience it at their universities, at their games."

David Riley, senior public relations manager for NPD Group Inc., said Nerjyzed's decision to focus on students and graduates of historically black colleges and universities was a smart move.

It's better for startups to target an audience than to try to sell to everyone, Riley said. Nerjyzed will undoubtedly draw the interest of gamers outside the HBCs because sports games are not a black-and-white thing; sports titles appeal to gamers of all sexes and races.

And people who like football video games are willing to buy more than one, he said.

Beauchamp said Nerjyzed will also promote the game through traditional media, with radio spots and television commercials, she said. But the company wanted to have "a street team approach," the same strategy hip-hop artists have used for years to sell CDs. The company is also using the Internet and viral marketing campaigns - akin to spreading it word-of-mouth online - to generate buzz. The approach appears to be working. Two days after announcing the game's launch date, Nerjyzed's Web site had drawn close to 1 million hits. The company was forced to expand its server space to handle the traffic. The site is now averaging around 40,000 hits per day.

"Based upon the feedback that we're receiving from the marketplace, we have absolutely no doubt that this product is going to be successful," Beauchamp said.

However, not all of Nerjyzed's visitors have been positive.

It took 2 1/2 years and millions of dollars to develop BCFx. It took about 2 1/2 seconds for bloggers to begin attacking Nerjyzed, its game, and both their names, and the bloggers did it for free. One blogger said Nerjyzed hates black people. Other gamers wondered why black people need their own game, and what would happen if a company created an all-white football game.

Beauchamp, a Southern University alum, said she expected some race-related comments but not to the extent of what took place.

Some of the individuals didn't know that black colleges exist or their responses might have been different, she said. Other visitors struck a more conciliatory tone.

"I saw one thread that said, 'It's not black ... college football, it's black-college football,'" Beauchamp said. "This person talked about the culture of historically black colleges and their existence, and also said, 'Oh by the way, I'm a white guy.'"

But other comments were fueled by racism, Beauchamp said. That's something Beauchamp, who grew up in Scotlandville, has to live with, and has lived with, on a daily basis.

On the plus side, she said, the game's title has driven a lot of dialog about the product and discussion about black colleges. "I think it's all good," she said.

Nerjyzed will release the game in a PC version on Nov. 23. The company plans to release the game in the Xbox and PlayStation formats in 2008. A version for the Wii is further down the road.

Nerjyzed wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible, not just the avid gamers but the casual gamers, because of some of the elements, such as the music and the halftime show, she said. Factor in the alumni, many of whom are older and may not own console gaming systems, and Nerjyzed worried a console launch might not reach the target market for the game.

"I think the PC release will help build demand for the console version," Beauchamp said.

Nerjyzed has already secured the licensing agreements for the next-generation consoles, she said. BCFx was built using the Unreal Engine 3, a game development framework that will allow Nerjyzed to adapt the PC game to different platforms.

Michael Arrington, a principal and senior analyst in the Acacia Research Group, said the development costs for a next-generation game depend on how the game is developed.

"If you have to do everything from scratch, then it's going to cost you more than if you're able to license a middleware product that meets your needs," Arrington said. "For instance, if you're going to create a 3-D shooter type of game, and you license the Unreal platform, you pay a certain amount to do that, and then pay a certain additional amount per platform."

Using a middleware product, such as the Unreal Engine, basically means a developer only has to write the game code once, Arrington said. After that, the developer just has to tweak the game for each platform, which cuts costs by quite a bit.

Beauchamp declined to discuss the development cost for BCFx. However, the average next-generation game costs between $7 million and $10 million to develop, she added.

Arrington said the costs can easily pass the $10 million mark.

Adding a few stars to the cast, as Command & Conquer 3 did with Jennifer Morrison of "House" and Billy Dee Williams, means the costs go up considerably, Arrington said. A major title like Halo costs considerably more than $10 million to create.

Beauchamp said Nerjyzed's capital came from the four founders and investment from some "high net worth individuals."

The company is now negotiating with retailers to secure shelf space for the game, which Nerjyzed is publishing itself. Beauchamp said the company is self-publishing because it wanted to maintain control over the final product.

With the BCFx rollout nearing, Nerjyzed is already developing its next game.

The company is not prepared to discuss the details, but the new game will not be in the sports genre, Beauchamp said. Nerjyzed expects to make an announcement about its new game sometime near February.

"Right now what we really, really want to do is to make sure we're bringing diverse products into the marketplace, those that are targeting the urban market, as well as different diverse products," Beauchamp said.

For instance, the video game market lacks games that are attractive to black women, Beauchamp said.

"We're going to be looking at a combination of different things," she said.

By Ted Griggs. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.