In an industry not known for outspoken and high profile executives, Neil Heywood, is still a relatively quiet figure. An investor and executive with a wide range of technology companies, he’s now backing a new esports company, with a number of experienced developers from Dundee.

The growth and evolution of the sports market has taken many in the games sector by surprise. Playing games professionally – and with large cash prizes up for grabs – is huge business in Asia and the US, but has not yet hit the UK to the same extent. That’s changing, with several new entrants to the market, including Nigel Eccles and Rob Jones, two of the co-founders of FanDuel, who announced their new esports venture, Flick.

DIGIT spoke to Neil recently about his involvement with the games sector and why he too is investing the esports market.

DIGIT: Give us a little background on yourself. How did you get into the games industry?

Neil Heywood: I’ve always been involved in technology companies, originally, and occasionally still, as a software developer. I came back to Scotland in 2002 after working for Quadstone, a data analytics company, in the US and joined Craneware as a non-executive.  I stayed there for 15 years and feel privileged to have witnessed its fabulous journey from early stage start-up to a £500 Million market cap company.

I’ve been involved in some companies after starting as a non-executive, specifically Two Big Ears and now Earthbound Games. In both those cases it was working with teams that had developed something special that got me involved. The virtual reality audio company. Two Big Ears [acquired by Facebook in 2016] had a number of games companies as customers and worked with publishers including Valve etc. as does Krotos [the digital audio tools company], which have all provided quite a bit of exposure to the industry.

I’ve also worked with Edinburgh-based DeltaDNA [formerly Games Analytics] which is now the No 1 company doing premium analytics for games companies. I invested in that and joined the board five years ago. My background was data analytics, so I’ve got quite interested and involved in that.

I joined the board of a French games company, Kobojo, after a conversation with their Swiss investor – Gerhard Florin – who was at that point Chairman of King [creator of Candy Crush Saga]. I was interested in working with him, so joined the Paris-based company in 2015.

I stayed in contact with Chris Stamp who ran Kobojo’s Dundee Studio after he left the company. When he started Earthbound, I got feedback on the really positive reaction that the early version of the game was getting from other developers so decided to invest and get involved.

DIGIT: Can you tell us a bit about the new venture?

NH: I’ve invested in and joined the Board of Earthbound Games, a company with a game in development from an outstanding team with a track record of involvement in hugely successful games such as Crackdown and Grand Theft Auto. The game is set in a sports arena and was designed with crowd participation in mind from the outset, which makes it ideal as a next-generation esport, as it moves the spectator from being a passive observer to an active participant.

DIGIT: Why are esports so prominent right now?

NH: The numbers of people engaged in watching esports is massive, far more than watch Netflix. Perhaps it is best explained by “your generation watched people playing sports such as football, our generation watch people playing video games.”

It is being suggested as a medal sport at the Olympics and already is at the Asian Games. From a technical perspective we are just at the start, virtual crowd involvement and augmented reality (AR) are going to allow the viewer the opportunity to become a more active participant.

DIGIT: What is Scotland’s position in the global videogames industry?

NH: It has a great history in creating games such as Lemmings, GTA and Crackdown and we’re now seeing the rise of significant companies such as Outplay in mobile games and Blazing Griffin on PC & console who are creating new games and marketing and publishing them directly.

Those two companies between them have over 250 staff across the UK. Edinburgh is now home to a growing number of significant studios – enough to create a concentration of talent that should ensure that new companies spin-out or come to Edinburgh.

DIGIT: One of the biggest success in the recent past must be the sale of Two Big Ears to Facebook. What can you tell us about that?

NH: It was a fabulous experience. George Elliott and I became investors, joined the board and over time got more and more involved in the business. Underlying everything was a product that had solved a problem nobody else had managed to do – enabling 3D audio to be dynamically delivered for virtual reality systems. We had to find a way to connect up the film studios making content with the viewing platforms – Facebook 360 and YouTube 360.

In the end both Facebook and Google recommended their users adopt our technology. Facebook subsequently bought the company and a recent market survey said we now had a 95% market share. The really interesting applications in that area are still some way off – I think we will hear more about that as augmented reality systems become available.

DIGIT: Is Scotland’s games sector able to access global investment?

NH: For many of the software companies I’ve been involved in it is all about making connections in Silicon Valley – whether you are in Texas, New York or Scotland you are on the outside unless you pitch up and keep in contact with Silicon Valley.  I originally moved to the US because of that – I went to Boston, but at that point Boston, New York and San Francisco had a slightly more even distribution of tech companies.

Now it feels like San Francisco is becoming more dominant. That trend has probably been accelerated by Apple, Facebook and Google concentrating their key development teams and decision makers in one small area. In theory, technology makes it simple to distribute this across the globe, in reality that causes a lot of communication problems, so the trend is in the opposite direction. What that really means is that we will have to keep jumping on a plane a lot, perhaps until augment reality makes virtual meetings feel indistinguishable from “real” ones.

DIGIT: What other projects are you involved in?

NH: I have around a dozen investments in early-stage companies, not by design, but from meeting the management and getting interested in the stories. Recent investments include DeltaDNA, Lending Crowd, Mallzee, Optoscribe and Snap40.

I’m also involved with Matrix Analytics which designs and runs algorithmic trading systems for hedge funds – using the data analytics ideas that we originally developed and learned from in other areas.

Is Earthbound Games now looking for investment?

NH: Yes – traditionally it was common for games companies to be funded via an advance from a publisher, but as the life-span of games expands and they become more like traditional software companies it looked like a good opportunity to raise equity finance. We’re just at the start of that process but the early indications of interest are very positive.

Thanks to Neil for his time. We’ll have more information on Earthbound Games – and it’s first project – in the near future.