By Juan Lomanto
You may have seen an office building or two with the word "Globant" in big letters, no matter where you are. From Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Monterrey and New York, to Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris and many other cities around the world, Globant is present.
But what you probably never knew is that this is a $7.3 billion market cap company that works with many of the world's leading video games. And that it is an Argentinian company.
What's Globant?
Globant SA GLOB was founded in 2003 as a software company by four system engineers. The company grew so much that it took its major leap when it partnered with Electronic Arts EA, one of the most powerful publishers of the industry and owner of "FIFA," "Battlefield," "Madden," "Mass Effect" and "The Sims."
After years of evolution and working alongside Rockstar, Sony SONY, Warner WBD, Ubisoft UBSFF, Square Enix SQNXF, Epic Games and Tencent TCEHY, today the company is considered one of the four top Argentinian unicorns - alongside MercadoLibre Inc MELI, OLX and Despegar.com Corp DESP. It is present at the stadiums of the Qatar World Cup 2022 as a sponsor and it is listed in the New York Stock Exchange since 2014.
Seeking to better know this business, Benzinga spoke with Matías Rodríguez, VP of Technology, Video Games and Metaverse at Globant in San Francisco. Read about the work of the company behind the best video games in the globe, the company’s contribution to "Fortnite" and "GTA V," and more.
We are now partners with @FIFAcom, because we believe that technology and passion have the power to break all kind of patterns, making the unthinkable happen. #SeekReinvention #FIFAWorldCup #WeAreGlobant pic.twitter.com/KSdOQDHc37
— Globant (@Globant) November 20, 2022
- Benzinga Gaming (BG): How did you land at Globant and what is your day-to-day role there?
Matías Rodriguez (MR): I started working at Globant in 2010, after having worked for some years in cell phone companies. During the first three years I travelled a lot, and in 2013 I moved to San Francisco in order to work at that headquarters.
My three goals consisted in helping to organize the American section, where we grow from 100 to 1000 employees; being closed to clients; and training more skillful employees by being in contact with Google GOOGL GOOG, Amazon AMZN, Facebook FB, EA and Apple AAPL. These companies helped us improve our technical training.
At that time, Globant Gaming had less than 60 employees around the world. Today we are almost 2000.
- (BG): How did you end up working with EA?
(MR): EA needed to expand its team dynamically and our goal was to partner with a company to outsource work. We convinced them that we were the right ones and we started to take on projects, set up training plans and train profiles in the country (Argentina).
We worked with all sports games and "FIFA" was the most natural. Even today, we are developing a not very well known free version, called "FIFA Online," which works in Asia and we want to bring it to Latin America.
In addition, we have been working with "Madden" for the last eight years. Since footbal is a sport that is not played in Argentina, we had to send our game designers to stadiums to buy jerseys and they ended up becoming fans of different teams. We needed training.
Currently, we also have partnerships with de Warner, Ubisoft, Epic, Microsoft, Tencent, among others. Except for "Call of Duty," we are working with the most important games in the world, even with "Hogwarts Legacy" (from the "Harry Potter" universe), for about six years now.
We announced a multi-year partnership with @FIFAcom to bring digital transformation to FIFA+, their game changing digital platform, and the @NYSE knows it! #WeAreGlobant #SeekReinvention pic.twitter.com/xxTULXQgoY
— Globant (@Globant) November 9, 2022
- (BG): "Howarts Legacy" had leaked in 2018, so it makes sense.
(MR): Yes, indeed, sometimes there are controlled leaks. Studios do so when they know the leaks can call people’s attention without interfering with the development. Fortunately, we had nothing to do with it and I have no doubts about it.
In fact, we are very strict about those things. Besides, our guys are very passionate about their work and they don't want to be responsible for ruining a release or being dismissed, logically.
- (BG): Of course, the secrecy that you manage always caught my attention. Do you have any agreement that prevents you from saying in which games you are collaborating?
(MR): Most of the times we do. "Howarts Legacy" is already on our website, but even when the games are announced we are limited in terms of communication. Unfortunately, we work on many projects that we cannot speak about. We do VR entertainment, simulations in cities… a lot of things that are protected in a contract.
Anyway, now we are eager to show a little more of what we do. But customers are very jealous, and we don't want to become a target.
- (BG): Can you tell us something about the games that we do know?
(MR): We originally started with engineering. Today one of our strongest features is the UX and UI (User Experience and User Interface), an element that as a videogame can make you win or lose, and that we brought from working with other industries.
Today Fortnite's UX is in charge of us, for example. It's part of its transition from being just a game to a metaverse.
We also have engineering; some 2D and 3D art; and research and development, as is the case with Sony. In that case we do mini-games and various creative experiences to get the most out of cameras, controls and so on. [We create] prototypes for the engineers to test internally and evaluate. 90% of it never comes out.
We have even added 400 people in game testing, mainly in Uruguay and in Tucumán Province, Argentina, where we work hand in hand with governments’ programs. We also added a backend section where we manage transactions, open-source projects with Google, etc, etc.
- (BG): Now that you are at that level of work, have you considered making video games of your own?
(MR): That is not in our plans because we don’t want to compete with our clients. Globant’s competitors that decided to go down that road, didn’t have a good experience. Furthermore, the industry is so cruel and in order to make a successful game and for it to survive a month, you ought to be willing to go through a long and painful road.
Fortnite is a clear example of this and people believe that it started a few years ago. When it first started it was a shady zombie adult game. Only after 15 years of waiting, Fortnite became what it is today. How many companies are up for it?
Diversity is at Globant’s core. Building an inclusive culture is not something we just talk about, is something we do every day.
— Globant (@Globant) October 12, 2022
At Globant, we celebrate differences because they not only empower us, they make us go farther and become better.#DiversityAtGlobant pic.twitter.com/FTgDqAvSS0
- (BG): Always thinking of games as a service, right?
(MR): Yes, but even if you wanted to make single-player games with a story, you can't really go and compete against "God of War." It's very complicated and we see it with our clients.
"Hogwarts Legacy" comes out in February 2023 and we have been working on the development for 6 years, and we didn't even start from the beginning. From the moment they have the idea until it comes out, 10 years go by, and not all companies are prepared for that. It's a long and painful road, as can be seen with "Blood, Sweat and Pixels," the book by journalist Jason Schreier.
Then, in Globant’s position, if we combine the risk of making a good name and losing our customers, [making a video game] is the worst strategy I could choose.
What we are doing and want to continue to pursue is live operation: games for our clients that we operate directly. We go through the whole creative process and at a partnership level, without all the risk involved in doing it alone.
We have inside projects: "The Gaucher," something similar to "The Witcher" but related to Argentina. However, we use it internally, it’s not going to the market. The idea is that when we have to train people, they have something specific to do.
- (BG): A few weeks ago, the consulting firm NewZoo stated that in 2022 the video game industry will see a 4,3% drop. How do you see this and how does it affect you?
(MR): I would dare to say they are mixing Metaverse with gaming, because I don’t see the drop they talk about, not at the consumption level. I don't want to contradict people specialized in numbers, but "Call of Duty" broke records again this year.
If we consider only the gaming industry, from the inside I can tell you we are being asked for more and more work, though the crisis may not be noticed until two or three years from now, since the development periods are decades long. You can't slow down because of the dollar or the euro.
It is not the same as other industries, which may decide to cut costs. To lose two years of game development is to have to do it all over again.
In the case of Globant, the crisis does nothing but to favor us, because if Amazon wants to do things for less money, there is nothing better than looking for outsourcing companies.
- (BG): Why do you think, then, big companies still decide to embark on such productions, even when making huge games is so expensive? Because we used to have two or three installments of a saga per generation. Today, if we're lucky, we have one.
(MR): It's the ambition. And one thing I love about the industry is the constant need to push the boundaries. Games are getting bigger, it's true, but there are fewer IPs. This is because they grab "God of War" and they know people are going to want to buy it, more so when we talk about studios that always deliver.
The big issue is the producers’ ambition and people’s greed, who pay $60 and expect something huge. So, games have start compensating that content one way or another. A game such as "Hogwarts Legacy" requires the same technical and creative complexity as a new Harry Potter movie, for example.
Producing content is expensive, an open world is expensive. How and on which technology you do it becomes fundamental. That's the reason of what happened to "Cyberpunk 2077." It was made with an engine that was not prepared for such a big open world and with so much content.
- (BG): Speaking of open worlds, what was Globant's role in the PC version of "GTA V"?
(MR): We were hired to make the game uncrackable for a couple of weeks. So, we took the source code and filled it with traps, almost like "Home Alone." What you get by doing this is that the characters can't jump; if they shoot the bullet, they fall onto the floor, etc. You set these traps so as to make them waste time.
I spent a couple of months working with them ["GTA V" developers] in New York, being in there was wild. At the end, we were able to delay the hackers for almost three weeks, it was a success.
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