Karen Seror: Transforming the video game industry with Gamestream

The chief marketing officer of Gamestream, Karen Seror, attributes her success to her view that “big thinking,” “dogged perseverance,” and “passion” are the keys to success. Her major objective is to expand Gamestream into a worldwide leader in the cloud gaming market. A proven leader of transformative change, Karen was pivotal in Fotolia’s rise to prominence as the industry standard in stock photography asset management before its acquisition by Adobe in 2014 for an eye-popping $800 million. She also has a strong desire to assist others, expressing as much when she said, “Through my job at Gamestream, I want to help others enjoy the good wellness advantages of video gaming. This dedication is totally in line with what the management and founders of Gamestream stand for.

The Emergence of a Leader

Karen has a lifelong ambition to do great things. She began broadening her horizons and developing her skills after being motivated by T.E. Lawrence’s aphorism, “Big things have small beginnings.”

She is certain that young people’s vocations are shaped by their families’ habits and attitudes. The convictions in every professional tale, she continues, come from family history. As a result of having a number of very successful businesspeople in my own family, “tribe,” I was raised with an innate curiosity for starting my own ventures and a strong work ethic.

Her older brother Laurent Seror was a role model and inspiration to her throughout her childhood. She boasts, “I am also fortunate to count several well-respected medical specialists among my relatives.” My upbringing in a family of doctors and nurses has undoubtedly influenced my career in video game marketing, which is now deeply rooted in principles that promote e-health and wellness.

Her role models in the business sector were all CEOs who had achieved success on their own. Their courage and determination encouraged me to let go of my fear of failure and are constant sources of motivation and inspiration to this day.

Karen is attracted to those who are’movers and shakers’ in their field because she wants to learn from them and emulate their success. They provide a tough workplace, she says, since they are enthusiastic about what they do. Being a part of these forward-thinking businesses as they strive to become industry leaders helps me develop professionally and fulfills my personal entrepreneurial aspirations.

She knew the value of maintaining a healthy lifestyle in the workplace, having made the transition from the medical field to marketing. She continues, “I place a premium on my physical and mental wellness. I wouldn’t dare apply for a job at a firm that doesn’t promote health in some manner. Gamestream is dedicated to helping others via gaming and showcasing the healing potential of games for everyone.”

Gamestream Is Here to Shake Up the Gaming Industry

Gamestream wants to make gaming accessible to anybody, at any time, using its cutting-edge cloud video game streaming technology. It brings console-quality gaming to the cellphones (iOS and Android), televisions (OTT and Smart TV), personal computers (PC and Mac), and tablets that most people already possess. They do this through the Pleio brand for consumers and a white-labeled B2B solution. The Gamestream B2B cloud gaming service has been deployed under both white-labelled and Gamestream brands across Europe, the Middle East and Asia through partners in telecoms and hospitality such as Etisalat, Bouygues Telecom, and Accor Hotels.

Servers, software, licensed game material, and data monitoring are all part of Gamestream’s comprehensive offering. It aids its clients, which include many of the world’s largest mobile telecommunications companies, in enhancing their services by mitigating problems like the need to boost customer retention and the desire to boost the’stickiness’ of telecom services. This, in turn, boosts the clients’ average revenue per user (ARPU) and retention rates, reduces customer churn, and strengthens their standing in the market. Cloud gaming is proving to be a potent and complementary value add method that telcos can employ to provide the fun and advantages of video games to a wider audience, particularly for businesses that want to appeal to the enormous casual video gaming population.

The limitless, cross-platform, low-cost strategy is at the heart of Gamestream’s value offering. By mimicking the successful approaches used by Spotify and Netflix, it enables users to forego buying games individually and gives its B2B clients an easier time selling these products.

Gamestream is committed to responsibly bringing console-quality gaming to a wider audience. She explains that our cloud gaming solution is useful in poor nations since it functions well despite slower internet rates. Our system works with the most popular adaptive gaming controller, furthering our goal of universal accessibility.

Gamestream was founded on a commitment to innovation. It has its own research and development department where it creates cutting-edge technologies that most of us can only imagine. She continues, “We trust our employees’ intuition and aptitude and don’t micromanage them. Someone may come to us with an idea, and we’ll do all we can to make it a reality.

CEO of Gamestream, How It Really Is

Karen thinks that both market strategy and research and development are essential to ascending the corporate ladder. As the CMO of Gamestream, Karen is responsible for driving its global marketing strategy, spearheading the go-to market strategies for new clients across multiple geos across the globe. She adds, “I’m a data-driven person – I am only satisfied when I’ve reached our KPIs, and defined our go-to-market strategies for our best-in-class clients.”

Despite having an incredible launch with the telecommunications sector, Gamestream’s business model isn’t dependent on this initial boost from telcos. The Gamestream solution is industry- and sector-agnostic, as its model, technology and services are being sold to sectors including hospitality, entertainment and healthcare.

At Gamestream, Karen strongly advocates for creating a diverse, multi-cultural team; a diversity that enriches the entire organisation, “I want to nurture my teams’ creativity and confidence to succeed. It’s not just about the incredible technology we’re building – but also the organisation; its culture, values and, of course, ambition. That’s all great to be a part of, but it’s also critically important; our business model and trajectory is attractive to both customers and investors alike”

She then adds, “I oversee the company’s CSR, and we regularly work with partners such as BePlayer One, which works to make gaming more inclusive for disabled people, and L’École des Héros, which helps teenagers overcome social anxiety through games.”

She believes there is no innovation without boldness. She says, “Be bold in creating transversal communications processes that extend across departments, ensuring everyone is talking to each other effectively and has shared goals. Sharing your vision with your team rather than keeping it at the top of the organisation creates trust, bringing people together and motivating them to pull in the same direction. Lastly, always keep a growth-positive mindset and think big! Don’t limit yourself – we’re sometimes our own biggest critics.”

Joining the company during the COVID-19 pandemic, she realised that communication was key to building trust and employee advocacy. She adds, “I have built great and effective relationships with my team despite the fact we are often based across different sites.”

She trusts her team to give their best and carries the weight of responsibility to take the company to a new level. She is proud of achieving success in her previous startups and wants to do the same for Gamestream.

Karen joined Gamestream in March 2020, at the peak of the global pandemic. Since that time, she has played an integral role in the company’s successes. She comments, “I’m proud that we’ve signed six significant deals with leading telecoms providers and hospitality brands in the last year. We also launched our consumer brand, Pleio, with Bouygues Telecom in France. We’ve rapidly grown our brand, unified the organisation, and attracted brilliant new people to work with. And importantly, Gamestream has tripled its annual revenue over the last 12 months.”

Thoughts on work-life balance

“Pick a job you love, and you won’t have to work a day in your life.” Karen’s thoughts always resonated with that quote. She loves her work and loves to spend time with her family and friends too.

While fuelling the growth of the company, she makes sure to carve out time for her family. She also regularly enjoys boxing to keep her body and mind fresh and active. She says, “It suits my personality of perseverance, getting out of my comfort zone, and challenging myself.”

Future prospects for the company

Gamestream is aiming to double in size in the next two years, adding more staff and taking cloud gaming technology to more countries and more business areas. Gamestream’s ambition isn’t solely just to expand into even more geos, but to increase its presence in an increasing number of business industry verticals. Karen comments, “In our opinion, 2022 will be the inflection point for the great cloud gaming industry odyssey.” The latest market forecasts from Newzoo predict that cloud gaming will pass the coveted billion-dollar mark for the first time, ending at $1.4 billion in cloud gaming revenues in 2021. But even more growth is incoming. The market is on track to exceed the five-billion-dollar mark in 2023 as technology and infrastructure continue to improve. Cloud gaming may indeed absorb the terminal gaming market (i.e. consoles), a sector that is now worth $43 billion. It could also expand the existing market of PC gamers who no longer want to invest in expensive machines, but simply enjoy the latest games by taking out a new subscription.”

Finally, let’s not forget the precedents laid down by the likes of Spotify and Netflix. Gamestream has identified the data-driven parallels between the adoption of cloud gaming, and the growth curves as demonstrated by the now mature worlds of video on demand (VOD) streaming models. Karen says, “At Gamestream, we are wholly convinced that the intersection between the world of streaming and video games will generate significant opportunities, and encourage gamers to move towards a subscription model, thus generating sizable revenues for cloud gaming actors. This streaming subscription model has proven itself, for example, in the music industry (Spotify, Deezer) and in the VOD sector (Netflix, Amazon Prime).

Karen adds, “Cloud gaming represents a real-time laboratory of economic models, with several coexisting simultaneously, the variables being the ratio and control of technologies and content applied in this ecosystem.” She then adds, “As far as future uses are concerned, we at Gamestream are of the firm belief that tomorrow’s gaming will be console-less, and without the need to download game content. The future of gaming will be more immersive, thanks to 4K, 3D, and virtual and extended reality experiences. Cloud gaming will power richer and more detailed game worlds, powered by more engaging narratives, which ultimately provide greater emotional connections with gamers.”

Tomorrow’s gaming will take on therapeutic and wellbeing issues, too. Karen explains, “Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated the benefits of video games from a therapeutic and cognitive point of view, and as Gamestream is member of iDate Digiworld, a leading global think tank for digital innovation, we are working towards the diversification of new forms of therapy that digital technology like video games bring.”

On a personal front, Karen wishes to leave just a modest legacy in the video game sector by bringing forward progress in terms of equality, diversity, and inclusion.

She says, “In particular, while women now make up a large percentage of global gamers, there is still a lack of women working in games. At Gamestream, we’re beginning to challenge the reality and perception that gaming is a male-dominated industry, and I hope to inspire more women to work in this exciting fast growth field.”