They let the industry know at Mobile Games Forum.
VCs are hot for gaming right now, and for iPhone. But are they hot for iPhone gaming, and indeed gaming on other mobile platforms?
A panel assembled at Mobile Games Forum today, with three VCs and a couple of games business analysts to chew the fat over where and when VCs might invest in mobile games.
"Mobile has been a graveyard for venture capital," said Nic Brisbourne of DFJ Esprit. "But now we're all excited again, thanks to iPhone. But it's tricky right now to see where the opportunities are in mobile with true VC scale potential."
Ariadne Capital's Paul Flanagan referred back to previous panels at the show, saying there is "a lot to be said for the freemium model" - yet also pointed out that companies like Blizzard have done very well out of a decidedly un-freemium model for their games too.
Brisbourne predicted that in a few years, there won't be much distinction between the web and mobile worlds.
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"The iPhone is increasingly a web experience," he said. "You look at the raft of tablet announcements that came out of CES too. There is no stopping point where it was mobile and becomes desktop. The apps and services that are successful are going to reflect that."
He also predicted that the app store paradigm is "a thing of this moment", but at some point, people will be able to get apps for their iPhone or other handset from any web page. "It makes the mobile environment look a lot more like the web."
Carlos Eduardo Espinal from Doughty Hanson suggested that people interact with their mobiles in different ways than they do with their PCs - and that's never going to change.
"A lot of investments are around how does a service or product add value to the user because it's mobile, not just because it's something that has been mobilised," he said.
Jack Kent from Screen Digest reported that mobile game investments have been growing this year, but not for pureplay mobile gaming firms as much as for games with a social focus - "social gaming companies with a mobile element, rather than mobile gaming companies with a social element".
Nicholas Lovell gave away a corking idea for a blog post at this point, about EA having a great business in five years time and Activision being 'the next Eidos' (i.e. not having a great business in five years time). Out of respect, I shall not reveal it... Oh.
The discussion actually verged into discussion of social gaming rather than mobile gaming - perhaps an indication of the priorities of VC firms at this point.
Kent pointed out that a lot of the VC investment in mobile gaming this year has been in billing firms and platforms (for example social platforms like OpenFeint). Brisbourne admitted that VCs don't like to invest in "hit-based models" - pure games companies - as they feel they're not as qualified to judge which products will become hits.
Flanagan hailed the fact that iPhone and Facebook both enable people to self-publish games and start generating revenues. "Then they don't need us!" he said.
Lovell brought up the idea of 'the gamification of everything' - gamelike elements being wrapped around other services. Foursquare being a good example - a social service with gamelike elements. How to make money? "We're back to that free conversation I'm afraid, but the conversation is very different to 'I'm going to charge people £5 to download it'."
Flanagan said one of the trends he'd like to see is the elimination of fragmentation - a little sigh rose up from the veteran mobile games industry folk in the room at this point - or at least companies that help developers get around that fragmentation.
"I have looked at companies creating a game as a proof of that middleware technology," he said. "That's what I'm looking at. Maybe it's a little utopian..."
How do VCs look at the likely strategies of Apple, Google, Nokia and other mobile platform owners? Brisbourne said that Nokia in particular is held up as "one that's going to start buying a lot of these platforms" - citing Plazes as an example.
Brisbourne also said that his firm wouldn't consider investing in companies that aren't looking beyond the iPhone.
Paul Flanagan, Ariadne Capital
Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Doughty Hanson
Nic Brisbourne, DFJ Esprit
