Developers share: 7 characteristics of successful game studios

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Lucky people are all alike, but unlucky people are each unlucky in their own way. For game studios, it seems that successful companies also have many similarities, while failures have various reasons. Of course, this statement is not accurate, because many successful studios also have different reasons. Recently, Michail Katkoff, a senior developer who has been engaged in mobile game development for 6 years, summarized the 7 characteristics of successful game studios in his blog based on his own experience. Since 2010, he has worked at Digital Chocolate, Rovio, Supercell and Zynga. The following is a blog post compiled by Gamelook:

Some of you may have read Ed Catmull's book Creativity Inc, which goes into depth about Pixar's creative process and describes how the studio manages their creativity, which results in a seemingly endless stream of blockbuster movies, and how Pixar maintains its creativity while growing at breakneck speed. This book reminded me of some of my experiences with game development, and I started to think about why some studios are better than others, even if they have fewer resources.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending to be Ed Catmull here. I have only been in the game industry for more than 6 years and have never worked in a 3A studio or a very small independent studio. However, I do have experience in free web games and mobile games, and I have worked in large studios, so I have the opportunity to work with the best talents in the industry.

So, what makes a studio successful in launching high-quality games and staying afloat in a highly competitive industry? Based on my personal experience, I have broken these down into 7 characteristics:

1. Keep your team tight

Large teams create middle management, because the need for communication and various meetings continues to increase, engineers and artists are most likely to spend a lot of time in meetings instead of putting more energy into making games. Large teams lead to a lack of sense of belonging. In a tight team, each member will focus on the overall quality of the game, and game bugs will be discovered quickly. In a large team, developers and artists only focus on one small thing at a time, and sometimes they don't even have time to see how their work performs in the entire game.

I strongly recommend that developers build a team of the right size for their game project, starting small and increasing in size as the game design becomes clearer and new talent is needed. In successful studios, game projects start with a well-established team of 4-6 senior developers, and as the project moves from concept to pre-production, production and launch, the team will expand to 15-20 people. The size of the team grows completely organically, with new members joining based on the needs of the project.

For a number of reasons, very large teams can actually slow down development rather than speed it up. In general, keep your teams tight and make sure that the people you add speed up development rather than slow it down.

2. Evaluate whether to stay in the game based on performance

Basically, a game team has only one goal, which is to create a masterpiece. From the beginning to the final goal, it will go through stages such as creative prototypes, internal and external testing. Successful game studios will quickly make the first playable version and make adjustments based on the feedback obtained. Finally, what awaits the game team is the test release. At this stage, your project must meet certain KPI numbers.

For game studios, if the KPI is not achieved or the success feedback the team wants is not achieved, the determination to stop the project must be made. Stopping the project is critical because releasing a poorly performing game may have a long-term negative impact, which in turn damages the long-term interests of the entire company. Such a project will take up resources for new games or supporting growing games. Through continuous internal testing, game studios can form a fast and flexible project evaluation process. Emphasizing the playable version allows the team to make major changes based on feedback. Frequent internal testing can also improve team morale and see clearer development progress as the game improves and feedback becomes more positive.

3. Find reference games for comparison

Reference games allow a team to quickly build a playable game so that playtesting and test launch data can guide the game development process. In my experience, the more unique and complex a game becomes during development, the greater the risk of the project. Successful game studios use very clear standard games as references to ensure that the game in development is not overly innovative. With clear references, pre-production and development stages can be based on proven concepts, meaning that the features or systems the team builds exist in one or two games. In addition to reducing risk, strong reference standards can reduce development time because planners, engine engineers, and artists already have a playable version to learn from.

Blizzard’s Hearthstone is largely derived from Magic: The Gathering, and the company’s designers made it much easier for players to play while still maintaining the difficulty of matching a large number of cards. Another way to use a reference standard is to first disassemble the reference game, which is of course more time-consuming and risky. The team then creates a game based on the reference game that can be clearly seen as different. Blizzard has used this method very well, for example, Hearthstone has a lot of similarities to Magic: The Gathering, Heroes of the Storm and League of Legends, Overwatch and Team Fortress.

4. Play your own games as much as possible

Teams that love playing their games tend to make great games. Often, especially in the early stages of development, the game you build is difficult to play because the early versions are buggy and lack most of the final artwork. However, through continuous experience, the team can not only solve all the bugs and uncomfortable user experience, but also create some features that players really like.

In my personal experience, playing your own game as much as possible is actually the best secret to improving the game and the user experience. Simulators can help finalize in-game values, and gameplay testing can improve the user experience, so the first step is always to let the team play the game you develop.

5. Respect players

Our players are fans of our games. They have even more time than we do. They create communities in the game and let more people know about us. Successful game studios will focus on making games that both please players and bring them challenges.

If a studio doesn't think enough about their players, then the players will feel it in the game. When product managers and game designers think that players are too simple-minded to understand deep gameplay, their games will lack core gameplay (mega-game) and deep exploration elements.

Take away the original game and you're left with repetitive gameplay and poor long-term retention. Losing player trust is a very dangerous thing to do, not only does it hurt the game in development, but it can also kill the community of a great game instantly, no matter how much marketing money you have prepared.

6. Give the team the power to make decisions

Successful game studios allow the team to make their own decisions and take responsibility for all decisions. After internal and external testing, the team can steadily obtain player feedback, and the team leader can break it down into multiple goals and implement them one by one.

When a team is empowered to make decisions about game development, they are better able to execute on the milestones they set, and it also improves the quality of decision-making because once a decision is made, the outcome of the game is not influenced by others. Teams that can make their own decisions learn faster, the decision-making process requires analysis, and as team members become more accountable, they will eventually make a better and more feasible plan.

Allowing the team to experiment and fail is very difficult for a studio leader to do, as his job is to build the team and release the biggest game in the shortest possible time. However, if the decision-making power is not given to the team, it may relegate the team to executive producers, and they will have less ownership of the product they make. What I have noticed is that studio leaders who challenge and listen to opinions can create a better development environment.

7. Always release your game

Successful game studios release multiple games and all of them become hits. Surprisingly, studios that have all six of the above factors often don't have the determination to release their games. These studios seem to be so critical of their work that the criticism actually hurts the team instead of helping the development. When criticism eats away the team's confidence, it is likely to prolong the development time because you need to make many changes and new features to meet user feedback. Although criticism is important, I think the development team needs to analyze this feedback instead of constantly adjusting according to endless feedback.

A good friend (and former colleague) of mine who has released some really great Facebook and mobile games said that there is only one way to fail in game development, and that is to not release anything. What he meant was that you never know if a game will be a hit until it is actually released. Sure, playtesting can give a good idea of ​​time, but the market is the ultimate dictator. Sometimes, it is better to enter the testing state earlier than to release it after all the features are completed, because sometimes the features you just added may not necessarily be liked by players, or even fail to meet the KPI requirements during the testing phase. In fact, releasing a game is only one of the many processes in game development.