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'Once you realise the importance of having a robust and adaptive framework and implement a similar structure into your operational approach, your workflow will become unmatched.'
August 2, 2024
In the very rich and complex world of game development studios face countless challenges that can hinder project success and operational efficiency or even stop it altogether. From balancing creative visions with technical constraints, to managing employee well-being, the obstacles are diverse and each significant to the process.
As a Studio Head responsible for running and growing Larian Studios in the UK, I have encountered many such situations that had to be dealt with in order to consistently achieve our goal which is delivering best-in-class RPGs. In this article, I’d like to describe a global studio presence framework that we have adapted and demonstrate how this strategic approach can provide solutions, drawing on insights from the industry. It’s partially thanks to this approach that we managed to achieve the release and ultimately win over 150 awards and nominations with Divinity: Original Sin, before going even further with Baldur's Gate 3, which launched to critical acclaim and received multiple Game Of The Year awards, including major trophies from the BAFTA Game Awards, Golden Joysticks, Game Developers Choice, DICE, and The Game Awards.
These achievements required a distinct strategy and vision. But before we get into that, let's have a look at the challenges.
Source: Photo by Jeshoots on Pexels
The boundless power of creativity is what drives the industry. But adapting it to technical constraints and building a robust internal company infrastructure is one of the main challenges in games development. It often happens that game studios come up with the most exciting ideas as they push the boundaries of modern technical tools, but that’s of no use if the project isn’t released on time or at all. And then there’s the constant challenge to ensure that creative visions can be manifested within the limits of existing hardware and engines without compromising the original vision or the final gameplay experience.
In recent years we’ve seen the games industry produce some exciting masterpieces. With every new iteration, studios strive to outdo themselves in terms of not only artistic skills, but technical ones too. The workflows are becoming more and more intricate to allow for constant iteration while pushing the bar of the industry higher and higher. It’s quite a challenging task to manage a scalable workflow that can handle large assets, numerous iterations, and multiple teams (often spread across different locations and time zones). To set yourself up for success you need to know the collaboration within your teams is as streamlined as can be, and that there’s clear communication and alignment on your goals. This is mainly achieved through meticulous production management and the choice of technological and development tools.
The pace at which new technical solutions come around in the gaming industry (things like VR, AR, and cloud gaming have been mainly adopted on a larger scale in the last few years) means that studios have to continuously learn and adapt. Integrating these and other solutions into your game development pipeline can require a lot of extra resources and can present additional risks, however it’s often necessary to keep up with the competition or breathe life into new exciting ideas.
It’s important to maintain focus on a healthy employee’s work/life balance as not doing it will almost certainly lead to team burnouts, affect developers mental health, ultimately reduce productivity in the long term, and even result in high staff turnover over time. These factors can compromise releasing the game altogether or maintaining the vision set at the beginning of the development cycle. Changing these things that have been around for decades for the better appears to be a significant challenge these days.
Game development is volatile by nature due to being expensive and risky at the same time. Studios have to secure enough funding and longer-term support to even have a shot at making their dream game, which can be difficult without a proven track record of past successes. Additionally, you need to be able to predict market trends and gamer preferences - often years in advance - to aim for a successful release. This adds one more layer of difficulty to the mix.
With thousands of games released every year, the task of maintaining player engagement is becoming more and more challenging. It’s not enough for studios to deliver innovative and high-quality games anymore as they also need to manage post-launch support through content updates and bug fixes while keeping the community excited to retain and increase the playerbase. This requires constantly allocating resources towards it and can be somewhat as demanding as the initial development.
The idea behind our framework and its implementation involves maintaining a presence in the form of game studios in specific countries for multiple strategic reasons. From acting as talent hubs to beneficial time zone overlaps, this approach might solve more issues than one would think. But here’s just a few reasons why we do it this way:
A Talent Hub: Each location is now a hub for talents in the region. People are generally much more inclined to work in a studio in their own country or a neighbouring one than move across the world, giving us a competitive advantage on finding and retaining the talent.
Time Zone Overlap: Having studios in multiple regions allows their time zones and work days to overlap. This is useful for a few reasons:
There is always someone online within the team in their regular work hours, ready to offer advice, jump a call, or generally discuss something in their field of work..
Healthier work/life balance as the company operates globally yet within reasonable working hours in each region. Thoughtful workload and task distribution helps avoid unnecessary strain on the team in regards to deadlines and shortage of time.
Some tasks are passed from studio to studio where it’s applicable as the workday ends in one studio and begins in another one, ensuring continuous experience exchange and progress on features.
Centres of Expertise: Depending on the specific talent pools in every region and despite a diverse development team in every studio, each one has major functions in which it acts as a centre of expertise, spreading it towards other studios. In our case this looks something like this, however this is a work in progress that may change over time depending on multiple factors at play:
Quebec, Canada (GMT-6): Audio, Environment Art, Gameplay Animation, Gameplay Code, Gameplay QA, Production, Scripting, Tech Animation, VFX
Guildford, UK (GMT +0): Audio, Cinematic Animation, Production, Publishing, Scripting, Tools & R&D, UI/UX Design, Voice & Performance, Writing
Dublin, Ireland (GMT +0): Cinematic Art, Cinematic Animation, Lighting, Localisation, Publishing, Recruitment, Scripting, VFX, Writing
Warsaw, Poland (GMT+1): Tech, Production
Ghent, Belgium (GMT+1): Gameplay Animation, Gameplay Code, Engine Code, Character Art, Concept Art, Design, Environment Art, Scripting, Tech Art, Tech Animation, World Building
Barcelona, Spain (GMT+1): Console Code, Character Art, Design, Engine Code, Gameplay Code, Production, Scripting, Tech QA
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (GMT+7): Automation QA, Cinematic Art, Cinematic Animation, Concept Art, Gameplay Animation, Gameplay QA, Scripting
The wider your reach is, the more diverse tech expertise and resources you and your studio have access to. By having multiple studios across different regions you use a more distributed approach, inviting diversity in technological capabilities and creative inputs that can help in solving complex problems. For example, one studio might have a better grasp at cutting-edge rendering techniques, while another can easily amass writing talent. Together, these studios can both do what they are great at and combine forces, pushing both creative and technical boundaries.
By having a prominent global presence, a studio has access to a wider pool of talent, which makes it much easier to get experts in specific areas. It allows you to assign major specialisations to different locations based on their strengths and team composition. A studio in a region known for its capable engineering universities can focus on technical development like engine code, while the other one known for artistic schools could specialise in 2D/3D Art - as a broad example.
The fact that the process continues and the workflow never stops - on a global scale - is a big benefit to production deadlines. The operations being continuous across time zones allows for a "follow-the-sun" model where tasks are passed along across the globe, effectively utilising the so-called 24-hour work cycle of a distributed company. This setup minimises downtimes and can even enhance how responsive the studios are to development needs, one studio being able to pick up a project where another one left off. It keeps things moving forward and also allows for more predictable scheduling while reducing the pressure on the team, bringing you to more efficient and scalable workflows. This approach ensures that workloads in a given studio are way more balanced.
Technological progress is constantly breathing down your neck, and yet you may see how different regions are adopting new tech at different speeds due to various reasons like legislation or global penetration of tech solutions. Having studios spread across the world can accelerate access to tech insights as this structure fosters a culture of continuous learning and adaptation, which is very important for staying ahead in a quickly evolving industry such as video games. Cross-pollination of ideas is mandatory for staying at the forefront of advancements in tech these days.
With the team distributed globally, the workload can be more evenly distributed even given time constraints and a sizable backlog of things to do. It allows you to maintain a healthy work/life balance in your teams as much as possible even towards the final stages of development whilst managing deadlines more efficiently. Transferring tasks across studios to balance the workload and to maintain regular working hours as much as possible and where possible can aid in promoting a much better culture at work as opposed to just single location teams. This in turn leads to a better retaining of talent as at the end of the day (or at the end of your whole development cycle) it facilitates improved employee satisfaction, reduces burnouts and generally keeps your studios a great place to work at, fostering loyalty and keeping things organised with a focus on well-being.
The global presence also allows for a certain degree of risk diversification. If one market or project (in case you do multiple projects with such a structure) does not perform as you expect it to, others might compensate. If there’s a certain crisis or something out of the ordinary in a given region, normally others provide a bit more stability and predictability.
Additionally, being present in multiple regions can increase your brand recognition and open up various funding opportunities with local accelerators or government bodies, such as being nominated for regional grants and various incentives not available to studios operating in a single country. This approach may also help in tapping into local player bases better and more effectively, tailoring content to regional preferences, and potentially increasing your overall revenue stream.
Multiple studios around the world mean closer proximity to your players also spread across the world, enabling a better and more tailored market research and integration of diverse feedback into the development process. This produces culturally relevant and diverse content, increasing player satisfaction and engagement with your game. Post-launch support can be then handled in a more timezone-friendly manner too, because you can now give players faster responses and updates when it’s best to do so.
As you can see, there are few things keeping your game studio becoming the best it can be. But international presence, while tough to master, can be a major step-up in your operations. Once you realise the importance of having a robust and adaptive framework and implement a similar structure into your operational approach, your workflow will become unmatched. I hope that this article serves as a starting guide to one of many ways of extracting the full potential of your studio.
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