Game Studio Unlocked
@gamestudiounlocked.bsky.social
Indie game studios are brimming with creativity and passion, but they lack experience leading and running a studio. With twenty years of experience, I write about how teams can build and grow successful, lasting studios.
If you group game projects into successful and failed ones, you'll find multiple common denominators in each group. The presence or absence of effective leadership is systematically one of the top root causes informing those outcomes. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/leadership...
Leadership in game development: what it is and what its absence costs
The non-negotiable force multiplier for game studios
gamestudiounlocked.substack.com
Your team and capacity needs change throughout the development of the game. Building the team in a deliberate manner helps minimize and avoid crunch, layoffs and wasted money. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/indie-stud...
Staffing strategy for game studios: full-time vs. contractors
Why the team you need at concept discovery is not the same at full production
gamestudiounlocked.substack.com
Money always comes with strings attached. Understand the tradeoffs of different possible funding strategies. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/indie-game...
Indie game funding: what you're actually signing up for
A concrete guide to your options, trade-offs and what I wish someone had told me sooner
gamestudiounlocked.substack.com
Should you pursue that new idea in production? Is that going to derail the milestone? Is this scope creep? Are we shutting down creativity? What to do? I wrote about it. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/killing-id...
Killing and protecting ideas in indie studios
A field guide for deciding what to keep and what to cut
gamestudiounlocked.substack.com
If you put in place a simple risk register and a regular team sync to review issues and progress, coupled with team iteration retrospectives, you're well ahead of most teams. It's straightforward and it pays off in spades. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/risk-regis...
Risk registers for indie game studios
Practical advice for indie teams to manage risk proactively and with minimal overhead
gamestudiounlocked.substack.com
It may seem a little obvious, but having a well-articulated vision, aligning the team behind it and understanding that throughout development what you will pivot is the features and UX around it, not the vision itself, is mission critical. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/importance...
Hiring is fundamentally different for indie game studios than it is for larger, more established companies. There's a lot of nuance that tends to get inadvertently glossed over. gamestudiounlocked.substack.com/p/hiring-for...
Understanding your "why", your reason to become a game developer, your driver to start your own studio, is profoundly important. I wrote about why this has value for you and how to approach it.
I have no idea what this is about, but Dome Keeper is going for $5.39 right now, so don't mind if I do :) store.steampowered.com/app/1637320/...
Hi, I'm Seb. 20 years in game development at Riot, Crytek, EA, indie studios. I work as a fractional EP and studio director with up and coming indie and AA studios. Consultancy: gamestudiounlocked.com Newsletter: gamestudiounlocked.substack.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sebastian...
