Video Game Veterans Are Abandoning Big Studios For Smaller Teams

Growing numbers of veteran video game developers are leaving large studios to work on smaller projects, citing bureaucratic burnout and creative constraints at major publishers. Nate Purkeypile, former lead artist on Bethesda's "Starfield," quit in 2021 after facing up to 20 meetings weekly coordinating with a 400-person team across four offices. He has since released "The Axis Unseen," a horror game he developed solo.

The trend, reported by Bloomberg, coincides with ballooning development costs in the industry. Sony's "Uncharted 2" cost $20 million in 2009, while 2020's "The Last of Us: Part 2" exceeded $200 million. "Small studios are not burdened by stockholder expectations," Renee Gittins, International Game Developers Association board chair, told the publication. They're "more nimble, [and] able to take greater risks." Recent indie successes like "Balatro" and "Animal Well," created by solo developers, have also demonstrated the commercial viability of smaller productions.

Dysfunctional

[fluffernutter]

I think this is no different than the dysfunctional way most companies work.. It is difficult to keep doing what you are passionate about forever, because in every company it is considered a 'move up' to move to a position where you are watching over other people doing the work instead of doing the work. If you don't 'move up' in a certain amount of time you are viewed as less useful.

Re:Dysfunctional

[gweihir]

I never understood why that is considered a move up. I always thought of it as a "your tech skills suck, try something else" move. To be fair, I have met a few (not many) excellent technical managers.

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[toxonix]

I can think of a few tech managers who are still very good at engineering in my current branch of the org chart. Mainly they moved up to get more $$ because they keep having more children to feed. Being a director-level technical manager apparently pays better than the developer equivalent (sr. principle engineer?), but with corporations being what they are, you have limited say or influence over anything. 20+ meetings per week that you have to attend which are mostly performative BS.

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[fluffernutter]

But then that begs the question, why can't a rockstar game developer make the same money just for being the best game developer?

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[Seven Spirals]

I don't know how it works with regular game companies but in the casino gaming industry, where I worked for years, we did pay well for devs who could produce results. At the time (about 15 years ago) hey hired all devs for 80k then gave them completion and performance bonuses. The guy who sat next to me made about $180k after all his bonuses were paid. He worked on the game engine and was really knowledgeable about both C programming with SDL, knew C++ also but didn't force it's evil on us too often, and I

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[fluffernutter]

Oh i thought you were talking about way more than $180k.

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[Seven Spirals]

Depending on where you live that can be a decent wage. Wouldn't work in Redwood Shores, California, but in rural Colorado it's a living.

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[fluffernutter]

But I can guarantee you the people who 'run the company' make a lot more than that.

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[Seven Spirals]

In this case they didn't. They were actual owners and in many years took a lower salary than we did to keep the company afloat during hard years. The owner told me it made more financial sense to build the company than to build his personal wealth. He and his wife and partner were stand up folks. The two guys were coders and got in the boat with us (one of them was a fantastic programmer). The wife worked the front desk and did our books/accounting.

They might make more now (hope so, Mike, you deserve it)

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[fluffernutter]

Ok but that's a small business. Was it public?

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[Seven Spirals]

Precisely. It was a small company with about 15 employees.

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[Seven Spirals]

sr. principle engineer?

I was at a company that made me a director so I could manage 22 engineers (8 domestic, 14 in India). I said I'd do it for six months while they found a professional manager, but afterwards they'd need to make me Principle Engineer. They had lost the last guy to another company. When I moved into the role, my pay did not change. The HR folks informed me that PE was the same as a Director, pay wise. Most companies have only one PE (hence the "principle" part). I have no real point, just thought you might find

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[alvinrod]

Traditionally because manager positions paid more. Some people with excellent technical skills took those positions to earn more money and found they hated the job because the technical skills they had spent years honing were no longer as applicable to their new role. It's the exact scenario described in the Peter Principle. The best managers are the ones who can shield the people they manage from bullshit raining down from even higher up and who try to find ways to make the people they manage more producti

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[fluffernutter]

In cultures like India and China and Japan, your level of running a company is everything. Families celebrate when their kids go from developer to manager.

Re:Dysfunctional

[2TecTom]

the bigger the corporate, the more ineffective it becomes, this effect is hidden by economies of scale, that is, until corruption cripples production and the whole thing collapses

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[radarskiy]

"If you don't 'move up' in a certain amount of time you are viewed as less useful."

The scope of the individual contributor is limited by reach of their own two hands.

By directing others, your scope is only limited by how many will accept that direction.

Sure there's that

[i kan reed]

But there's also the fact that a third of the industry got laid off.

There's thousands of free agents with excellent skills just waiting for a chance to join an indie studio.

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[Baron_Yam]

Yep. There are a lot of recently unemployed game devs who are probably not ready / desperate enough to try and find other ways to market their skills just yet.

They know how to make games, it's still their best bet for making a living and likely still their career preference too.

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[Moryath]

Also the fact that companies like Sony and Microsoft want to staff their teams with H1-B Slaves and Indian Crap-Programmers, so the real experienced devs have no choice but to form their own indie studios.

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[Seven Spirals]

I agree. However, I'd point out a few things. First, there are competent Indians. I met a few. Yes, it's not the norm, but they aren't unicorns either. Second, it's not the fault of an Indian for taking an H1B visa to undercut an American's coding job. If there is blame to be meted out, it should be on the the big businesses and government that creates these "opportunities".

Consider the fact that an H1B visa holder is often abused by their contracting firm or whatever company they are indentured to. Also,

Big Corporations == DEI HR Hell games (and movies

[eadon-com]

DEI - the REAL reasons modern entertainment is so sucky, so left wing (crap).

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[KlomDark]

Don Jr, Eric, and Ivanka? That DEI?

Re: Big Corporations == DEI HR Hell games (and mov

[paul_engr]

It must be so tough living in society with so much angst. How do you manage?

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[Darinbob]

His mom brings his meds down to the basement in the morning, but some days she forgets.

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[gtall]

Aren't you supposed to be out there eating Haitian cats, or am I misremembering your marching orders?

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[slipped_bit]

Now they can be unburdened by what has been, with the passage of time as it passes.

This is a win all around, really...

[King_TJ]

From the dawn of the video game revolution, the best games usually came from small teams. (Some of the early 80's coin-up arcade hits came from pinball machine manufacturers who spun off small teams to try building an arcade game title. And the most popular adventure games on personal computers were usually done by publishers like Sierra Online, who started with just a married couple working from their house.)

The state of today's video game industry is approaching it far more like making a Hollywood movie,

Re: This is a win all around, really...

[PFritz21]

Or a kid is asked to repurpose arcade cabinets for a less successful project and given free rein to come up with a concept. Thatâ(TM)s how we got Nintendo and âoeDonkey Kongâ. Theyâ(TM)re worth billions forty years later, and helped to revive a dying industry with home consoles in North America.

Re:This is a win all around, really...

[Zarhan]

From the dawn of the video game revolution, the best games usually came from small teams

This is all well and good, but the problem is these days that there's gazillion indie games available on Steam or GOG or itch.io, that you really cannot guess which is good.

I have only installed stuff like FTL or Shadowrun Returns (the whole series, Dragonfall is best) *after* they became widely acclaimed.

Way back when Ken and Roberta started out they had much smaller field. "Indies" where publishing (BASIC or assembly) program listings in magazines, and even those had a bit of editorial control.

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[King_TJ]

I get it... but we're ALSO stuck in kind of a rut where most of what people collectively think is "good" are just re-hashes of the same relative few game concepts. How many Battlefield or Call of Duty games do we need, for example? And as good a franchise as it is? How many more Fallouts will keep getting made around the same core concept?

If anything, we're just going to need some better video game review sites to point people to the ones that are really good?

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[JamesTRexx]

Rehashes indeed, and not challenging in my opinion when it comes to the few first person shooters I've looked at. Mods only take it so far.
I'd like to see an FPS where realistic graphics is not the priority but enough performance to fill a scene with characters without stuttering or disappearing after dying and going out of view (see Far Cry x).
And a difficulty grade that doesn't mean a difference in damage, but makes the enemy actually move in a smarter (or dumber as they do now) way. They don't walk aroun

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[Zarhan]

I get it... but we're ALSO stuck in kind of a rut where most of what people collectively think is "good" are just re-hashes of the same relative few game concepts

Sometimes rehashes are ok. One of the better indie games for me has been Hero-U Rogue (see https://www.hero-u.com/ [hero-u.com] ). Basically, if you loved Quest for Glory series from Sierra, this is basically same game with serial numbers filed off. Same main designers too.

Granted, I'm looking through my nostalgia filter, but was really happy to play that one.

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[fjo3]

No need to guess if a game is good. All you have to do is check the reviews and/or read the discussion forums. And if you don't like the game after that - get a refund. I've refunded plenty of games on Steam. There is a time limit, so don't sit on a new game for weeks - wait to buy it when you have some time to play it. I have more great indie games than I have time to play. Finishing up Steamworld Heist 2 right now, which is my game of the year, but I have plenty lined up after that, such as Dave the Dive

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[Darinbob]

But the big games get reviewed and fans are dumping on them because they're still not as good as movies. Criticisms about how characters look abound, voice acting is criticized, character or face animations are dumped on, it's all very brutal. It's a trend to be negative or hostile on social media or youtube about big games. So the message being sent back to the studios is: you should have spent even MORE money.

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[toxonix]

I used to work for a big US publisher, but at the time we had mostly small teams of ~5 people, maybe 8 at the most, with shared teams for things like sound design/music, hardware engineering and dev tools. This was all arcade games, except for a few 5th gen console titles that were in development. Game mechanics was everything, and the graphics were just pushing the limits of the hardware, which required a lot of microcoding tricks. There aren't many mobile game development companies making games as fun as

Games have gotten too popular

[JThundley]

Gaming has gotten too popular and therefor more corporate. I'm just glad I have the option of going to non-chain locally owned restaurants while the masses go to McDonalds if you know what I mean.

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[Darinbob]

It's the opposite though. McDonald's is inexpensive and low quality. The independent restaurants may have very expensive ingredients prepared by high paid chefs. Whereas indie games very distinctly are making shortcuts because they don't have the budgets - some are pixelated because they have to be and not because they're being ironically retro.

AAA studios are in a bind because the fans demand perfection. Add voice acting for the protagonist in an RPG then the community bitches because that's not how th

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[JThundley]

You're right that my analogy falls apart when it comes to cost. Maybe a better analogy would be comparing blockbuster Hollywood reboots of sequels of superhero movies to art house or independent films. The older I get, the more and more I turn to and fall in love with indie games. I hope good indie devs stick around and churn out good games!

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[mjwx]

Gaming has gotten too popular and therefor more corporate. I'm just glad I have the option of going to non-chain locally owned restaurants while the masses go to McDonalds if you know what I mean.

This is why I'm glad I never became a console peasant. PCGMR FTW.

On PC it's easy for a small studio to develop and publish, cheaper too as you're not paying danegled to MS/Sony for the privilege of existing on their platform. I haven't bought a AAA game (or is it AAAA now, fuck it we're "Five A" now) in years simply because none have held my interest. I couldn't care less about Call Of Snorefare: Same As Last Year, I've got loads of games from indy and smaller studios, many of which are still being activ

Unsurprising

[paul_engr]

How games should be developed: gamers make games. Anybody who isn't feeding them diet coke, pizza or keeping the office from catching on fire, if there is an office, is superfluous.

Good

[gweihir]

While the things smaller studios do are not as visually stunning (wears off in an hour or so), they have produced some pretty great games. Things like Factorio or Oxygen Not Included come to mind for me. In the end what counts is not presentation, but fun. Too many big studios seem to have forgotten that. BG3 is somewhere in the middle on team size and shows that larger teams can perform exceptionally well, it is just that most do not.

again?

[snowshovelboy]

Is this new or did bloomberg.com just now notice a trend that has been going on for like 25 years.

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[kurkosdr]

citing bureaucratic burnout and creative constraints at major publishers

And that, right there, is the problem with modern games: Suits who exercise extensive control over the creative process to make sure certain checkboxes are ticked (or bring in outside consultants with no passion for the game to do the same), because they think this is how you get a guaranteed a smash hit. Problem is, art isn't a process of ticking checkboxes.

I just hope we get something like the old Electronic Arts, aka a company that gives developers the funding and marketing to go beyond indie level but keeps a "hands-off" approach to the creative process (with the exception of setting tentative deadlines and monitoring progress).