We don't need to look in the news for long to be reminded that it's a very challenging time for the games industry right now. While layoffs have always been part of the cycle of the industry, the mass layoffs that have been seen following the COVID boom have been significant.
The impact has been widespread affecting every part of the industry, not just studios that had commercial failures but even the large and seemingly profitable corporations, while some of the biggest casualties have come from on the operational support side.
Some people who have been impacted by these redundancies are also finding this as an opportunity to try something different. Instead of trying to get another role in a highly competitive job market, they have decided to take destiny into their own hands and start their own business.
"I'd rather do something that's dependent on me, so if I fail or succeed, I fail or succeed on my terms," says Fabio Davide, founder of Electric Sheep Studios, an indie game and co-development studio whose core members had all been affected by recent layoffs. "Ultimately, what was promised to the previous generation, where a cushy job in a big company is stable, does not really exist anymore. So at that point, that leaves a space to the entrepreneurial will for you that just wants to come out."
Fabio Davide – Founder and Head of Studio, Electric Sheep Studio
But while the idea of no longer answering to the corporate machine and being your own boss sounds appealing, is that necessarily the right career choice after being laid off? For the people we spoke to, including Davide, it turned out wanting to start their own company was already an ambition they had.
"There was an awareness there of this being a thing that would probably happen at some point in the next couple of years, it just meant that it happened now as opposed to in the next couple of years," says George Willard, co-founder of Secret Sauce, a visibility agency offering services in marketing, biz dev and publishing support, the kind of roles that have been disproportionately affected in these mass redundancies.
Micro indie studio Silver Script Games was actually founded by Alyx Jones back in October 2022, as she was working on her own project The Quiet Things during evenings and weekends alongside her full-time role. When she was made redundant last December, she then decided to turn this part-time endeavour into a full-time role.
"I probably would have eventually transitioned to it maybe in a couple of years, but we were lucky to get grant funding and the redundancy package further helped me make the decision to just do my own thing," she says.
Alyx Jones, Founder Silver Script Games
As alluded to above, having financial resources is important when deciding to start a company – which a good redundancy settlement can offer – even if the actual registering of a company in the UK is only £20. There are still other start-up costs to consider, which vary depending on the company being set up.
"Because we're a consultancy, a service offering phone calls, presentations, decks, documents, Excel spreadsheets, the actual startup cost is pretty low.” says Willard.
"But it's the runway that you need to get stuff set up and get clients through the door that I think is a challenge. You need some sort of severance or savings that you can call upon to give yourself that time to get clients through the door to be able to make that kind of thing happen."
As well as severance, Jones adds that it's possible to negotiate for other things from a former company. "People don't realise, especially if it's never happened to you before, that you can negotiate and push for what you think is right with whatever leverage you have," she explains. "There may be deals you can do like asking for equipment that you've been using, especially if your role's gone, then you should be able to keep your machine or whatever game design software that you might have a license for – whatever makes your life easier. And for a lot of companies, those things are easy to say yes to."
What has also helped is that Jones was free to pursue her own side projects outside of her job, something Willard believes should be the norm for other companies especially in this current climate of uncertainty. "The people that we're speaking to are projects and pieces of work that we wouldn't have been able to do previously," he explains. "It should be important for more people these days to explore having side contracts, but also for more employers to entertain the idea of side contracts, as long as it doesn't impact their staff's day-to-day job. Because it made a huge impact on our ability to spin something up quickly."
These new companies are naturally operating at a smaller scope with less resources than when they were at their previous employers, but it's also given them the opportunity to reconsider a different way of working that's more sustainable.
"We're basing our vision on something we call sustainable creativity," says Davide. "We want to build something that doesn't implode over the weight of its own growth, which means not going through a cycle of hiring a hundred people to make a AAA game then firing those hundred people because you cannot sustain them during the pre-production of the sequel. I don't think it's necessarily different, but it's different from what a lot of the big companies in the industry are doing right now."
When starting something from scratch, it's also important to build networks. Having pre-existing relationships has been especially important for Willard, with the agency relying on connections of connections and word of mouth to find clients. "Before we even announced anything, we were able to fall back on connections of connections and people that we've met at conferences years ago, that we were able to talk to now. It put us in a strong position to be able to announce with clients already signed on the books, which can make a massive difference."
Davide adds: "I wouldn't say that having a pre-existing network is overly important – but you need to be willing to do the work to build one because it's needed. Nobody's gonna come and give you a publishing deal, or money for investment after you put up a website and say hey, I want to become a developer."
Besides just finding funding, those networks are also important for identifying like-minded people to collaborate with, although the benefit of these layoffs has also meant there's an even greater talent pool out there to draw from, through the many supportive communities that exist in the games industry. This can also be assuring for people who would like to start their own company, but do not necessarily have a team in place initially.
"There's even funding opportunities to be able to hire people or help you put a business plan together, or incubator schemes if you want to learn," says Jones, who's had to figure out becoming a studio head, whereas she had previously been working in audio, albeit as a lead so did have experience in training and helping people, as well as mentoring and tutoring outside of that.
"The great thing about the games industry is everyone you meet is really friendly and willing to share their knowledge, so if running a studio is something people want to do, there is support out there to be able to do it. Alternatively, if you're for example an artist not interested in running a business, you can partner with someone who you've got to know either at work or at a development networking opportunity that you can collaborate with."
George Willard, Co-Founder Secret Sauce
Of course, starting a studio comes with a lot of other changes to adjust to, some which will be beneficial, but others also a new challenge. It’s perhaps most liberating that being your own boss means being able to take charge of the situation.
Being able to make mistakes ourselves and own those learning points and own those decisions that we're making, I think is a very nice position to be at," says Willard. "If we don't think something is a safe bet, or we don't think something is a good choice for us as a company, or aligns with our values, we're able to say no without worrying about what somebody above might think of that."
The converse of that is Willard has also had to adjust to a mental shift, having been too used to having to also answer to someone higher up. "I was speaking with a potential client the other week, and they were asking if we can do certain things, and my immediate reflexive thought was, I need to speak to somebody before I say yes," he adds. "But actually, it's up to us whether or not we do that!"
As Silver Script's first game is a personal and autobiographical project of Jones, the biggest benefit to taking this path is having the creative freedom to do exactly what she wants to do and take the risks that AAA companies wouldn't. "We have that creative freedom so people are generally more interested in some indie games at the moment because they're doing something new rather than recycling the same old formulas." she says.
As long as I can run a small team and keep us afloat year after year, even if I just make the same amount of profit each year, then we still have reserves to fall back on when we have a rainy day that then guarantees salaries for a longer period of time."
There are nonetheless downsides and challenges to overcome when starting a new company that still needs time to grow. Money can become a major issue, not just the issue of start-up costs or runway mentioned previously.
"I never really thought about cash flow before, because at a company you just get paid as you need to get paid," says Willard. "But now if we don't think about it, we're not going to make any money and we're not going to be able to pay ourselves, so it's quite stressful."
Davide adds: "As a creative person, you start to realise how much things rely on money, so there is the risk that every suggestion, every discussion ends up going to money. Oh, it would be cool to do that, but this is going to cost X to build that, which we don't have. So you have compromised quality, and it's really hard to balance."
Money is of course a resource, and having limited resources extends to other areas as well, whether the amount of hours in the day or the number of people, which can be a problem for people who are seeking a better work and life balance.
"Realistically, I wake up and then I start working and then I'll work until 8 or 9 in the evening, because I want to make stuff happen, I've got stuff to do," says Willard. "There's nobody else to say, it's six o'clock, it's time to log off. I can work all weekend. And that's not a great thing to do.
"Because there's nobody else to do stuff, so you end up picking everything up because somebody has to. You can kind of coast on a lot of jobs at certain times. You may have a bad week where you don't stay as up to date as you should be on a project but you know that there's enough people on the project that it's going to keep moving forward anyway. But if you're not pushing it forward, it doesn't get pushed forward."
In addition, Davide also thinks there's a risk of being derailed from the original creative goal, and unwitting fall back into the same bad habits. "You might end up in the same trap that big companies end up with when they decide they want to make a game because of a particular genre or style is selling," he says. "You fall into the same trap and thinking, just through a different path."
However, Jones is confident that she will not feed back into the corporate cycle, and if Silver Script becomes a great success, definitely would not allow it to be acquired.
"I think that people like me who've been through that, they probably feel quite burned by the experience," she concludes. "If they do have their own company and then someone comes along wanting to acquire them, they're certainly going to think twice before they sell up unless their only goal is to do that. But that's not my idea."
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