Agenda
Adapt or die: The benefits and costs of balancing co-dev and original IP development
Rory McGuire (President & Chief Creative Officer, Blackbird Interactive)
Pass Type:
Festival Pass, Game Changer Pass -
Get your pass now!
Track:
Business Strategy
Audience Level:
All
Format:
Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
For over a decade, Blackbird Interactive (Starfield: Free Lanes & Terran Armada, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Escape the Backrooms, Minecraft Legends) followed a tried-and-true strategy of using full-game external development to fund its own original IP. But when the post-COVID bust hit and that funding evaporated, BBI was forced to adapt that model to work for co-development.
BBI's president and CCO, Rory McGuire, explores how BBI built a co-development lifeline in a storm of cancelled projects and layoffs. He details the organizational restructuring necessary to make co-dev work, the precious stability it created, and how the studio is continuing to identify and defend against unexpected silent killers of a hybrid studio like fragmenting culture, eroding institutional knowledge, and the strain of juggling a dozen separate projects with their own needs and challenges.
BBI's president and CCO, Rory McGuire, explores how BBI built a co-development lifeline in a storm of cancelled projects and layoffs. He details the organizational restructuring necessary to make co-dev work, the precious stability it created, and how the studio is continuing to identify and defend against unexpected silent killers of a hybrid studio like fragmenting culture, eroding institutional knowledge, and the strain of juggling a dozen separate projects with their own needs and challenges.
Takeaway
Attendees will gain an honest look at the sacrifices and benefits of pivoting to a hybrid model involving co-development. They will gain a vocabulary to diagnose failure modes, an understanding of unique entropic forces and how to mitigate them, and a model of how to structure a similarly-sized business.
Intended Audience
This presentation is accessible to anyone and requires only basic knowledge of how games and studios are funded and developed. Takeaways will be especially valuable to those in production, management, or leadership positions who are interested in the realities of co-development.