Agenda
The Orchestration Economy: Rebuilding Game Production After the Great Layoffs
Yea-Ji Oh (Global Director, Delivery and Client Engagement, Streamline Media Group)
Pass Type:
Academic Pass, Festival Pass, Game Changer Pass, Indie Pass, Start-Up Pass -
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Hot Topics:
International
Track:
Production & Team Leadership, Business Strategy
Audience Level:
All
Format:
Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
The era of solving problems by throwing people at them is over. Funders want a product without the cost of carrying headcount, more than 40,000 games industry jobs have disappeared, and teams are smaller. Whatever AI becomes, with its introduction, the perception of labor and with it how games get made has already undeniably changed. The industry now demands new development methods and a new studio structure: a lean core team, trusted external partners, and shared context across both. So who should studios choose to build with, and what makes a partner worth choosing? Drawing on 25 years and 500+ shipped titles, this session offers a practical, realistic survival playbook. It introduces orchestration, a general-contractor model for game production, and the factors that decide whether a partnership holds through the final, unglamorous 20 percent of delivering a title.
Takeaway
Attendees leave with a checklist for external partnerships in a leaner industry. They gain a practical way to judge who to build with, and a realistic picture of how a studio runs when headcount is no longer the answer.
Intended Audience
Producers, studio heads, team leads, and business or partnership leaders who are restructuring how their studios build games, or positioning to become external partners, benefit most. No prerequisite knowledge is required. Familiarity with game production pipelines and co-development arrangements helps but is not necessary.