As Tag celebrates it’s 15th birthday, we take a look at some of the lessons we’ve learned over the years…
We’ve just reached the 15th anniversary of our founding. It’s been a remarkable journey of growth, creativity, and working with some of the world’s best game studios.
When we started we were a team of three with some big ideas. A decade-and-a-half on and we’re a team of over 60 with dozens of game projects under our belts. We’ve seen new staff rise through the ranks to become respected industry voices, and have had the pleasure of becoming deeply connected with the local community here in Dundee; a city we sincerely adore.
We’ve worked hard, but we’ve also had a lot of fun together. And time and again we’ve seen projects we’ve contributed to go down very well with players, the press and our peers. That’s a feeling you really can’t beat.
We’ve also learned a lot about running a successful game studio over the past 15 years. We’ve enjoyed a great many successes, and we’ve learned how to embrace the occasional failure, learn from it, and apply those lessons to our ongoing growth and development.
With all that in mind, we wanted to share our key tips for growing and maintaining a game studio that thrives. Below you’ll find practical, frank insights that we hope will help studios of every size learn from our experience - all learned over 15 years of Tag.
1. PLAN BEYOND THE NEXT PROJECT 📝
At Tag we put our all into the projects we work on. Dedication and focus are key to making the most of any game creation effort. At the same time, we’ve learned that to succeed in the long term, you always need to put some consideration to the project that follows. You need to assign some time and budget to exploring future opportunities in advance. Whenever you’re working on a game, be sure to have some planning underway for what the next game will be. The day you finish working on a project is too late to start considering what the next one will be. And remember to plan an orderly and workable handover between projects. Your staff in particular will need headspace as you make the transfer; a process that will ultimately mean the new project starts - and finishes - on the right foot.
2. TRUST MATTERS 🤝
Importantly, you should hire people you trust, and pick partners you trust. It isn’t always easy to get right, and building trust often comes with time. But trust is also infectious, and can permeate a games business. Engendering and focusing on trust can bring many gains; including a happier, more creative, more efficient team. Build trust by leading as you would like to be led. Make clear to your staff that you trust their approach and ability - avoiding micromanaging their every action. Staff also need to be able to trust the seniors, which all comes from openness and transparency wherever reasonable - and that’s one of our core values here at Tag. Respect and trust should go in all directions, and we believe openness and transparency within the team makes for a better working environment and improved output. On a related note…
3. BE HUMAN-CENTRIC 👫
Your business success and game success will be bolstered by running your studio as a human-centric business. Respect and support the need for quality of working life, and work-life balance. Most importantly, it’s the right thing to do, but respecting and supporting your staff and the reality of their lives is also conducive to a more productive studio environment. Make clear to staff that they can be open about work challenges without judgement, and do all you can to support them in overcoming those challenges. Give ample time to considering how you can support staff, manage concerns, and quickly respond to complications in the team dynamic. More than anything, have empathy for the people that are your team, and let them know they can come to you.
4. CREATIVITY AND COMMERCIAL VIABILITY CAN BE BALANCED! ⚖️
Making games is commonly motivated by passion, but that must always be balanced with business thinking. Do not shy away from being commercially motivated. Indeed, a commercial mindset can give your studio the budget and resource needed to also pursue more creatively motivated projects. Make decisions based on how they extend the life of your business - because that more than anything will keep you making more games. If you are working with other teams as we do, pick projects that offer good profit margins. Don’t be afraid to assert your need to succeed, and make sure internal projects are planned as both creative and commercial entities.
5. TRY NEW THINGS AS A BUSINESS 💡
As with our first tip here, focusing on your current projects and giving them required dedication is always a first priority. But as your studio grows, diversifying can bring many gains. You might have the resource to work on simultaneous projects, taking the risk out of each. Or, like Tag have done in the past, you could work on tech or services related to game dev, and offer them to other studios as part of your business - all while establishing proprietary tech that you can use with absolute control. Working to establish our multi-featured connected Live Game Management platform ChilliConnect helped us grow, let us understand and explore how to best evolve the business, and brought in a bounty of learnings about our own approach to crafting games. And when we sold it to Unity in 2019, it brought significant funds into the studio. Again, always be aware of balancing diversification with your capacity and the need to focus on the core of your business.
6. FOCUS ON WHAT ISN’T WORKING TOO ✅
Be realistic, analytical and thorough in making objective critiques of what is and isn’t working in your business. Identifying issues as early as possible will prevent major crises - and early identification comes from making a habit of constantly examining your own business. Look for external perspectives where possible, and be prepared to be honest with yourself and your team. Don’t be precious, and be willing to make tough decisions.
No business is perfect, and recognising that can actually help your studio improve, grow and flourish.
We hope those tips prove encouraging and useful, whether you're a new studio, a veteran dev setting up their own outfit, or deeply experienced at the helm of a games company.
We’re very much planning to be here - bigger and better still - in another 15 years. And we hope your studio is too. Because the games industry is one where our collective success defines the individual success of our teams. So here’s to 15 more years of making great games - and growing our studio businesses.
We’d like to give one final shout to all of the team, past and present, who have made Tag what it is today - we couldn’t have done it without you! 🥂
PS. We’re hiring right now! So if you’d like to join the team and experience our exciting journey with us, head on over to our Careers page now - we’d love to hear from you.