Programs for Game Studios Programs for Game Studios
How to design a program and its mentoring for studios that make and sell games.
What this presentation covers
What this presentation covers
What this presentation covers
Europe’s game industry
Most studios are small companies
Europe’s game market was worth EUR 23.3 billion in 2021, built mostly by SMEs.
- Game studios 4,900+4,900+
- Game publishers 200200
Why game projects fail
Most game problems start with people
In 200 studio postmortems, most root causes were people, not technology.
- Management as common as production problems
- Marketing grew most over 23 years
- Team rising in the last decade
- Technical falling over time
Skills a studio needs
A game needs more than code
A game joins writing, design, art and code with publishing and localisation.
- Art and design look, feel, game rules
- Development engine, tools, performance
- Publishing marketing and community
- Localisation every market’s language
Public money for games
Map public funding before investors
In the UK, a certified British game can claim a 34% credit on qualifying spend.
Funding milestones for a game
Tie each funding round to a build
Publishers and funds judge what they can play, so plan builds as milestones.
- Prototype is the core loop fun?
- Vertical slice one level at final quality
- Publisher deal money for production
- Launch store page, reviews, sales
Testing with players
Playtest early and often
Mentors should ask for player feedback at every build, not only before launch.
Publishing deals
Keep the IP when you sign
A game is first a work of intellectual property, and the deal decides who keeps it.
- Who owns the IP? the studio, ideally, with a licence
- What is recouped first? the advance, then a revenue split
- What marketing is promised? a budget in writing
Living with platforms
Plan for platform rules to change
Stores change curation and pricing often, so games are reworked long after release.
- Curation who gets seen
- Pricing fees and discounts
- Player data drives each update
Running a live game
Set a pace live teams can keep
Running a game as a service intensified work at a large studio, a study found.
- Ship an update on a planned calendar
- Read the metrics retention and spend
- Listen to players community feedback
- Plan the next one with time to rest
Who works in games
Widen who builds the games
About 98,000 people worked in European games in 2020, an estimated 20% women.
Sources
The research behind this presentation
- European Parliament (2022) European Parliament resolution of 10 November 2022 on esports and video games (2022/2027(INI)) Official Journal of the European Union, C 161, 5 May 2023, 2-10
- Politowski, C., Petrillo, F., Ullmann, G. C. & Guéhéneuc, Y.-G. (2021) Game industry problems: An extensive analysis of the gray literature Information and Software Technology, 134, 106538
- HM Revenue & Customs (2024) Claiming Video Games Expenditure Credits for Corporation Tax GOV.UK guidance, updated 19 February 2026
- Nieborg, D. B. & Poell, T. (2018) The platformization of cultural production: Theorizing the contingent cultural commodity New Media & Society, 20(11), 4275-4292
- Weststar, J. & Dubois, L.-É. (2022) From crunch to grind: Adopting servitization in project-based creative work Work, Employment and Society, 37(4), 972-990
Help studios ship and keep going
Fund builds, protect the IP and keep a pace teams can sustain after launch.