Gardens: Building a Startup Games Studio for success (makers of Journey, Spider-Man, Skyrim)

GameMakers

If you were going to start a new games studio, how would you design the organization, the work environment, and work culture and values for the company? We speak with the co-founders of Gardens, who are building a shared fantasy adventure game from a veteran team that has worked on games such as Journey, Spider-Man, Skyrim, and many others. Gardens has recently announced an over $30M series A round, and we discuss how they are starting. - How are they designing their organization? Why did they make specific decisions on how to work and operate? Also joining us, is veteran game industry veteran Kristian Segerstrale. Co-founder of Glu Mobile, early investor in Supercell, cofounder and CEO of Playfish acquired by EA, senior exec at EA, and currently CEO of Super Evil Megacorp. OUTLINE: 0:00 Intro 1:38 How to deal with cofounder relationships? 2:35 Meeting Lexi for the first time and starting the company with lots of preparation 6:06 How do you fight and disagree with each other? 8:54 Most important issues to figure out as an early startup - need to resolve disagreements in a good way and personal motivations 12:42 Industry trends over next 5-10 years vs. focusing internally - strategic product decisions (platform) and fundraising strategy 20:08 Validating assumptions and asking for help 20:50 Gardens game: “an online PVPVE fantasy action adventure survival sandbox” 23:53 How to green light/validate game concepts at Garden and convincing investors of funding from Seed to Series A through prototyping 29:00 How did they think about designing their organization and establishing company culture and values? 34:06 Will Garden’s employee-centric focus and support of “work-life-balance” hurt their ability to succeed? Is hard-core necessary? 40:50 How to be successful without working in office and without hardcore work ethic? 47:20 What are key concerns for success? Scaling/hiring 49:37 Hiring from 3 to 20 51:53 Objectives from Series A funding and overall ambition for the game project SUBSCRIBE TO GAMEMAKERS: - Spotify Podcast: https://spoti.fi/3Cpyq7i - Newsletter: https://gamemakers.substack.com/ 😃 —CONNECT WITH ME! — • MY INSTAGRAM → @jokim1 • TWITTER → @jokim1 • LINKEDIN → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jokim/ — POPULAR CONTENT — 🤑 Economy of the Metaverse with Tim Sweeney https://youtu.be/h6ClJxjuRvw ℹ️ How to Build the Amazon of Game Companies https://youtu.be/bkd2TOpKt4I 🔮 Gaming Trends | A Look Ahead at 2021 https://youtu.be/NejFzHtpiZI 🖥️ The Future of PC Gaming https://youtu.be/_QT7O3Wxi2s 🔴 Games Industry M&A https://youtu.be/65nyPk6WNrs 🔴 Netcode for Multiplayer Games https://youtu.be/tHq3PzmjhLw 🔴 IDFA Deprecation Product Impact https://youtu.be/Ojec4wGKpso 🔴 Trip Hawkins on the New High Score https://youtu.be/5egTSQ6AiRA 🔴 LiveOps F2P Best Practices https://youtu.be/tmzqqnYbjNY