The current state of the industry and the drive towards the creation of new indie and AA studios

Regular gamers (and developers!) love to complain about what we don't like about a title. The graphics are outdated, the mechanics are repetitive, the amount of DLC they release at an exorbitant price, among many other complaints. If you know so much about games and maybe how to make them, what better option than to create your own studio? Although it sounds a bit like "be your own boss", that was Llama Lane CEO Lars Håhus's main piece of advice on the current state of the industry in a message to the assembled developers.

It was at the Gdańsk DevGAMM, held at the AmberExpo with the support of InvestGDA, where we were able to talk to him for a few minutes, in which he shared his vision of the current state of video games, all after founding several studios.

"There's never a better time to start the studio than today - you're always going to regret that you didn't do it, I think, if that's what you want to do. Obviously, when it comes to funding, it's a bit different than what it was previously. It's changed a bit, but there's still money out there and the advice I always give to founders is really bootstrap as far as possible, which basically means if you can create your game using your own funding, your own savings, and then take it as far as possible (...) You have to have a playable game for anybody to even start considering whether or not to invest in you."

He was also keen to stress the importance of having a common mindset, without it getting in the way of the creative vision of the studio members. To establish a solid relationship between the different members there is no one way faster than another, it simply has to be built, getting to know each other better, working side by side and sharing a long-term vision. "You start to meet people at school and you start to establish these relationships, that's a good time to build trust. You work with them and see what they are good and bad at."

But for a studio, it is not only the commitment to the project and the passion for the environment you work in that is important. It is essential to achieve profitability in order to be able to build your products with a growing team and live for the long term with your projects. Everyone in the company, not just the management, must be clear that the product must be sustainable, to ensure the survival of the project. "When people decide to become game game developers, I think very few are going to have this business mindset and like, hey, let's make money or let's go to market and how that works and so on. There has to be a scale between them.

The full interview touches on many more topics, for example the Swedish model in video games, where there are no public funding for video games, which means that studios have to adopt a business mentality from the start. This has made the industry more self-sufficient. "People in Sweden have been successful in making games that have made money and they've actually gotten some money out of that and become relatively wealthy, that they're investing back into the industry because they want to."

If you want to know more about this interesting world, we leave you the full DevGAMM interview with local subtitles below.

Would you like to start a studio with your developer friends?