Productivity should be seen as the birthright of the small studio. Instead, it has been neglected and creators have largely ceded these concerns to the kinds of people who attend investor relations calls. Productivity’s dim reputation is a result of this neglect, with unpopular corporate measures like return to office (RTO) and layoffs being top of mind when the term comes up. It should be seen as a happy thing, focused on opportunity and enabling creators to take on more projects with even greater ambition. By moving away from the more limiting view of productivity as a necessary evil, creators will be better acquainted with one of the most effective tools in navigating a competitive environment.
Productivity is best thought of as the ability to make better use of the resources available to us. If a writer finds a way to write an article faster, they have become more productive. If they write better articles in the same amount of time, they are also more productive, since the quality-adjusted output is greater. Sometimes these gains can be unlocked by buying things that make them more productive (word processors, third-party web hosting, writing lessons). Some of these gains come through a rearrangement of the resources they already have (removing distractions, writing around or through difficulties, building routines). Applied to our daily lives, we see productivity as purely beneficial, since it means we have more free time to do other things. Applied to business, it also should be a good thing, since productivity gains have historically been associated with wage gains.
This does not mean that every encounter with productivity gains is positive. For many, productivity gains can mean working harder, and not every effort ultimately pays off. Like any warning, these individual experiences should not be ignored, but too much emphasis on negative examples runs the risk of constraining a very useful tool available to creators. Ultimately, examples of productivity enhancement lend themselves more naturally to positive outcomes than negative ones.
Consider a generic founding story. A developer at a large, established studio is full of ideas but finds themselves relegated to comparatively minor tasks on larger titles. They do good work, but it is slow to be incorporated due to several layers of review. Genuinely new work is even slower to be incorporated due to changes imposed from the top resulting in considerable rework. Possessing some financial resources and becoming increasingly frustrated with a stagnant work environment, the developer sets out with a couple of like-minded coworkers to found an independent studio to realize the kinds of projects they haven’t been able to create in their current roles.
This story is common enough to be a cliche. It is also a straightforward story about productivity. A group of individuals reflect on the mismatch between their talents and the processes they are being applied to. They decide they can realize more value by building their own process, the proverbial “there has to be a better way” founder’s story. In addition to benefitting from a more efficient process, part of the team’s compensation comes from working on projects that are creatively satisfying. The new studio is not assured success, since they have separated themselves from distribution, which was a given at the old firm. They start with the advantage of making a better product at a lower cost. As long as the cost of replacing the gaps in the production chain does not exceed the gains from the new team’s efficiency, the new studio has a good chance of succeeding, if not thriving.
The story does not make any mention of working in an office or getting promoted and firing dead wood colleagues. It doesn’t even require the old studio to be a bad place to work, only less appealing to the ambitions of the soon-to-be-founders. The only unusual feature is that the productivity aspects of this story are now made explicit.
Creators do not start studios to worry about productivity, which is why it can be overlooked. Conversations concerning productivity are often born of scarcity, and so the present framing about what can be done can just as easily focus on what can’t be done. It can also appear like something that only big companies worry about when the topic comes up on earnings calls.
However, creatives have an advantage when facing productivity questions, since they are directly aware of how these choices affect their final product. Films are even more costly than games to make, but James Cameron saved millions of dollars on the budget for The Terminator with a bit of opening text that sets the decisive battle between humanity and the machines in 1984 instead of 2029. There are efficiencies that can only be found by doing the work, and smaller studios are better equipped to find and incorporate them.
Any independent creator is ultimately going to have to take on responsibilities outside their specialty. Social media mavens may not have good intuitions when it comes to netcode, just as highly skilled programmers may not naturally possess the empathy that makes for good user interfaces. Building, maintaining, and improving a production process that makes better games at a lower cost than the competition is another responsibility a creator takes on by going independent. A more positive framing is just a way to make sure this responsibility isn’t neglected.
We will be more open to better ways of working if we don’t see productivity as a necessary evil and instead see it as the means through which we can achieve our creative ambitions. It is an investment in our long-term success as creators.
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