How to stay on top as an outsourcer

Challenges of outsourcing companies: how to stay open and competitive in a fast-paced business environment??

The gaming industry has grown by 23%?since COVID-19 and will likely continue to grow at annual compound rate of 11% per year through 2024. To keep up with the demand for new games and support their processes, gaming studios are increasingly turning towards outsourcing. This leads to substantial competition between outsourcing firms providing 3D art, animation, UI/UX design and other services.?

While companies create NDA to protect their business ideas and stay competitive, we think it is necessary to share our experience and best practices to help other outsourcing companies adapt to rapidly changing business environment and contribute to positive changes in the game development industry.?

How can an outsourcing company stay open and win competition among other market players??

1. Invest in the team - create opportunities to attract best talent. There are many ways to attract talent – from expanding the geography of search to more elaborate measures for talent attraction and retention. Think of the measures that would help you hire best artists and developers – this may include creating solid professional development path for them, investing in education, ensuring transparency of internal processes, maintaining real work-life balance and more.?

2. Quality is the key to success. “Better done than perfect” is not always a good advice – sometimes it’s better to spend more time on the product to create something truly special, as soon as an outsource company stays transparent and updates a partner on the status of projects. By investing in quality and keeping a balance between unique style and partners’ specific requests an outsourcing company can build a solid foundation for future collaborations.?

3. Think about your portfolio. A good practice is to allocate time to interesting signature projects. There is no need to focus only on hero assets – companies can build solid portfolio and demonstrate their teams’ skills by creating elements of environment, engines, and other assets.?A good example of portfolio could be a set of unique assets tied to a game setting – e.g., references to national celebrations or popular culture elements.?

4. Be open in communication and flexible in terms of collaboration with your partners. An outsourcing studio can build better partnerships by diving deeper into the partner’s processes and being flexible in all aspects of collaboration, from pipeline to communication. Being proactive about the pipeline and providing timely updates throughout the process will also be an advantage.?

5. Gather your feedback. Feedback is a critical instrument for enhancing professional development of outsourcing studios and building their relationships with community. Game dev studios often use testimonials to refer outsourcing firms to each other, so it would be helpful to spend some time to gather feedback from partners and increase brand awareness by speaking about successful projects publicly. While feedback exchange between a client and outsourcing company results in more fruitful collaboration, it is also critical that team leaders and artists/developers engage in feedback sessions to create healthier working environment, ensure professional growth and increase overall product quality.?