Why the future of game studio success is operational, not just creative

At the point where every studio has access to cutting edge tools and technology, from game engines to marketing platforms, how do you make your game stand out? Riad Djemili, co-founder of Codecks, explores the value of operations in helping studios find their edge.

As a co-founder of a game studio (Maschinen-Mensch, born and based in Berlin), I’ve watched our industry change over the last decade. It’s a different world now. 20 years ago, if you wanted to use an engine like Unreal, it could cost you a million dollars; today, it’s basically free for everybody.

Getting your game into stores was a complicated process with a lot of gatekeepers; now, anyone can launch a game on Steam. Even marketing has changed completely! Thanks to platforms like TikTok, you don't need a huge budget to reach millions of potential players.

These changes have been great for creativity, but they've also levelled the playing field and made the market incredibly crowded. When everyone has access to the same powerful tools, the same distribution channels, and the same marketing megaphones, how do you stand out? This is the big question, and I believe the answer is something our industry has historically undervalued, often to our own detriment: operational excellence.

The studio is the new publisher

One of the most profound shifts is that the old gatekeepers are gone, but their responsibilities have landed squarely on our shoulders. A decade ago, a studio's primary job was production. We made the game, handed it over, and a publisher handled the rest. Now, we are the publisher. This means we're not just managing development; we're running Steam wishlisting campaigns, managing Discord communities, cutting trailers, coordinating with platform holders, and analysing sales data.

This creates two massive new layers of complexity. First, the process complexity skyrockets. Your project plan isn't just a list of art assets and code tasks anymore: it’s an interconnected web of marketing beats, community events, and development milestones, all with their own deadlines and dependencies. The announcement trailer needs a stable build; the community update needs new screenshots; the demo for a festival needs to be branched from the main project.

Second, the team complexity grows. You're bringing in people with entirely different backgrounds and "sensibilities." A programmer needs long, uninterrupted blocks of focus time to solve complex problems, for example, while a community manager needs to be reactive and constantly engaged. These work styles can easily clash without a system that respects both. When your marketing team and your development team are using different tools and speaking different languages, you don't have a unified studio: you have factions that are forced to inefficiently translate their needs to one another.

The exponential growth of chaos

This problem of team complexity gets exponentially worse as you grow. This isn't a feeling; it's a mathematical reality. When you're a three-person team, you have three lines of communication to manage. It's simple. You can all stay in sync with a quick chat. But when you grow to ten people, you don't have ten lines of communication: you have forty-five. At twenty people, that number jumps to an unwieldy 190. The complexity doesn't just add up; it multiplies.

This is the exact point where the informal, ad-hoc methods that work so well at the start - like Post-it notes, a Trello board, or a shared text file - inevitably break down. The pain points become daily occurrences. A critical decision is made in a Slack DM, and half the team never sees it. Two people accidentally work on the same task, wasting days of effort. A key piece of feedback is mentioned in a hallway conversation and is immediately forgotten. This is that "awkward mid-size phase" that so many studios hit, where the processes that got you here are no longer capable of getting you to the next level.

Winning the lottery in a hit-driven world

Let’s be honest: the games industry is a hit-driven business, and the hard truth is that most games don’t make a profit. We’re all trying to win the lottery. While you can never guarantee a hit, operational excellence is how you give yourself better odds. It’s how you afford to buy more lottery tickets.

Think of it this way: a studio that runs on clear, efficient processes can simply achieve more with the same amount of time and money. They can build and test more prototypes, pivot faster when an idea isn't working, and ship projects more reliably. A chaotic studio might spend its entire budget on one big, high-risk bet that fails. A well-run studio can make several smaller, smarter bets, gathering data and feedback along the way to dramatically increase the chances that one of them will find an audience. In this market, efficiency isn’t just about saving money: it’s a core strategy for survival.

An agile framework for the modern studio

So, how do we create operations that are both structured and flexible enough for this new reality? For us, the answer lies in the core principles of the Agile Manifesto. While written for software development, it is uniquely suited to the creative and unpredictable nature of making games. It provides a blueprint for building processes that empower people and adapt to change.

The first value - individuals and interactions over processes and tools - is vital. Game development is a constant, creative dialogue between different disciplines. The most important work often happens in the conversations between tasks. A process that discourages this interaction is a process that fails. Any system you adopt must be built to facilitate and capture these vital conversations, not hinder them.

The second is valuing working software over comprehensive documentation. A 500-page game design document is worthless if the game itself isn't fun to play. In game development, the "truth" is found in the playable build. The primary goal should always be to get to a testable state as quickly as possible. Your documentation process should therefore be a living, breathing part of development that serves the game, not the other way around.

Third, the principle of customer collaboration over contract negotiation perfectly captures the modern relationship between developers and players. With Early Access and live service models, we are in a constant dialogue with our community. Their feedback is invaluable. A modern workflow must have a direct and efficient channel for player feedback to flow into the development backlog.

Finally, and most importantly for game development, is responding to change over following a plan. You will discover things during production that you couldn't have predicted. A mechanic isn't fun; a playtest reveals unexpected behaviour. A rigid plan is a prison, forcing you to ship a feature you know isn't enjoyable just because it was on a list made a year ago. Your process, and the tools that enable it, must be built to adapt.

The Beating Heart of Your Studio

In the end, succeeding in today's games industry requires a holistic approach. You need the creative vision to stand out, but you also need the operational discipline to execute that vision without burning out your team or your budget. It’s about managing complexity, aligning your team, and giving yourself the best possible chance to succeed.

A core requirement of this operational excellence is mastery of your toolchain. At the centre of that toolchain is the beating heart of your company: your central project management tool. It’s where your strategy is translated into action, where your team comes together, and where the health of your project is made visible.

We faced this exact reality at Maschinen-Mensch. Our solution was to build our own tool, Codecks, because we needed a system that was born from game development, for game development.

We tackled the challenge of engaging our multi-disciplinary team by making it highly visual and playful, using a trading card metaphor that resonates with gamers and creators. This approach gets artists and designers to willingly engage with the process while still providing the robust features like dependency tracking and detailed reporting that producers and programmers need.

It is built on those agile principles: it fosters interaction through a goal-oriented conversation system; it supports living documentation; it brings in the player community via deep Discord integration; and its entire structure is designed to be flexible and adapt to the unpredictable nature of finding the fun.

Ultimately, the best tool is the one your team will actually use. While Codecks is our answer to the challenges outlined here, your mileage may vary. The crucial takeaway is to consciously choose a tool that empowers your entire team and supports the agile, ever-changing process of making games. Your process, and the tools that support it, are no longer a secondary concern—they are the foundation upon which your studio's future will be built.