How to build a successful small indie team | Indie Dev Insights #3

"You need to compose your team very well - or your entire game project might be doomed" - Daniel Marx, Co-Founder, Game Director and CEO of the award-winning indie studio Osmotic Studios, shares his experience from founding their studio with a team of three devs in 2014, growing to eight people and shipping two successful games since. In this interview he gives his insights on questions like: What are the essential roles for any indie studio? How do you develop successful games with a small team of only a few people? And why can it be a challenging and emotional journey to lead a small indie team?

This is the third video of Gamecity Hamburg's new series "Indie Dev Insights" where we talk to indie devs and industry experts about topics that concern indies apart from strictly development topics - like marketing, sales, funding, publishing - or in this case: organization of a team.

Learn more about Gamecity Hamburg and get in touch:

Video production: moodmacher+

Daniel Marx, Co-Founder, Game Director and CEO of the award-winning indie studio Osmotic Studios, took the time to talk to us about how they organize their team of eight game developers and the lessons he learned from starting up the indie studio back with only three people in 2014, taking care of the business side since then and successfully shipping their two critically acclaimed indie games “Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You” and “Orwell: Ignorance is Strength”.

First, he explains the four roles that you need to build a great indie dev team: A game director, a technical director, an art director and a business director to him are the key roles that make up a successful indie game development team. He also shared that he and his co-founders had to grow into their roles, gaining experience as they went along.

But there are also big challenges to building a team and managing complex, creative projects as an indie team. In a small indie company, you will need to be able to wear multiple hats, switch between roles and responsibilities constantly as part of a small indie dev team.

That is also why finding the right people as teammates and creating good working relationships is so important when starting your indie game studio: When you set up an indie studio and build your team, you have to compose it very carefully. You will need to be able to work efficiently and effectively as a small indie team – or your whole game project may be doomed.

But aside from talking about what being a successful indie studio takes, Daniel also shared that it can be a very challenging and emotional journey to be responsible for a small Indie Game Dev team.

As a tip to others who think about building a small business making video games, Daniel says that there’s never been a better time to do it, especially in Hamburg, because of opportunities like the Prototype Funding by Gamecity Hamburg or the German federal funding. But he also says you shouldn’t dive into building your first game as a small indie development team naïve and organize yourself well.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:10 About Osmotic Studios & Introduction Daniel Marx, CEO
2:41 The four big roles and skills needed in every indie dev team
3:25 People might need to grow into their role(s)
3:52 The biggest challenges of working in a small indie team
4:44 The advantages of a small studio: Responsibilty turns into experience
5:50 Also: teamwork makes the dream work! Or turns it into a nightmare
6:37 Advice to your past self: Managing is emotional
7:21 Tl;dr Found your studio now!
8:06 Do it! But do it professionally
8:33 Outro