Get insight into starting an indie game studio and the challenges that come with it in this interview with Ayla Derrick, the founder of Cave Bear Games.
Let’s face it: the game industry is hard. With the recent layoffs this year and the increased difficulty of finding a job in the industry, it’s easy to lose hope especially if you’re at the beginning of your career. Everyone seeks candidates with experience when a lot of people don’t even get the chance to work on a project.
If you’re in the same boat, you might have thought of another solution: founding an indie game dev studio. While it might not be the ideal solution, it is a way to learn, gain experience, and work together with a team to create a game or several. And with some luck, you might even gain funding in the process. However, there’s a lot of work that goes into founding, growing, and maintaining your studio. You have to manage multiple teams, talk with other industry professionals to network, find mentors, look for investors, work on the game—all while constantly learning. It can get exhausting very fast.
The good news is there are more and more resources for indie game studios ranging from online communities that support each other, to mentorships and insightful materials about what it takes to make games.
Meet Ayla Derrick, the founder of Cave Bear Games leading a team that’s made entirely of junior volunteers. In this article, Ayla shares more about her experience and struggles of founding an indie studio, developing a game, and key points to keep in mind when starting your own.
Let’s start with an introduction to you and your work. What was your background like before shifting to the game industry, and how did you come to the decision of founding a studio?
I began my journey in education, but when I decided to switch my career direction, I knew it was time to pursue a lifelong passion: creating games. I started with a lot of applications to game dev positions but I wasn’t successful. That’s when I thought of creating my own studio and putting together a team with the same struggles and passions so we can grow together. Along the way, I connected with amazing mentors on LinkedIn, and that’s how my studio came to life. Our team is made up of passionate junior developers, just like me, all excited to build their portfolios through this project. And who knows—if the game takes off, we’ve got a revshare plan to celebrate the success together!
Since you’re developing your first game, you know the struggle to break into the industry, so we’ll have a few questions around that. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone thinking about founding their own studio?
The biggest help was from networking. I managed to connect with mentors and professionals all over and I really appreciate all their support so far. It’s hard getting into the industry, especially more so as a junior, but the community is always willing to help and that’s what I find amazing. So my advice is go and try networking, be it online or offline. You’re bound to meet great people to give you hands-on advice or even collaborate with you.
Our Discord community has a section dedicated to that since we have a lot of people starting out. We have a networking channel and we partner with other volunteer-led studios to offer volunteering/revshare opportunities. At the moment we have 50+ partner studios with more to come.
What resources did you use the most to found and run your studio?
I’d say all the help from our mentors. I make it a priority to find mentors for every team member since we’re all juniors and as someone with a background in education I’m huge on learning and improving. The team has amazing ideas but everyone needs a bit of polish and that’s the part the mentors play. It’s incredible how everyone in the game industry is extremely welcoming and willing to help, and that’s been a huge part of running the studio.
Let’s talk about some of the challenges you’ve faced as a newly-founded indie studio. What would you say are the biggest so far and what do you recommend to new studios?
One of them would be the lack of knowledge since we’re all juniors and we’re learning. This was especially challenging during pre-production as we didn’t have any documentation to guide ourselves by.
Our mentors helped us along the way, however, we only really understood what it means once we got through it and realised we did a lot of things wrong. We’re dealing with the consequences of that right now and it’s slowing things down.
My advice to avoid this challenge is to take your time during pre-production. Have a meeting with everyone involved, talk about what you all want in the game, and start your documentation. Don’t create content before designing and creating system plans.
As for the team structure, everyone has different ideas of which departments matter the most. But at the very least you need a designer, programmer, marketer and QA lead. You might think that all departments need to be involved in every step of the development, but it’s not always feasible. Try to identify that during pre-production so you have a clear plan moving forward. I personally highly recommend a Producer at the start as well.
What would you say is your focus when creating games?
My main focus is the experience we gain as a team and the actual physical experience of creating a game. We’re all juniors so that’s what we’re looking for. The game itself is less of a focus but it’s something that keeps us together. Everyone’s passionate and interested in the game, so aside from gaining hands-on experience, we’re also driven by our love for Plantasia.
A common struggle is finding a good name for a studio and honestly I find yours amazing. A lot of people love seeing bears on your social media too. The bear craze is real. So what’s the story behind the name Cave Bear Games?
It’s actually related to my name. Ayla is not the most common name you might have encountered and it’s actually from a book called The Clan of the Cave Bear. It’s a fantastic book about a human girl named Ayla who gets adopted by a neanderthal tribe in ancient cavemen times. It follows her as she grows up defying stereotypes and patriarchal ideas. So obviously as a fellow woman I resonate with that. I also like my name a lot and so Cave Bear Games came pretty naturally.