We've been remarkably lucky to not have to navigate some of the really extreme pressures that independent game companies find themselves under because a game doesn't quite pan out how they thought, or development goes a little bit longer, or the market changes," said Rao. "We still exist in that space, but we've been fortunate to have our chemistry and bond get us through. And to have worked on games that we love that have found an audience, which enables us to sustain ourselves. We said our games, the concepts, are a reaction to the previous game, but they also are just funded by the previous game."
The glue that holds the company together, Kasavin thinks, is the collection of personalities on the team and Supergiant's ability to retain them. That's the real secret sauce between the buns of Supergiant's sustained success. Whether due to burnout, layoffs, or other equally pernicious factors, many video game studios have high turnover rates. Supergiant does not. Ten years later, all seven people from the company's Bastion days are still there, alongside ten others that have been hired during other projects. Kasavin chalks that up to a conscious focus on health and personal growth.
The studio has made changes over time to ensure that everybody takes care of themselves. For example, Supergiant began as a company with unlimited time off. But, Rao explained, this created an "invisible pressure" to never stop working, because developers always had endless vacation time in their back pockets. These days, Supergiant still offers unlimited time off, but employees are required to take at least 20 days off per year. "This is us saving us from ourselves," Rao said. "That changes our psychology to 'How do I spend this minimum? Where do I put it? Am I doing a summer break, or am I doing every Friday for a little while?'"
Rao repeatedly emphasized that, when it comes to company culture, little things add up. As another example, he pointed to Supergiant's approach to emails on the weekend—namely, that there shouldn't be any after 5 PM on Friday, even if somebody's really excited about a new feature or idea, because that risks roping other people into work on the weekend. "It doesn't mean someone can't get really excited about something and do something if they want to," said Rao. "It means the company is not going to ask you to, and you shouldn't accidentally pull more people into a process that they didn't necessarily intend to do."
Even in these moments, however, team members try to temper each others' more self-destructive impulses. "Not everyone hollers if they're overburdened by work," said Kasavin. "We try to look out for each other and say, 'Hey, is this too much? Can we alleviate some of the burden here?' Sometimes it's not even a question, right? It's like, 'No, you're doing too much.'"
It's been a learning process, Rao and Kasavin agreed—one that's resulted in a place where people can come into work whenever they want and make time to have friends and families outside it. It might not work for a more literally super-giant 5,000-person company, said Kasavin, but it works for Supergiant.
"It works because it's a bunch of individuals, so it doesn't have to scale," Kasavin said. "We talk about how our games are very much built around the idiosyncrasies of the people on the team. Music is a central point because of Darren, voiceover is there because of Logan [Cunningham], and so on. Instead of trying to force everyone into the same work pattern, it's recognizing that creative people—different stuff makes them tick. The way that Darren does his best work is different from how I might do my best work. Rather than just force us to meet in the middle, just let Darren do his thing because he's a genius. Let me do my thing because I happen to grind it out late at night sometimes as a writer. You know, I wish I could do my best work within the space of 9 to 5, but unfortunately it doesn't always happen that way."
The Secret To The Success Of Bastion, Pyre, And Hades: No Forced Crunch, Yes Forced Vacations
It’s been ten years since Supergiant Games opened its doors. The team put all of their hopes into the studio’s debut game, Bastion, an action-RPG with a narrator. It succeeded with flying colors. Since then, the studio has released Transistor, Pyre, and Hades, every single one receiving critical...
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