The future of external development is in live game support, says former Keywords CEO
Behind the success of triple-A video games is the constant labor of external developers. When a company like Electronic Arts, Gearbox, Ubisoft, or Nintendo needs additional labor resources, they'll turn to companies like Keywords Studios or U.K.-based service Universally Speaking.
There's been more attention on this end of the game industry thanks in part to the unionization of Keywords Studios employees in Edmonton, Canada. Those workers, who provided development support to Dragon Age: Dreadwolf developer BioWare, complained of unfair treatment and low pay and sought to organize to address those concerns.
With games growing larger and larger, needing ever-expanding labor forces, developers like the ones at Keywords Edmonton will be a huge part of the industry's major successes in the years to come.
Until recently, industry veteran Andrew Brown was the CEO of Keywords Studios. He's now migrated to Universally Speaking, where he hopes to scale up the company's support services and expand what services the company provides to the game development world.
The biggest growth area for the company? It's in live service operations. Here's why:
The language around external game development service providers can be a bit tricky. "Contractor" might refer to an independent contractor, a whole studio doing contract work, or a temporary employee "on contract" at a company. Brown introduced the phrase "exdev," short for "external development" during our conversation. In his mind, the expansion of "exdev" services is in the world of supporting huge live service games.
Brown said that in his time in the game industry he's watched it go through a "reverse Moore's law." While Gordon Moore was concerned with the doubling of transistors in
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