In recent years, the game development outsourcing market has risen in tandem with the video game industry. Although outsourcing for any content was formerly practically controversial, it is the best decision regarded now.
Game development is already the most popular sector for outsourcing. The environments in today’s video games are more vibrant; textures are thicker and more sophisticated, and lighting effects require layering to capture actual dynamic lighting and how it acts on different surfaces.
In addition, technology is constantly evolving, and graphics are becoming more and more advanced. Therefore, if you take the pros and cons, it’s likely you’ll see it’s far more effective to hire an outsourcing studio that has all this technology, resources, and expertise.
What is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is the business practice of hiring a party outside of a company to perform services where traditionally conducted in-house by the company’s employees and staff. It allows the employing company to focus on its core business.
Game co-development means working with an outside partner to create game modes, features, or a whole game section. The client and the staff team collaborate to build the game. The latter is guided by the leadership team’s creative vision, designs, and overall direction.
According to Brice (2009), 83 percent of UK video game developers, including Blitz Games and Ubisoft Reflections, have admitted to outsourcing various aspects of their development.
At 4Crows Digital, We have highly trained specialists who can deliver in any area of the development process without any additional training.
The advantages of outsourcing
Time
Regardless of the studio size, outsourcing or subcontracting will allow companies to assemble a team of artists relatively quicker than the conventional method of recruiting an in-house staff. Which will give the company a head start in the competition over other firms in the market.You can make more content or polish the current project with the extra time gained for a better gaming experience.
Outsourcing also allows small developers to go into production without any R&D of their own, which is a very effective way to create art assets without a lot of investment.
Flexibility
Outsourcing or subcontracting allows video game companies to temporarily add more resources by recruiting more developers when they need them and release them when they are not, without any trouble or hard feelings.
Furthermore, by utilizing external development, internal art managers of video game companies can worry less about artists and developers being upset or unhappy because they do not enjoy the project assigned to them.
Value
External development can be utilized to complete time-consuming tasks more quickly, as they are being created or developed in parallel. This way total time spent by each staff is ultimately shortened, making it easier for them to meet deadlines and milestones of the developing process.
Without outsourcing, this would be rather difficult to accomplish in-house, as the work would have to be split up and distributed among multiple artists, which would take longer & lower the efficiency of the whole studio.
Turnover
A high level of employee turnover indicates and adds inconsistency, uncertainty, and even fear within the video game studio or company.The correct use of outsourcing would provide a company with good continuity and stability, as the sight of colleagues join and leave as projects go in and out of production will be eliminated.
Outsourcing can help to preserve teams’ social dynamics, decrease chances of conflicts, and maintain their productivity. Plus, subcontracting also enables production to continue while the in-house staff is away on holidays and vacations, even during weekends if necessary.
Reference source: starloopstudios.com || Linkedin || Polygon || Investopedia || cpl.com || Suplychaindigital.com || Quora || Jonaz Ruiz
