Interleave’s Dave Sanderson on external development trends, and the industry redefining what sustainable development looks like

Alex Boucher met up with Dave Sanderson from Interleave at the External Development Summit (XDS) in Vancouver, Canada to ask him about the state of ExDev, what he thinks about the challenges the games industry is currently facing, and what he believes it will have to do going forward to survive. 

What do you think are the biggest external development trends that are being discussed today? 

So it’s been a very painful couple of years for the games industry, and from my perspective, I think we’re at a bit of an inflection point in how we make video games. With more traditional AAA games, you can spend many hundreds of millions of dollars and many months or even years developing a product only to discover that it has no market fit or that the players aren’t going to adopt it. That model is just fundamentally not suited toward reality, frankly. 

We’ve seen horrendous layoffs. We’ve seen in a very difficult time, people raising capital to make new games. I would say we are seeing the cracks in the old model really becoming more than just cracks, and that’s been very painful, but I also think it creates an opportunity to help define what sustainable development looks like, and what is the new model for video games, especially at the higher level of things. 

In terms of trends, I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more investing in AA scale games with sort of some lower upfront investment, where you start basically taking more shots on goal from external development. I think we’re going to see a lot more work being done by smaller, more specialised teams who are very good at coming together and breaking apart as and when it’s needed. 

Do you think from the client side, they’re ready for that expectations wise? 

It really depends on the client, because I think the word there is trust. Can these teams tackle the problems that you have? Are they able to plug into your systems well? Are they able to adapt to different environments, different engines, different needs? If it’s true  — and it’s a big if — that smaller teams working together is a better way of operating, it really requires that everybody can be nimble and flexible enough to build that way. Candidly, some teams are really well set up to do that. Some really aren’t. 

Sure, and I mean, you sort of touched it, we’ve had a bit of a sea change, right? There’s almost been this perfect storm of a pandemic, where people have ended up having to work remotely. The whole model’s changed there, and habits have also changed to a degree, as players are playing the same game for longer. Everyone’s suddenly having to adopt the whole Survive 2025 thing. Do you think there will still be a few more bumps on the road?

I think a few more bumps in the road are inevitable. One of the things that I bristle a little bit with that sort of Survive 2025 or survive the storm mindset, is that weathering the storm implies that there is an after the storm that resembles what came before. I don’t believe that that’s the case. I’m of the opinion that it’s going to be stormy from here on out. We’re actually contending with a different reality. We’re not trying to return to a past mode of operating. 

I don’t think it’s ever coming back from an ‘availability of capital’ perspective …but also, I don’t think we should want it to, because a lot of the games industry’s history has really heavily relied on the exploitation of labour. 

External development is one of the places where throughout sourcing, we have been able to push a lot of work into areas of the world where you are chasing cost of labour, but that also brings with it the potential for really grinding exploitation, that idea of like, outsourcing crunch. I don’t want to be part of a games industry that is really reliant on either treading on people’s passion for the project and exploiting them that way, or not treating them like the highly skilled labourers they are. 

I very much want to be a part of changing the way games operate at a really fundamental level. I also think that it’s not just players spending more time in the same number of games or a smaller handful of games. One of the ways that you can look at things like social media or even just endlessly scrolling the carousels in Netflix, is that it is just entertaining enough that you’re getting that dopamine hit. 

There are a lot of games that are pretty nice, and yes, we’re competing against other games, but I think enough things in our lives as consumers are now game adjacent in how they’re designed. We’re actually competing with that kind of attention economy. 

Moving on to XDS. It’s a very crucial event and it has grown exponentially in the last few years. It’s almost helped to sort of convince people that the word outsourcing is no longer a dirty word. That it’s not necessarily evil, and it’s actually something that will benefit your team. Do you agree with that, and do you think XDS has got more to give in the future? 

Absolutely, I think so. One of the most challenging things that we have is that external development is not just important to the games industry … it’s non-negotiable. There’s no such thing as a video game of any significant ambition that doesn’t involve cobbling together teams from different companies. 

One of the challenges that we have, is that many, many people grow up wanting to get into this industry. You can go to school to be a designer, you can go to school to be an artist, you can go to school, even to be a producer or a business person. There are lots of avenues into well understood disciplines in the games industry, but I would be stunned if more than a handful of people under the age of 25, even know the term external development.

A pipeline of talent is really crucial for our ability to succeed, as then we can train people in this discipline. I think things like mentorship, training, and popularising the idea that this is a job that you can have are important. I was in my 30s before I even knew external development existed as a job. 

What’s your favourite part of being at XDS? 

Connecting with other people. One of my favourite things is to be talking to someone who says, ‘I have this kind of problem’, and connecting them with somebody who has some kind of solution. 

I absolutely believe there is not one problem at this conference that can’t be solved by somebody else at the conference. It’s just a question of connecting people. I’ve been to a lot of events, as you probably have as well, I think. XDS feels like one of those events which has tangible outcomes. Things are going to happen and maybe not next week, but definitely down the road. It’s a results event. 

Do you have one piece of advice for studios that are just starting out? 

If you’re a studio that’s just starting to outsource, be aware that the experts on how to outsource well are your service providers. So be humble enough and vulnerable enough to say, ‘this is the problem that I have’ to clearly define the challenges that you have, and then be open to the solutions that are presented to you. 

There’s an enormous diversity of people that can take on challenges. There’s not one way to do it. Historically, I think there’s been a lot of ego around how the game is going to be made and then going out to potential external partners and kind of trying to stamp the way they’re going to work … as opposed to looking at all the solutions that are available and being open to options. 

If you’re a service provider that’s just starting out … Understand the solutions that you offer, and then look to plug into places. You can’t be all things to all people. 

What would you think is the biggest challenge in external development today? 

Deployment of capital. The availability of budgets is very conservative right now, and delayed decisions for service providers is death. The faucet is just getting turned off. We have a mass exodus of talent and expertise. We’ve had tens of thousands of people, either leave the games industry temporarily, or permanently as they seek employment elsewhere. That’s years of expertise that is not deployed. 

When it comes to external development, many of the people affected are people that are really good at this discipline. We’re losing the people that know how to do this well in many cases, and we’re going to need to reset and mentor new talent. It’s a very difficult thing.