Nigel Franks from Snowed In Studios on the state of external development, and why video games are a relationship business

Alex Boucher sat down at XDS with Nigel Franks, studio head at Snowed In Studios, to ask about his company, the state of the industry around it, and how you navigate being an external developer.

Who are Snowed In Studios for those who are not familiar with the company?

We are mostly an engineering studio. We’ve got about 200 developers on the floor. We’ve been around for 15 years. We started off doing our own IP and then realised that that’s very hard and expensive to do and got into the services business to be able to augment and supplement that, but that ended up being way more profitable. 

We were building up a studio until about 2018, when Keywords came knocking. We were acquired by Keywords in 2018, which allowed us to fuel a whole lot of growth and get into much larger projects. We like doing very difficult engineering projects, like ports and things of that nature. They’re difficult and they’re good training grounds, but they also keep our engineers happy. They also give us a view into how other independent developers or even larger developers set up their projects and how they work. We get a really good view of that. 

We’ve got about 10 projects on the go, typically, ranging from small indies to AAA. We worked on Forza Motorsport, Starfield and Diablo 4. 

Has outsourcing and getting clients changed in the last few years, do you think?

I don’t think so. I’ve been in the games business since the year 2000. In software development since 1994, after I left the military. What I found with the games business specifically is that it is one of the most relationship based businesses I’ve ever seen. 

The work that we get is mostly based on the relationships that we’ve had from working with people in the past, or colleagues that have moved into different areas. They know the style of work we do, they know the quality of work we provide. We like multi-year projects because of the relationships that build from developer to developer, not just between management, and building those relationships is really key. 

So that really hasn’t changed for us. What has changed has been amping up our business development over the last year because of the pendulum swings in the games industry. Big changes at Microsoft and things of that nature. When Microsoft catches a cold, the rest of the industry catches the flu. They’re very valued partners for all of us, but at the same time, that has trickle down effects too. We haven’t really changed how we do business, but have certainly amped up the frequency of meetings that we’ll be taking and making. 

I think in terms of business development, nothing beats a face-to-face start. With that in mind, I’m guessing that XDS is an extremely key event for a company like yours?

XDS is my favourite show for a few reasons. It’s not as big as GDC, so you don’t get lost in all the noise. It allows for those more intimate conversations with people. High-quality conversations. You don’t have to worry about going through a crowd of 20,000 people to get from one meeting to the next. 

The other thing is that the people that are here are serious about the business that they want to be conducting, and it’s all concentrated in one spot. I have a great deal of gratitude for XDS, and the people that put it together from the very beginning. XDS is fundamental for us as a business, even if we’re not doing straight business development, just connecting with our clients is the most important thing. 

How are client expectations changing when it comes to external development partnerships? Are they changing?

Definitely. Sometimes there are these interesting swings that happen. Everyone’s after super high quality, and doesn’t care about the price, until they get to the price, at which point they now care about the price. There is both a push for high-quality and a push to bring the price down at the same time. Those things are diametrically opposed, so you have to find a way to navigate that. 

How do you navigate that? I mean, you hear about a lot of companies that have lost out on a contract, but then had that same client come back to them a year later saying “Can you fix it?” because they went with a vendor who was competitive in quote, but did bad work. Is that something you’ve come across? 

Surprisingly, yes. Whenever we’re told that somebody else got the job for whatever price they chose, we’re wondering “How did they do that?” We’ve seen places where people have promised something in a timeline that’s so aggressive, then we get called to fix something. 

We’re not just an outsourcer that’s only done outsourced work. A good chunk of us come from working on the development floors at the major publishers, running teams. We know what the realities are with these things, and we never want to oversell something. 

There have been several contracts that we’ve lost out on where somebody has come up with an extremely aggressive timeline, and an extremely aggressive price. I could see where they’re at from a price standpoint if they’re coming from a low cost market … but the timeline, as Scotty would say on Star Trek … you can’t change the laws of physics. There are certain things that just take time to build. 

So we have encountered that, and are very humble when somebody comes back to ask for  help. We say we’ll do the best we can. It’s all relationship based. If you start thumbing your nose, then no one’s going to want to do business with you. We’re also Canadians, so we’ll say sorry for what somebody else does. [Laughs.]

So going back to partnerships, now. What’s one thing you wish studios understood about successful external development relationships? 

I couldn’t immediately come to the point of having production support in those partnerships. Because people are price conscious, they’ll say, “give me X number of developers”. We’ll say, “you need a producer to go along with that”. Then they’ll say “I don’t need a producer or a project manager. I’ve got all that on my side.” and they don’t understand the value of what we’re proposing, so we end up offering to do it at a discount and they’ll still push back. 

So for some things we’ll put a project manager on for free, until they see the value of what we bring, because they’re the key to understanding what’s going on with the bigger picture. Developers are great. They’re very good at what they do, but very few of them combine that project management skill set with their development skill set. It would be great if people saw the value immediately of having somebody in that management space.

I think that it’s always been a constant struggle for us to make sure people see that value right off the bat. Once we’ve been working with somebody for a while, they see the value that our production team brings to the table. 

When you go on a recruitment drive, what do you say to sell the studio in terms of why someone should work there?

I show them we have a very happy workforce. I tell them we do 37.5 hours a week, with no crunch culture, and about the autonomy that people have in being able to complete their work. There’s a very high level of transparency at all levels of the studio, from management down to anybody on the floor, and it’s super important for us.

Are you doing any inclusion initiatives or anything like that at your company? 

We aren’t doing that specifically for Snowed In. We know that there is an effort inside of Keywords (our parent company), and we ride along with that. DEI is very important to every one of us, but it’s also very expensive and difficult to do. These are things that are very close to our hearts, but we don’t know how to implement that at scale for a small company of our size. The way I see it, people are who they are. We try to hire for skills, and we try to eliminate bias during the evaluation process, as best we can. 

We know we’re not getting it all right. It’s a problem with the game industry. It’s dominated by white men. I’ve noticed this has been an issue, but it wasn’t an issue to me because I came from the military side of things, where the uniform is the grand equaliser, but I know the world doesn’t operate that way. 

We’re doing the best we can to try and make our work forces as diverse as possible. However, I also know it’s a long term endeavour. The biggest thing is going to schools and telling people “Look what you can do in the games industry!” 

But we’ve also realised that doing this at universities is too late. So now we’re talking to people (including from underrepresented communities) at the grade school and high school levels … at least seven or eight times a year. It’s a really big thing for us to get involved in the local community. We also try to build up that local indie community as much as possible by providing them with space for meetings, and cut rate office space and things like that. 

The games industry is probably the most inclusive I’ve ever been in, but it still has a lot of work to do. When the industry gets tough, that’s one of the first areas where things start to constrict, and we have a double whammy now, as the industry that has gone through that pendulum swing, and we have an anti-DEI movement over in the USA pushing back on all of this. 

It’s not affecting game companies that I’ve seen so far, but we’re also pushing back against it quietly to try and make sure that we’re showing that we’re an inclusive environment. It’s a very different world compared to just five years ago, right? It’s quite crazy.

What’s your favourite part of being at XDS? 

The people. Meeting old friends, and making new ones. I always learn something. It really ignites my curiosity. 

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

The length of time a lot of contracts take to sign. A lot of people don’t understand the internal politics that happen at the larger publishers. It takes time to get something through. Sometimes a publisher needs something immediately, but not always. You need to have patience and realise that you’d better have some runway built up for your studio before you start chasing business. It could take anywhere from six weeks to six months before you have something concrete!