‘Making part of a game is still good business’ says Sumo Digital’s Porter on its co-development successes

Sumo Digital is going from strength-to-strength, growing to over 500 employees and with a successful IPO valued at £145m late last year. And a key reason for that is a strong growth in co-development opportunities.

"There’s a lot of people that want help with projects, co-development is a much bigger thing than it used to be," said Paul Porter, managing director at Sumo Digital, to MCV.

"The mid-tier is supposed to be shrinking, but making a part of a game is still good business. As long as we’ve got something that we can contribute to, that the team can engage with, and feel proud that they’ve produced, then we’re really happy," he continued, talking about the company’s mix of complete triple-A titles and co-development projects.

"A few years ago where people thought that console development would really slow down and a lot of studios faced a lot of trouble and disappeared and fell by the wayside. And at the same time we found that the opportunities have still been there, so from our point of view there are still a plethora of opportunities in high-end console development."

He attributes that switch to two key factors. Games are still getting bigger, in terms of modes and assets, and with games-as-a-service growing there’s also a need for additional resources in terms of running titles beyond launch – as Sumo did with LittleBigPlanet 3.

However, less specifically to games development, working with distant partners has also improved massively over the last few years. "There are better systems to work remotely than there used to be, you don’t have to all be in the same building."

For the full interview see this week’s all-new issue of MCV, out Thursday in print and online.