Embracing the Co-Op Studio Model in Indie Games

[@Lunareon]

Great topic, good advice. Co-Ops are becoming more and more common among all kinds of professionals and experts who have previously worked as freelancers alone. It's basically the strength and safety of a company combined to the freedom and responsibility of entrepreneurship.

[@VultRoos]

The Motion Twin segment of this talk was fantastic. It's great getting to hear about their specific implementation of a true no hierarchy company, especially some of the difficulties and challenges. I wish he went into even more granular detail about some of them, but it's a really good overview.

[@ScottFoust]

I like this idea very much. CoOps can definitely operate inside capitalism. This is just a structure that allows the members (employees) to have say in what happens with the profits. But, like anything new, there will definitely be optimal ways to structure the organization (how and when who gets to make what decisions).

[@Zen-rw2fz]

no they can't, they will allways be out competed with the more oppressive businesses, the investors and banks. capitalism is evil, I don't care if you're a reformist or revolutionary, socialism is the future.

[@simjans7633]

@@Zen-rw2fz worker owned coops basically are communism. It's what Marx wanted. Communism isn't state owned capitalism, it's workers controlling the means of production aka running their workplaces. edit: And they totally can be competitive, there are many examples all over Europe of coops outcompeting top down hierarchical corps. Especially in a creativity based industry like making games.

[@thepurplepanda4]

@Hussein the supporter of KARA BOĞA Its closer than the american mentality behind marxism, which is actually stalinism. Its cool enough seeing that be represented, so be thankful of that maybe eh?

[@aliasmcdoe2799]

@@simjans7633 Communism is a classless moneyless society, not having cooperatives in a capitalist system. And no, co-ops in capitalism can't compete like traditional corporations, as the later have distinct advantages over the former. Mainly, being able to pay very little money for labor, and undercut co-ops in terms of pricing to drive them off markets. You need a system change, not just some people making co-ops.

[@celisewillis]

​@@Zen-rw2fz make sure to tell Vanguard, the leading multimillion dollar fund manager that they're hopeless and going to fail 😅 tell all the multinational huge co-ops in Europe that having existed for decades!

[@astrahcat1212]

To those against this, no one's forcing you to do anything, business models can live side by side in peace, and different people work in different ways. There are many projects in where I could see a top down structure faring far better, but the point is they're working in such a way that gives them a sense of long term community. A top down structure with profit sharing if you absolutely must have a single leader could work too I think. If you really want a top down model and find the idea of cooperatives restrictive no one is stopping you from going out and creating a top down business.

[@Tchomify]

Game devs: Man, it sure is hard working 16 hour days to make share holders rich while barely being able to pay rent myself. Maybe there is a better way to structure a business? Weird nerds on KZbin: Waaaaahhh! You're just like Stalin!

[@Zen-rw2fz]

>Maybe there is a better way to structure a business? lol this is where the "you have nothing to lose but your chains" apllies more than anything, quit your job, start a coop with your worker comrades.

[@Tchomify]

@@Zen-rw2fz Because it's a systematic problem. If you're a worker who is barely making rent as it is, you definitely don't have the capital to start about a business. The only way to get the capital is to find investment, but that kid of defeats the point of having a coop.

[@Tchomify]

Believe me, I'm trying to work it out

[@Zen-rw2fz]

@@Tchomify what is it you're working with?

[@celisewillis]

​@@Tchomifyyeah, it is rough out there. It is possible, but us poors just gotta put in more time to build a better future 😢

[@BisectedBrioche]

Who invited Senator McCarthy to the comments section?

[@alirohani2687]

Seriously wtf is wrong with these people they are all over the internet right now

[@ericb.4313]

I'll bet you $20 those commentors see Liberty Prime from Fallout and don't realize it's making fun of them. On a sidenote: you owe me $20.

[@Zen-rw2fz]

@@alirohani2687 read marx, you'll get it then

[@joppemin]

only thing that worries me about indie co-ops is that you have such a long period without any income before your initial game comes out and then it's still a risk if it even makes any money, of course this is also the case with a capitalist studio but it's a scary hurdle to overcome

[@S_Tadz]

Most coops have membership fees. I use a coop bank, and the share is like 5$ (one-time fee), but I could see a much larger 500-1000$ membership fee to get in an established game dev coop.

[@celisewillis]

Valid thing to worry about. I think keeping the co-op size low in number until your game launch, and expanding as you publish more games is a pathway. Creatively, it's also important to be making a game that stands out, and creates a niche people didn't know they wanted. Cult of the Lamb is a great example, combing animal crossing/resources management and dungeon crawlers to make a brand new type of game! If your co-op is working on what amounts to a reskin of Metroid with no new mechanics/story, rethink what your plan is. You can do ANYTHING, you're not beholden to an exec board worried about what's "popular". You have great ideas in you, let them out!

[@narthur157]

What was the coop resource url they mentioned at the end?

[@triforcetony1921]

They show it on screen at 49:47.

[@burner9147]

Lol Americans are all about democracy right? So let bring democracy to the workplace

[@johnscammell8941]

America is not a democracy. It’s a democratic republic. We vote democratically for our elected officials and trust them to work towards the benefit of the people.

[@celisewillis]

Exactly! I work in animation, and it's incredibly frustrating to have people I've never met limit what the artists can do and make. Frequently they are decisions that hurt the company long term, and if they just listened to the artists, things would have been fine.

[@dzezva1171]

Indeed.

[@Zaptruder]

Coops seem like an interesting company structure... way easier to startup as a coop then a traditional model if your goal is to recruit easily without much capital. OTOH, they have a range of weaknesses in their base traditional form. Seems like someone should have figured out a good way of getting the advantages of a coop while maintaining some benefits of the traditional company structure (specifically talent recruitment and management). Sounds like the UK and Europe at least have figured out much of these challenges if they can scale up to larger corporation scales.

[@bigredjj10]

I'll argue that a lot of the weaknesses stem from the comparatively less energy put into development of co-op structures compared to traditional externally owned companies who have had billions of hours put into researching how to design company structures. Putting more energy into co-ops will improve their implementation. There are also different organizational structures possible which can help depending on the industry. In my opinion, the biggest weakness is competing against companies in a market system where the rules are designed for companies with traditional structures, so that within that paradigm companies have an advantage because they can undercut working conditions and bring in external capital (with expectations of large returns). This can be somewhat remedied from changes in regulations around rules (along with worker unions who force companies to have similar working standards to co-ops).

[@Zen-rw2fz]

a cooperative is a democracy at the work place, monarchs used to say the same crap about democracy when the peasants were starving(and some of these monarchs still have their heads for some reason).

[@Zen-rw2fz]

@@bigredjj10 yes

[@gamesdisk]

I don't know man. I worked in group projects for "fun" and back at uni. There is always someone who doesn't pull their weight

[@mousc460]

And that's why you vote them out

[@alirohani2687]

Also I feel like people don’t pull their weight in every job I’ve ever had so that shouldn’t be a reason not to go for it

[@ScottFoust]

What happens when a roommate doesn't pay their share of the rent?

[@magonus195]

@@mousc460 you can't often vote them out in school. Not the one I went to, anyway.

[@mousc460]

@@magonus195 you're just a student/ subordinate in school. In a workers' co-op, you and your peers are the boss of equal measure.

[@henrique.campos]

So I thought it would be like...literally having 2+ studios collab-ing on the same IP, but...it ended up like a communism-socialism sorta model cooperative model?

[@magnuscritikaleak5045]

@@oakieland companies do not have to be a Pyramid scheme like Evil corps.

[@magonus195]

Clicked on the title thinking it was a GDC on co-op games development. Ended ended being some socialist experiment. Pass.

[@voltcorp]

lol coops exist all over the world and all throughout history and you call them an "experiment". call mondragon corporation up and ask how their experiment is going

[@burner9147]

What do you find so offensive about removing the boss from the work environment would you miss his boots that much?

[@oskar1076]

If you don't care about this, then you don't care about the people making your beloved games.

[@CianMcsweeney]

What is wrong with it in your opinion? To me it actually seems like it would be more efficient than the beauracratic mess of bad management that many top down private companies suffer from

[@GriffinAndThings]

First?

[@171694]

If people want to use this system on a private company, it's all good for me. But if you use tyranny to force me to use a system like this, then we would have some problems

[@aresgood1]

imagine if someone used this argument the first times democracies became popular. "hey i am fine if you are democratic in your far away country, but if you want to make MY kingdom democratic that's tyrannical " no bro. more democracy is always good.

[@ScottFoust]

@@Generic8864 You seem to think that all co-op structures allow everyone to vote on everything? That's not true. The co-op votes people into positions. If people don't like the way that person is performing that position they are voted out. The workers can't do that in a standard American corporation. They can on a co-op.

[@aresgood1]

@@Generic8864 as long as that small group is elected by the people that's looks pretty democratic to me. but that doesn't even matter. let's just make sure companies are run by a group of people elected by the workers. you don't have to call them democratic if you don't have to. just remember this is what people are referring to when they say "democratically controlled workplace" also the "mondragon" corporation is one of the biggest companies in spain and it's a worker coop.

[@aresgood1]

@@ScottFoust i love when people claim it's not a democracy unless you make a referendum for every decision. tells you a lot about how much they know about politics.

[@aresgood1]

@@Generic8864 oh. i didn't know all board members are elected by the workers in all companies. my bad. well let's just do what mondragon does then.

[@markerwinargenti]

Bwhahahahaha!!!

[@burner9147]

What's so funny? Bootlicker