Team interaction is key to success, says Field

The key to start-up success is maintaining the interaction between people, even as your studio grows, says the co-founder of Wish Studios.

Caspar Field, who has served as an executive producer on teams of 70 people working for the likes of Relentless, Eidos and Argonaut, shared his advice on managing teams of start-ups with Develop.

“Something I’ve found so important to success in the past is maintaining that interaction of different skills within a small team. With everything else going on, people forget that making games has to be a creative endeavour that exists between the different disciplines,” said Field.

That logic can be continued as your company expands and welcomes more staff into the production fold, he said.

“As you grow your team, you have to maintain units of creative teams that cover disciplines. Let’s say you end up at 50 people, then maybe you’d want ten units of five people all from different disciplines. That can really stimulate and empower the individuals.

“Where you see people making errors as they grow is when they organise their teams by discipline, so you have a pool of artists and separate pool of designers, and not much crossover. That’s not what you want to do; you have to try and build mini furnaces of creativity.”

You can read more about Field and his new studio in our feature.