The Role of Co-Development in Modern Game Development

It can feel like modern game development competes to ship the best game with the smallest possible team. We constantly hear stories about breakout titles built by a handful of developers, but that narrative is often incomplete. Behind many “tiny teams” sits a much larger layer of co-development, outsourcing, and external support across engineering, art, QA, localization, and more. In this episode, host Alexandra Takei, VP at Medal, sits down with Ninel Anderson, founder and CEO of Devoted Studios, to go under the hood of that hidden layer of game development. 

The two unpack what co-development actually is, where the line sits between co-dev and outsourcing, and why a risk-averse market has pushed more studios toward fractional resourcing and flexible external partnerships. They also discuss a core misconception in the market: that external partners are mainly about finding cheaper labor, when in reality the real advantage often comes from better pipelines, stronger process design, and access to the right talent globally. Finally, the episode explores how Devoted thinks about staffing and capacity, and why communication training is core to the company’s culture.

We’d also like to thank Overwolf for making this episode possible! Whether you're a gamer, creator, or game studio, Overwolf is the ultimate destination for integrating UGC in games! You can check out all Overwolf has to offer at https://www.overwolf.com/.

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Alexandra: All right, what's up everyone? And welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Alex, and this is the Interview and Insight segment.

It seems these days there's a competition to ship the best game with the smallest team. We often hear Clair Obscure was made by less than 30 people, held by with, made with under 100. This indie game was made by three people, maybe even one. But the reality is that behind almost every small development team of full-time FTEs, there is an outsourcing powerhouse of co-development arrangements, offshore teams or external support functions for QA, CS, and localization and more. The word fractional is all in vogue, and this is because as games have become ever more competitive, no one wants to staff up resources for a game they aren't sure is going to land in the market. Today we are risk averse, and in a risk averse environment, the thing we care about is optionality.

But who are these co-development studios who work at studios like this, and what do the economics look like and what is the line between co-dev and outsourcing? It seems a little fuzzy to me at least, and what is materially different actually about running a studio that works on multiple projects all over the world, on all sorts of pro platforms all at once.

And so, today we're gonna go under the hood of how games of those kind get made, and the people that help make those games happen. My guest today is gonna answer some of those questions, and so I'm so stoked to welcome Ninel Anderson, founder and CEO of Devoted Studios. Devoted started in 2018 and now currently employs, I think, over 250 people across multiple projects.

I think Devoted, it's most recent win, but you let me know has been, Embark's title Arc Raiders. She's been doing this for eight years, which is freaking awesome, and I am very excited to have her unique perspective today. So, Ninel, welcome to the show.

Ninel: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so, so excited. I feel like the, the win of Arc Raiders was Embark's win. We're only here to support Embark in the first place to get the win themselves and we're actually power of co-development. Right?

Alexandra: And we're gonna talk about that actually, in one of our, one that's one of my questions is gonna be, you know, whose wins, how do you, how do you feel about winning together in that capacity?

But we'll get there in a second. But before we dive into the show, I actually wanna hear a little bit about what motivates you. And you said something really interesting to me during our kick-off call and something that's actually very different from, I think what most people say when they start video game studios. And so, I just want you to kind of share that, you know, you started this industry building games and then you moved into co-dev and, and why?

Ninel: I might be a very weird person. I love video games, but what I'm obsessed about is efficiency. Like I live and breathe efficiency. That, that's the sexiest thing for me. Like, how do, like I sometimes I like go to bed and wake up with the same thought. How would I optimize this process? How do, how do I make sure that we deliver? And I'm not as obsessed about the games themself. I'm more obsessed about the puzzles and the, the Rubik's cubes that it takes to deliver a game.

It's, and especially, especially when it requires multiple studios and multiple teams and limited amount of, of information that gets to a code of partner, then kind of mastermind a plan and be, be a partner. So that what drives me personally, and you know, I started Devoted Studios in 2018, was an idea of building a company that supports the talent no matter where they are in the world, to work on games of their dreams.

So, I'm passionate about creating an opportunity for talent, but not necessarily the games themself and maybe makes me a weird CEO. But that's where I feel, that's where I feel like my gift is. And for me in 2018, the idea was to do all of that, but from home and your PJs and I thought that we could build a company where we can hire the talent based on their passions, their skills, and not necessarily where they're located geographically. In 2018, that sounded like a logistical nightmare, but the logistical nightmare I was excited about. I was like, I'm more excited with what we can produce when we're not confined in one location, but then get the people with the best possible skills and passions, especially since, you know, you look at Ukraine that is super talented when it comes to realistic art or very, very skilled optimization engineers. But then we have Malaysia is amazing at animation. Like, how can we, instead of being confined in one territory, and that usually is driven by education of that country, then cherry pick the talent everywhere and build the team.

And in 2018, people thought I'm crazy. You can't build video games from home. I was committed and then in 2020, all of a sudden my phone was a hotline. So yeah.

Alexandra: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think like, I mean, well, we'll, we'll talk a little bit about that like journey from, you know, the physicality of what it means to be a studio.

But I think I really respected your response there because I actually don't think that that makes you that abnormal of a CEO. I actually think it makes you more common of a CEO, but rare in games. I think it's actually a very common thing for many people who are just running businesses and some of the, one of the most important skills is just efficiency and capital allocation, right?

And trying to build a place where people wanna show up to work every day. But in games, I find that to be rare because I think the most people have some sort of creative mission that they wanna go on. So, I find it really beautiful that you had said something like that to me. And I kind of wanted the audience to, to hear it. Can you describe Devoted Studios? What's a 30 seconds version of what Devoted does?

Ninel: Well, it's probably hard to squeeze it in a 32nd elevator pitch, but I will try. Devoted Studios is a co-development partner in the games industry. What we're passionate about is supporting our partners of building an amazing games, whether that's an indie title to AAA titles from Epic Games and Riot, working on League and supporting super fun, very bill off titles of our clients.

I think our specialty is co-development on the engineering side, so building up the teams with engineers, designers, art support, and on the art side and to end production, which I feel we really mastered. So, building pipelines and supporting our partners from concept through modeling, through integration in the engine, and optimizing the overhead on their end.

Alexandra: Awesome. Okay. And I know that you had a comment about capital allocation, so what were your thoughts there?

Ninel: Yeah, I think you, I think you brought up a very interesting question was capital allocation. I feel a lot of times when people think about outsourcing is like, oh, let's bring an outsourcing partner somewhere cheaper 'cause we need to optimize the budget. And I, and I feel like there is this notion like let's just bring cheaper resources to fill the gap and that's the way to optimize it. But I feel the real creativity when it comes to optimizing production budget is actually optimizing the processes and the way that you can deliver and finding the best talent.

And maybe that talent is a little more expensive than the cheapest version of something. But when you build a pipeline that allows you not to lose money in the process, that's where the biggest magic happens. Where you have something that is very efficient and also is the talent that is the best fit.

And I think that unlocks the best opportunity for any, for any project.

Alexandra: Got it. Yeah. Well, you answered one of my questions about like, what's a misnomer about outsourcing. So we'll kind of pull, pin that one back and maybe that's a, you'll have another one later on. But I think that's a great intro.

And so, understanding your background, understanding what devoted is, but I wanna kind of peel back to like the, to the opening, and I wanna talk about what actually might seem like a conclusionary topic, but I wanna talk about it first. And that's kind of like co-dev's history and what it means for games today.

And I meant it when I said I feel like every new game announced today is something like Tiny Team Ships, insane game with five people. And the internet machine and the truth seekers are all like, no, not really. They actually had this team at their publishing, three outsourcing studios, this shop in Ukraine, like, and I think you're probably one of those studios more often than not.

And so my first question is not actually gonna be centered around economics, but how your organization feels when those things are said. I get the sense that studios try to hide how much support they really had for hype purposes, and I bet that maybe. SUP teams that have supported them, like devoted might feel maybe hurt a little given how much love and time that staff gave the project and that that might be true to devoted, but I feel like it's probably goes across all outsourcing studios in general. And how do you think about that as a leader?

Ninel: That's a, that's a really, really good question. What do I start? I think there's, there's multiple aspects to it, right? I think quite often we, we are running into a situation where we work on a project and we have a team of 20 people that poured their love, soul, soul tears for like two years to ship something and then we're prohibited to put it in our portfolio, advertise it in any shape or form, and those things really hurt and that we have multiple clients like that, that we love and respect, but would love for them to change their opinion around how we can credit ourselves in those productions.

And, and you know, there's, I, I respect some have specific requirements and pipelines and whatever, but it's also tricky because we get hired on a project because of the portfolio that we are providing, right? So, it limits our, our opportunity, especially when we put something like, into something two, three years of our time.

And then we have nothing to show. And we only have a project that was like three years old, and our new clients come in, they're like, well, can you show us something that you've done in the last? And we're like, yeah, we have like a bunch of really cool things, but they're all under NDA. And you just feel like, I don't know, like you're bullshitting and, but it's like, it's true.

There's so many amazing things that we've done, but I can't show or say anything which, you know, is a part of which is a part of how the, unfortunately some of the parts of how the industry works, but there's also a bunch of other projects that do not only fully allow, but also endorse like our favorite, one of our favorite partner Obsidian even allowed us to say that we worked, we were working on out even before the game launched, when the, like, the first trailers came out, wrote a little note that allow us to bring more of the partners and more of the clients.

So, there's, there's a mi mix of both, so that's good. I try not to think about it too much.

Alexandra: Yeah. But I figured it would be something that would be relevant. I think I find that to be a bit disingenuous in times 'cause I know that like, you know, even from being on the studio side myself, you know, like sometimes it takes a village and, you know, even if it's one person, you know, you, you outsource one VFX artist somewhere, I think that there's, that would be a question. And I think, I actually didn't think about the, the other, the other NDA not being able to share the work as obviously being detractive from your ability to get a secondary client. Like you could have worked on a huge AA game and they're just like, Nope, you didn't do that.

You're erased from the history of having supported this and that's actually negative for your own business.

Ninel: Yeah,

Alexandra: And I just concerned, like, I guess the question is like the emotional consternation and sadness of developers as most people obviously really care about the games that they work on and, and whatever they've produced.

Ninel: That's very true. I had actually a very special moment, literally last week with one of our clients where they reached out to me and asked whether,  knowing how much we're pushing for individual talent to be highlighted, they came to us and they were like, hey, I just wanna make sure on these and these things, do you want us to not only say Devoted Studios, but also the names of the artists? Because the other studios said, no, but I know that you are always pushing for that. And I was like, a hundred percent. Let me, let me send you a spreadsheet with all of the artists and who works on what. Because for us, we wanna have artists credited first and foremost. Like we, you know, when we put together, especially for like very specialized art projects, that the volume is not what's in question, but more like, you know, we need like a three or four assassin concept artists.

We actually, instead of setting a studio deck, put together portfolios of individual artists showcasing their work to make sure that our potential partners seize who exactly they're choosing and participating in the process with us because obviously we are going off from the information that they're sharing with us about the project, but that's usually like a little increment of it.

And us together, choosing the best talent for a particular production, I feel creates just a much higher chance for success 'cause sometimes we get notes and like, oh, this person is amazing, but we need somebody who is more focused on shapes and forms rather than X, Y, and Z because of what we're trying to achieve here.

So, the, I feel like the more transparency there, there is, the more we can set the project for success.

Alexandra: For success. Okay. Awesome. You said co-dev is actually somewhere in between “traditional outsourcing”, whatever that means and “staff augmentation”, whatever that means. Is this a stable position to occupy?

And so like, what is for you, the line between outsourcing and co-dev? Because I, the way that I actually draw the line is co-dev is you, your name gets to be on it. Like when we did, when Blizzard did co-dev on Diablo Immortal with Netease, it was like publicly, like Netease and Blizzard, that's co-dev.

And then if you're in the shadows, you're outsourcing. I don't know that I made that a rule up in my mind. So, what do you think about, what's the rule for that?

Ninel: Well, I, I cannot define a rule for industry because I feel like everybody uses terminology the way they want. I use it, for me, outsourcing is more when deliverables are very clearly defined, scoped out, planned and need to be executed, here's, here's the map of what needs to be executed, here's how follow this guidelines and bring us back the result. And co-development is more, or staffing, staff mentation is more of like, we need five people. We gonna manage those people and we are responsible making sure these people deliver the results that we want.

We mean being the client. Right? And co-development is, here's our vision, here's what broadly needs to be delivered. But we don't really know the details of how this would be delivered and we need to together figure out how it needs to be delivered, or we don't wanna handhold you and you have an ability to make creative decisions or production decisions or technical decisions.

And we are figuring it out together. And that's, for me, co-development is a lot of ownership of, ownership of the over their result and a lot of creativity. So, yeah.

Alexandra: No, that was, that was actually very succinctly put. That makes a lot of sense. And that's what I'm going to now adopt as my, which I think is why I think in a co-development capacity, because it's usually so much ownership.

The name comes out there, right? Like, and then that's why like the name is usually publicly. That's why I guess I, I took that from, that I was like, oh, if you're, if you're publicly being announced on the game, it means that you must have had some significant ownership over the vision or the creative process to help in some sort of way, which is, I guess where maybe I derive that my definition.

Ninel: Well, I think what, with the example of Blizzard and NetEase, I think that co-development is probably, is probably req, like, probably requires joint financing. That's what I think when, when I hear Blizzard and NetEase did something. I feel like co-development partners are named but named more in the credits rather than there is a press release with all of the co-development partners out there, so I wish.

Alexandra: Cool. Yeah.

Ninel: Yeah.

Alexandra: Okay, cool. And we're gonna get a little bit to the co-development philosophies and actually like how it works in terms of the economic structure, but my last question before we move on to the next section is, do you think most co-development studios have aspirations to build their own games?

And maybe even more specifically, is there a difference in the talent you look for because of this perhaps? Knowing that you'll, knowing that Devoted doesn't make its own games, is there a different kind of tech person and talent that wants to work at something like, at a co-development studio versus a studio that's, you know, building its own IP?

Ninel: I'll give you a broader answer 'cause there's like a little bit of my philosophy about that approach in general. Devoted doesn't have aspirations of building its own games, even though we have a concept that we're floating right now, but more of a, a published like a publishing deal and it's just really, really fun.

But it's not the nature of what we're doing at Devoted. And I feel like earlier in the days in my career in video game development, a different company, we, we had a vision that we would build, we'll take some co dev deals or some full dev RFP deals and with the money that we are making, we're gonna put into and build the game that we want.

And what it ends up being is that because your salary of your entire company or specific people is dependent on you meeting the milestones with the publisher or any, you know, whatever the structure of the client is, you consistently end up taking people from your own game and putting them on the project that you're co-developing or, you know, working with a publisher on, which creates that every time they're pulled in and out, they lose context.

Alexandra: Mm-hmm.

Ninel: And every time it's like three steps forward, two steps back, two, three steps forward, two steps. And eventually we actually, at the, in my previous company, we stopped building our own games because that, it was just…

Alexandra: Too hard.

Ninel: To do. It's just impossible.

Two things at one time. It just, yeah, it's just impossible to do those things at one time. And there's other companies that are successful. I actually looked and I might be wrong, but I read this recently that Gearbox was originally doing co-development, like full development deals with publishers as well.

Alexandra: They were, they were, they were definitely co doing co-development at the very beginning, yeah.

Ninel: Right. And then, you know, and then look at the success and, yeah, as far as I remember, Epic also was involved in that. And then, you know, Fortnite didn't. Epic sell Gears, Gears of War to Microsoft 'cause they were the original developers of it, right? So there, there, there are success stories of people who were doing full development, co-development for others and then branched into delivering their own titles.

Alexandra: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I was just, you know, I think.

Ninel: It's not what I wanna do, what.

Alexandra: You.

Ninel: Wanna do with my obsession, it was not my obsession over efficiency for me. It's very inefficient. It's like you gotta, you gotta, you gotta choose what you wanna do.

Alexandra: Which lane you wanna run in. Yeah. Okay. And so then maybe like, that takes us off to some co-development philosophies. And you also said this to me, is that you can outsource work, but you can't outsource vision.

And so how do you work alongside studios to ensure that your Devoted employees understand and are plugged into the heart of the game vision, which, as you said, sometimes they receive so little context. How do you make sure they understand what the vision of the game is, especially when they're not physically there or they're not actually part of the, the studio?

Ninel: Right. There's, there's two parts to it, right? So, when I'm talking about you can't really outsource vision, sometimes I, we have clients that come in and they're like, oh, we have an idea. And maybe like a very small company, especially like I would say two, three years ago when there's a lot of money floating in and a lot of people wanted to come in and build video games 'cause it was hot and there was investor money and all of that stuff.

And they would come in and be like, oh, I have an idea, but I wanna hire you as a company to fully develop this game. And I would actually not take those projects because I truly believe you can outsource vision and you can't outsource like it's, it's a business. Building a game is building a business.

You can't have an idea for the business, but then somebody else building that business for you and then running that business for you. That's, I think that that vision and that strategic and operational part needs to be within your company, and then you can bring in a partner that could, you know, do the production of it, but you still need to run and operate that business, especially if we're talking about building a live ops game. I, I just don't think that that's.

There is a successful case that I've seen that somebody did that because of it. And when we're talking about, project vision in general and making sure that that project vision is, is communicated. It's foundational for any co-development, like for outsourcing, might not be as important.

When you have clear specs, clear definition of what needs to be done, and you just need like, I don't know, a hundred of assets to be developed, you don't really need to know the vision. But if you are trying to co-develop a map or co-develop a portion of the game or a mode, you need to share that larger vision so people can make decisions on their own without being like, Hey, hey Paul.

Hey Paul. Hey Paul, how about this? I have another question. And then they were like in Slack 20,000 times a day asking you questions. Because they feel not empowered to make decisions because they're blind, they don't know where they're going. So, outsourcing, probably not as important to like, know the entirety of the vision, but is a good thing to know 'cause then people can suggest better ways of achieving something, not just doing exactly what, what's in front of them. But for code co-development is, it is foundational. And I think it, I think the most important part on the co-development partner side is asking questions and being like, no, but you know what I do wanna want, I do wanna know the vision.

Can you, you guys have a project deck? Can you walk me through so that we can support what's the best decisions?

Alexandra: Yeah. Okay. So, then it made me more concretely, like if I'm a studio and I ask a carve off a piece of the game to devote it, like say, build me this level, right? Which is much more big than drop me this, you know, make a 3D poly acid of a trashcan.

Build me this level. And it comes back technically perfect, but it doesn't actually serve the purpose that I the studio is trying to achieve in that relationship. Like, whose fault is that, in your opinion?

Ninel: I had actually a conversation with someone a couple years ago that I left and I was so puzzled and this person shared with me that of their bad experience with outsourcing.

And I was like, he's like, I don't want that experience to happen again. And I'm like, well, tell me more. What was your experience? And they shared with me that they hired a team and they send them the specs of what needs to be delivered and what they got back, uh, was wrong. And then they looked at the specs and what they put in the specs was wrong, but it was clearly wrong.

And so, their vision, the outsourcing partner didn't ask the right questions about like, they should have seen that it's wrong. And I'm like, but didn't you write the specs, like when you were sending it, like, obviously I didn't ask, I was like, I just, I, I might not even wanna work with them after that conversation because the level of just self accountability and awareness of how you set your partner for success is just, was, was just not present.

And I think, I think a, it is, it is equally important for an outsourcing partner to ask questions, but even like when we ask questions, there's certain decisions that our clients might be making that we actually might disagree with. And we still saw that those decision end up being super successful for a project in the market, but traditionally something that we would disagree, and we haven't seen anyone doing that.

And video games are just so creative and so different. So, something that sometimes could be a bug or like a limitation of an engine could be the most fun experience for, for the client. So, it is important to bring things up, but it's also, you know, it is the client's decision of how they wanna execute it.

Alexandra: So, yeah, you guys are in a very different seat. Like you guys, you have, the client wants it this way, you make it this way. You're not, it's not your business to fight the creative vision or advocate for, for it.

Ninel: I will with the client. I, I, I'm…

Alexandra: Oh, you will

Ninel: Okay. I have a, I have a reputation that I, and I tell it to all of my clients when they come in and I'm like, I'm gonna tell you when I'm, when I will disagree and I'm gonna bring it up and I'm gonna flag it, but I will ultimately surrender to your decision.

Right. Because it's, you know, our partner's project. Right, right. So, going back to what you shared, I think the questions for me, and actually what you shared in the example that what I shared is like, where were the weekly meetings, right? Where was the kickoff call where we all aligned the, the vision? How did we report on the progress that we had to figure out that something was completely off when there was the final delivery?

And I think that intermediate is the key to make sure that both parties are accountable to that vision. Because I'm sure a lot of people who develop video games, what they wanted in the very beginning, what the game actually ended up being. Oh. Is a very different thing. But that, that's not a bad thing.

Right. As long as it's. It's the same sort of, at least vision for the direction.

Alexandra: Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah, and I guess that was actually going to already going to my, towards my next question, which was like, if you could ask for one thing from a studio side holder to be a better partner, like what would that be?

And it sounds like, well one is just to like include you in the process, have a weekly meeting, have a kick-off, actually tell you the vision, right. So that you can give the team the context to make the right decisions. You know, and I think like, and on the other hand, I think what that, so that's what we talked a little bit about, like what the partner can do, the studio, the IP owner, the can do, what are the components to you that make a good co-dev partner?

And so, like in that regard, and you know, like how perhaps does Devoted win a bid over some other co-development studio? How do you think that you guys show up to make the partnership work?

Ninel: Well, it's, it's a broad question 'cause I feel like every project requires, you know, their own special sauce and how you prep for it 'cause I think it starts with identifying what's the pain point, right? And, and for somebody, somebody that, when they're coming, going out to bring it on a partner, they just need volume, right? For somebody, they have a very, very, very tight deadline and they need that to be met. Or previously they had an issue with consistency.

And so how do you ensure that consistency is happening? And so usually identifying what's the, what's the thing that drove them. First and foremost place to bring in a co-partner or an outsourcing partner will depend on how we will structure, our team. And for some projects you need like very, very tight deadline, very high proficiency.

You need to bring like just all stars. There's no room for mistake. There's like, we had a project that we were bidding out end of last year, the timelines were so aggressive, there's no handholding possible. So, you can only bring people that not only are great executors, but also have enough confidence to go figure it out, ask questions, ask questions 10 times until you get the answer.

Not like, oh, I sent you a message on Slack and you didn't respond, so I didn't do it. You know?

Alexandra: Right, right,

Ninel: Right. So, but you don't, some on some projects where the timelines are not as aggressive, you can staff differently. Right? And that, that affects your budget and all the, all the components associated with that. So I think, okay. I think that's a foundational question there.

Alexandra: Yeah, and I mean, I think that's the answer, right? Like, I think the component of a good co-dev partnership is that you understand what your client needs and you pitch and you mould yourself to fit them. And I think that's probably how you win over, over others.

I'm curious though, like, can you tell me about a partnership between, and you don't have to mention another partner, but can you tell me about a partnership that didn't go so well? And perhaps on both sides, why? And sort of what did you guys learn from it and took take forward from it?

Ninel: This year we, because I mean, as a, as a studio, you can't be amazing in every service possible, right?

Alexandra: Mm-hmm.

Ninel: And we, last year decided that we're not taking standalone animation projects and we're not taking standalone VFX projects. Because every time when we are doing those disciplines as a co-dev initiative, everything is great. When we are doing those initiatives as just standalone items, it becomes the thing that, and animation and VFX is just very, very, very, very subjective.

Like it needs to like convey the emotions. It's very, if not, if you don't know what the emotions the designer wanted and they're not really great in conveying them and you are on the outsourcing side. Like I tell my partners when they come in for me to like, Ninel, can you take a VFX project?

I'm like, no. Because what I advise them, and I always send them actually to, Jason Kaisers School 'cause they have a bunch of really good visual effects artists and like bring an intern internally if you can't hire, or the visual effects artists are very expensive or just hire somebody internally but don't outsource visual effects because it becomes this never ending loop of iterations.

And especially if you're, if you are budgeting it as a fixed budget, that's ends up being a loss and a lot of frustration for co-dev partners. So, what we found is we don't do, and we tried multiple times and my BD team came in crying like, please, please, please, we really want this client. Let's take this visual effects standalone project.

And we get absolutely like, I not even gonna go in the details.

Alexandra: Yeah, but that's a, that's a lesson, right?

Ninel: Yeah. That's a big, that's a big lesson for us. It's just too subjective. But on the VFX projects where we are in charge of, let's say a, a whole location or a map and we do concept and modeling and technical and we do VFX on top of it, it always end works.

Alexandra: End up being, yeah. Yeah.

Ninel: A great thing. So, we actually had a, had to have a whole decision internally that we don't, and no, no more crying. And I feel like it has been pain painful enough of times where my team is like, okay, we understand why we're not doing it.

Alexandra: So that makes sense. That makes sense. And I love that example.

That was beautiful. And that's actually I think something that I found from my own development experience as well. We outsourced VFX and then we brought that stuff in-house asap. So, 'cause you're just like not living and breeding the art team if you're just the only, you're like the one artist that's outside of it.

And so, I think that's also a cultural thing and it's a vibe thing and it's, it's hard to, it's hard to get. Yeah. Okay, so I wanna start moving over to the economics of code Dev and sort of running devoted in general. You just mentioned this one topic, VFX and animation, but what do people mostly, if you had it in a couple categories, what do, what are the top two things that people come to you for in terms of services?

Ninel: I'd say that there's an evolution of, of servicing this, this, that people has been coming to us, I think in the last year has been more and more code dev, engineering and design together. And historically there was always a lot like separate services art in the last year and a half. It's mostly, like most of the project that we do are end-to-end art.

So, from concept through modeling, through integration. And we have beautiful examples working on League of Legends where we are in charge of delivering maps in partnership with League. And we do from concept through modeling, through integrating and having the whole thing together, which just gives my team so much joy of feeling that.

Alexandra: That's amazing.

Ninel: Be supported to birth the whole thing.

Alexandra: So, yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Okay. Yeah, especially like the full, I think, and that's probably also really satisfying because you also have a little bit more of the creative freedom to kind of execute it the way that you would execute it. And, and it's obviously in line with the bigger vision.

Ninel: Yeah. I mean, I would say creative freedom as a part of creative partnership 'cause we have amazing art directors and leads on Riot side that support us and we're, we're just. But there are soldiers and creative soldiers of building it together, which is really fun.

Alexandra: Nice. How far in advance, just I'm curious, like, do you guys need to get integrated with the studio to like start being effective?

And I'm sure that that kind of varies, but I guess I'm kind of asking like, how, what's like the timeline to like get, get rolling on some of this sort of stuff?

Ninel: It varies so much. It's, it's an amazing question. I think like sometimes, sometimes the project allows you to like integrate and sometimes like.

The first delivery really needs to happen in the next two weeks, and there's no, no time. And it's, it's so fascinating for me because I feel like sometimes, you know, most of the time when we hire people internally, or like our clients hire people internally, they give them three to six months to onboard, figure things out, be able to fully find the things that they need and the folder that there is, you know, but when we bring in an outsourcing partner, we're like, chop, chop the deliveries in two weeks.

And you're like, this is the first time me seeing this project. And, and I, I always tell my clients whenever they're bringing, you know, whenever we are being onboarded on the project, I'm like, it's, it's important for you to share with me what needs to be done, but it's equally important for you to explain to me what should not be done.

And that is. People think what should not be done is like logical, but it actually, what should not be done is what they have done before. It didn't work. It became a part of common knowledge and, but then it just, like, it's logical and I'm like, that's not logical.

Alexandra: That's, you know, no, 'cause you didn't live the history of it.

It's actually how you, it's actually a really good, effective way of also like prompting cloud code is you tell Claude what you want, but then you also very specifically tell Claude what you do not want. So, there is that. But I mean, the reason I ask that question is because like they, you know, it, it seems like it could be just like a lightning storm of like someone's like exactly what you said, chop-chop, right?

And then like you start the, you start the contractual relationship. They're like, you're on the dollar. Like we obviously only wanna pay for this amount. So, like, we wanna max, we wanna squeeze everything we can out this co dev partner and then you on the other side are constantly managing this very large queue of workers.

And your goal is that you probably don't want them to be idle. But then you also just probably moving people around. You're like, they show up on Monday, they're like, by the way, entirely new thing that you're on today. Like, get going. So like how do you internally manage that like level of, perhaps maybe whiplash from, from, from talent of kind of being moved left and right onto something really quickly.

And sort of then think about kind of the scheduling lines and project staffing to keep like people from burning out and, you know, 'cause they're even on a worse rollercoaster without sourcing than they are and with co dev than they were inside the studio sometime.

Ninel: You know, what comes to mind? We had, we were bidding out this project a couple years ago and we were like looking at, and it was huge, huge production.

And my, I'm, I'm on the call, my head of production there, and then one of our lead producers there is a bunch of other people and some people are like, we gonna die delivering this. And my lead producer was like, well, it's better to die delivering this than being without a job. And I was like, yeah. But it was just like so cool to see like your team, like really, truly understanding it, that we're in the times where certain things might be hard, but it's much more fun to die trying, building something and it's not obviously what we want than not have a project.

I think what makes us different at Devoted Studios is, every talent has a choice. Whether they wanna be a part of a project or not. So, it's all, so it's all consent based and, which I feel like allows for people to be really passionate about something so not, they're not working on things that they don't wanna be a part of, I feel.

Alexandra: What if I don't wanna work on anything though? Do I get, do I still get paid?

Ninel: No, we got, if you don't wanna work on anything that sounds a sabba, like, sounds like a sabbatical, please take something.

Alexandra: I was just, I was just imagining someone being like, well, I don't like any of the projects that I've presented, so I'm not doing anything today.

Ninel: Like, look, I, I look at all of it from a perspective. It's, we wanna create an equal opportunity for every talent, but it is, it is foundational for people to wanna show up. For people to wanna deliver, for like, I don't, we don't run a charity organization. Sometimes I look at like LinkedIn and it feels like everybody, doesn't matter how much they contribute to anything deserve to be paid.

And I'm like, but if you're not showing up and every day you're saying it's gonna be delivered tomorrow and tomorrow just happens and it's not delivered. Like, we're delivering a game. Like we have a budget, we have a timeline, and we are always, you know, there's, there's a lot of sentiment like, oh, game development is really in a shitty place right now.

But I'm like, that's actually how game development was in 2019 and 2018 and 2017. It was always like, very tight budget, no money. But I also feel like that's where a lot of creativity came from. Because like in, in the years, if we look at the years of 2020, the, the games that were started in 2021 to 2023, like I haven't seen anything that was like drastically in that got the VC money, like the never ending spend, how much you want?

So far, I haven't seen anything that was like, wow. And by the way, Arc Raiders started before that, so we can, you can't, like I…

Alexandra: Oh, and they didn't get.

Ninel: Don't loop.

Alexandra: VC money. They're not, they're not in the VC money category. Yeah.

Ninel: Yeah.

Alexandra: But I see what, I see what you're saying, but I think like, that's an interesting question.

I was just more curious how it works for you. And so, okay, so couple quick questions. How many projects are you guys typically supporting at any one period of time? And then how do you decide who, if, if it is a opt-in to the project, right? But then you, you know, I'm sure that you sign the deal at an MSA level and someone's gotta work on it, right?

So how do you make sure that, you know, all the projects that you on are actually getting supported in like an efficient, as you said, manner such that none of your workers are bored because they're obviously all there because they care and they wanna participate. And you're obviously maximizing kind of like your staffing inventory.

So how does that actually work and who helps you keep track of it? It seems like a lot to keep track of.

Ninel: My hat of production has some special sauce of capacity management. I have no idea how she does it, and I honestly sometimes don't like, 'cause sometimes I, I go with her on some calls about that management and I'm like, that, you're doing it great.

There's nothing I can help you here with. But it's, it's definitely a lot of combination of work of business development and production and management capacity in advance. So, like we have a lighting project that is finishing end of April. So, we know that we have, I usually like three months in advance, we start looking for different projects.

We go to some of our other clients that might be at that stage of production that they might need lighting support and start doing the show and tell of like, look how many amazing people we have. So, I think. And then it just magically happens. I don't know. Most of the time, I know, obviously in certain times it doesn't.

And then you, you have to figure out the bench situation. But most of the time if, if you're good in knowing when the project ends. And these are resources that are in demand and there are high skills professionals, it's usually ends up as equaling out.

Alexandra: Okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's just a lot of like queuing management and assembly line kind of operational, like thinking about sort of like flows and move through and, and stuff like that.

I think like, because obviously you wanna get on as many projects as possible, but yet you don't wanna burn your talent out. And you wanna give people something interesting work. So, I think when you like kind of do it across all the different dimensions of, you know, perhaps there's someone on the, someone in the studio that just doesn't wanna work on the same.

Type of thing, multiple, multiple times in a row. Right? They wanted something interesting and creative. That's, that's all, that's a lot of different, like different levers to kind of, it's definitely, it's kind of like playing it like a, you know, like a tactical, tactical game, right? There's like a lot of, there's like a lot of stuff going on.

I've got my archers over here and this pipeline, this factory's going, and then in three days I'll have oil and then I'll refresh. And so, it's kind of, you just must have a lot of people that are very good at that.

Ninel: Correct. That's kind of like a lot of spreadsheets and, and, and decks together.

But when it comes to capacity management, I think for us, one of the biggest pivots that allowed it to be more efficient was switching from focusing on one discipline to be more of an end-to-end production, especially when it comes to art, because that allows us to plan better. So, on the projects we were doing, let's say only modeling, but we were dependent on some other vendor bringing in concept art. We could, we were always late. We were always idle, like, right? Not we were late. The things that were promised came late to us to be delivered at a certain Yep. Would be late. And then we would have less time, and it was just like always this giant mess. And then it was somebody else would integrate it and then we would receive feedback because it doesn't look in the engine the same as, you know, it looks in Maya, but we can't see it because we don't have access.

So, when we started switching projects to wording the concepts we know. Where we at approximately at finishing those concepts and then we're signaling to 3D team. And also if, let's say concepts are being a little late because the clients want to iterate more, maybe on the final kind of the colors or the textures of, of the concept, our 3D team can already actually, even if they're delayed, start working on the shapes and the forms and start modeling the assets.

So, by the time they'll figure out, you know, what's the final look of it, we will be already 30 or 40% into production of the assets. So, on the overall timeline, we would not be stressed and delayed, even though on the first things they might need a little more time on the creativity, which wasn't a possibility for us when we were just one of the partners.

Right? And it's obviously not the thing that is happening on every single project for everyone, but for us, I think that was a major shift for better planning of capacity.

Alexandra: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. And two more questions in this section. The first is like, do you, because you, you just said that like you used to actually there most to be multiple partners, like multiple outsourcing.

Say you were dependent on another outsourcer and now you're trying to cover a bit more of it, as you said, end to end. Do you guys work with other outsources to maybe fill the gaps and skills that you are missing? So, if someone comes to you devoted, do you then work with another outsourcing studio?

Ninel: Sometimes. Yeah, that that's absolutely is a possibility. We had multiple projects where we would bring in a partner and oversee it and transparently communicate with the client of like, Hey, we can cover this and this, and we have a partner that can augment it, but we would steal. Do the whole thing.

And we've, and we've recently had it in one of the projects and there was a bit of an expertise that we had a gap and we brought it in. That vendor is also inside of the SOW that's fully transparent and everybody's happy. Like a…

Alexandra: Cool.

Ninel: You know, clown. Because in the end of the day, what the client is looking for is the result.

Alexandra: Right, right, right.

Ninel: You know? With the least amount of overhead and, and speaking back on, like the example that I shared about like the concepts, modeling, whatever, what it creates is actually more freedom because that takes away the overhead from the client on managing from one per one vendor to another.

Updating the timelines, schedules, delivery dates, and all of that stuff that's absorbed within one studio. And so, I, it doesn't have to be devoted, but if you're looking to. Augment your pipeline was a partner, I would suggest highly look into the one that could do the end-to-end production.

Alexandra: Right. Makes sense. But, but the, but the macro takeaway is that sometimes even the outsourcers or the co-devs also have outsourcers in co-dev. Which I think is an interesting thing. It's not everybody has everything. And so sometimes you have to like, work with every, with, you know, you might not specialize in…

Ninel: Organization.

Alexandra: Well that's…

Ninel: But let's look at keywords as an example. Right. Which is one of, not one of the, it's the biggest company. It's the biggest.

Alexandra: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

Ninel: And even VIRs, but I think keywords is what semi studios and would allow them to dominate the market is their ability to. Get in one client and be like, oh, you need concept, we have Vault. I can give you that.

Alexandra: Exactly.

Ninel: Oh, you need like, you know, whatever. We have this other studio, like Red Hog or whatever. And so, they would absorb internally that overhead, oh, you need engineering. We see you need interior. Let's bring like, I don't know. Mm-hmm. Like high voltage or not. I'm like blanking on all of it 'cause there's so many of the studios, there are keywords there a lot, but.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Ninel: But I think that's what actually allowed them to be that successful and that was the strategy that they, that they built is around being able to like fully…

Alexandra: Be that OneStop shop for everything that you possibly could need.

Yeah. And that probably also loves you. It's, it's, it's, it's a better business too. It's, it's an easier client relationship and it's a better business for, for probably for both parties. But before we move on to our conclusion, I wanna ask a little bit about like the, the economics. You probably get paid kind of regardless of the game's success.

Obviously, but in the upside case and maybe something like, you know, Arc grad most of the time insanely, most of the time you get paid regardless of success. Well, we hope that you get paid for the work that you do, but in the upside case and something like ARC grad, you know, it's possibly you could, one could argue that you're a part of making it very successful.

And so, I'm curious, are there any kind of like bonus structures that you guys set up with studios? Because I think the way that I would think about is that I wanna ensure that my outsourcer or my co-development partner is motivated to do great work and that great work is manifested in like a big game.

So, does that ever happen for you guys and, you know, that, does that allow, you know, your team to kind of feel like they were part of for the financial success of a title?

Ninel: I would say earlier there were way more deals where. A publisher or a developer who is looking for support would offer revenue share on the project, but it always came with the caveat of a discount on the cost of the services.

Alexandra: Hmm, I see.

Ninel: And so in my career, I have never seen the revenues come in because the economics of it is usually, even if the game is moderately successful, it would be like, oh we, the economics is we recoup all of the money that we spend on the development and then we recoup all the marketing money that we spend on the development.

And if the game is successful, you wanna spend all of the money that you are getting into more marketing so you get more players 'cause in the end of the day, for what's actually one of the most important thing for the company that created a successful game is their valuation. So, what they're looking for is actually not a lot of times, not revenues per se, but the valuation of the company so they can sell it.

So, the more top line that they're showing is affecting for how much they can sell the company itself. Right. So not the bottom line, but the cod dev partner that gave a discount in exchange of the potential revenue share is dependent on that bottom line. So, the, the mismatch of the strategy for dev, original dev and the mismatch was for the cod dev partner creates that discrepancy that I personally have never seen any revenues from those deals and I kind of stopped taking them maybe 10 years ago.

So, I'd rather, I'd rather make sure that my team is paid and, yep. You know, they get, they can go on vacation with their family, they can provide support. Now I can't, I can't come to like, you know, John and be like, John, you are gonna get paid less this month, but if so-and-so is successful.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Ninel: In three years maybe, there is some coaching for all.

Alexandra: That's interesting. Like given the fact that they would, they'll, they'll discount the original offer with the original price. I was just curious too, and I guess it's a, it's, it's, it's a matter of perspective of how big of a role and you, you contribute to the success.

Right? But I was just curious if any of those things look like that, because I think like some, and oftentimes I would find it to. Aligned, you know, in, in some, in a, in, in the more macro way, maybe, perhaps not in the p and l way in terms of enterprise value, but, you know, I would want my development partner to be motivated to also be, want this to be a big game with me.

Ninel: I think that does work mostly for full cycle games because the incentive is how can we create the most, in the most efficient way for a very reasonable budget, again, that we can roll out in the market and start getting data. And I think that aligning that incentive a lot of times between a publisher and a developer in that kind of context works, but again, need to figure out the economics.

And we actually just recently posted a checklist of what to look out for and the contract was a publisher. 'cause I also had a podcast for like, interviewing one of the top lawyers in the gaming industry, just listening to Horst stories of what you know. You think you're gonna get 50% rev share on the project, but what you're actually getting is 50% of deducted everything and you actually never see anything.

Alexandra: Cool. Alright. So, we're running up on time and so I want to talk about our final topic, um, which is building talent and culture in co dev. And so, you mentioned that, you know, like there's, you have some unconventional training programs and so for me, I think culture is kind of two things.

And I learned this from a mentor of mine, which is habits and norms. And so, you're doing these unconventional training programs, which I think you mentioned were nonviolent communication, improv training, five dysfunction of a team for your game studio, and sort of what do you help to create in terms of the devoted culture?

And I think especially. Because devoted employees are also meant to understand maybe the culture and the vision of another studio. They work alongside sort of like, where's the line between the devoted culture and the studio that they're supportings culture.

Ninel: Wow. So, a little bit, two different things for me.

I'll probably start with the, the trainings. I truly believe that communication is key. And I, you know, one of your early earlier questions that you mentioned for me was just reflecting that sometimes you have to design yourself in the relationship with others so much that you don't even remember who you are.

And sometimes you have to, like, for this client, it's so funny, like for this client we would have, they absolutely want exactly. How it's written and their requirements. And like, God forbid you even like, breathe a direction that is a little different, right? And for the other client, it's like, oh, we want you guys to take more ownership while you're not taking more ownership.

And for another one, it's like oh, we want you, we want the ownership here, but here, no ownership. No ownership. And but here and then, and then you're like, it's not like you don't wanna, you are like, I don't even know what you want. But you're also like, when you were schooled or like you were given feedback on one project for, there's absolutely no way you should be doing this.

And then you come on a different project and you already, you have scars because you were told that's not what you should, what you're supposed to do. You just, you, it's, it's really, really hard. Like you get feedback all the time. I'm like. I train my team to not take the feedback to heart. I'm like, we have our own values, right?

And we actually change our values maybe like once every couple years, not like fully, but I feel like some of the values be, I feel like I write our values in the way that it helps our people to be focused. And sometimes those values already become such an automated things that there was no point of pointing out that as a value.

So, one of, one of the values that I added that this year was one plan. Everybody knows the plan. Everybody knows the plan at all times. And if the plan get updated, everybody should know the plan. And I just feel like in a remote company.

Alexandra: Yeah.

Ninel: It doesn't always, you know, it doesn't always become, it doesn't always…

Alexandra: Happen.

Ninel: Yeah. It doesn't always happen. And I. I am at, it's a good value fault. I'm at fault. Sometimes I'm like, I feel like I communicated the plan, but no, I created the plan in my head and then I gave couple tasks, but I never really shared the plan with my team. So, it is a little bit of a moment of, of re disciplining myself in the first place.

But I feel like communication is, is key and being able to be confident and then have the tools of asking the question in the way that other person can receive that question instead of getting defensive or really understanding why you need the answer, instead of being like, oh, I don't have the time for you.

Right, because it's you. A lot of time people, people bring co dev on things that, they already behind or my favorite one, they weren't able to figure it out internally how to do it. And now they're like, oh, let's bring code dev and just drop it on them. And then, well, you weren't able to figure out internally like, I might need time to figure out how to do it as well.

So, and I think being able to, just being arti, articulate and communicative and also on it sometimes, like I have no ego if I need to ask the same question three times, five times, seven times, you name it. Unless like I need to get the answer. And that persistence is also needs to be trained and be okay to drop your ego when, when the result is on the line, I think. Mm-hmm. Like the biggest thing that we invest in the company is, is communication in. And as you mentioned, the improv trainings, the nonviolent communication trainings, the, all the different types of communication. It's, it's a never ending thing for us 'cause there's always, like, I do it personally for myself.

I love Chris Voss trainings that never split the difference. And being able to, yeah, in general, communicate to other people hear you, but also to fund trainings too. So that's, it's, you know, competitions, video game competitions and stuff so people feel united.

Alexandra: Makes sense. That sounds really fun.

Ninel: I went, I went into rambling. You should have stopped me. Very, just very passionate.

Alexandra: Yeah. And then, two last questions, because we are up on time, but my, my, I think this has potentially happens sometimes, you know, you might work with a co-dev studio and maybe some of the development team really like who they're working with.

Do you find yourself losing talent to the studios that you partner with and do you try to prevent this with like, legal non-solicit or are you kind of, of the mindset that if they wanna go find a permanent home and another studio making their own IP, that they should kind of go do that?

Ninel: People can choose their own adventure, right? If they wanna go elsewhere. Like, I can't stop anyone. But we do have legal, non-solicit with our current clients. I have never really ran in a situation where somebody left our company to go work directly on the project and for the client internally.

But we did have, we did have one of our partner, one of our, one of our talents that his contract was up, we didn't renew, and then in a few months he actually joined the client in the same project. But it was, it was totally fine. Like, we're actually, we're super excited.

Alexandra: Yeah. I, I figure it's just like, and sometimes I think obviously like you're building your own business and so you might have a, you know, some very talented people who are, you know, you've, you've kind of aggregated and, and, and collected over the years.

And obviously that's also part of, perhaps like your edge in a way, is that you have really good people who do all the things that you say such as communicate well. The people that you said are exceptional, who are able to ask the questions to get the right vision, who don't let things go and.

Those sometimes would be people that you know, might get poached. And because you're working with so many people, you know, they're just like exposing people to potential poachers. You know, so I'm just curious how you guys think about that.

Ninel: You know, what I'm really proud of is actually we have a very high return rate, so that's amazing. We have so many people inside Devoted that worked at Devoted, then went elsewhere, and then came back in a year,

Alexandra: And then came back.

Ninel: And then came back in a year.

Alexandra: That's amazing. That is a really good metric, actually.

Ninel: Yeah. And sometimes we're like, Hey. Well, you, if you wanna go play elsewhere, go play elsewhere.

But it's actually kind of good here. And sometimes people don't really appreciate how good it is and then they go elsewhere and they're like, you know what? It's kind of really cool here. I'm back. I really loved it. You know?

Alexandra: Yeah.

Ninel: So.

Alexandra: That's good.

Ninel: We, we do have the side of…

Alexandra: A building a good…

Ninel: We have pretty good return rate and it's the funniest thing, but it happens on Slack channel when they're like, oh my God, Louis is back. You know? It's cute.

Alexandra: It's probably, it's actually probably better than the retention rate. It's actually, the return rate probably means more.

Ninel: Yeah. I truly believe that.

Alexandra: Okay. And so, then my final question for today is, is there something that the co-development industry like needs to stop doing? Is there a bad habit that this holding the whole industry back?

And then on the reverse side, what do you think is a belief about co-development that most studios hold that you think is just flat out wrong?

Ninel: Well, I can't speak for all of the co-development partners because there's definitely maybe some, they're not as good as the others. But I, I would say in general, in my, in my circle of amazing studios that I get to be friends with, and I, I, you know, I feel like if we actually spend more times together, we would probably be a better industry.

But I feel like genuinely co-development partners really want their clients to succeed. And really you're trying to optimize for the best outcomes. But sometimes it's really hard to do that when you're not having the vision, like, what am I optimizing for? So, when you, I, a lot of times if I have a very clear roadmap from my client and I feel secure on the project, I can come up with the best ideas of how what they need to be achieved will be achieved.

But if I don't have that visibility, it's really like, oh, this is your three tasks for this week, right? Instead of like, here's what everything that needs to be done, then it's hard for me to optimize. So, I feel like sometimes they're like, oh, the outsourcing partners or Code F partners are just doing exactly what I'm being told.

What they're being told to is actually due to the lack of visibility or what else is there? And then that triggers some rework. But I also fully understand that giving that visibility requires time. And a lot of time we don't have the time. So, it's kind of a double-edged sword and. I would just love that when people bring on an out a, a partner, they really approach it from a perspective for setting up that partner for success.

Because a lot of time and IIC is like, oh, I'm gonna test out eight vendors. Whoever, whoever figures it out, works on the project. And I'm like that, that one five day test cannot give you visibility of how your three next year is gonna look like because you are just testing that. Maybe they put it on the button and let's say we take art as an example, right?

They put on their art director to do the test, and they whip the test in five days, and it looks amazing. But it doesn't tell you anything about how they're planning, how they're staffing, what's their communication, how they're working with feedback, how defensive they are when they receive the feedback, versus how quick to pick up.

On all of the details and nuances of the project, how much, yes, they might be a little better on this delivery, but how consistent they are across like all of the deliveries. They actually had a project last year where they, and I thought that was the coolest way to test partners. They brought in three vendors for three months timeline to actually evaluate all of those things and then make a decision of who is the partner that creates the least amount of overhead on their end, and then calculate what's the budget right ratio.

Because sometimes like, oh, this is X, Y, and Z, and that's the cost, right? But you don't really see how much of the overhead cost to get this cheapest resource or the cheapest partner. And I think like looking at this holistically across all of the aspects of it, but also really putting time to set your partner for success is what yields the best results.

Alexandra: That makes sense. Well put, uh, okay. Ninel, this was amazing and I think that you guys are playing such an important role in the games industry and in game development. I was very excited for this because I do actually genuinely believe this is like the secret teams. Behind every big game watch is nowadays.

So, thank you so much for coming on. There's clearly so much opportunity for people who wanna work in games, in co-dev and outsourcing. And thank you so much for sharing your journey personally to founding the company and, and why you started it. So, as always, friends, if you have feedback or ideas, please hit me up at [email protected]. I am always open. And with that, that's our episode. Ninel, thank you for coming on.

Ninel: Thank you so much for having me.

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