Lessons from the founding of Ironwood Studios

gamedeveloper.com:

In the last couple of years, the flush-with-cash video game industry has seen a number of high-profile new studios pop up on the market. These range from the new startups led by experienced developers fleeing their former employers (your Second Dinners, your Dark Passengers, whatever Jeff Strain is opening up this week) to the higher-profile branches of larger companies like EA, Netflix, and even Annapurna Interactive. 

It's a lot of money to throw around, and with that money comes a lot of pressure. One studio that hews closer to the former group of companies is Ironwood Studios, the developers behind Pacific Drive. Co-founded by Alex Dracott, it's one of the lucky companies that managed to attract investment thanks to a strong team and great game idea.

But great games and great people don't always make for great companies. And with a lot of money on the line, they can run the risk of turning into a bubbling pot that might boil over. In our chat with Dracott about the design inspirations for Pacific Drive, the longtime industry technical artist was unusually candid about how he and his colleagues have navigated the studio's early days.

We wanted to spin those insights out from our conversation about cars and Pacific Northwest vibes, for the benefit of any other enthusiastic creatives looking to strike it out alone. Here's what he shared:

When Dracott began to mess with the prototype that would become Pacific Drive, he at first toyed with the idea of staying independent, making the game as a solo developer. But as the idea grew more fleshed out, he realized he'd need more help with the project, and his next thought was that he wanted to make "a healthy place that I would want to work at."

Dracott kicked off that process