Squanch Games COO, Mike Fridley Talks the Future of the Gaming Industry
If you want to see a recruiter at Nxt Level get excited, just say Squanch Games. The love of “Rick and Morty” and “Tover Saves the Universe” is unparalleled in our office. This is an interview that people were fighting for the chance to talk with COO Mike Fridley.
After learning about Mike’s fun facts (watch the interview to find out what they are), and his cross country move, and vacation tips, we learned about his background at some of the top gaming studios.
In the past 12 months $86 billion in acquisitions of independent gaming companies has happened, with the year before seeing only 10% of that number. Mike shared with us his thoughts on the industry changes.
“We have just seen the tip of it. Consolidation always breeds consolidations, so we are going to see, I think, more consolidation. I think that there will be both large and small consolidation. There will be, at times the perception will be that they are good for the industry. There are definitely some upsides too, I think what Microsoft and Sony are both trying to do right now with these game services that they are offering, the subscription services. I think Game Pass is a huge value right now. I have Game Pass Ultimate and it’s amazing. I play games that I never would have played without it. There is a massive library that is only getting bigger with each one of these acquisitions. It’s like ‘ok, ok. I never would have bought this game but I am sure glad it is on here because I got to play it.’ And Sony is now consolidating all their Sony Now and Sony Plus, their two services, into basically a Game Pass type of service. I think that is likely where the industry is going and because of that those big power houses need content and so you can either buy it, or make it and I think that the consolidation of it is going to increase the amount of content that Microsoft and Sony can make and provide that value to their subscribers but is it going to be the kind of content that we see now with the independent owned studios?
“I know that I have worked at some pretty big studios. I worked at Bethesda. I worked at EA. I’ve worked on some big titles and franchises and having more cooks has never been a good thing. Having more cooks in the creative, having different goals, you have business goals, you have creative goals, you have PR goals. There’s all these different goals in a larger mechanism of a giant publisher that don’t always align with making a great game. The benefit of being a small studio is that we define our own colors and what makes the most sense to us. A place like Squanch, our main pillar is, it’s really the only pillar is make games that we want to play. “
He feels the big difference between recruiting and hiring at the indies and big guys is that because of having a small staff they have to think more of how a person is going to fit in with the team. “Indies weight cultural fit… whether it is personality or creative vision or conflict resolution, all of that kinda rolls up into the culture of the studio; like how do you handle people who disagree, how do you get your point across when you are the only person in the room that has it. All those are a lot more important to us at the indie level because we don’t have a deep bench.”
Fridley believes that if an indie studio wants to stay indie they need to make “good stuff” for a big studio to create a publishing deal for the games. He sees this as the sustainable future for the gaming industry.
