The Culture of Disruption

Building a new type of game company

I’ve written in the past about how successful game companies will need to evolve to a more service-oriented business model in which all of the elements of growth—marketing, product, support, analytics—are intertwined. However, building an innovative company also takes a certain type of culture. Here’s how we’re trying to do it at Disruptor Beam:

http://www.slideshare.net/jradoff/culture-ofdisruption-final

Many companies talk about cultural values but then do nothing to put those values into actual practice. That’s where I hope Disruptor Beam’s approach to culture is different. You can read about our culture in the above deck—but for a brief introduction, the pillars of our culture are Authenticity, Effectiveness and Constant Improvement. Here are some ways we practice what we preach:

• Genuine passion for the types of games we make and respect for the source materials
• Hiring is based on: Culture Fit > Talent > Skills
• Application of agile development practices to all areas of the business: iterate marketing, operations, deal-making, etc.
• Failure as a normal part of learning & business — as long as it isn’t the same type of failures over and over
• No tracking of vacation & sick time (i.e., unlimited PTO)
• Everyone publicly shares their objectives and key results (OKRs) from the CEO to the newest hire
• We don’t need/want non-compete agreements