Worldbuilding led, pro-moonlighting, 4 day working week — some things that make us a little different.
Hello. I’m Mark, the founder and CEO of Those Beyond which started life in 2021. After several conversations with people ranging from our worldbuilding led foundations through to moonlighting and my newfound passion for a team wide 4 day working week — I thought I’d write down some thoughts on how our studio might be a little different to others.
At Those Beyond, bringing a sense of belonging through play has always been a foundation for our studio. Escapism isn’t just fun. It is necessary. And we take our responsibility in the entertainment industry of the future seriously. The world we live in is beautiful, full of wonder and yet equally demanding and requires us to find solace through entertainment.
Being an early stage studio, we will not pretend to have already settled on the pillars that define us or to have discovered all the real values that will be dear to us. However, we have started to work out what makes us a little different.
It is important to the founding team that we adopt an emergent strategy that finds out who we are on the journey as we design, build and launch our worlds. I guess some studios feel they can say exactly who they are immediately. But for us, like when we were growing up ourselves, we are discovering who we are as we go.
I hope other studios might find this useful and I intend to take a look back at it over the months and years ahead to see how much we have evolved and if we still hold these things below close to our hearts.
We’re worldbuilding led.
Like for so many other kids, from Redwall, to Baldur’s Gate to Warhammer — getting lost in other worlds was a huge part of my childhood. It didn’t matter to me if they were in books, films, video games, painting miniatures or playing cards.
In Those Beyond, we’re worldbuilding first because we love all types of media; from films to games — but also because fictional worlds have a way of bringing people together; to create communities and to foster a real sense of belonging. We want our players to be excited not just about the content we make, but the worlds they’re set in.
Through the history of being a creative arm that spun out of a large tech company, we have spent years on our own intellectual property for sci fi and fantasy settings (most notably alderlore.world) that we knew would be some of the indie fandoms we wanted to build a new platform around and give a true sense of belonging to.
We make decisions quickly. But are ready to pivot them quickly too.
Those Beyond moves quickly. We like to move forward and see what is there. And then be ready to move sideways or even back if we don’t like what we see.
Taking calculated risks like this is ok! Most companies say they like to get 80% of decisions right. We are different, we’re not afraid to get things wrong — even if that’s 50% of the time. This is because when we get things right, they are brilliant and we’d rather pivot fast than be paralysed by trying to get things right all the time. Instead, we found something new; we moved into a space fast; we ended up with an influx of new fans. All these things are great outcomes.
So what does hurt us? It hurts us when someone is worried that a decision made might reflect badly on them. We help to get rid of this worry by celebrating their bravery. Usually, the learnings are what end up pushing us forwards anyway.
A four day working week on full pay.
In our view spending 4 days at work and 3 days away from it all has got to be better for everyone.
Those Beyond unanimously agreed that we wanted the future of the company to work Monday to Thursday with every Friday off.
A few companies trialling this are trying to show that productivity can remain the same as a 5 day working week, but we don’t believe this is the right pressure to put on the team. It’s not 5 days productivity in 4, it’s 4 days productivity in 4. And we make sure that we plan our schedules around this. We are working 4 days a week on full pay with no change of daily hours.
Those Fridays are yours to spend however you like.
A balanced working environment where quality is king.
Coming into our studio, it is a seemingly relaxed environment. In some studios there is a sense of ‘being on a mission’ or ‘heads down crunching things out’. This isn’t quite what people would feel like being in our team.
The Those Beyond balance we are striking is hard to describe unless you witness it for yourself but you’ll see that although we move fast on making decisions, we optimise for high quality by not letting haste or ‘that’ll have to do’ mentality into our creative processes.
Quality and polish is at the heart of it. If we feel that quality is at risk, we will reduce scope, or where possible move deadlines, to ensure we stay at the threshold we can be proud of and the level our audience come to expect from us.
This doesn’t mean deadlines aren’t important, our focus is on building things for others, and a creative process needs boundaries, including time, to make sure we achieve that. But we calculate what we deliver to ensure the working environment is relaxed enough so quality can blossom.
Moonlighting and personal projects
The founding team have a cultural heritage in working on passion projects. We support the idea that your time away from work is entirely your time.
If you want to spend that working on personal projects, whether it be indie games, novels, or anything else, then you are completely free to do so. And those moments where it turns into something, are moments we want to celebrate with you. Unlike some studios, we never try to inhibit how you spend your free time and are happy to formally assign projects you work on as your IP.
Everyone owns a bit of Those Beyond.
Everyone owns a little slice of Those Beyond in the form of share options.
Prior to Those Beyond, the founding team each spent time at a high-growth startup and grew it from 10 to 500 people. They witnessed first hand the positive effects of collective ownership — people felt valued, and everyone contributed to the company in their own way because everyone wanted to share in its success
What really matters for us in Those Beyond is to get our worlds into the hands of people, but it is good to know that if they end up doing very well then people can take value out of the company and use it for whatever they want to do next in life.
Why does our small studio need big titles like CEO?
I’ve thought a lot about this over my 19 years of working and I think a bit of structure is better in the long run. When we started Those Beyond, we all reflected on a love and respect for totally flat organisations. Equally, we had direct experience of the benefits of knowing who had responsibility for what areas. We find that structure helps to reduce frustrations since there is no tiptoeing around the autonomy we each need in our respective domains of business, creative, execution and technology.
I mean, Those Beyond is pretty chilled so it isn’t much of a structure here day to day but when things get really hard (and they do), then someone just has to make a decision and go boldly forward. Sometimes it is me. Sometimes it is Fox. Sometimes Ben, Gemma or Matt.
One day, it might be you making the big call. We’ll rally around you all the way. Even if it means carefully treading back the way we came. Why? Because we are always falling forwards.
