Mighty Bear 2023 Review: Bears Building in a Bear Market
Introduction
In 2023, Mighty Bear navigated the bear market with a blend of resilience and innovation, turning challenges into growth opportunities. This review sheds light on our efforts in workforce diversity, team restructuring for “Mighty Action Heroes,” and proactive wellness initiatives, underscoring our commitment to creating a work environment which is both dynamic and supportive.
We critically examine industry trends, notably the shift from traditional mobile Free-to-Play models to more equitable, user-generated content and digital ecosystems. We aim to have projects like “Mighty Action Heroes” and “Project Kodiak” at the forefront of this transformation, embodying our dedication to finding new ways to play and engage with communities.
This review also candidly identifies our strengths while recognising areas for improvement for the year ahead.
2023 has been a very difficult year for almost everyone in the industry. This is what we did, what we learned, and what we need to do better after building in the bear.
Diversity
Methodology: To evaluate our performance on this front, we sorted all full-time staff into two buckets — “Steering” and “Core Group” — and took a look at the composition of each group.
We excluded people who work fewer than 40 hours per week (no hiring a load of part-timers to fake the numbers!)
- If your employer doesn’t share this data, you should ask. If they’re not tracking it, you should probably look for a new job.
Based on the latest US data, men typically make up ~76% of the workforce in game development studios. At Mighty Bear we’re well above the industry average with women and non-binary folk at 46% of the mix, which represents a small improvement on last year.
However, there’s still much work to do. We would like to get this mix to 50/50 and if we allow ourselves to become complacent it will almost certainly deteriorate.
Our small Steering Group * (7 people) still has room for improvement. Given how small it is, just one or two people joining or leaving the group has an outsized effect, but we will still endeavour to do better.
*We no longer include the founders in this calc as it skews the results and we’re not planning on changing the composition of the founding team anytime soon.
This is the first time in our history that women have outnumbered men in any group at our studio. The challenge will be to keep this around 50/50 going forward.
As mentioned in last year’s review, we no longer track the ratio of Singaporeans/PRs to other nationalities. Since the pandemic we shifted our outlook and now have staff across Asia, as well as having recently opened a studio in Vietnam to help augment our development capability (Bear Force Two).
Team
2023 has been our most challenging year to-date from a team perspective.
Between 2019 and 2022 Mighty Bear primarily worked on Apple Arcade projects, which required us to have processes and pipelines which were closer to multi-platform premium games than games-as-a-service titles.
As Mighty Action Heroes moved forward, we came to the conclusion that we needed to make changes to accommodate a way of working which was better suited to the product we are building. This resulted in us changing the overall team structure and our expectations of individuals and the professional skills needed. The net result of these changes is that the team today is smaller and more senior than 12 months ago.
As a company which is now seven years old, we acknowledge that turnover is a fact of life and people will get “on and off the bus” at different points and for different reasons throughout the company’s journey.
We remain grateful to everyone who has contributed and been part of our story so far and we’re always available support Bears (once a Bear, always a Bear) in their future adventures.
Team Events and Recognition
The team worked very hard throughout the year, so like in previous years made sure to take some time out to recognise their contributions.
This year we also added the ceremonial bestowing of the Bear Chain to recognise those who successfully complete their probation and become fully-fledged bears!
Wellness
Two weeks a year where the studio is closed (unchanged from 2022)
In 2021 we realised that people were not taking enough time off because they didn’t want to let their colleagues down, or if they did take time off, they were answering mails and still engaging with work.
To resolve this we instituted a system where for two weeks a year (one week around the middle of the year and one at the end of the year), the studio is closed and everyone is off at the same time.
We operate an unlimited leave policy and therefore, this does not come out of any leave allowance. It doesn’t seem fair to us that a studio should decide to close its doors and force people to deduct that from their leave. Staff should take leave when it makes sense for them. People are also encouraged to take as much leave they need to throughout the rest of the year.
Wellness and Development Allowance (Unchanged from 2021)
As a result of the first survey we conducted, it came to our attention that we needed to be doing more in terms of wellness benefits. The challenge was that every team member has unique needs: some people wanted gym membership, others health insurance with certain provisions, etc. In the end we decided that the best outcome would be to give each team member an annual budget they can spend as they see fit in pre-approved categories such as: health insurance, mindfulness apps, gym membership, yoga, dental, etc. We also allow people to spend this budget on books (both fiction and non-fiction) if they‘d rather spend it on reading.
Regular care packages, studio time off, wellness and development allowance, etc. are all part of a solid foundation but we will continue exploring new options to make sure that people are healthy, happy, and looked after.
Industry Thoughts
In 2021 we came to the conclusion that the existing mobile Free-to-Play (F2P) paradigm was broken. Between the 30% tax imposed by app stores, the removal of IDFA/ATT, and soaring user acquisition costs, the future looked bleak for all but the well-funded mobile studios and publishers. This prediction played out with the past 12 months with various players in the space either downsizing or ceasing operations altogether. There’s no reason to believe 2024 will be rosier for traditional mobile F2P businesses either.
We believe the future of mobile and games-as-a-service will shift to alternate business models in the short to medium-term. The creator economy is playing an ever larger part in the online space and players expectations are changing too. User Generated Content (UGC) platforms, digital asset ownership, and players and content creators monetising their time and attention will become a much important part of the overall mix.
In today’s market, a F2P game generating $100 gives about 75% back to the ad networks and app stores. This leaves the developer with $25 and the users and content creators who make up the ecosystem with $0. Rewarding those who provide most of the value in the ecosystem makes much more sense and will lead to a much better alignment between developers and players.
In 2024 we will start to share more of what we’ve been building against this vision.
What We Did
Mighty Action Heroes
This year was all about getting Mighty Action Heroes to market.
Despite only starting full production in August 2022, by the end of 2023 we had the game was available globally on Android, as well as on browser. In addition to the core game the past 12 months we also rolled out a couple of interesting innovations on the tech front:
- A crafting system which let users combine items to create new NFTs which they could use in-game or trade with other players.
- NFT “locking” whereby we would provide players with in-game rewards for committing to not selling their in-game items while still keeping them in the player’s wallet. Other solutions move the player’s assets to a new location.
- Real-time cross-platforming gaming between Web2 (email and social logins) and Web3 players (wallet login) across mobile and desktop.
We had the perfect end to the year with the award for “Best Mobile Game” at the Gam3 awards. We don’t concern ourselves too much with awards and the like, but it was great to see the team get some richly-deserved recognition for all their work and sacrifice in 2023.
AI
At the end of 2022 when we set a goal that by the end of 2023 our Art, Engineering, Design, and Marketing teams use AI to generate 50% of our output. We hit that target in parts of the org as early as May. 2023 was the year we focused on content production, 2024 will be the year of AI powered UGC.
We’re leaning heavily into emerging tech and we hope to have announcements and cast studies to share early next year. Until then, here’s a thread I wrote earlier in the year about our AI efforts.
Project Kodiak
Project Kodiak represents our first foray into the world of UGC and creator platforms. We’ve been working on this over the past few months and we’ll be unveiling what we’ve been up to early next year.
What Went Well
Adaptability
The team continued to prove that they can adapt to new circumstances, business models, and ways of working. We know that the next couple of years are going to throw up a lot of uncertainty and opportunity and as CEO I’m confident Mighty Bear can adapt and rise to the challenge.
Shipping Fast and Well
Though Mighty Action Heroes has not been an easy project, the team delivered a game which beat out much more established and better-funded competitors to win a game of the year award in just over 12 months. In Mighty Action Heroes we have the foundation of a great game and the wider MightyNet ecosystem of games.
Rapid Learning
The foundations of Project Kodiak are exciting and will inform what we do with all our other projects. We’re keen to share this with you soon!
What Needs To Change In 2024
Studio Focus
The team has been mostly product-focused over the past 12 months. As we start scaling Mighty Action Heroes and the MightyNet in 2024 we will be much more focused on external communication.
Geographical Focus
In 2021 I wrote this on the challenges of building a studio in Singapore:
Singapore has seen an influx of major overseas studios which has impacted the landscape in a number of ways:
- The experienced talent pool is spread even more thinly than previous years (there has been a shortage for a number of years) and is likely to require a greater number of overseas hires in the years ahead.
- Some major studios have a policy of not hiring fresh graduates*. When there are players in the ecosystem that do not contribute to nurturing the next generation of talent, this creates an inequitable distribution of both experienced talent and the work of nurturing the next generation of talent. It jeopardises the future of the entire ecosystem.
- The impact on smaller studios is hard enough when larger incumbents enter the ecosystem; after all, some talents at smaller studios will inevitably leave for the larger studios.
- This natural churn of talent becomes brutal when it is exacerbated by what appears to be a deliberate policy by some multinationals of targeting smaller home-grown studios. Instead of competing with and sourcing talents from the other big players in the local and global ecosystem, they focus on raiding smaller studios.
- Such behaviour is counterproductive as it ends up creating an even more limited pipeline of intermediate and senior talent for themselves in the future (especially because they do not nurture junior talents themselves).
This unsustainable dynamic is a challenge that needs to be addressed for the health of the local ecosystem: experienced game developers don’t spring out the ground fully formed.
The onus shouldn’t be on studios with the fewest resources to do the heavy lifting for everybody else. It can’t be that the wealthiest freeload from the efforts of the less well-off and give nothing back.
Up to 30% of the workforce at Mighty Bear at any given time are in their first full-time role. Since founding the company we’ve developed good links with academic institutions and every year we hire people into full-time roles directly from our internship programme. Likewise, we promote from within our ranks as the default option — we don’t airdrop people in from outside the studio as a first resort.
We take our responsibility to the ecosystem very seriously and are fully committed to help to develop the next generation of talents.”
The situation in Singapore has continued to deteriorate since I first wrote that. In late 2023 we decided to open a studio in Vietnam to help us address our staffing challenges, and in 2024 we will need to ensure it’s up and running and working well.
A related point is that we’ve historically been poor at integrating overseas staff in to our day-to-day operations. This is something that must improve in 2024 if we’re to succeed.
Closing Thoughts
Last year I wrote: “2022 was without a doubt our most challenging year, but it was arguably also the year we grew the most both as professionals and as people. It’s been a bruising year but I feel we’ve come out of this calmer, more confident, and better equipped to deal with the challenges 2023 will throw at us.”
Turns out I was wrong. This was our most challenging year but as I wrote last year, it’s in these years that you grow and improve the most.
We’re excited for 2024. At a macro-level, the signs are that 2024 will be better than the last couple of years and we have a lot we’ve been building in the background that we want to unveil. We’re looking forward to sharing this in the months ahead, it’s going to be truly epic.
Thank you to everyone who was a part of this journey in 2023. Be you a team member, someone who lives with a team member, a mentor, investor, business partner, supporter, and of course the members of our wonderful community. We’re tremendously grateful to be building alongside all of you. Thank you for everything you do.
