What makes Big Time Studios special
A unique perspective on everything that sets Big Time Studios apart
Our blog posts not only offer insights and sneak peeks into the world of Big Time, but it’s also an opportunity for us to feature unique voices and perspectives behind the scenes. In today’s post, Chief Technology Officer Matt Tonks shares his thoughts on what makes Big Time Studios so special.
Matt Tonks got his start in the gaming industry through the Medal of Honor franchise at Electronic Arts, and later moved to Epic Games where he worked on Gears of War and later Fortnite. A few years ago, he made the leap and joined the startup world, founding a studio with fellow Epic Games alumni and guiding the technical direction of other startup studios such as Drifter Entertainment and now Big Time. As CTO, Matt spends a fair amount of time shepherding development efforts and planning, but his true love is coding and the lion’s share of his day to day is still spent contributing directly to the game.
What Makes Big Time Studios Special
Often in game development, there are unfortunate trade-offs you have to make when considering studios for employment. Usually this means choosing between the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to the product and living comfortably without fear of the company failing and then having to deal with the fallout in your personal life.
Large, well established studios that already have intellectual property (IP) and productions in progress tend to have big teams and lots of funding — offering nice safety nets for employees. However, you’ll have to work against longer production cycles with few opportunities for creative input (unless you’re one of the very few at the top of the food chain). Small indie studios on the other hand, may have significantly fewer developers, no established IP, and generally not a lot of funding. And yet, you’ll find faster production cycles and more chances to share feedback.
Big Time Studios is the best of both worlds. We have a highly talented and tight knit team that values rapid iteration and creativity above all else (more on that later). We’re also well funded and our team can work with peace of mind, knowing we have the runway and support to see the project through.
One of the great perks that comes along with having a small team and limited corporate overhead is that the development team can dedicate time and focus on making the game, instead of dealing with processes all day. When you remove all the red tape, procedures, and protocols that come along with interacting with hundreds of people, all you’re left with is building the game. It’s incredibly freeing to focus on making the game awesome without all the distractions.
We are able to make changes to our vision, rapidly iterate on designs, and experiment with new ideas in ways that are just not feasible in big studios. While this partly falls under process, it’s also because of our team’s outlook and the culture that we actively foster. We believe a prototype is worth a thousand documents, and so we do everything we can to make it faster and easier to prototype new ideas as rapidly as possible.
This unique combination of stability and freedom is really our secret sauce and it gives working at Big Time Studios a rare, magical quality.
