How Indie Studios Should Build Beyond the Game Itself

Making games is hard. Most indie studios release only one game, and success is far from guaranteed. As a founder, it's tempting to pour everything into the game itself. But this approach overlooks something equally critical: building the studio.

Business coach Martijn van Zwieten, who has spent 15 years in games and five years coaching leadership teams across indie, AAA, and mid-tier studios, argues that the challenges of running a studio aren't intuitive. Yet the core principles are straightforward. "At the same time that you're building your game, you should also be building the studio itself," Zwieten writes. "You should be building the structures and processes that help your studio perform in the long run."

Zwieten has distilled his experience into a framework called FIRM, an acronym standing for Future, Issues, Rocks, and Meetings. These four pillars form the foundation of studio management, driving focus, alignment, and accountability. Over a five-part series, Zwieten walks through each tool, explaining why it works and how the pieces connect into an operating system for indie studios.

What defines a studio

Before implementing any management framework, Zwieten argues you must answer a basic question: what is a studio? Your answer shapes how you view your own operation and the decisions you make.

At its core, a studio is a profit-driven entity that creates a product (a game) and exchanges it for money. The fundamental goal is simple: create more value through sales than the game costs to make. That profit then funds future operations and more games.

But value exists only in the player's eyes. If you plan to run a studio long-term, thinking about your audience and how to add value to their lives must start from the outset.

Three non-negotiable elements

Any studio consists of three core components: a team that creates something (games or IP), and a way to get that creation into the hands of an audience through distribution and marketing. As a studio lead, building a great team, making great games, and reaching your target audience are all essential.

These three elements also determine how investors view your studio. According to Jason Della Rocca, co-founder of Execution Labs, a stronger team, stronger IP, and larger community all increase your chances of landing investment.

Your job as founder involves thinking about all three simultaneously. Remove any one, and the entire system breaks.

Finding your studio's purpose

Jim Collins' 2001 book "Good to Great" identified a key difference between sustainably successful companies and those that fail: the successful ones are crystal clear on their purpose. This clarity helps teams make better, more consistent decisions and attracts the right people.

Collins introduced the Hedgehog Concept, named after a Greek maxim popularized by philosopher Isaiah Berlin stating that "a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing." Your studio's purpose lies at the intersection of three questions:

What are you most passionate about? (the emotional drive of your team). What can you be the best in the world at? (your craft taken to its end point). What drives your economic engine? (how you make money, largely dependent on the community you build).

Zwieten offers Paradox Interactive founder Kim Nordstrom's example. Nordstrom answered these questions by noting: "We are passionate about creating Grand Strategy Games and interacting with the audience who loves playing them. We are the best in the world at creating deep endless complex sandbox games for our audiences who love us for it. We create quality games for PC and console, that we maintain for years and years, with constant updates and DLC. This generates revenues that allows us to create more games and content."

This led to Paradox's stated purpose: "We create endless complex replayable games for our loyal fans and ourselves."

Answering these questions honestly and sticking to your answers will help you attract the right people and make more intentional decisions about your studio's future. Zwieten's framework provides the tools; your purpose provides the direction.