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Courtesy of Fallen Leaf, Ironwood Studios, Summerfall Studios

Unreal Developer Roundtable: Taking AAA to indie -- how small teams are making big games

Jimmy Thang |
September 4, 2023
Art
Community
Design
Games
In our first-ever Unreal Developer Roundtable, we assembled a panel of guests who worked in the AAA game development space and branched off to form independent studios. Our panelists include Summerfall Studios Creative Director David Gaider (who previously worked at Bioware and Beamdog), Ironwood Studios Founder & Creative Director Alex Dracott (who previously worked at Oculus VR, Sucker Punch Productions, Sony Online Entertainment, and more), and Fallen Leaf Studio Game Director James Tinsdale (who previously worked at Evolution Studios, PlaygroundSquad UK, Asobo Studio, and more).
 

Hosted by Inside Unreal and UE:LFG host Tina Wisdom, the trio of developers share their origin stories of getting into game development, elaborate on how they switched from AAA to forming their indie studios, and share learnings from working in the AAA development space.

Throughout the in-depth discussion, Gaider, Tinsdale, and Dracott spoke about how their studios nailed their distinct visual styles working on Stray Gods, Pacific Drive, and Fort Solis respectively. They also discuss how to establish trust within an indie organization and what they think represents the best thing about indie development.

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