Polygon.com / 31.05.25

When making lots of small games is more sustainable than making one big one

If you play indie games, you may have noticed Strange Scaffolds incredible hit rate. Every single one of the studios games from Clickolding, I Am Your Beast, and most recently, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown has ended up somewhere within the Positive ranking system on Steam (with several achieving Very Positive or even Overwhelmingly Positive). So, how does the studios creative director Xalavier Nelson Jr. ensure his studio only turns out bangers? To find out, I sat down with Nelson at this past Marchs Game Developers Conference or more accurately, I sat down with him right outside GDC, as he couldnt afford a ticket to the prestigious (but expensive) game-development networking extravaganza. And even that is part of Nelsons strategy of working within extremely tight constraints, and never trying to do more than exactly what his studio can afford to do. Think the opposite of Icarus: build the wax wings, but then dont fly into the sun. Nelsons business strategy is to ju...
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