Louise Andrew - d3t & Coconut Lizard: Keywords Studios

 Week 5:





This week we had an industry talk by Louise Andrew. She is the Head of Art at d3t and Coconut Lizard. Both of these company are co-development studios that offer work-for-hire services to help other studios create their games. She has worked in the industry for over 20 years and is credited in over 20 published titles.

Louise's talk was interesting as she told us about her journey through the industry, starting in fine art and eventually progressing into the game industry. She also talked about how their companies work on many games with many different styles and how they've won a lot of awards. The most interesting part of the talk was when she was talking about the 'work-for-hire' that d3t and Coconut Lizard use.

I found the practice of work-for-hire to be really interesting, especially with the mass layoffs that have happened this year. Work-for-hire seems like a good thing for multiple reasons. One big reason is the experience. Those at the companies that use this are able to gain experience on many different titles, technologies and styles. Another reason is job happiness. Louise mentioned that they find what roles are the most suitable for the employees and give them tasks that they would find challenging and fun. 

The most important reason in my opinion would be the security of the job. I say this because recently the gaming 'bubble', that was the result of the Covid epidemic, has popped. This has resulted in many titles being cancelled and many people being laid off. Work-for-hire and co-development seem to have a good foundation to solve an ongoing problem in the industry and that is companies hiring people for specific roles when creating a game and when the title is published (or sometimes cancelled) those same people have no role left in the company. This usually results in them being let go. I say that these practices have the potential to solve this issue as they allow companies/studios to hire the needed talent for their games and, after shipping the game, the companies don't have an excess of unused talent and those same people can move onto their next project.

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