Dragon Snacks Video games is popping out of stealth right this moment to craft joyful, community-centered gaming experiences the place gamers can each play and create their very own social hubs.
The corporate was based by business veterans Jen MacLean (Xbox, Amazon, IGDA), Michelle Menard (Oxide Video games, Zynga, Firaxis), and Chris Nemcosky (Scopely, Backflip). I talked with them in an interview. Dragon Snacks Video games goals to innovate and redefine the way in which we play, with inclusive worlds and third locations designed for connection, collaboration, and creativity.
Dragon Snacks was created in response to current dramatic shifts within the recreation business panorama. Mass layoffs proceed to hit main studios, mid-sized builders are vanishing, and generative AI is dominating the dialog and reshaping how video games are made. On the similar time, a brand new drawback for the business is rising: youthful gamers don’t all the time see video games as their leisure of alternative.
As business veterans behind billion-dollar titles and partnerships, the cofounders see this atmosphere as a possibility, not a disaster. With small, sustainable groups, an emphasis on player-driven content material, and a perception that video games will be the subsequent era of social hubs, Dragon Snacks is embracing the way forward for recreation improvement in ways in which bigger studios can not. It’s targeted on multiplayer, co-op and social gaming experiences.
After witnessing firsthand business tendencies as builders and leaders for many years, the Dragon Snacks founders are in a singular place to unravel most of the greatest challenges in gaming right this moment:
- The AI wave: How GenAI will influence recreation creation, why sensible studios are leaning into human-driven collaboration, and the way Dragon Snacks is approaching tech with out sacrificing creativity or humanity.
- The rise of mega companies and layoffs: There’s no “secure” studio measurement or firm any longer, and small, environment friendly, agile groups could make video games that compete with 9 determine price range titles. Dragon Snacks builds success not by worrying about technical superiority or outspending the competitors, however by specializing in participant wants that aren’t being met right this moment, and involving gamers at each step of the method.
- Video games vs. Social Media: As Gen Z and Alpha spend extra time on TikTok and Discord, how can recreation studios evolve? Dragon Snacks is betting on collaborative, player-led creation as the important thing to not simply making video games aggressive with social platforms, however co-opting these different leisure platforms to drive progress. By involving gamers as energetic co-creators, and offering experiences they share with
their “discovered households,” Dragon Snacks goals to satisfy emotional wants that drive engagement on each platform and machine. - Console wars: Dragon Snacks’ founders imagine they’re irrelevant. At the moment’s participant wants and desires are profoundly completely different from audiences the video games business used to serve. Gen Z and Gen Alpha gamers count on to have the ability to play on any platform, at any time, with any buddy. This viewers calls for rapid enjoyable and fascinating leisure, and so they wish to really feel like their time is revered by builders.
By constructing experiences which can be natively cross-platform, with cross-play and cross-progression, and actively involving gamers in significant creation from the primary second of the sport, Dragon Snacks is constructing a uniquely targeted new leisure expertise.
“We have to cease constructing video games for the gamers we had 5 years in the past and focus our creativity on the gamers of right this moment and tomorrow. Gen Z and Gen Alpha demand leisure experiences that meet their wants, and so they’re not fascinated about an outdated business playbook,” stated MacLean.
“Our imaginative and prescient is to create social recreation experiences that may broaden or contract to fill any out there period of time, and that join gamers to the those that matter most to them. We all know that enjoying in a secure, trusted house, with high-quality content material, and with significant interactions with different gamers are non-negotiables for this viewers,” stated chief artistic officer Michelle Menard.
“By adapting recreation improvement to a player-focused methodology, with speedy iteration, always-playable builds, and early and ongoing neighborhood suggestions, we’re making video games the way in which they must be made for the long run. We’re delivering video games tailor-made for the gamers of right this moment and tomorrow, and we see our imaginative and prescient as the trail ahead to profitable, sustainable video games and firms,” notes cofounder and CTO Chris Nemcosky.
In an period the place gaming must adapt or be left behind, Dragon Snacks isn’t simply beginning one other indie studio – they’re constructing video games for the place the business must go subsequent.
MacLean stated the staff confirmed a prototype that it inbuilt six weeks and was in a position to present behind closed doorways on the Sport Builders Convention. They bought good suggestions and determined to return out publicly. However the firm doesn’t count on to point out off the sport actually quickly.
An enormous disconnect for giant video games
At Microsoft, MacLean’s staff managed Xbox’s, largest third-party partnerships like EA, Epic Video games, Roblox, Riot Video games, Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive.
“It turned actually apparent to me that the way in which massive firms make video games, that the way in which we’re fascinated by rising the video games business as an entire, wasn’t resonating with the wants of Gen Z and Gen Alpha,” MacLean stated. “We have been targeted a lot as an business on how we’ve finished issues over the previous 5, 10, 20 years — and never sufficient on how participant wants are altering on the similar time.”
MacLean stated she has youngsters who’re eight, 12 and 20, and he or she has seen how their gaming life cycle has advanced. She reviewed the analysis on them and located that graphics differentiation doesn’t matter is far to individuals who bought their begin within the business on Roblox and Minecraft.
“We now have crafted these a whole lot of thousands and thousands of greenback experiences that don’t resonate with an viewers that dips out and in of leisure experiences in 30 seconds or 90 seconds,” MacLean stated, “For our viewers transferring ahead, now we have to assume in another way.”
She reached out to Nemcosky, whom she had labored with earlier than at Large Big Video games on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and likewise talked with Menard.
“We actually got here collectively round the concept to make video games that resonate with the long run audiences, it’s important to have a look at the wants that aren’t being met, and it’s important to construct these artistic cooperative, collaborative experiences constructed from multiplayer from the bottom up,” MacLean stated. “And do it in a method that’s sustainable, that doesn’t depend on options that mattered quite a bit previously however don’t matter sooner or later, and that actually is crafted to know the wants of our participant base.”
Beginning up
They shaped the studio on October 11, and now the staff has six individuals in a totally distant office. They raised a major angel funding and are extra funding forward.
For the primary venture, Menard stated the staff is specializing in a recreation that can also be a social platform.
“It isn’t nearly gaming. It’s about actually an area that they’ll hang around with their associates, with individuals they’re already linked to in actual life, and bringing that additionally to their digital life,” Menard stated. “It’s actually assembly them there and making an attempt to construct them an entire expertise that meets them throughout each of these boundaries, to allow them to hang around with their associates in actual life, bounce right into a recreation at Dragon Snacks and maintain hanging out with their associates there in each longer durations of time.”
The experiences can final shorter occasions, like perhaps 30 seconds or 5 minutes. MacLean stated the corporate isn’t speaking concerning the style or recreation particulars but, however you may inform one thing from the type of artwork.
Menard stated the corporate embraces a visible theme that’s just like “photo voltaic punk,” which has extra of an environmental and nature focus, with some parts of excessive tech.
“You’ve bought that blend of the fantastical and the technological,” Menard stated. And it has an optimistic view of the long run, with drawback fixing, bodily supplies and ecosystems which can be self-sustaining, Nemcosky stated.
The staff will seemingly develop to about 20 individuals, however it would stay nimble, MacLean stated. It received’t be a hundred-person studio partially as a result of will probably be in a position to faucet co-development sources, or exterior improvement corporations like Key phrases or Virtuos, which have hundreds of staff who do improvement for different recreation studios.
As for AI, Nemcosky stated, “It ought to be a software to take the stuff that isn’t enjoyable about improvement out of improvement. It isn’t for making the sport, proper? I wish to make video games. That’s why I bought into video games. That’s why I’ve been within the business this lengthy, the juicy, good technical issues, or the actually neat artwork that’s pushing one thing. I don’t need that to go away.”
He added, “However what I do wish to have go away is like writing boilerplate checks in code. I undoubtedly need AI to try this for me, or cope with clean web page syndrome, the place I’m questioning how do one thing Or I wish to get some consultant kinds to know how I what resonates with me, after which put that human contact again into it. So we’re utilizing it as an accelerator, however nothing we are going to launch shall be fully AI generated. We are going to all the time have or not it’s touched by a human and made by human, however we are going to use it to take a few of the administrative out of improvement and speed up our pace.”
MacLean stated it’s a really difficult time proper now to boost cash.
“There’s plenty of uncertainty, however on the similar time, we’ve bought new platforms launching, that are tremendous thrilling,” MacLean stated. “We all know that increasingly more persons are going to be trying to signal content material for 2027 and 2028 and we’re additionally seeing extra expertise out there at a extra cheap worth than ever. So it’s each the worst of occasions, but in addition the very best of occasions.”
And she or he stated, “We expect there’s an enormous alternative for us to rethink, as an business, how we make video games, who we’re making video games for, and particularly why we’re making these video games.”
The properly of inspiration
The entire leaders stated they admired Supergiant Video games, a small studio that has made gigantic hits just like the Hades collection of video games.
Menard was beforehand design director at Oxide Video games, whereas Nemcosky was VP of Studio and led the staff at Scopely that helped created Monopoly Go.
“After I take into consideration the way forward for the business, I feel now we have to be targeted on eradicating boundaries to play,” MacLean stated. “I might agree with Supergiant that I feel there’s a possibility for video games that aren’t full priced titles, it doesn’t matter what that worth may be, whether or not it’s $70 or $80, and likewise fascinated by how we leverage plenty of our competitors by way of social media networks, Tiktok, YouTube shorts, Discord and co-opt them in order that they grow to be participant acquisition platforms for us.”
In the long term, MacLean stated the corporate envisions transferring to its personal platform. She stated Dragon Snacks is like hanging out with your mates after a protracted irritating week. It’s about creating one thing or partaking in storytelling or constructing one thing.
“For us, we expect that transcends platforms,” she stated.
Whereas Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox are creating enjoyable preliminary experiences, they’re not offering the subsequent steps in maturity or taking gamers right into a multiplayer co-op expertise.
“We expect that there’s a tremendous alternative, significantly as a result of while you have a look at what’s occurring at a bigger society degree, should you’ve watched Adolescence on Netflix, which is extremely harrowing, or learn the Anxious Era, this viewers defines themselves by the validation they get from different individuals,” MacLean stated. “We wish to reshape that to present them a spot the place they get validation from their associates, from the individuals who matter most to them.”
