Regenerative Game Development
There is a farming practice known as Regenerative Agriculture. It is not a new approach but rather an old truth. Some people, like Todd Dwyer and Scott Hambrick, practice this philosophy and share their experiences firsthand on their podcast, Growing Resilience. A few advocates like Wendell Berry have dedicated their lives to this practice, and Wendell, in particular, has championed it in his writings and lectures.
As the name implies, this approach improves the quality of the land over time. As the soil becomes richer, the plants become healthier and more fruitful, and the farmers become productive. It's a positive reinforcing loop—the type of system a designer intentionally creates.
You may wonder why a game developer would be concerned with farming; let me explain. In many ways, the state of the games industry reminds me of the modern farming industry.
The interesting thing about modern farming is that many farmers have chosen a different approach than the regenerative one. It is not unfair to describe our farming method, at least in the United States, as factory farming. It relies on government subsidies, heavy use of chemicals, and monoculture fields, which, on the one hand, produce high yields but, at the same time, deplete the soil of nutrients and slowly poison the land and people.
Similarly, the games industry has large corporations reporting record profits while simultaneously laying off staff, smaller successful studios being shut down, and talented developers getting caught in the wake. Like our approach to farming, our approach to developing games appears shortsighted, foolish, and unsustainable.
There has to be a better way! So, I ask, could there be a regenerative approach to game development, and if so, what would it look like?
Three ideas stand out from Mr. Berry's work, which, if we were to adopt would move us closer to a regenerative approach:
Shift priorities
Work together
Expand diversity
Shift Priorities
It all starts with priorities. For regenerative agriculture to work, it requires prioritizing the well-being of the land and the community over profit. This does not mean profits aren't important; they aren't the most important thing. Profits are a requirement of any healthy business. Yet, if you damage your most valuable resource (people), you will negatively affect the long-term health of your business and the health and quality of people's lives long into the future.
Bob Chapman, the CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and author of Everbody Matters, writes, "We're destroying people and killing our culture because we send people home after treating them as objects and functions, instead of caring about them as human beings. We want them more engaged because we want them more productive. We want more productivity out of them because that creates more profits and that creates a better future for the company, but we don't care about them as people."
We must let go of our short-term thinking and raise our eyes beyond the quarter, beyond the season, beyond the release, and even beyond ourselves. We must recalibrate our timelines and concerns and start to think in decades and generations. Mr. Berry exemplifies this in his quote: "Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias."
Work Together
Next, we have to work together. Wendell emphasizes the importance of small-scale, local farms where farmers help each other. In other words, within a community. "I believe that the community—in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures—is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms," writes Berry.
I see this cooperative, generous spirit within the indie spaces, and I'm encouraged by it. However, we need more of it, and it needs to be adopted by the major players in the industry. Jonathan Blow talks about a time in the games industry when established studios freely shared information because it helped the industry advance and make technological breakthroughs. Today, large studios tend to use a heavy hand to guard any potential intellectual property.
Case in point: see the clip below circulating on Twitter.
Expand Diversity
The final idea we can extract from Mr. Berry's work is that strength and resiliency require diversity. Do you know the difference between soil and dirt? Soil is alive; dirt is dead. Healthy soil requires biodiversity, and a flourishing game industry will require diversity.
When you read diversity, your mind probably jumps to thinking about people, which is undoubtedly part of the equation. We know from 1 Corinthians 12 that the church body is composed of different types of people with various gifts and callings, and all of them are required for the body to be healthy.
However, there are other forms of diversity as well. For example, we know from investing wisdom that you want to diversify your portfolio, i.e., your income streams. What if we created hybrid studios where games were only part of the equation? Even if you want to focus on games exclusively, there are many variables to explore, such as diversifying the types of games you make, their size, their platforms, the engine used, or monetization methods.
In his book 24 Assets, Daniel Priestly advises creating an ecosystem of assets. He writes, "Great businesses have a product ecosystem with four types of products, including a range of free, low-cost, and core products that all serve a unique purpose." He continues, "Products and services don't make money; product and service economies make money." In contrast, many smaller studios live and die by the sales of a single product type.
Obviously, these three ideas are only the start of a regenerative approach to game development. I hope that, like a person who experiences a health scare, this difficult time in our industry serves as a warning sign to look for a healthy path—a regenerative one—that can see us through hard times and take us where we dream of going. The good news is that our industry has the most brilliant, creative, hardest working, and determined problem solvers I know, so I'm confident we can do this.
