Inside Indie Games

A Collective Approach to Making Games, with Mal Abbas

January 22, 2019 UK Games Fund Season 1 Episode 4
A Collective Approach to Making Games, with Mal Abbas
Inside Indie Games
More Info
Inside Indie Games
A Collective Approach to Making Games, with Mal Abbas
Jan 22, 2019 Season 1 Episode 4
UK Games Fund

This is Mal, who helped set up Biome Collective – a co-operative started in 2015 that’s made up of creative technologists, artists, academics, and researchers. 

Mal told me that running the company in this non-traditional manner means they’re a lot more stable than a traditional startup

He says it puts them in a position to do projects independent of each other, which gives more creative control, freedom, and opens the doors to a lot more collaborations.

But I was interested to find out how they went about balancing this. Can a collection of freelancers be as tightly bound to a company as, say, employees can? How does a company like the Biome Collective ensure that its main work actually gets done alongside all the freelance projects going on? 

Show Notes

This is Mal, who helped set up Biome Collective – a co-operative started in 2015 that’s made up of creative technologists, artists, academics, and researchers. 

Mal told me that running the company in this non-traditional manner means they’re a lot more stable than a traditional startup

He says it puts them in a position to do projects independent of each other, which gives more creative control, freedom, and opens the doors to a lot more collaborations.

But I was interested to find out how they went about balancing this. Can a collection of freelancers be as tightly bound to a company as, say, employees can? How does a company like the Biome Collective ensure that its main work actually gets done alongside all the freelance projects going on?