Dragon Snacks Video games is popping out of stealth at the 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 trade 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 best way we play, with inclusive worlds and third locations designed for connection, collaboration, and creativity.
Dragon Snacks was created in response to latest dramatic shifts within the recreation trade 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 downside for the trade is rising: youthful gamers don’t all the time see video games as their leisure of alternative.
As trade veterans behind billion-dollar titles and partnerships, the cofounders see this setting as a chance, not a disaster. With small, sustainable groups, an emphasis on player-driven content material, and a perception that video games could be the subsequent technology of social hubs, Dragon Snacks is embracing the way forward for recreation improvement in ways in which bigger studios can’t. It’s centered on multiplayer, co-op and social gaming experiences.
After witnessing firsthand trade tendencies as builders and leaders for many years, the Dragon Snacks founders are in a novel place to unravel lots of the greatest challenges in gaming at the moment:
- The AI wave: How GenAI will affect recreation creation, why good 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 at the 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 lively co-creators, and offering experiences they share with
their “discovered households,” Dragon Snacks goals to fulfill emotional wants that drive engagement on each platform and machine. - Console wars: Dragon Snacks’ founders consider they’re irrelevant. In the present day’s participant wants and desires are profoundly completely different from audiences the video games trade 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 speedy enjoyable and fascinating leisure, they usually wish to really feel like their time is revered by builders.
By constructing experiences which are natively cross-platform, with cross-play and crossprogression, and actively involving gamers in significant creation from the primary second of the sport, Dragon Snacks is constructing a uniquely centered 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 at the moment and tomorrow. Gen Z and Gen Alpha demand leisure experiences that meet their wants, they usually’re not considering an outdated trade playbook,” stated MacLean.
“Our imaginative and prescient is to create social recreation experiences that may develop or contract to fill any accessible period of time, and that join gamers to the folks that matter most to them. We all know that taking part in in a secure, trusted area, with high-quality content material, and with significant interactions with different gamers are non-negotiables for this viewers,” stated chief inventive 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 best way they should be made for the long run. We’re delivering video games tailor-made for the gamers of at the moment and tomorrow, and we see our imaginative and prescient as the trail ahead to profitable, sustainable video games and corporations,” 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 trade must go subsequent.
MacLean stated the crew confirmed a prototype that it inbuilt six weeks and was capable of 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 indicate off the sport actually quickly.
A giant disconnect for large video games
At Microsoft, MacLean’s crew managed Xbox’s, largest third get together partnerships like EA, Epic Video games, Roblox, Riot Video games, Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive.
“It grew to become actually apparent to me that the best way giant corporations make video games, that the best way we’re fascinated by rising the video games trade as a complete, wasn’t resonating with the wants of Gen Z and Gen Alpha,” MacLean stated. “We have been centered a lot as an trade on how we’ve executed 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 developed. She reviewed the analysis on them and located that graphics differentiation doesn’t matter is way to individuals who bought their begin within the trade on Roblox and Minecraft.
“We’ve got crafted these lots of of thousands and thousands of greenback experiences that don’t resonated with an viewers that dips out and in of leisure experiences in 30 seconds or 90 seconds,” MacLean stated, “For our viewers shifting ahead, we now have to suppose otherwise.”
She reached out to Nemcosky, whom she had labored with earlier than at Massive Enormous Video games on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and likewise talked with Menard.
“We actually got here collectively round the concept that to make video games that resonate with the long run audiences, you need to take a look at the wants that aren’t being met, and you need to construct these inventive cooperative, collaborative experiences constructed from multiplayer from the bottom up,” MacLean stated. “And do it in a approach that’s sustainable, that doesn’t depend on options that mattered so much prior to now however don’t matter sooner or later, and that basically is crafted to know the wants of our participant base.”
Beginning up
They shaped the studio on October 11, and now the crew has six individuals in a totally distant office. They raised a big angel funding and are extra funding forward.
For the primary venture, Menard stated the crew is specializing in a recreation that can be a social platform.
“It isn’t nearly gaming. It’s about actually an area that they’ll hang around with their mates, 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 attempting to construct them a complete expertise that meets them throughout each of these boundaries, to allow them to hang around with their mates in actual life, soar right into a recreation at Dragon Snacks and preserve hanging out with their mates there in each longer durations of time.”
The experiences can final shorter instances, like perhaps 30 seconds or 5 minutes. MacLean stated the corporate isn’t speaking in regards to the style or recreation particulars but, however you possibly can inform one thing from the sort of artwork.
Menard stated the corporate embraces a visible theme that’s much like “photo voltaic punk,” which has extra of an environmental and nature focus, with some components 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 downside fixing, bodily supplies and ecosystems which are self-sustaining, Nemcosky stated.
The crew will possible develop to about 20 individuals, however it’s going to stay nimble, MacLean stated. It gained’t be a hundred-person studio partly as a result of it will likely be capable of faucet co-development assets, or exterior improvement companies 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 instrument 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 trade 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 exams 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 will probably be utterly AI generated. We are going to all the time have it’s touched by a human and made by human, however we are going to use it to take a number of the administrative out of improvement and speed up our velocity.”
MacLean stated it’s a really difficult time proper now to boost cash.
“There may be 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 individuals are going to be seeking to signal content material for 2027 and 2028 and we’re additionally seeing extra expertise accessible at a extra cheap value than ever. So it’s each the worst of instances, but in addition the very best of instances.”
And he or she stated, “We predict there’s an enormous alternative for us to rethink, as an trade, 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 crew at Scopely that helped created Monopoly Go.
“Once I take into consideration the way forward for the trade, I feel we now have to be centered on eradicating obstacles to play,” MacLean stated. “I’d agree with Supergiant that I feel there’s a chance for video games that aren’t full priced titles, it doesn’t matter what that value could 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 change into participant acquisition platforms for us.”
In the long term, MacLean stated the corporate envisions shifting to its personal platform. She stated Dragon Snacks is like hanging out with your folks after an extended hectic week. It’s about creating one thing or participating in storytelling or constructing one thing.
“For us, we predict 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 predict that there’s a tremendous alternative, notably as a result of while you take a look at what’s happening at a bigger society stage, when you’ve watched Adolescence on Netflix, which is extremely harrowing, or learn the Anxious Technology, this viewers defines themselves by the validation they get from different individuals,” MacLean stated. “We wish to reshape that to provide them a spot the place they get validation from their mates, from the individuals who matter most to them.”
