Mediatonic's guide to growing a creative games company

Murder By Numbers game director Ed Fear talks how Mediatonic strives to push boundaries with every new project

- Ed Fear

Okay, so we’ll admit it – until recently, you might not have heard of Mediatonic. But the truth is, we’ve been quietly growing into one of the UK’s biggest independent game developers – now with over 230 people across four studios in London, Brighton, Leamington Spa and sunny Madrid.

Platform-agnostic, our games range from top-grossing mobile titles like Yahtzee With Buddies to upcoming PC/console partyroyale Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. What’s inspired us and challenged us has led us down a weird and wonderful path that we’re glad to have pursued.

Over those past 14 years, we’ve learned a few things and are eager to share our advice, so here are our thoughts on setting out your stall as a studio and what you can do to grow it sustainably.

GAMES YOU NEVER KNEW YOU WANTED

There are countless studios in the world that can make games – and more with each day that passes – so it’s important to work out what makes you stand out: what makes you special and what ingredient you can put in that no-one else can.

We spent a lot of time thinking about what makes a Mediatonic game: what DNA threads our early offbeat titles like Amateur Surgeon together with what we’re currently working on at the moment. And the best answer we’ve come up with is that there’s always a twist – something a little different from the norm.

“Wait,” you’re probably thinking. “You just said we need to find the difference, but your difference is that you’re different?”