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 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 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 identical 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 surroundings as a possibility, not a disaster. With small, sustainable groups, an emphasis on player-driven content material, and a perception that video games could be the following technology of social hubs, Dragon Snacks is embracing the way forward for recreation improvement in ways in which bigger studios can’t. It’s targeted 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 singular place to resolve most of the largest challenges in gaming at the moment:
- The AI wave: How GenAI will influence 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 “safe” studio measurement or firm any longer, and small, environment friendly, agile groups could make video games that compete with 9 determine finances 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 development. By involving gamers as lively co-creators, and offering experiences they share with
their “found families,” Dragon Snacks goals to satisfy emotional wants that drive engagement on each platform and machine. - Console wars: Dragon Snacks’ founders consider they’re irrelevant. At present’s participant wants and desires are profoundly totally 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 rapid enjoyable and fascinating leisure, they usually wish to really feel like their time is revered by builders.
By constructing experiences which might 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 need to stop building games for the players we had five years ago and concentrate our creativity on the players of today and tomorrow. Gen Z and Gen Alpha demand entertainment experiences that meet their needs, and they’re not interested in an outdated industry playbook,” mentioned MacLean.
“Our vision is to create social game experiences that can expand or contract to fill any available amount of time, and that connect players to the people that matter most to them. We know that playing in a safe, trusted space, with high-quality content, and with meaningful interactions with other players are non-negotiables for this audience,” mentioned chief artistic officer Michelle Menard.
“By adapting game development to a player-focused methodology, with rapid iteration, always-playable builds, and early and ongoing community feedback, we’re making games the way they need to be made for the future. We’re delivering games tailored for the players of today and tomorrow, and we see our vision as the path forward to successful, sustainable games and companies,” 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 mentioned the group confirmed a prototype that it inbuilt six weeks and was capable of present behind closed doorways on the Sport Builders Convention. They received good suggestions and determined to return out publicly. However the firm doesn’t count on to indicate off the sport actually quickly.
An enormous disconnect for large video games
At Microsoft, MacLean’s group managed Xbox’s, largest third-party partnerships like EA, Epic Video games, Roblox, Riot Video games, Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive.
“It became really obvious to me that the way large companies make games, that the way we’re thinking about growing the games industry as a whole, wasn’t resonating with the needs of Gen Z and Gen Alpha,” MacLean mentioned. “We were focused so much as an industry on how we’ve done things over the past five, 10, 20 years — and not enough on how player needs are changing at the same time.”
MacLean mentioned she has youngsters who’re eight, 12 and 20, and she or he has seen how their gaming life cycle has developed. She reviewed the analysis on them and located that graphics differentiation doesn’t matter is far to individuals who received their begin within the trade on Roblox and Minecraft.
“We have crafted these hundreds of millions of dollar experiences that don’t resonate with an audience that dips in and out of entertainment experiences in 30 seconds or 90 seconds,” MacLean mentioned, “For our audience moving forward, we have to think differently.”
She reached out to Nemcosky, whom she had labored with earlier than at Massive Large Video games on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and likewise talked with Menard.
“We really came together around the idea that to make games that resonate with the future audiences, you have to look at the needs that aren’t being met, and you have to build those creative cooperative, collaborative experiences built from multiplayer from the ground up,” MacLean mentioned. “And do it in a way that is sustainable, that doesn’t rely on features that mattered a lot in the past but don’t matter in the future, and that really is crafted to understand the needs of our player base.”
Beginning up
They fashioned the studio on October 11, and now the group has six folks in a totally distant office. They raised a big angel funding and are extra funding forward.
For the primary undertaking, Menard mentioned the group is specializing in a recreation that can also be a social platform.
“It isn’t just about gaming. It’s about really a space that they can hang out with their friends, with people they’re already connected to in real life, and bringing that also to their virtual life,” Menard mentioned. “It’s really meeting them there and trying to build them a whole experience that meets them across both of those boundaries, so they can hang out with their friends in real life, jump into a game at Dragon Snacks and keep hanging out with their friends there in both longer periods of time.”
The experiences can final shorter occasions, like perhaps 30 seconds or 5 minutes. MacLean mentioned the corporate isn’t speaking in regards to the style or recreation particulars but, however you’ll be able to inform one thing from the type of artwork.
Menard mentioned the corporate embraces a visible theme that’s much like “solar punk,” which has extra of an environmental and nature focus, with some parts of excessive tech.
“You’ve got that mix of the fantastical and the technological,” Menard mentioned. And it has an optimistic view of the longer term, with downside fixing, bodily supplies and ecosystems which might be self-sustaining, Nemcosky mentioned.
The group will doubtless develop to about 20 folks, however it should stay nimble, MacLean mentioned. It received’t be a hundred-person studio partially as a result of it will likely be capable of faucet co-development assets, or exterior improvement corporations like Key phrases or Virtuos, which have 1000’s of staff who do improvement for different recreation studios.
As for AI, Nemcosky mentioned, “It should be a tool to take the stuff that isn’t fun about development out of development. It is not for making the game, right? I want to make games. That’s why I got into games. That’s why I’ve been in the industry this long, the juicy, good technical problems, or the really neat art that’s pushing something. I don’t want that to go away.”
He added, “But what I do want to have go away is like writing boilerplate tests in code. I definitely want AI to do that for me, or deal with blank page syndrome, where I’m wondering how do something Or I want to get some representative styles to understand how I what resonates with me, and then put that human touch back into it. So we’re using it as an accelerator, but nothing we will release will be completely AI generated. We will always have it be touched by a human and made by human, but we will use it to take some of the administrative out of development and accelerate our speed.”
MacLean mentioned it’s a really difficult time proper now to boost cash.
“There is a lot of uncertainty, but at the same time, we’ve got new platforms launching, which are super exciting,” MacLean mentioned. “We know that more and more people are going to be looking to sign content for 2027 and 2028 and we’re also seeing more talent available at a more reasonable price than ever. So it is both the worst of times, but also the best of times.”
And he or she mentioned, “We think there’s a huge opportunity for us to rethink, as an industry, how we make games, who we’re making games for, and especially why we’re making those games.”
The nicely of inspiration
The entire leaders mentioned 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 group at Scopely that helped created Monopoly Go.
“When I think about the future of the industry, I think we have to be focused on removing barriers to play,” MacLean mentioned. “I would agree with Supergiant that I think there’s an opportunity for games that are not full priced titles, no matter what that price might be, whether it’s $70 or $80, and also thinking about how we leverage a lot of our competition in terms of social media networks, Tiktok, YouTube shorts, Discord and co-opt them so that they become player acquisition platforms for us.”
In the long term, MacLean mentioned the corporate envisions transferring to its personal platform. She mentioned Dragon Snacks is like hanging out with your pals after an extended disturbing week. It’s about creating one thing or participating in storytelling or constructing one thing.
“For us, we think that transcends platforms,” she mentioned.
Whereas Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox are creating enjoyable preliminary experiences, they’re not offering the following steps in maturity or taking gamers right into a multiplayer co-op expertise.
“We think that there’s an amazing opportunity, particularly because when you look at what’s going on at a larger society level, if you’ve watched Adolescence on Netflix, which is incredibly harrowing, or read the Anxious Generation, this audience defines themselves by the validation they get from other people,” MacLean mentioned. “We want to reshape that to give them a place where they get validation from their friends, from the people who matter most to them.”
