The Missing Strategy
Why focus is the most creative decision a game company can make.
Low-res
Most game companies have ambition but no clear strategy. They know what they want to make, but not where to excel.
Strategy is deciding where to become great: what to focus on, who you serve, and how you’ll deliver something players value more than alternatives.
Without strategy, success resets with each project instead of compounding. Brilliant teams drift instead of building mastery.
Focus creates strength. Knowing when to say no sharpens creativity, builds expertise, and gives teams shared direction.
Clear strategy aligns people, attracts investors, and channels creative energy. It’s not corporate—it’s one of the most creative acts a company can perform.
Hi-res
“Explosions must look amazing!”
That’s what I excitedly exclaimed when I started Massive Entertainment in the mid 90s. I wanted to make “the best games in the world”—full stop. That gave us energy and purpose, but not direction. We had an abundance of creative intent but no strategy. It’s only later that I realised how big that difference is.
Over my thirty years in the industry—as a founder, executive, board member and investor—I’ve met hundreds of studios and publishers. Some brilliant, some chaotic, all ambitious. Too few had a clear strategy—or even understood what that word meant.
When I ask game company founders about their strategy, most describe their next game: the genre, mechanics, art style. Just like I did, they convey ambition—”we want to make great games”—but rarely a deliberate path to becoming the best at something specific.
I’ve seen the same pattern repeat again and again. Companies with strong creative ambition but weak strategic clarity. Studios and publishers who stumble onto success rather than design for it. Our industry often mistakes motion for direction.
Deciding Where to Become Great
Strategy is one of those words that sounds bigger than it needs to be. In business, it often gets buried under jargon: frameworks, matrices, and buzzwords that make it feel abstract or corporate.
But at its core, strategy is simple: it’s about deciding where to become great.
A strategy defines what you will focus on, who you’re serving, and how you’ll build something players will value more than other games—ideally doing so with less financial cost and minimal emotional pain. It’s the guiding direction behind every creative and commercial decision that follows.
At Massive, we had ambition but no defined strategy. Years later, at my next startup, we approached things differently. Our strategy was clear from day one: reinvent quiz and trivia games for a new audience. We saw a genre that millions of people loved but few developers treated with real design ambition. That clarity shaped everything, from the products we built to the talent we hired. It didn’t make the company bulletproof, but we knew what we were trying to master.
That’s the essence of strategy. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it gives a company purpose beyond its next project launch.
Why Game Companies Struggle With Strategy
Game founders almost always begin with artistic intent. They want to provide the kinds of games they love to play. That’s a powerful creative spark, but it rarely comes with a strategic frame. Artistic instinct answers what feels right, not what will make us experts in this space over time.
This is why so many companies “find” their strategy only after several projects, if they’re lucky enough to survive that long. They stumble upon what they’re good at through trial and error. It’s a creative lottery that rewards tenacity, but not necessarily discipline.
The cost of that lottery is enormous. I’ve seen brilliant teams run in every direction, restarting with each new project instead of learning from the last. Without a clear strategy, success doesn’t compound. It resets.
Strategy in Action
Strategies don’t need to come from boardrooms or expensive consultants. Sometimes they emerge from intuition and self-awareness—when a team recognizes what they’re truly passionate about, good at and has the courage to focus on it.
For example, a studio might decide to build first-person shooters for players over forty—people who love tactical depth and atmosphere but have no interest (or reflexes) for high-speed, competitive play. Or a publisher might commit entirely to pixel art and retro-inspired design, catering to the nostalgic subculture. They don’t chase every audience; they deepen their connection with one.
A great real-world example is the Swedish indie studio Landfall. They’ve had remarkable success with games like Stick Fight, Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, Content Warning, and PEAK. After growing from a few people to around twenty, the founders made a counterintuitive decision: they didn’t want to keep expanding. Instead, they scaled back to a handful of people and decided to make smaller games faster, each developed in three to six months.
That decision wasn’t framed as a strategy, but it absolutely was one. Landfall had learned what they were best at: creating inventive, funny, highly shareable multiplayer experiences that spread organically through player communities and social media. By focusing on that strength and structuring their studio around it, they turned their culture into strategy.
Landfall’s example shows that strategy doesn’t have to sound grand or complex. It’s simply a conscious choice about what to do—and what not to do. In their case, it was a strategy discovered through reflection rather than deliberate upfront design. Most teams never stumble into clarity by accident—so better to choose it on purpose.
The Fear of Focus
Many companies shy away from the topic of strategy because it feels abstract, restrictive, or simply irrelevant to creative work. They worry that choosing a direction will limit experimentation, that focus means giving something up. And they’re right: it does. Strategy means saying no to things. It means deciding what not to chase, what not to build, and what not to become. But that’s precisely where its power lies. Boundaries don’t stifle creativity, they sharpen it.
Strategy helps teams decide where to explore deeply, not whether to explore at all. When you choose where to specialize—whether it’s narrative-driven adventures, physics-based comedy, or online worlds—you give your team a shared language and clear direction. Over time, that focus compounds. It builds skill, knowledge, and intuition that make each new game release stronger than the last.
Defining Your Strategy
Deciding your strategy starts with three questions:
What are we naturally good at—or could become great at?
What do players value that aligns with those strengths?
How can we build that capability faster or better than others?
The answers often emerge from honest reflection on your passion and past work. What have players responded to? What energizes your team? What do you keep doing better than expected? Sometimes, like Landfall, you discover your true strategy after several projects. Other times you choose deliberately from the start.
Defining a strategy isn’t complicated, but it does require intent. You need to decide what you want to become great at, and then communicate that direction so clearly that it guides large and small decisions.
In my experience, most teams actually don’t resist strategy—they just don’t understand it when it remains abstract. Once direction is clear, people usually find relief in having a shared sense of focus. It gives them permission to make choices with confidence.
For leaders, strategy becomes a multiplier. The key is to keep it visible—talk about it in all-hands meetings, product reviews, and one-on-ones. Connect it to concrete decisions.
When everyone understands where the company is heading, they can act with greater autonomy. Teams know what to prioritize, what to ignore, and when to discuss going “off strategy” as a deliberate exception.
Beyond internal alignment, strategy also transforms how others see your company. A clear strategy makes it easier to bring investors on board. When they understand your long-term direction—where you’re heading, how you plan to get there, and why you’ll win—they see more than a single project. They see a journey worth joining.
The goal isn’t to create a rigid rulebook—it’s to create alignment. A good strategy needs to be defined, lived, repeated, and occasionally questioned. That’s how it stays real.
The Creative Unlock
Strategy isn’t a requirement for success in games. Plenty of game companies have proven that passion, talent, and timing can carry you a long way. But a clear strategy increases the odds of turning that success into something lasting. It aligns teams, sharpens decisions, and keeps creativity moving in the same direction.
When you know what you want to become great at, every choice starts to make more sense. The hard decisions—what to build, who to hire, what to say no to—become easier, because they all point toward the same horizon.
The irony is that many people still see strategy as something corporate, when it’s really the opposite. Strategy is how creativity finds direction, how bold ideas become coherent, sustainable plans. It’s about defining not just what you want to make, but why and how you’ll make it better than anyone else.
In the end, what’s missing in most teams isn’t creativity or ambition—it’s strategy. And when it’s found, it becomes one of the most creative and liberating acts a team can perform.
This essay is part of my ongoing series, Connecting the Pixels, where I explore how technology, creativity, and culture intersect in the future of interactive entertainment.