Maintaining a living
and learning company culture through
acquisition and funding
As the games industry continues to boom and studios consolidate their resources, a central recurring question is: How can a company successfully manage cultural change after a merger or an acquisition? In addition, what’s the best way to ensure all parties continue to learn and evolve in the new ecosystem, post-acquisition?
T
he topic of post-merger cultural change was the focus of a fascinating panel
discussion at XDS 2021. If I learned anything from taking part, it’s that everyone is facing similar challenges when it comes to acquisitions in the video games market. Our industry is characterised by fragmentation – with various
service providers each supplying a different piece of the production puzzle, from audio to animation, software engineering to testing, localisation to player support, and more. These services have been historically procured and delivered separately. But that’s changing. Service providers are asked to deliver solutions and not services.
Working within larger teams makes smaller studios and service providers stronger by exposing them to larger markets and pushing them to solve more complex problems. The synergies and efficiencies gained through collaborating with
other studios ultimately deliver a better experience for publishers and developers. One of the key pillars of strategy at Keywords Studios is growth
through highly selective acquisitions, and Keywords has successfully completed around 60+ acquisitions since its IPO in 2013. We currently have six studios in the art service line and each of them
is unique in their experiences in joining Keywords. Take Portland-based Liquid Development as an example. The studio was founded in 2000 by Darren Bartlett to provide art creation services for the game industry. In the last five years, the industry changed rapidly, and clients demanded larger teams, more services, and higher-value services. Since
58 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2022
its acquisition in 2015, Liquid evolved quickly to meet these changes. Now, in the Keywords ecosystem, our Portland team relies on our
1,400 artists worldwide to form more scalable teams; in what we call the ‘follow-the-sun-model’. No matter how niche the skillset is, Darren knows he can cross
Keywords’ service lines to find the unique talents in our various audio, marketing and co-dev studios. He can assure his clients that the Keywords investment programme will continue to augment the array of capabilities and resources they can tap into. Having this platform allows the Liquid team to provide higher-value
services to solve complex problems and not just deliver art assets. The Keywords platform also provides an operations infrastructure
that studios can plug into, including finance, IT, HR, and sales. It was a relief for newly acquired entities not to have to write HR policies, deal with recruitment immigration, worry about IT security, and a myriad of headaches. The acquired companies can focus on what they do best, growing
their businesses. But one of the biggest challenges of growth by acquisition strategy is
how you retain the values and behaviours that have made each studio successful, while still maintaining Keywords’ group strategy and plan. This was the most talked about topic at the panel discussion. What we have learned over the years is that culture matters in three
different ways.
LOOK FOR A CULTURE OF QUALITY GROWTH The games industry continuously looks to exceed the quality of the last game or the last release. The market calls for it, with players keeping high, and in many cases, increasing expectations. This requires everyone in the industry to continue to strive for
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