How Many People Does It Take to Make a Video Game?

October 25, 2019

TL;DR… A game could take many people or just a few. My suggestion? Stay as small as possible.

I love what Supercell says about teams — “the best teams make the best games.” It’s true.

There’s a common belief out there that you need a big team to make a game. From my experience, you don’t. At least not when you’re starting. From my point of view, having a big team is a big liability. 

At its peak, over 1,000 people were working full-time on Club Penguin. We had offices in Brazil, Argentina, Canada, England, Australia, and the United States, with full-time people showing up to work, sitting at desks. It was a lot of work. 

We grew from a team of four to over 1,000. Growth was the hardest thing. It was insane. 

As you grow a game, you’re likely going to think that you need more and more. But when the teams become bigger, the politics and process become bigger, and the work can get less and less fun. Although some people find politics and process fun, I do not. Everything gets more complicated as the team and the process expands. 

Take a look at this picture, for example. It shows all the lines of communication between people with smaller teams vs. larger teams: