ThatGameCompany
CompanyUnited States · Founded 2006
Documents about ThatGameCompany
Article
Procedural Feminism Through Game Design: Towards an Analytical Framework for Situating Games as Feminist Artefacts
The SPIRAL framework serves as a novel analytical tool designed to evaluate digital games as feminist artifacts, moving beyond simple representational analysis to examine how game mechanics and systems encode ideological values.
- The SPIRAL framework is introduced as an analytical tool to evaluate how digital games function as feminist artefacts by tracing how values are embedded within design systems.
- The framework extends the traditional MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) model by incorporating feminist ethics, affect theory, and decolonial epistemologies to assess the ethical depth of game systems.
- The analysis emphasizes that visibility and representation alone do not guarantee equity, warning that such approaches can often slide into tokenism or reinforce normative assumptions.
University of SydneyOct 2026
Article
The New Money Behind Indie Games
Successful indie developers are increasingly turning hit-game profits into publishing and funding arms for other studios' projects.
- Successful independent studios like Innersloth, Landfall, and Kinetic Games are using profits from breakout hits to fund other developers, effectively bypassing traditional publishing bottlenecks.
- The venture capital boom for gaming has collapsed, with annual investment falling from a $12.5B peak in 2020–2022 to below $2.5B by 2024 as capital shifts toward AI.
- New developer-led publishing labels are prioritizing flexible, developer-friendly terms and smaller project budgets, typically ranging from $500,000 to $1M per title.
NaavikSep 2026
Article
Cultivating a Culture of Experimentation
Conventional "innovation culture" programs such as 20% time, hackathons, and motivational posters are largely decoration.
- Original game studios like FromSoftware, Klei, and Supergiant cultivate innovation through six mutually reinforcing conditions, rather than superficial programs like hackathons or 'creative time'.
- Studio independence is a structural precondition for innovation, allowing studios to kill prototypes, change major systems, or extend production cycles without publisher pressure, as seen with FromSoftware's early Souls games and Klei's self-funded period until 2021.
- Consistently original studios tend to maintain small, clearly led teams (e.g., Klei had 11 people in 2009, House House made Untitled Goose Game with 4), defending against growth to minimize coordination overhead and allow teams to 'hold the game in their heads'.
Game Studio UnlockedMay 2026
Article
Epic's Surprise $520m FTC Penalty: Let's Talk Dark Patterns
The document analyzes the U.S.
- The FTC imposed a record $520 million penalty on Epic Games, consisting of $275 million for COPPA violations and $245 million for consumer refunds related to deceptive UX design.
- Epic Games violated federal law by failing to obtain parental consent for players under 13 and defaulting minors into open voice and text chat settings.
- The FTC identified 'dark patterns'—including counterintuitive button layouts and one-click purchase flows—as the primary drivers for unauthorized consumer charges.
GameDiscoverCoOct 2022
