How external development became a critical layer in game development — Keywords CEO interview | The DeanBeat

If you look back a decade or more, the structure of the game business has changed. And one of the essential new kinds of companies in that structure is the layer of the game industry known as external development, or what used to be known as outsourcing. And the biggest company in that space is Keywords, which has 13,000 game developers across dozens of studios around the world. Bertran Bodson has been the CEO since taking over from Andrew Day in 2021. Bodson came aboard in the midst of the pandemic and dealt with the downturn and layoffs that hit games in the past 2.5 years. Since he has joined Keywords, there hasn’t been a “normal” year yet. But Bodson believes that Keywords and other external development companies have created a cushion of sorts for game makers, allowing them to operate ambitious game studios with perhaps no more than 50 people. Those studios can flex up or flex down the workforce, and they can use teams from Keywords from the very start of a project in what is kn ... Read full article.