Lessons From a lean Hyper Casual Studio: Don't spread yourself too thin!

As Hyper Casual game developers, we are constantly working on new and exciting games on a very fast basis as compared to more traditional game development studios. As a result, we are naturally drawn to very exciting new genres and sub-industries in the world of Game Dev.

There's so much going on in the Game Dev world right now. With Blockchain gaming, NFT Games and Play-To-Earn games popping up left and right, earning millions in funding for very minimalistic prototypes, it's extremely tempting to jump off the Hyper Casual bandwagon and onto all of these exciting new opportunities!

That being said, I've been really pondering about what direction is the best to take for a small studio that is just establishing itself, and I've come to the realization that it would be a pretty big mistake for me to spread myself thin and work on a multitude of projects, at least for the moment.

For small startups, and very limited resources to go around, you have to be almost surgical about the energy you use and extremely strategic about how you expend your limited energy. A couple of months ago I was so hyped up by NFT gaming that I started to invest some resources into an NFT project of my own. However I quickly realized it was sucking away time and energy I needed for my bread and butter: Hyper Casual.

There's still massive opportunity for Hyper Casual, and although it may seem like there's a faster ROI jumping on the hype train that is Play To Earn and Blockchain gaming, I think it's wise for a lean startup to really focus on their primary revenue stream until they've really "Hit it Big" and can carefully expand into other opportunities.

For me, I definitely plan to get into Play To Earn and NFT gaming very soon, but mainly after I've already published a few HC games to pay for it.

If you can jump on the bandwagon with little to no deleterious effects to your bread and butter development, then you probably should get on it asap! But if you have limited resources and you have to be as effective as possible with said resources, I think it's best to hold fast and stick to one thing to completion.

That's what will then give you leverage to expand into more exciting ventures later on, without affecting the survivability of your business.