I’ll never forget a brief conversation I had with a friend in the game industry around 10 years ago. We were talking about a publisher with 20 employees, and they were looking to hire more people. I asked my friend, “Is having more employees inherently better?”

His answer–a resounding YES–was memorable because (a) it wasn’t even a debatable answer for him and (b) I actually don’t agree. I think there’s a big difference between purposeful growth and growth for the sake of growth, whether it applies to the number of employees, products, infrastructure, revenue, etc.

This was perhaps the biggest topic I broached with Joe of Allplay and Nick from Bitewing in our recent conversation. Early in the chat Joe mentioned an exit interview with an employee who had concerns about the complex web of internal systems resulting from Allplay having 30 employees and publishing around 25 games per year.

I was already curious about this, as Allplay and Bitewing both have quite a few unfulfilled crowdfunded games (14 total between them at the time of the recording). I asked them how they felt about that quantity and how it serves their customers. We also talked about overhead (Allplay owns a warehouse) and the general concept of growth (Joe mentioned the size of Asmodee as an aspiration for Allplay).

Bitewing is a little more similar to Stonemaier in that both companies have less than 10 employees and rely heavily on outsourcing to independent contractors, facilities, and services. We incur different risks than Allplay: We have less control and might be forced to pivot (this happened recently when our fulfillment partner in Canada told us they no longer wanted to be a fulfillment center). Conversely, the risk of high overhead is that if you have a bad year, you might struggle to pay salaries and leases.

Here’s my take on growth for each category:

• Personnel: I believe in hiring based on need. If there are enough responsibilities for a new coworker to have and sustain a full-time position that will serve customers better, that’s when I start to think about a hire. The first place I turn to is this form. Also, importantly, if I hire someone, it’s because I believe in them and the position so much that it’s a long-term commitment that Stonemaier can commit to supporting through good years and bad years.
• Products: I believe in quality over quantity; I don’t think more is better. I think we can best serve customers by spending a lot of time, effort, resources, and love to release only a few new games at most each year rather than casting a wide net, especially when there are so many other companies also making great games. We can really shine the spotlight on each game when we do this, which also gives each game a better chance of long-term success.
• Infrastructure: We’ve never invested in infrastructure at Stonemaier Games. I view our core competency as game publishing, not warehousing, manufacturing, fulfillment, or retail (i.e., selling our own games via a storefront). We all work from home from 5 different states rather than maintaining a shared office space.
• Revenue: I literally don’t care at all about growing revenue year to year. In my opinion, the pursuit of increasing revenue doesn’t have any connection to serving customers (at best it is one of many metrics for gauging customer satisfaction). As long as we have the funds to generously support our personnel and fairly pay independent contractors, we have what we need. “Number go up” is simply not a goal for us.

For what it’s worth, I feel similarly about events and conventions: To me, the goal is for everyone to have a great time in a specific shared experience. An event that works well with 100 people may feel completely different if it grows to 400 people.

Those are my thoughts on growth! I’d love to hear your perspective: Is more inherently better? When is growth good?

Also read:

• Questions for The Bits (part 1)
• Questions for The Bits (part 2)

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