Soren Johnson on keeping his game studio small: 'You get better games if you take longer to make games'

Amid the doom and gloom in the games industry right now—the mass layoffs, the studio closures, the declarations that TikTok is winning the attention war—there are still little studios plugging away at good, niche games and making it work. Mohawk Games, founded in 2013 by ex-Firaxis developers, is one of them.

Mohawk is about to release new DLC for its excellent 2021 grand strategy game, Old World, and studio co-founder Soren Johnson told me at GDC earlier this month that revenue from the game is enough to sustain the company, which has purposefully remained small at 15 people.

"We're trying to build a sustainable studio," Johnson told me. "And, frankly, a lot of that has come down to not over-hiring, right? We've been roughly at the same size for a long time, and we take it seriously. We really don't want to be laying off our staff, and we know if we double our size, we're taking that risk."

A consequence of saying small is that Mohawk doesn't exactly move fast, but that's only a problem if you're in a hurry, which Johnson and co aren't.

"I think in general, you get better games if you take longer to make games," said Johnson. "I want a less stress-filled life, where we can be creative, make the games that we're good at, and stay in business."

In its 13 years, Mohawk has so far released two games—"economic RTS" Offworld Trading Company and Old World—as well as lots of DLC for both. The latest Old World expansion, Empires of the Indus, takes the grand strategy game to the Indian subcontinent, adding three new civilizations. It's out on March 30.

Old World is very much in Johnson's wheelhouse—he led the design of Civilization 4—but he does have ideas outside of the grand strategy genre, telling me he's "often wanted to make some sort of light, tactical RPG type game" and is interested in narrative games like Inkle's 80 Days. There's nothing to announce right now, but Johnson says he's got "a giant list of games it'd be fun to make."

Mohawk might take its time getting to them, but Johnson hopes to keep the studio going for "as long as we want to keep working."

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