Creating a Productive and Inclusive Workplace: Cathedral Studios' Unique Culture

Introduction

My name is Josh Palumbo and I am Head of Product Management at Cathedral Studios. I studied Computer Science at Umass Lowell with a minor in Economics. I also have a strong gaming background and played in national LAN events in Counter-Strike 1.6 in Source from 2003 to 2009 as well as in semi-pro competitive leagues like CAL and CEVO.

Our founders are brother duo Toby and Robert Saunders who have a strong background in film and TV. The rest of the leadership team consists of our CMO Jonas Rosbech, who has over 12 years of marketing experience, a co-founder of the gaming education website Gamerzclass, and a member of the F6S 500 Startups in San Francisco. We also have our Head of Game, Branton Lansdale, who has over a decade of experience in Unreal Engine development and was personally mentored by Lee Perry, a lead designer from Epic Games. 

I met Toby during a community AMA regarding the game back when they were a small team of only a few members. At the time, they only had a prototype of their Horror FPS title “The Bornless” to show, but they were ambitious and clear with the vision of the plan, and I was immediately drawn to the project. After keeping up with Toby over the following weeks, I joined the leadership team of the studio and we quickly scaled to about 25 full and part-time contractors. 

Work Organization

Work at the moment for The Bornless is completely remote. While this provides some unique challenges in regard to game development, we are able to efficiently utilize productivity and communication tools to keep things running smoothly. We have a studio Discord for day-to-day communication, and we utilize Monday.com as our productivity software to ensure tasks and goals are being updated, deadlines are being met, and we have a transparent roadmap for the game.

The teams are split up into many of the traditional departments of game development. We have our leadership team, an art team, a programming team, a marketing team, a networking team, a sound team, and an environments team.  Our art team consists of various specializations such as 3D, 2D, animations, UI, and VFX. 

Using Discord and email as primary means of communication is extremely efficient for us, as not only are we able to keep clear track of messages, documents, and announcements, but we also utilize a variety of voice channels for the day-to-day operations between our team members.

Hiring a New Specialist

We have had great success as a studio hiring generalists as opposed to specialists and getting them proper training and time to work towards refining some of the more specific skills in development. This allows us to be a very agile team with developers that are multi-talented across areas of expertise. Being that we are still a smaller indie studio, it is important for us to stay within the scope and budget of what we are building.  So for us, a very important soft skill is the eagerness to learn and tap into a variety of skills that may be slightly outside of your comfort zone. Not only can they hone in on what they do best, but the proper training allows them to increase their repertoire of offerings. 

Specialists still, however, play an important role in the development process and are something we hire for a variety of tasks. Specialists will typically deliver extremely high-quality and polished work and can be pretty efficient at doing so. So while the generalists give us versatility in our game dev team, specialists can push some things over the finish line when it comes to tasks like VFX, animations, and overall polish. 

Welcoming Newcomers

We have built an amazing company culture at Cathedral Studios. For new members, we immediately plug them right in, and being that we are still a smaller studio, it means departments are communicating with each other much more than in a studio with hundreds of members. Whether it is having a small after-work party in the Discord for a member who is leaving, or some friendly game nights outside of work hours with those on the team, we are all very closely connected. 

Safety is an important topic and something we take seriously with very clear company guidelines and rules that all of our team members must view and follow before signing on. Building an understanding with teammates is something that is done very easily when onboarding new members. Since specific departments have a clear hierarchy and only a few people work in each one, the workflow becomes very clear with little friction. This is one of the benefits of a smaller studio is during the normal developer day-to-day they usually work particularly close with 3-4 people, making it easy to feel welcomed and not overwhelmed dealing with dozens of others.

Managing Burnouts

Burnout is a serious issue in game development, especially when dealing with things like tight deadlines and high pressure. One thing we strive to communicate to all members is the importance of work-life balance. This is something that is made much easier being a remote team, and also since we operate across many time zones, we are really flexible with actual work hours. 

Proper project management is something that also helps tackle this. Using our productivity software, clearly outlining our development sprints, and ensuring no members are overloaded with work that may seem unachievable while keeping their targets ambitious helps mitigate a lot of the “crunch time” issues. 

Finally, keeping open communication all the way across the entire studio directly to the leadership team to make sure any issues that arise get immediately addressed and resolved will ensure that the burnout and mental load of each member is balanced!

Creative Freedom

We most certainly are huge advocates of any of our members to make suggestions and offer up their feedback towards everything we are working on. Being a small team, gathering insights from our closest developers is extremely important. For example, we have had our artists specifically recommend things like features in the game, how certain elements should work, and more. We also really encourage our team to work on a certain level of autonomy. In some cases, this may mean suggesting a workflow they feel is more efficient for their work. As far as strategic decisions go, we always welcome recommendations and review all serious input from the team. While we can never guarantee a suggestion is put into place, whether it be a piece of their workflow affecting another department, or a feature in a game that does not fit into the design, we still always review and take them seriously!

Educational Approach

Education is one key area we have excelled at, especially with our younger generalists. We always encourage our developers and even the ones who are not directly involved with the development process, such as the marketing team, to find specific elements they would love to get involved with and work towards learning about them. We have examples of animators learning new software, and even a brand new intern programmer who learned Unreal Engine from scratch that now works full-time as a junior with our programming team!

Facilitating educational opportunities and training whether it is with one of our existing members or giving them the tools and resources they need to work on this themselves is something we will always value as we continue to grow as an Indie studio.

Joining the Team

At Cathedral we look for a wide range of talent for artists, but overall we are looking for those who are willing and ready to broaden their skills. An artist who can come into our studio and be a “jack-of-all-trades” type and be able to assist with everything from 2D to 3D, to even some animation would be extremely valuable to us as a steady. In some cases, we are happy to facilitate an artist who may not have that knowledge yet but is willing to learn! Outside of the broad skills, we always seek someone who has ambition, drive, and a love for games. One thing that has brought our studio so close is our commitment to all of these things! 

You can now wishlist their new title The Bornless here. 

Josh Palumbo, Head of Product Management at Cathedral Studios

Interview conducted by Arti Burton