Working at Dragon Snacks Games
When we started Dragon Snacks, we knew we wanted to build a company where people felt empowered and supported in doing the best work of their lives. And that’s a tall order, because “a great place to work” often means different things to different people. So one of the first things Michelle, Chris, and I did was to create a “Values and Principles” document, ensuring that as the company’s leaders we’re aligned on what we are building as a company, and that our team understands what we believe is important—and especially why we think it’s important – as we build our studio and our games.
Admittedly this sounds cringy, but it’s true. We’ve all seen – and worked for – companies that talk a good game when hiring developers or giving talks at conferences but fail spectacularly in operation. We are determined to live or die by our values and principles.
Our most important principle is that we pay attention to the impact and quality of someone’s work, not to the number of hours they’re logging in front of a screen. We don’t track hours worked (unless required to do so by law, sorry!), because doing so emphasizes the wrong thing. Bloated time cards don’t contribute to the final product; they’re just numbers. We want our developers to focus on the impact of their work on the player, the game, and the team, not on how much caffeine they consume to generate buckets of mediocre content.
Along those lines, we don’t tolerate brilliant jerks. We’ve seen how they cause chaos and negatively affect the final product. There are plenty of fantastic developers in this business who are also great collaborators and teammates, not to mention good human beings. Those are the people we want to work with.
We also believe in the power of small teams; constraints breed creativity and cross-disciple work is a superpower. It’s easy to hide in a large team, especially when you’re not feeling engaged or interested. We’re deliberately keeping Dragon Snacks small (at least in team size, definitely not in ambition), so that every developer feels invested in the experiences we build. Every sprint focuses on a useable, player-facing feature so that we don’t get lost in the depths of code rather than focusing on player experience. We also obsessively play the game together, even though we’re only three months into development and the gameplay may be limited to collecting gold berries and shooting vine chompers.
And last but definitely not least, we encourage the team to share what they love outside of work. Sometimes people share new game recommendations (Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 are recent favorites), sometimes we rant about books that have disappointed us. Whether it’s a YouTube video or tv clip, band or festival, we love learning more about the people we work with and the awesome things they get up to when they’re not at work. We share pictures of pets, loved ones, beverages, and (of course!) snacks. At the end of the day, everything we do here is focused on making the best game possible, and doing so in the best company possible. As leaders, the biggest compliment we can receive is when employees refer their friends to come work with us.
If you think there might be a Dragon Snack job in your future, visit our careers page, give us a follow on social media, and keep in touch.