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Tonic Games formation minimises development risk, Mediatonic's Bailey says.

Tonic Games formation minimises development risk, Mediatonic's Bailey says.

Mediatonic's newly-formed parent company Tonic Games Group reduces the amount of risk there is in working on new projects.

That's according to studio co-founder Dave Bailey (pictured), who told GamesIndustry.biz that by diversifying its output with a range of different developers, there's less pressure on individual titles.

Tonic Games Group was formed in June 2019, and encompasses Mediatonic, as well as two startups it had incubated, The Irregular Corporation and Fortitude Games.

"The whole portfolio is so large and so diverse that when we take a bit of a gamble on one thing, it's supported by everything else," he says. "That was really the founding principle of why we went on this mission to build a group. Because if you're trying to do something that's completely new, it's risky. Game development is risky in and of itself.

"We've got a lot of battle scars from our first ten years, where we've been through things like publisher restructures, studio closures, all these kinds of things. Those are things that I feel really get in the way of creativity and make it more difficult to try something new. That's why building this multi-studio structure, where the bigger ones can support the smaller ones and we can share resources across what we're doing. It makes things much easier for us, and ultimately helps us grow overall."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.