Creating Game Art In-House or With an Art Outsourcing Studio?

The mobile game industry allows an opportunity to advance development with the help of game art outsourcing, so there are two choices to make:

- Create everything in-house;

or

- Hire an external game art outsourcing studio that would assist in production.

There are ongoing discussions about which one is more preferable as both approaches have their ups and downs. In the first case, developers do have a solid grasp of the processes and can be way more involved in them. Everything from the workflow to the hardware and life quality of the team is before the eyes of the management. But there is of course another side of the coin.

In the case of an outsourcing studio, the developer gets rid of a lot of causes to worry: they don’t need to think about the everyday routine of the team, minor tasks, and future workloads. There’s also no need to keep the expenses such as workplace and hardware maintenance. In addition, because most of the outsourcing teams work as independent contractors, developers have only a limited range of responsibilities to them, e.g. no need to have a retirement plan, corporate bonuses, social package, or life insurance. Also, if it happens that the scope of work is reduced, there’s no need to worry about paying for the business downtime to the outsourcers!

On the other hand, a solid game art or development outsourcing team is always loaded for months ahead, and if developers won’t have any consistency in the pipeline down the road, the external team may feel it’s more beneficial to switch to someone major, such as one of the top-10 leaders of the mobile market in the region. They always have a lot of work that never ends, so it provides more reassurance to the outsourcer that the team will have bread on their table for a long time from now.

Final thoughts: deciding whether to work with an external game art studio or make do with an in-house team is about weighing all pros and cons — if it makes sense in terms of the production length, timelines, and expenses, it is highly beneficial to get an external team. However, if you feel more comfortable creating everything in-house (which mostly fits the mindset of a smaller development studio), and being able to look all your artists in the eye, go ahead and stick to this approach. After all, you can always add an external studio later — the good thing about outsourcing studios is they are always happy to get new connections in the industry!

The post “Art Outsourcing vs In-House Production?” was initially written for RocketBrush Studio Blog.