Ludisphere
The game industry, reported Bydgoszcz · Poland Issue No. 41
Featured — Studios

The mid-size studio is quietly rebuilding itself

Between the giants and the solo devs, a wave of 30-to-80-person teams is rewriting how games get funded, staffed and shipped. We spent six weeks talking to the people doing it.

Empty game studio at dusk with rows of dark monitors and workstations catching cool window light
Inside an independent studio floor after hours — where mid-size teams now fight for room to work.
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This week on Ludisphere

One story we sent a reporter to chase, and the desk's shortlist of everything else worth your attention.

Empty tiered esports arena with a large stage lit in blue

Market · Long read

Esports arenas are being built for a crowd that hasn't arrived yet

Three Polish cities broke ground on dedicated venues this year. We looked at the leases, the sponsors and the attendance math — and asked who is really paying for the seats.

Read the full report with Insider →

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    The quiet economics of a game that never ends

    Market · Analysis · 9 min

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The four desks

Everything we publish lands on one of four desks. Pick where you read first.

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Columns from people who make games

Not critics writing about the industry from outside it — designers, producers and engineers filing from inside the work.

Jonas Weber Systems designer

Why your loot table is a design confession

The way a game hands out rewards tells you exactly what its makers believe about their players. A monthly column on the small decisions that shape a whole system.

Priya Nandakumar Producer

The schedule was always the story

Crunch, milestones and the quiet art of saying no to a deadline. A working producer on what shipping really costs and who pays it.

Ola Sørensen Engine engineer

The frame you never see

Rendering, load times and the invisible engineering players only notice when it breaks. Deep but readable — no maths degree required.

Tomasz Lis Studio founder

Running a studio you can afford to lose

Funding rounds, payroll and the maths of independence, from someone who has closed a studio and opened another. Blunt, first-hand, monthly.

Abstract macro of layered newsprint and halftone dots with a red accent line
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From the desk

Editor's note

There is no shortage of game coverage. There is a shortage of coverage that stops to ask a second question. Ludisphere exists for the second question — the one a press release is written to keep you from asking.

We are a small newsroom in Bydgoszcz, and small is the point. We can't cover everything, so we don't. We pick a handful of stories a week, report them properly, and let the rest go. Our columnists still work in games, so their columns carry the weight of people who have shipped, missed a milestone, and had to explain a delay to a room full of investors.

If that sounds like the read you've been missing, Insider keeps it going — and keeps it honest, because you pay us, not an advertiser.

See what Insider includes →

06

What readers write back

Unedited notes from the Insider inbox — developers, studio folk and journalists on what the reporting and the Monday Briefing actually change for them.

Illustrated portrait of Wojciech, a producer in Kraków

I forward the Monday Briefing to my whole production team before standup. It's the one newsletter that tells me what a delay actually means for a studio our size instead of just reprinting the press line. The arena-economics piece got quoted in a funding meeting three days after it ran.

Wojciech Adamczyk · Executive producer, Kraków

Signed up for the long-reads, stayed for the source notes. As a freelance reporter I read a lot of games coverage and most of it stops at the announcement. Ludisphere keeps going until someone actually answers the question. The play-tester column made me rethink a pitch I'd been sitting on.

Hanna Lindqvist · Freelance journalist, Gothenburg

Illustrated portrait of Diego, an engine engineer in Lisbon

Ola's engine column is the first thing I've read on rendering that I could hand to a designer without an apology. That's rare. The whole thing reads like it was written by people who have missed a milestone, which — going by the columnists — it was.

Diego Ferreira · Engine engineer, Lisbon

Illustrated portrait of Amara, a studio operations lead in Berlin

Ad-free and tracker-free was the reason I paid, but the reporting is why I renewed. Running a 40-person studio, I don't have time to separate signal from marketing — the briefing does it for me in about four minutes a week. Worth more than the annual price, honestly.

Amara Okonkwo · Studio operations lead, Berlin

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The things readers ask most before they join — answered straight, the way we'd tell a colleague over coffee.

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