Hey Everyone! 

It's your favorite game team back here, talking about the state of the studio! Every year, it feels like we get two steps closer and one step back; that said, we've made really excellent progress so far this year. 

Earlier this year, we went to GDC for the first time and shared Ravenwood and, at the time, a project that we were co-developing called Forked Up. We received incredible feedback, deepened some partnerships and relationships related to Ravenwood, and we're really excited for the next big demo update coming soon. 

We also received excellent feedback on the game we were co-developing, Forked Up, but development has stalled while they continue searching for a publisher to help take it from the demo state we got it to a finished, polished product. We look forward to the opportunity to work with them again in the (hopefully near) future and help bring that game to life!

You'll notice a recurring theme, though: we've continued to find co-dev work to support us and finance the development of Ravenwood. While co-development work slows down Ravenwood's development, it provides the revenue we need to keep reinvesting in the project the team and our wonderful investors (that's you!) so passionately believe in. 

So on that note, I'm going to focus a little bit more on our co-dev adventures right now. And at the end, I'll highlight some cool stuff that you'll start to see about Ravenwood over the next couple of months. If you're only here for the Ravenwood stuff, that's fine! Scroll down to the bottom, and I'll see you there with some cool insights. If you're here to kind of see behind the scenes of how we can keep this studio running and operational, I'd love to talk to you about it!

Exploring Codev 

We originally got our start in the Codev space, working on mobile projects and VR projects back in 2018-2019. We've always kept that co-dev side of ourselves, as it provides the revenue we need to build our games and experiences. However, throughout our history, we've discussed stepping away from it just to focus on our own independent projects. That comes with its own risks, however. Independent projects can take years to develop without a clear funding pipeline, as we've seen. 

Even with the revenue advantages of codev, it can still take years to develop our independent projects because we have to slow production to support codev and then ramp back up once a codev project is finished. 

Recently, we had a big studio vision planning meeting, and we landed on the idea that codev is integral to our short-term revenue cycles. What this means for us is that as we grow and as we become more successful, we want to have a division of the company that is dedicated to co-dev work and a separate division dedicated to our independent work, so we don't have to keep stepping away from our independent projects every time a new Codev project comes in. 

We're still a ways away from making that a reality. However, we've started taking steps to do that by defining a charter for the co-dev division and setting acceptance criteria for when it's time to hire people specifically to support it and return our core staff to the independent work they were brought on to do. 

We've also explored some unique contracts in the healthcare space, leveraging existing talent within the studio to help stand up applications that support people. Maintaining those applications has turned out to be a low-resource, high-margin activity for the studio. 

Studio Roadmap as we see it 

Talking about the high-level vision for the studio is always a fun topic. Internally, much of the discussion has revolved around the idea that we'll still be, at our core, an independent game studio focused on creating our own games that tell incredible stories and bring people together.

We want to have some divisions that are sub-divisions within that company, though. We found some interesting avenues in the Roblox space by participating in a Roblox Incubator. We hope to talk more about that soon, once that game has been publicly announced. Roblox provides a really unique avenue for recurring revenue from independent games, as well as a unique angle for co-development with brand partners and branded experiences. 

We'd like to spin up a central co-development division to handle software and game projects that come to our doors looking for an excellent team to make their ideas a reality and support them after release. 

Lastly, we'd love to start a publishing company far down the line to support independent games. That's what we consider an aspirational angle for us. Not something we're actively aiming for or working toward, but something that, if we have a successful game, we have in mind for what the future looks like. 

These high-level roadmaps are really just helpful for getting a good understanding of what we're building and what we're building toward. At the end of the day, everything we're working towards is releasing good games that tell incredible stories and bring people together, while also taking care of the team that made this a reality. 

Fun Ravenwood News 

Over the next couple of weeks, we'll be back to releasing new character portraits and information about upcoming characters! Our long-time 3D artist turned concept artist Harper is back in action, creating some new wonderful characters for Ravenwood. We know that they are so excited to get their character seen and start telling you guys about it. (Also, if you're in the market for a tattoo, Harper's a wonderful tattoo artist as well!)

Outside of that, we've been working on some updates to the crafting minigames and experiences that we're super excited to show you. And a level designer that we brought on to work with us on the Roblox game we're excited to announce is shifting to work on the mines of Ravenwood and the dungeon tile sets. We're so excited to give a behind-the-scenes look at the process of creating the dungeon tile sets in the mines. 

Going forward, these State of the Studio updates will likely happen once or twice per year, around the middle of the year and at the end of the year. But! We'll try to make sure that we have dev blogs and updates coming once a month We have two really long term code of projects that we're going to be able to start talking about late next month and so it will give us a ton of stuff that we can start discussing and sharing with everybody and our Roblox game should be launching in October we're super excited to show you it!

Thank you so much for your continued support, and remember, if at any time you'd ever like to chat studio or talk with me, you can reach out to me via my calendly link to book a meeting with me, and I'd love to have a conversation!

Thank you again, and as always, We'll Keep Moving Forward! 

Corbin John Reeves 

CEO and Game Director 

Azure Ravens Entertainment.