The definitive guide to finding the right service partners for your game

In this guide, I’ll walk you step-by-step through how to find, evaluate and solicit contract talent to save money and avoid mismatches.

I use this process to help studio leaders find service providers that have “saved their ass” and become deeply trusted partners.

This is the foundation of my methodology which has saved game teams over $2,700,000+ of production expenditures while contributing to the successful delivery of over 120 projects.

This is for studio leaders who…

• don’t know which of the thousand+ service studios is right for them.

• are tired losing money on bad outsourcing.

• just need contract help they can trust.

• don’t know “external development”.

Let’s get into it!

Table of Contents

• Create a project charter with an ideal candidate p …

• Identify top providers based on your requirements

• Motivate competitive pricing with an organized RFP …

• Conduct due diligence to give you confidence in yo …

• Onboard your new partner to align with your goals …

Create a project charter with an ideal candidate profile

Your project charter should start by detailing what it is your looking to do and what success looks like. From that, you should work backwards to define what you need in your ideal candidate.

For the charter, start with the basics:

• Project Summary [what it is and why we’re doing it]

• What success looks like [detail specific criteria]

• Successful examples [define expected quality]

• Timeline [due date and checkpoints along the way]

• Project constraints [list all assumptions & unknowns]

Once you’re defined your project, you can then work backwards to create an understanding of what skillset or talent mix you’ll need to achieve success based on the project constraints.

These questions will help you narrow the field to give you a more workable list of candidates:

1. Is this an area where you are looking to save costs, or pay for expertise? [Region/county]

2. How much overlap do you require? Full workday, or weekly checkin? [Timezones]

3. What type of organization do you think would partner best? [Size, prior clientele]

4. What skillsets are required to accomplish your task? [Portfolio overlap]

5. Any gating requirements, such as console devkits? [Studio capabilities]

Creating clarity ahead of time on what you’re looking for and how you’ll analyze the alternatives will allow you to be much more efficient with your time when screening candidates.

Identify top providers based on your requirements

Locating the right group of partners is where most people get hung up, so I’ll walk you through it step by step.

There are many different ways to meet potential service partners:

• Asking friends for referrals

• Scheduling meetings at conferences

• Using online databases, such as:

  • XDS-Spark

  • Game Caviar

  • Unreal Engine Service Partner Directory

  • Multiplatform

Since you’ve already created your ideal profile and know what type of company, capabilities and portfolio work you’re looking for, finding relevant candidates can be quick and easy.

I further narrow the field via the following steps:

1. Use your budget to define regions - IE low-labor vs high labor costs countries

2. Use your collaboration requirements to eliminate timezones

3. Filter for company size based on desired value match

4. Finally, narrow to your shortlist based on perceived capability and prior experience

Take a few minutes to browse and reach out to your initial shortlist of service providers. I’ve shown how you can go about it here:

Unfortunately few providers, especially more boutique companies, have the marketing resources to maintain up-to-date digital presences, so you’ll need to contact them directly to confirm they have the capabilities, availability and relevant past experience you’re looking for.

🧠Here’s a brief synopsis of how I evaluate:

• Company characteristics [size, location, years operating]

• Experience of team [past projects: platform, engine, genre]

• How much client work have they done in the past? [number of engagements, recency, repeat clients]

• Communication [language proficiency & professionalism]

• Alignment [internal processes, motivation, vision]

In addition to your subjective evaluation based on the perceived quality of their portfolio and prior work, you should also complement that assessment with objective measures.

For example, if you are looking for a porting partner, ask how many times they have successfully gone through certification on your target platform.

If they’re a fit, get them under NDA, and let them know the date when you’ll be distributing the RFP. Depending on the scope and complexity of the project, I’d suggest targeting between 5 and 8 qualified candidates for the proposal.

Motivate competitive pricing with an organized RFP process

This is the point of this whole guide: create competition in the bid process by soliciting candidate proposals simultaneously.

You’ll need all your ducks in a row for this to happen - candidates under NDA, requirements well documented, and timeline set.

Why a process?

1. Competitive bidding motivates quality proposals and fair pricing.

2. Fairness and transparency are ensured by giving every candidate the same amount of time to study and prepare their proposal.

3. Receiving the proposals simultaneously allows you to review and compare them at the same time, enabling you to make decisions more efficiently.

Expect a lot of questions from candidates throughout the RFP process. I prefer to set two dates for answers, so you can batch questions to your tech and art teams and distribute the answers back to all RFP participants, ensuring everyone has the same information.

Conduct due diligence to give you confidence in your choice

Once you’ve received the proposals, you’ll want to level the bids. This means converting all objective measures to the same base units (IE daily rates vs monthly rates), and putting them in a leveling sheet so you can compare side by side.

Final result will look something like this:

Once you’re able to evaluate apples to apples, you’ll probably have a few candidates that can be easily eliminated and ideally a handful that all seem like they’d be a great fit.

You’ll then want to conduct due-diligence, collecting feedback from past clients and ensuring that the claims they made in their sales pitch and proposal are accurate.

You are looking for a talented partner who not only has a strong capabilities match, but also solid financial standing, a good reputation, and a history of reliability.

Onboard your new partner to align with your goals and processes

Congratulations, you’ve selected your external development partner! Now all you need to do is negotiate the agreement and ensure a smooth transition from planning to execution.

Don’t assume the people who prepared the proposal have the same context and information as the team assigned to do the work. Start from scratch and make sure everyone assigned to the project are given a proper introduction.

Contract negotiation is a separate topic that I’ve written about elsewhere. You can find more information in my newsletter.

That's it! By following these steps, you’ll secure a partner capable of providing exceptional work and boost your studio’s financial efficiency.