Despite a few recent live service game disappointments, the attraction of this genre in the gaming business remains undiminished. With increased demand, the Game as a service (GAAS) model for gaming organizations confronts several challenges in terms of flexibility and scalability to keep up with regular modifications. In that situation, external art supplement appear as an ideal solution for driving the GAAS model’s success rate.
This article explores why external art supplement is crucial for GAAS developers, how it optimizes cost-effectiveness, and the value it offers in adapting to market trends.
Why Gaas need External Art Supplement
So why external art supplement can drive the GAAS success? What are Live Service Games or the term Game as a service (GAAS). The GAAS model thrives on continuous updates, regular player engagement, and scalable content. However, maintaining a dedicated in-house team to produce a high volume of diverse, AAA quality assets is costly and challenging. The result is a growing need for game art outsourcing to enable studios to keep up with these demands while staying adaptable to market trends.
How External art Supplement tackle the challenges of Game as a service (GAAS):
Maintaining Artistic Quality
Players expect game-as-a-service (GAAS) titles to feature a steady flow of visual updates for seasonal themes and events. This approach keeps the gaming experience fresh and engaging. However, ensuring consistent quality over the long term is a significant challenge. Game art outsourcing studios tackle this by providing skilled artists who deliver AAA-quality assets that align seamlessly with the game’s visuals.
Adapting to Market Trends
External teams respond quickly to evolving market standards, producing assets that resonate with current design trends. This flexibility keeps the game’s graphical style relevant to players, where in-house teams may struggle to adapt to continuous design changes.
Cost-effective
Operating an internal art team demands a sustained investment in human capital and ongoing training expenses. Outsourcing eases this financial load by giving studios flexible, project-based access to top-tier talent. This setup reduces high fixed costs associated with maintaining a large in-house team.
Flexible Scalability
GAAS developers don’t always require a constant influx of new assets, but they do need rapid scaling for major updates. External art supplement allows game developers to adjust production volume as needed, with pre-trained artists ready to produce assets on demand. This structure enables studios to meet event deadlines more efficiently, saving both time and resources.
Market trends of external art supplement
Many of the world’s major gaming companies have been forced to lay off employees in recent years due to the economic slump. For example, Riot Games laid off almost 530 employees in early 2024, accounting for 11% of their global workforce. Outsourcing has emerged as a dependable solution for them. According to a survey from International Game Developers Association (IGDA) in 2021, nearly 70% of game developers indicated they enhance their games quality with outsourcing services.
This move enables businesses to minimize costs while maintaining resource flexibility. More specifically, in every year, a gaming business must pay a big salary to its whole in-house art team, which solely works on seasonal upgrades. It requires more team leaders to operate and train, therefore the overhead cost is too high in the current market setting. This is totally overcome by an outsourced option, especially if the outsourcing company already has management and training teams.
Thunder Cloud Studio game art outsourcing process: A complete guide
The Thunder Cloud team has built a stringent and user-friendly management system for clients in order to maximize collaboration efficiency. We are certain that we will be a perfect fit puzzle for customers looking for cost-effective solutions with the ambition to reach the best quality that can be applied to mass manufacturing. This process has been optimized by us throughout more than 11 years of experience working with many different clients. The game art outsourcing process includes the following steps:
Align with your vision:
Before each project, all involved personnel sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to secure the project’s confidentiality.
The next step is gathering the client’s brief—a crucial process for Thunder Cloud, as it lets us fully understand the project’s goals and vision. We then discuss and advise on key details, including technical specifications, desired quality, and a suitable budget. For example, clarifying whether the assets are for in-game use or cinematic purposes helps us align our production with the project’s needs. We also unify the art style, whether stylized or realistic, to capture the project’s spirit and optimize production time.
Because the client’s production strategy affects resource allocation and implementation costs, it must be clear and comprehensive. For urgent projects, we assign additional staff to maintain swift progress. In other cases, we tailor resources to meet specific needs, which may impact costs accordingly.
This step establishes mutual understanding and agreement on expectations and product specifications. Thunder Cloud Studio remains available to support the client in addressing any challenges with the proposal plan.
Proposal plan:
After both sides have a shared vision, we will present the client with a suggested plan that satisfies all project requirements. The production team at Thunder Cloud will follow a rigorous procedure to develop the best possible plan in terms of both cost and quality.
Pilot testing:
Pilot testing is recommended prior to mass production to ensure that all parties have a common understanding of the general nature of the project, technical needs, working practices, and client standards. As a result, Thunder Cloud Studio recommends starting with a small scope pilot, such as one character, one weapon, or one prop. This is an easy way for the client to assess the studio’s level in the shortest amount of time and at the lowest expense. At the same time, it can help the studio execute in a method that is most appropriate for the client’s visual outcome.
Mass production order:
Only when Thunder Cloud clients are satisfied with the pilot and have agreed on the project’s specific output will they decide to proceed to the mass production phase. Thunder Cloud can ensure AAA quality output regardless of whether it is man-month-based or asset-based. Our artists receive extensive training and are carefully chosen to meet the project’s needs. In addition, Thunder Cloud’s system is designed with many positions to ensure premium service delivery.
Art Director:
Art directors will consult the artistic components to employ, communicate the vision to the team, and make sure all the game art assets follow consistently with the approved direction. AD can be hired or assigned depending on client request or the complexity of the project.
Head of production:
The Head of Production will be responsible for overseeing and ensuring the process is on track with the client’s goals and objectives. In addition, this position is responsible for effectively allocating resources, optimizing the human resources and materials needed for the project.
Project lead/ team lead:
A project lead and team lead oversees a particular project or component of a project and is in charge of making sure it is finished according to the project’s objectives, on schedule, and within budget. And the most important task of this function is to ensure the quality of the final outcome before delivering it to the client.
Coordinator:
The coordinator acts as a connecting line from the client to the in-house team to ensure the process runs smoothly and ensures the deadline for asset delivery is met. This role will help the client conveniently manage the assigned assets, our coordinator will take care of the difficult part.
Artists:
All of our artists will be trained in all of our services. They will stay updated to industry trends and software advancements to continually improve their skills.
What make Thunder Cloud Studio stands out in the game art outsourcing market
Premium Service
Thunder Cloud Studio is committed to delivering consistent, top-tier quality through our Premium service. Our Art Directors, Head of Production use rigorous internal QA systems to guide highly skilled artists and ensure each project achieves reliable, AAA-quality outputs. This approach guarantees faster turnaround times to meet the dynamic demands of live service games. With premium service, we have had the opportunity to cooperate with top games like Subverse or Illuvium…etc.
During mass production, the Thunder Cloud team will maintain common mistake systems and update optimization methods. In order to reduce project running time, help clients have more assets in the same amount of time.
Flexible and Transparent Budget Planning
Our Budget Planning approach ensures flexibility and transparency by offering two tailored pricing models: artist-based and asset-based. These models enable precise budget control.
Thunder Cloud’s methods include pilot testing based on the project’s scope, complexity, and time requirements. This process optimizes the budget for clients. With no hidden costs and upfront estimates, clients can confidently plan their budgets. While modifications in the budget may occur during any project, we will inform you in advance if this situation arises. We will await your approval of any additional costs before proceeding.
Optimized Project Management
The number of assets in outsourcing projects in general, and Thunder Clouds in particular, is extremely large. Clients will find it challenging to maintain consistency when managing such a vast number of assets. Our professional team of coordinators and project leads, who have considerable expertise handling outsourced projects. And obviously, they will eliminate the hassle for you. All assets are readily organized and managed for clients to monitor and provide comments. Our ultimate goal is to meet your deadlines and maintain consistent art quality in each detail.
Seamless Communication
Thunder Cloud Studio prioritizes effective, seamless communication, essential for cross-time-zone collaborations. Through our Seamless Communication service, clients receive real-time feedback and updates via live chat such as Skype, Discord or Slack whether it works best for the client. Otherwise, secure platforms like Trello, Smartsheet and Jira are also in focus to ensure smooth project adjustments and fast response to feedback. This flexibility allows us to establish excellent and fully transparent relationships with our clients based on full trust and transparency.
Moreover, to address the inherent obstacles, we assign a coordinator to each project. This position will in charge of monitoring the work’s progress and providing regular updates to the customer. Both sides would remain on track, and any issues that emerged could be handled immediately.
A Trusted Partner for Long-Term Game Art Success
Thunder Cloud Studio has earned the trust of numerous clients through our commitment to excellence and long-term game art collaborations, supported by a suite of exceptional services. Thunder Cloud has built trust with many partners through major collaborative projects, including:
This is one of the largest mobile casual game initiatives in the Western market over the last five years. Monopoly Go became a successful endeavour when it was launched as a flagship mobile game in 2023. In the same year, they had over 100 million downloads. Thunder Cloud contributed to the project’s success by providing full-service packages. Including: 2D concept, 3D model, 3D environments, 3D characters, level assembling, main intro trailer of the game, characters animation, buildings animation, design event maps, banner, UX/UI for this game. We are proud to work on projects with Scopely since the very early days from the prototype phase until now.
This game stands as one of the most significant mobile shooter game releases, developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Activision in 2019. Launched as a free-to-play title, the game achieved unparalleled success with over 270 million downloads and over $480 million in revenue within its first year. We are honoured to participate in the success of this project with 3D character design services in the latest updates.
Publishing in 2024, League of Angels become the most anticipated free-to-play game of the year. Which is developed by the leading corporation of game developments and publishing in China, YooZoo. And we had the honour to work with the Singapore branch to produce a series of user acquisition promo videos on a monthly basis for many famous Yoozoo games such as: League of Angels game series, Infinity Kingdom, Era of Celestials, Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming, Rangers of oblivion, etc.
This is a project from the popular Fast and Furious film franchise, therefore we are thrilled to collaborate with 3D Clouds to handle a wide range of categories, including 3D character, vehicles, and cutscenes.
How to Train Your Dragon is a well-known animated series with a global following. School of Dragons is a successful game based on the famous IP mentioned above. Thunder Cloud is not only in charge of asset generation, but we have been following the project from beginning to end. At the same time, we are a supplier of hundreds of assets, such as Dragons, weapons, decorations, props, and character outfits with a particular cartoonish design and ultra-lightweight construction. The most important thing for us is to communicate with the proper design and quality of the original IP while maintaining the game’s lightweight technology in order to get the best possible performance on mobile.
Conclusion
In today’s dynamic gaming industry, external art supplement has become essential, especially for Live Service Games outsourcing projects. The Game as a Service (GAAS) model requires frequent updates and visual freshness to engage layers, a demand that can strain in-house teams. In this process, external art supplement plays a critical role. Which allowing studios to scale resources efficiently and maintain quality without the burden of high fixed costs. Thunder Cloud Studio exemplifies this approach, offering specialized services like flexible budget planning, seamless communication, and optimized project management. By partnering with a trusted external art supplement, developers can ensure cost-effective, AAA quality asset production that aligns with market trends. So that it can support paving the way for sustainable growth in the ever-evolving live service games landscape.
