I plan on making both hyper/hybrid casual mobile games as well as games for other platforms. However, I will most likely start with mobile games when starting a game company. Is it feasable to have a game company that starts out making mobile games and then eventually moves on to more “hardcore” games for other platforms?

BradleyAuerbach said:
Is it feasable to have a game company that starts out making mobile games and then eventually moves on to more “hardcore” games for other platforms?

Why do you have to ask? Is there some reason why you think the answer might be “no”?

@Tom Sloper It's because the team will probably know more about casual games and mobile app development, and I don't know how successful a game would have to be to be able to afford training the entire team. For instance, a team trained for developing 2D casual games would have to learn 3D modeling as well as an entirely different engine.

I personally don't think so.

casual mobile is a different market than all the others.

If you have a team and a company founded on mobile, you'd need to likely find all new people for the other platforms.

Also, I'm assuming your planning on using the profits of your 1st games to fund development, the ROI on mobile and margins are usually small.

BradleyAuerbach said:

@Tom Sloper It's because the team will probably know more about casual games and mobile app development, and I don't know how successful a game would have to be to be able to afford training the entire team. For instance, a team trained for developing 2D casual games would have to learn 3D modeling as well as an entirely different engine.

The word “training” has great weight in your reply. Most of what pro game devs have are interests and skills. A lot of those skills are transferrable. I can imagine a team that has a mix of skills, some people having knowledge of multiple platforms, and using cross-platform engines. Pigeonholes can be broken out of. But your thinking is clearer now, and it's not entirely wrong.

GeneralJist said:
If you have a team and a company founded on mobile, you'd need to likely find all new people for the other platforms. Also, I'm assuming your planning on using the profits of your 1st games to fund development, the ROI on mobile and margins are usually small.

A fair amount of truth there, sprinkled with an undue amount of pessimism. It wouldn't be necessary to replace all your people with “all new people."

Yes, it would be difficult to break out of a mobile pigeonhole and make it big in another platform. But everything is difficult, and not very much is truly impossible.

It also depends tremendously on what they have built and how they have built it.

A team who builds games on Android using only Kotlin and NDK/C++, and builds their iOS games with Objective-C and Swift, they're basically locked into their platforms. Targeting a new platform will require moving to either a different platform's libraries or to platform agnostic libraries. Very few organizations do this.

These days most games use major cross-platform engines and cross-platform middleware. A team who builds their mobile games using Unreal or Unity can simply click a few buttons to target additional platforms. They may need to replace a small amount of platform-specific code and content, but perhaps 99.99% of the work is done for them since the systems implement everything in platform agnostic interfaces. While teams may need to provide a little bit of system-specific work, the vast majority can use exactly the same code and content to produce a game that runs on all the major platforms, from PC and web deployment to game consoles to phones. Unity can target 22 platforms, and Unreal can target 20. You can literally just check a few checkboxes and produce the game for all 20+ platforms.

For the specific genre and skills these will depend on the games people make. For example, if a studio is focused around 2D games and pixel art and wants to transition to 3D worlds they'll need to switch from pixel artists to modelers and texture artists. Many of their workers will likely have some amount of skill in multiple areas, so the transition for workers is going to depend on the products and on the people involved. Some can handle it immediately and are well versed in a range of tech, some can be trained and transitioned, others may need to be hired.

Tom Sloper said:
A fair amount of truth there, sprinkled with an undue amount of pessimism. It wouldn't be necessary to replace all your people with “all new people.

I didn't mean “replace”, meant hire new people. I'm assuming they would keep on the original mobile people, to patch and support their previous work,, or do both.

what one man calls “pessimistic” another calls “realism.”

From what I hear with the competition of mobile games, it's a really hard sell.

Also, from my understanding, it's better to tailor a game to a specific platform.

For some people and businesses, it is an “or”. People must decide to do this OR that.

For some people and businesses, it is an “and”. People can choose to do this AND that.

The first mindset is limiting, and sadly common. The second mindset is enabling, and it often accompanies wild growth. Over the years I've seen hundreds of companies start out as small enterprises doing tiny projects in one domain, and as time passes grow to work on many things, many projects across multiple domains. There is absolutely nothing that inherently limits a company in regards to the question in the title. (Can a casual mobile game company eventually move on to more "hardcore" games?) There are personal limitations, business choices, and financial constraints at any given time, but companies can do it, and successfully transition into additional domains quite often.

I think the OP should get to a point in his career and self-esteem where Randoms on the internet can have points of view, but don't define the course of his life.

cultivate intrinsic motivation, and it will always carry you through.

Where there is a will there is a way.