How Emerald City Games Stayed Independent And Kept Shipping

Recorded live on-site at GDC, host Peggy Anne Salz sits down with Derek Day and Jamie Young, the cousins behind Emerald City Games, to talk about what it really takes to build an independent studio that lasts.Emerald City started in a basement in 2008, with families upstairs, developers downstairs and a team doing whatever it took to keep the dream alive. Fast forward and the studio has shipped more than a dozen titles across original IP and major franchises, including Star Trek and Tomb Raider.Derek and Jamie share how Emerald City has stayed independent by balancing creativity with survival, building strong internal tools, protecting its visual identity and staying flexible enough to work across original worlds, licensed IP and live mobile games.Skillz enters the conversation as the infrastructure layer that helps studios like Emerald City keep that focus. By bringing competition systems, backend support, analytics and live ops tooling closer together, Skillz gives developers more room to build the parts players actually feel: the game, the world, the community and the experience.In this episode, Peggy, Derek and Jamie get into:How two cousins built Emerald City Games from a basement into a long-running independent studioWhy staying independent means knowing when to say no, even when opportunities come callingHow the team puts its own creative stamp on major franchises like Star Trek and Tomb RaiderWhy retention, live ops and community now shape how mobile games are built from the startWhy integrated SDKs, analytics and platform tools can give indie teams more room to punch above their weightFor indie developers, Emerald City’s story is proof that survival is a strategy. Stay creative, stay adaptable, build the right team and use the right tools so you can keep shipping the games only you can make.Let's Connect👉🏻 X - https://x.com/pgbiz 👉🏻 LinkedIn Group - https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/pocketgamer-biz/?originalSubdomain=uk 👉🏻 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/PGbiz👉🏻 Website - https://www.pocketgamer.biz Check out more world-class speakers sharing their insights and expertise at one of our events. You can find details of our next event here - https://www.pgconnects.com/next-event