Have an idea, but lack the finances or time to scale up a full team? Or maybe you have a team, but are missing some specialty skillsets or experience to establish a strong pre-production phase. Or maybe you just simply need a second opinion. That’s ok! Game development is hard. Pie Trap can help mitigate some of those burdens! We provide senior level experience to help support your development needs as you try to iron-things out. Heck, we can even help you do the ironing! We make sure you can hit the ground running with production, because time is money. We provide temporary leadership to the departments that need guidance or support. We’ll work wi th your in-house team to create pipelines, documentation, and accurate/realistic scope and schedules for your specific project and company goals. We provide a project manager with every client that can “Speak the language” between art production and tech. How? Because they aren’t just managers, they’re artists and developers, who have worked on a variety of different projects ranging from low-high spec demands, and understand the problems you face! We make our own games as well, and understand today’s standard work practices. So, let Pie Trap’s passion for game development partner with yours. We can get the ball rolling for you, for however long you need us.

There are outsourcers and then there’s Pie Trap! Well, Pie Trap can certainly be a fierce contender in creating assets and content for production, but prioritize quality over quantity. Artisans over mass producers. We are a small strike team that focuses on the problem areas of your production; unblocking it with minimal supervision so your in-house team can focus on the things that really matter. Be wary of the bait’n’switch. Has outsource team swapping happened to you? It can be common for outsource studios to establish trust by having Team-A do the “art test” or first pass contract. Once a contract or longer contract is established, you notice the quality of work change. You’ve been given their less experienced Team-B to actually handle production. With Pie Trap, we work only in small strike-teams composed of individuals that were hand-picked with the appropriate skill sets to match your project’s needs. There is no A-team/B-team. The team only changes if the client’s needs change. The content we provide goes through a rigorous evaluation process with our art leads. We make sure all meshes, uvs, and textures are clean and optimized to your specific needs; We understand game-development can be an iterative process, so assets are authored to be clean, reproducible, and as non-destructive as possible, and we include all source files in your software of choice. Finally, all assets are heavily tested in your engine of choice, along with your provided shaders and/or scripts; resulting in a “ready to serve,” asset. We pride ourselves in delivering every asset to a launch-level of polish, with the goal that there should be no need for a dedicated in-house developer at your company whose entire job is to “fix the outsourcing work” that is coming in. We have been these people before! and have seen how much hidden cost can accumulate with outsourcing. Let us save you money, so you can use that talented individual for something that really matters!

Like many of our clients, we’ve come from the trenches and have built our studio by our bootstraps! We understand that your goals are more than just getting tasks done. You have an amazing project or idea, and you want someone who is just as excited to help you bring it to life! We’ve worked with many other studios, helping them with pitches and prototypes to achieve funding or proof-of-concept. We ask about the “Why’s” and not just about the “How’s”. We’d love to hear why you’re making this product; why you chose a certain target audience; why you chose the platform you did or the art style you’re shooting for. We give attention to the project’s goals and the client’s budget holistically. Our client-facing project managers are personable and transparent with communication. We will never sugarcoat a situation. We will always be upfront and realistic, and always provide you with solutions moving forward. You will find working with us to be flexible, comfortable, and safe. Being located in the Pacific Northwest USA, we understand we can't compete with many low-cost outsourcing houses, but we are confident that Pie Trap is more cost effective overall. Why? Because, we work to understand your end goals and create a process to future-proof the content we provide; creating little to no rework on your behalf and to reduce future production by streamlining your content with best practices. In other words, is it really cheaper/faster if it goes through 2-3x more revisions to get it right? Pie Trap understands that time is money. The longer it takes to finish a project, the most costly it is for the studio as a whole.