I joined Goodgame Studios in 2010 as a 2D Game Artist, back when the company was still a start-up with fewer than 100 employees and just a handful of artists. Over the following six years, I grew with the company as it became Germany’s leading game development studio, reaching over 1,200 employees and releasing several highly successful, award-winning titles.

As an Art Department Lead, I played a key role in building and shaping the art teams, helping scale the department to 183 artists across multiple disciplines. My work contributed to the enduring success of hit titles such as Goodgame Empire, Goodgame Empire 4 Kingdoms and Goodgame Big Farm, which together amassed over 300 million registered users and generated more than $1 billion in revenue by 2017 in the free-to-play market.

Context of project

As Art Director at Goodgame Studios during the early development phase of Goodgame Empire and its mobile counterpart Empire: Four Kingdoms.

I played a key role in defining a strategic visual style—very distinct from competitors—that laid the creative foundation for two of the company’s most successful titles till now and earned strong player affection.

Goodgame Empire, launched in 2011, quickly grew into a global hit in the strategy genre, with Empire: Four Kingdoms extending that success onto mobile platforms.

Together, they brought in hundreds of millions in revenue and reached over 250 million registered players.

My Design Strategy

Hard-to-Replicate Vector Style

> The style is difficult to replicate, requiring highly skilled artists with strong draftsmanship, exceptional Adobe Illustrator skills and a refined sense of values and tones to achieve this level of detail and volume.

> This complexity creates a strategic advantage in the highly competitive free-to-play market, as it makes the visual style hard for other studios to imitate quickly and launch a look-alike game copy.

Distinctive Style &
Brand Recognition:

> The woodcut-inspired style stands out from competitors and offers instant brand recognition.

Vector Illustration & Appeal:

> The illustrative style, it's abstraction and joyful color palette has a broader audience appeal, than the regular medieval target audience.

Key Challenges & Responsibilities:

Project Scope:

> Delivery from concept to launch in just 8 months with a core team of 7 artists.

> Simultaneously leading two other titles (Disco & Fashion) through their full production cycles.

Balancing Detail &
Production Efficiency:

> I defined a balanced level of detail to ensure consistent weekly live-ops updates while staying within the reproduction capacity of the available artist pool. 

New Stakeholders &
Cross-Team Alignment

> Secured design approvals for creative alignment with C-level management and cross-functional leads under short timelines.

> Aligned with Game Design, Development, Project Management, and Marketing on production status and coordinated asset needs.

Workflow &
Pipeline

> Developed an end-to-end production pipeline—covering concept design, final artwork, file delivery, and integration with the development team.

> Set up naming conventions, asset folder structures, feedback protocols, and delivery processes  for clarity and efficiency.

Art Production &
Asset Supervision

> Checked and cleared open questions of game design briefs.

> Developed style guides / design guidelines.

> Balanced live game content requests, marketing deliverables and dummy assets for testing.

> Scheduled, prioritized  and assigned tasks/workloads to artists.

> Reviewed and approved final artwork.

Live Ops, Success & Scaling up

> Scaled up the team by recruiting new artists for growing in-game and marketing asset production needs. Focused hiring people with creative talent and with the right soft skills to fit the team.

 > Creating team structures, hierarchies/direct reports (Art Director, Senior Artists), defining everyone's role and feedback pipeline as team grew.

> Designed an on-boarding process for new hires, such as mentorship/buddy programme, design-guideline documents and game's art-Wiki for fast integration to the production process.

Styleguide evolution & development with the art team.
Answers to: What would have helped you to get faster on-style while onboarding, what are the design secrets and hacks you would have known earlier? What are repeated off-style mistakes?

About Goodgame Empire