Daph Janssens
Day III Digital
Daph is the Co-Founder and Studio Manager of Day III Digital. With a PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and a background as a Clinical Pharmacist, she entered the games industry as an outsider interested in how different industries design and structure work. She brings a research driven and people focused approach to studio design, embedding transparency and shared decision making into the company’s foundations. Day III Digital is a co-dev studio that has scaled from 2 to 18 people in two years.
Daph Janssens is speaking at the following session/s
How Rethinking Pay and Power Helped Us Build a Resilient Co-Dev Studio
The most common company value is integrity while the second most common is collaboration. But how many truly live by those values when pay structures reward competition and the most important decisions are made behind closed doors? Values alone don’t shape studio culture.
This talk is a case study of what happened when an industry veteran and an outsider founded a co-dev studio where pay is transparent, power is shared and the company culture is built within the studio structure.
Leveraging her background as a Research Scientist, Daph frames this talk as an experiment. She walks you through the original hypothesis, what rethinking pay and power meant, and their observations as the studio grew from 2 to 18 people over two years, contributing to multiple AAA co-dev projects. She will also provide a practical evaluation of these structural decisions, including their difficulties, successes and impact.
This talk is for anyone from any discipline interested in learning about how studio structure can build resilience, improve retention and affect collaboration in a co-dev environment.
Session Takeaway
- An case study of how transparent and aligned pay structures influence collaboration, competition and retention
- An understanding of how studio culture can be shaped by structural decisions, and not just values
- A new perspective on industry norms related to pay, power and resilience
Session speakers
