Independent Developers: The Future Of Nashville Gaming

Belmont Vision Multimedia. (Zach Watkins)

Across the city, groups of gamers and developers huddle in coworking spaces, coffee shops and office buildings.

Rather than being led by AAA studios worth millions of dollars, the digital medium’s highest scorers in town are hobbyists, independent developers and all-around creatives who channel various artistic disciplines into a single interactive experience.

From game jam winners to massive projects years in the making, the gaming industry in Nashville is growing with coders trading ideas and pushing the boundaries of what a game can be when there are no investors to please.

But while Nashville’s indie developers chase creative freedom, the broader gaming economy is moving in a very different direction.

Despite the United States gaming industry's $128 billion value in 2024, only a shrinking fraction of that revenue comes from premium AAA games, according to Statista.

Instead, most of the industry's profits are now tied to hardware sales, in-game advertising and the booming world of in-app purchases, especially through mobile gaming.

As traditional game sales decline, the industry has leaned heavily into the free-to-play model, offering games at no upfront cost to entice players into spending more money over time.

A  move which many critics view as predatory.

“All the free-to-play games tend to be really sticky in terms of microtransactions... They get you invested with new content here and there and people get sucked into that ecosystem and can't get out,” said Jeremy Townsend, a veteran in the world of game development and a two-year member of the Nashville Game Developers organization.

With a previous job at Infinity Ward and credits for developing multiple installments of the Call of Duty franchise, Townsend left LA for Nashville to create his own development team for the games he wanted to create.

“There is just a lot more competition for fewer dollars,” said Townsend. “You can make something that's high quality with just a couple of people now, if you can stand out."

Retention of video games, once at an all-time high during COVID, has sharply declined according to Statista, causing studios that expanded during the pandemic to shrink just as fast, resulting in layoffs, sunsetting of games and disappointed player bases.

This can be seen in Nashville at the biggest development studio in town, Iron Galaxy. With credits on some of the biggest titles of the past two decades like “Crash Bandicoot” and “Skyrim,” the studio opened its first Nashville office in 2022 with its influx of revenue from the pandemic before moving into its permanent home in the AT&T building in 2024.

But only a year after this expansion, the company laid off 66 employees, more than half the number of jobs it had pledged to create when moving into the city, according to the company's blog.

The layoffs were part of a broader contraction across the gaming industry, where even mid-sized and large companies have been forced to scale down as audience engagement declines and development costs soar.

And while only some of NGD have seen the inner workings of a AAA studio, the rapid collapse served as a reminder that the future of the city’s gaming scene likely won’t be shaped by corporate studios but by the creatives building games on their own.

“For what you're doing generally, and the time versus money aspect... Independently creating a game is not a good way to make money,” said Cory Martin, a 10-year member of NGD and a determined developer who is on the cusp of releasing his mobile game “Leapin Lads” seven years in the making.

Martin, entering the mobile game space, could have easily created a product that asked players to open their real-world wallets to pay for the over 100 skins within the game already. However, he opted for a different approach.

“I don't want people to pay real money, I hate that,” said Martin.

Martin’s philosophy opposes much of the modern gaming industry, where in-game purchases and monetization strategies dominate design decisions.

For him, making games is less about profit and more about creating something honest and that exists outside of market trends.

“My goal is to create something unique and not just take some game that already exists and put my own spin on it,” said Martin. “it’s not trying to copy anything that’s already out there. That’s probably why I stuck with it all these years.”

His game, set to come out this summer, has taken over seven years of strenuous development time and tens of thousands of lines of code to compile into a fully polished product. With support in over 10 languages and a slew of mechanics and variations to keep the player engaged upon launch, the last step until release is finding a publisher who will conform with his design philosophy and not push him towards commercialization.

“Games are in this weird space where it's like, some people view them as entertainment, some as art. Some people have mixed feelings on it,” said Martin.

Pursuing the advancement of gaming as an art form, NGD welcomes creators of all backgrounds, regardless of whether their projects are aimed at commercial success.

Many developers in the community see games not just as narratives to be consumed but as interactive spaces where players confront consequences, agency and motivation.

“The experience of consequences, actions and choices is what's important, and how does the video game get you to engage with what your motivations are behind them,” said Milan Zanussi, one of the newest members of NGD with only four months under his belt.

Still, creating experiences that resonate beyond mechanics alone is a challenge. Even when a game is designed around thoughtful interaction, it is not always easy to make players truly reflect.

“You can convey stuff with patterns and mechanics, but I think people, it's hard to do it in a way where people actually latch on to it, and make them see the world differently, or think about things,” said Martin.

Within the organization, games are valued not by profitability but by the questions they raise and the experiences they provide.

At the end of the day, NGD is an organization rooted in community and brings those who may be working alone together to bounce ideas off one another and create friendships among like-minded people.

“I've met many friends through this,” said Jeremy Steffens, an IT professional with a passion for game development and a member of Nashville Game Developers for the past three years.

This sense of belonging is something many members have found through the group.

“I have a hard time opening up and making friends, especially when it comes to being online, so it's nice to be able to show up and have people,” said Martin.

Sometimes the weekly coworking sessions dissolve into casual community time, which many members do not mind.

“We like to hang out, so occasionally we get nothing done, but that's what it's about,” said Steffens.

The meetings are less about formal productivity and more about building camaraderie among people who understand the highs and lows of creating something from nothing and reinforcing the idea that if anyone ever needs help, there is always someone to lean on closer than you might think.

Despite the time, energy and effort that may take nearly a decade before it is recognized, the NGD organization brings self-labeled "geeks" together to check sanity and break it as local game developers push the mold of what a game not constrained by the pressure of corporate entities could look like.

“It’s very fortunate that we have this group. Making a video game independently is a stupid thing to do — but finding a bunch of other stupid people who are doing it too? That’s great,” Martin said with a smile.

This article was written by Zach Watkins