Discover Mudstack: Asset Management and Collaboration Platform for Game Studios
Focus on being an artist first, and let mudstack handle bringing everyone to the table.
Have you ever wondered why it takes several years for a video game to be produced? There are many complicating factors but the difficulties start early. Artists and digital art teams have long struggled with managing their assets in a way that makes finding relevant assets easy. Game studios often have documents that run over 10 pages— just to instruct their teams how to name and save files! Compounding this is the fact that artists rarely use version control because they’re forced to use solutions that were built for software engineers. Finally, traditional art review processes involve cumbersome meetings that come at the end of work cycles, causing a lot of work to be thrown out based on (late) feedback. Now you can begin to understand why game launches inevitably get pushed back again and again.
Enter mudstack — digital asset management and collaboration platform custom built for the needs of game studios and digital artists.
“As a technical artist myself, I experienced the pain first hand when it comes to managing assets at scale. No one likes starting their work day struggling to find assets they need. Where is it— was it saved in Google Drive, was it the one sent out on Slack or the one just emailed to me? They all have the same name! Getting late feedback from my Art Director at the end of a long week when I had busted my behind to create work often caused me to throw much of it away and start over”
Jordan Stevens, CEO & Founder of mudstack.
When Stevens transitioned to work as a software engineer, he realized that the tools so readily available to engineers for automation, version control and collaboration were so far advanced compared to those available to digital artists. He became determined to work on solving this problem for his first love— video games.
Tagging and filtering assets makes complicated naming conventions and folder hierarchies a thing of the past. What teams spend days on can now be done in minutes. Visual version control allows artists to be themselves, rather than forced to work like engineers. Integrated review and collaboration at the asset level means that entire teams get better visibility into the status and lifecycle history of individual pieces of work. The ability to review early and often significantly reduces wasted work.
Investors agreed— earlier this year, mudstack closed a $2.2m seed round led by Hyperplane Venture Capital. Also participating in the round were Overline VC, Forum Ventures, and several angels.
As of this publication date, mudstack is officially out of early access. A generous free tier allows anyone to test out the application before deciding whether they need upgraded features and professional level access control. With the chaos and dramatic changes in work styles forced by the COVID pandemic, this remote first collaboration platform couldn’t have come at a better time.
