Brighton-based FuturLab has been making video games for greater than 20 years, however the studio is generally identified for PowerWash Simulator, which stays its largest hit by a appreciable margin. Following its Early Entry launch in 2021, PowerWash Simulator has gone on to attain greater than 17 million gamers, and the sport spawned a well-received sequel in 2025.
However one factor that not everybody may find out about FuturLab is that it operates a strict ‘no crunch’ policy. Kirsty Rigden – who was beforehand co-CEO of FuturLab alongside founder James Marsden, however took over as sole CEO in 2023 after Marsden retired – says that the studio has all the time embraced a zero-crunch method. Rigden beforehand labored at Brighton’s Relentless Software program, maker of the Buzz! quiz video games, and she says it was a related state of affairs over there, with nine-to-five working rigidly enforced.
“Everybody within the workplace leaves at 5 o’clock,” emphasises Rigden. “I can not stress sufficient how I feel that it is actually vital for people, but additionally video games, to have a life outdoors of it.”
But that no-crunch policy is tougher to comply with if you’re the CEO, with the destiny of the corporate and its staff in your arms. She admits to working late previously, though much less so now that she has two young children. “I feel you’d discover it arduous to discover any proprietor who did not have to work outdoors workplace hours. You will have a actual accountability to your workers, and if a possibility comes about, and issues are wanting a bit shaky, am I going to go, ‘Properly, no, I am not going to keep a couple of hours later and put in a pitch to get that bit of labor?'”
The distinction is that she would by no means ask her workers to do the identical, she says – however if you’re the boss, there’s little room for respite.
“If you need a hilarious story, with PowerWash 1 the writer was Sq. Enix, and I really learn the publishing contract that they despatched us whereas I used to be ready to be wheeled in for a C-section,” remembers Rigden. “Would not suggest. I imply, it sounds terrible, would not it? But it surely’s fairly boring sitting in hospitals.”
Again when everybody labored within the workplace, it was straightforward sufficient to flip off the lights and shuffle everybody out of the door at 5 o’clock. However these days FuturLab encourages remote-working, and Rigden says this makes it tougher to implement their no-crunch policy.
“I am unable to bodily make people cease,” she says. “All I can say is: I completely don’t need you to crunch. Should you really feel you want to crunch, come and speak to us. We’ll minimize scope, we’ll get some outsourcing or one thing – there are different methods of doing it, you do not want to crunch. As a result of drained and miserable people aren’t going to create good work. So all I can do is say that and assist people. And so far as I’m conscious, there hasn’t been any crunch. And if there has, then that’s on the person, who has not gone by means of the insurance policies that now we have.”
However how can firms keep away from crunch from a sensible perspective? The character of sport improvement signifies that work tends to ramp up in the direction of the sport’s launch date, as bugs are discovered and want to be fastened earlier than the title makes its public debut. Rigden has a straightforward repair for that downside: “Do not inform anybody when it is popping out till it is prepared to go.”
That was the method FuturLab took with PowerWash Simulator 2, solely saying the sport’s official launch date a couple of weeks earlier than launch, at a level when the sport was absolutely finished. But that is a luxurious FuturLab can afford, self-publishing a sequel to a hit that is assured to get consideration. Builders who’re tied into outdoors publishing offers – which could contain large advertising and marketing pushes at launch which might be arduous to reschedule – won’t be so fortunate.
Rigden says that is one thing FuturLab confronted previously, nevertheless it nonetheless caught to its no-crunch policy regardless. “We would labored on earlier video games with a writer the place there have been tight deadlines and issues, and actually, we simply minimize scope,” she says. “That is the best way we handled it. We simply [said], ‘Let’s take a look at what we have got left to do, what’s vital, what is probably not so vital, and minimize it. But additionally, thank God we do not reside in a world the place now we have to stamp discs and get them out the door. You may put out updates and proceed to help the sport.”
Distant-first FTW
FuturLab’s remote-first policy could make it tougher to preserve tabs on staff and guarantee they are not working unsanctioned extra time, however Rigden says it has been important for attracting expertise to the agency.
The policy originated through the COVID pandemic, when FuturLab discovered it had to workers up quickly after the success of PowerWash Simulator. “It is arduous to get expertise and be like, ‘Are you able to please uproot you and your whole household to transfer down right here to Brighton?’ Which, by the best way, is a beautiful place in case you’re going to transfer. But it surely’s a large ask. So it made sense for us. We have been ready to scale fairly shortly. We have been ready to get actually good people.”
Now, there is no query of going again – or insisting, like some firms have finished, that staff come into the workplace no less than a part of the time. “No, I might by no means do this,” says Rigden, emphasising how ridiculous it might be to ask staff to journey probably tons of of miles to are available in. “I imply, how’s that going to work?”
Rigden emphasises the advantages of distant working – “People haven’t got to commute, they will stick the laundry on” – and provides that it advantages the corporate, too. “Clearly now we have an workplace, which is beautiful, nevertheless it would not have to accommodate the 115 people or no matter we’re, in order that retains prices down.”
However she admits there are issues with distant working, too. “It is tougher in some respects,” she says. “It is actually arduous to make people really feel always linked. There’s extra conferences than there can be in any other case, since you’ve acquired to actually be sure that strains of communication are open and everybody’s in alignment. So you may have to power people to speak a lot slightly than the pure strolling across the workplace.”
It is maybe harder to forge a sense of social cohesion, too. However FuturLab does strive to allow social bonding between group members: as well as to two whole-company gatherings every year, the studio encourages social meet-ups of worker teams positioned in numerous components of the UK.
Not simply the PowerWash people
The PowerWash Simulator franchise has been nothing in need of a phenomenon for FuturLab, and Rigden offers credit score to the writer of the primary sport, Sq. Enix, for his or her assist in getting it off the bottom.
“We had a actually good relationship with them, it was very collaborative,” she says. “They allow us to lead a lot on advertising and marketing. We did a lot of the work ourselves, as a result of we knew the sport higher, and they amplified it and helped the place obligatory… They have been nice, however in the end we needed to transfer into self-publishing as our long-term technique.”
Self-publishing is one thing FuturLab is acquainted with – Rigden notes that lots of their earlier video games earlier than PowerWash Simulator have been self-published. “So it is type of our regular mode anyway, nevertheless it’s good that we’re a bit freer by way of content material drops and issues like that, as a result of we do not have to undergo a large machine. We will simply do it ourselves.”
That means of including content material wasn’t so fast beforehand. “We would ship them a construct, and then they’d have to check all of it, however it might be below their schedules, and they’d have slots [for testing] as a result of they have been making an attempt to handle a number of issues directly. Whereas we have no of that.”
“Mainly, there’s infinite quantities of stuff to wash on the market”
In distinction to the primary PowerWash Simulator, which had a “very gradual, regular rise” in curiosity, says Rigden, the second sport noticed a enormous preliminary spike in gamers thanks to the franchise’s rising fame. And simply as the primary title featured collaborations with franchises like Wallace & Gromit and Tomb Raider, extra team-ups are deliberate for the second sport – and firms are queuing up to be concerned. “We get a lot of people wanting to work with us,” says Rigden, though she notes that character-heavy collabs do not have a tendency to work. “We’re not washing the people.” Nonetheless, they will not be operating out of issues to put within the sport any time quickly. “Mainly, there’s infinite quantities of stuff to wash on the market.”
Not that it is all about washing. There’s an ongoing, usually very foolish narrative between the 2 PowerWash titles that connects every little thing collectively and helps to contain gamers. Though Rigden says the story wasn’t in there on the very starting – and in reality narrative has by no means been a large emphasis for her. “It is not a factor that pulls me in. So if I had been solely in cost, I simply most likely would not have thought to put it in, to be sincere. However our design director and our sensible sport author simply managed to weave this unimaginable story.”
Regardless of the massive, ongoing success of the PowerWash Simulator sequence, it is not the one factor FuturLab desires to deal with. “We have all the time tried to do two initiatives directly… so we have got one other sport which I am actually enthusiastic about,” says Rigden. “I really actually love PowerWash, I play each evening. I imply, you’d suppose I might be sick of it, however I am not. PowerWash can go on endlessly, and there’s so many issues we will do with it – however we do not need to simply be a PowerWash studio… We’re all the time fascinated about, ‘What else may we do?'”
Rigden could effectively nonetheless take pleasure in enjoying PowerWash each evening, however we think about many others on the firm is likely to be prepared to transfer on to one thing else after 5 years or extra engaged on the identical factor. We wonder if that broader focus is partly about holding FuturLab’s workers comfortable.
“Yeah, it’s,” says Rigden. “I feel you most likely lose a sense of having fun with creativity in case you’re doing the identical factor on a regular basis. And likewise, from a boring logistics viewpoint, it is a lot simpler to have two initiatives and have the ability to transfer people round slightly than go, ‘Oh, this challenge would not want as many people for a bit. What am I going to do with them?’ It means you are far more versatile as a studio by way of sources.”
“People need video games. I feel it is nearly getting a refund into the business”
It is heartening to see a UK studio thriving at a time when the general narrative within the nation’s video games business is much extra gloomy, with firms like Splash Harm and Three Fields Leisure issuing studio-wide redundancy notices. Rigden thinks the layoffs we have seen over the previous few years are a persevering with correction from overinvestment through the COVID period, however she reckons the UK business will get better.
“In fact it should,” she says. “If I have been an investor, I might be like: ‘Now’s the time’. Nobody’s making video games. There’s going to be no video games popping out in a couple of years. Make some video games. Discoverability is going to be simpler. It’ll choose up once more.”
“I doubt it should return to the COVID increase, nevertheless it’ll get better from the place it’s now, for certain. I imply, there’s a demand for video games. People need video games. I feel it is nearly getting a refund into the business from working with the federal government, and traders calming down and in search of alternatives once more.”