As indie-looking as Mintrocket’s debut title Dave the Diver may be, the studio itself is anything but. Previously a sub-brand of Nexon – a South Korean company whose primary focus includes high-budget and live-service titles like The First Descendant and The First Berserker: Khazan , Mintrocket was created to develop low-risk, high-reward titles that wouldn’t severely impact the parent company if they failed. Mintrocket has since become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nexon, but its humble origins remain.
In a 4Gamer interview, Mintrocket CEO Jaeho Hwang explained that the studio was formed as part of Nexon’s “Big & Little Strategy.” Nexon’s effort to develop more unique and creative games (as opposed to only “safe” projects with predictable reception) spurred the company to divide its efforts into big projects (those with a high success rate) and smaller projects (those that allow for more creative freedom). While Nexon handled development and publishing for the bigger projects, Mintrocket was put in charge of the smaller, more experimental ones.
Hwang says that the Big & Little Strategy was born out of the current state of the game industry, where development costs are rising, but the reception of big, triple-A games is becoming more hit-or-miss, forcing developers to stick to making sequels and remakes of already established IPs. “I don’t think there is anyone who could have predicted the success of games like Balatro and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It is difficult to predict the future and build a strategy.”
Since Nexon’s company structure is centered around creating and maintaining large-scale, live-service games, it made sense for it to handle the bigger projects (there would also be a certain level of quality expected from Nexon-attached titles). Meanwhile, Mintrocket, with its smaller-scale of operations, established its own way of working, leading to it becoming its own subsidiary.
Despite Dave the Diver’s success and Mintrocket having more creative control over its projects, the studio still plans to continue making small-scale games. This is because it has already fostered a healthy work ethic centered around making unique games with a small number of people.
