Wild Blue Studios

Written by Christopher McGeorge

Founders: Mitchell Malloy and Eli Allen
Industry: Entertainment
Website: https://www.wildbluestudios.art

In one sentence, how would you describe your cooperative?
Wild Blue Studios is a worker-owned external development studio providing art and creative services to teams across the entertainment industry.

What is the mission of your cooperative and what do you hope to achieve?
We were established to provide an equitable, sustainable, and supportive workplace environment for creatives in the video game and entertainment art industry.

What are the types of member classes in your cooperative?
We currently utilize a single membership class for employees, who become eligible for membership after 18 months of employment.

What are the benefits for individuals/businesses who become members of your coop?
We talk a lot about “horizontal structure, vertical deployment.” Each member gets an equal vote in electing our board and for key directional decisions. We also equally distribute any surplus profit amongst all members at the end of each year, or reinvest those profits into our team’s benefits. But we also acknowledge differences in expertise and accountability and structure our job responsibilities and individual compensation accordingly. This creates a supportive environment for new members to grow and recognizes that value that we create cooperatively. All members also have the ability to recall leadership, ensuring that the people leading our studio are always accountable to our workers.

How do you keep things fun and exciting for your members while still running a business?
As a fully remote company, it can be an extra challenge to keep things fun and resist the urge to isolate in our respective home offices. Our team formed a “fun committee” that organizes group movies for work and watch events, monthly show and tells where we share the projects we’ve completed, and coordinates cooperative party games. We’ve also structured our work week around four days, Tuesday through Friday, so our team has extra time to pursue their hobbies and passions. We work hard when we’re in office, so we can play just as hard the three days that we’re out.

What challenges have you faced in running your cooperative, and how have you addressed them?
It’s always difficult to navigate areas where you don’t have expertise, and initially for our team that was largely in the legal and finance categories. Partnering with excellent finance and legal teams was key to building our solid foundation and setting us up for success. When we were starting out it was also difficult to source lines of credit to help us with cashflow when we had multiple creative projects running but couldn’t invoice until they were complete. Our cooperative structure made navigating traditional sources of funding more complicated. We were able to find a great Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) called LEAF that helped us bridge those gaps. They were instrumental in our growth and ability to scale up to meet client demands.

What makes your cooperative stand out in terms of services/products?
Because our workers are also owners and directly share in the success of our business, our team is incredibly invested in the success of every product. We also have a very low attrition rate. This consistent and motivated workforce helps us guarantee the high quality of work we deliver. You don’t find that type of structure or reward in a traditionally organized company.

If your cooperative had a theme song, what would it be?
After our all-hands meetings, we always do a 10-minute stretch session. It’s meant to help prevent repetitive stress injuries from creative work, but it’s also a time when we get the opportunity to DJ and share music. But if we have to narrow it down to a single song… probably “I Miss You,” by Blink 182. We even have call and response soundboard buttons in our Discord server for it. Also, shout out to John Mayer’s song, “Wild Blue.”

How is your coop helping to “Build a Better World?”
A large percentage of our staff identifies as LGBTQIA+. While we work hard to make our company a safe and inclusive environment, that extends to the work that we make for clients. We have helped some of the biggest video game companies develop and ship their first explicitly queer storylines and characters. We believe representation matters and we’re proud to champion that both in our workplace and our work.

Each month in 2025 we will spotlight a different cooperative as part of our celebration and support for the UN’s International Year of Cooperatives.