Departing Directors, New Directions.

This month we’re bidding a fond farewell to two of our co-owners: Hannah Nicklin and Douglas Wilson. The co-owners remain firm friends and grateful collaborators, the parting of ways is due to a natural parting of the ways as lives shift, and the pressures of the current state of the industry demand smaller teams working at different scales.

Farewell Friends

Douglas Wilson is part of the original trio following Nils’ founding of Die Gute Fabrik in the early 2010s. Now a full time Senior Lecturer at RMIT University in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, Douglas met Nils and Christoffer while studying at ITU Copenhagen. A key driver of the local multiplayer phase of the company’s output; from JS Joust to Sportsfriends; Douglas then was a key designer on Mutazione, including co-designing the procedural musical gardening systems with Alessandro Coronas. Douglas then co-led the development of Saltsea Chronicles’ brand new trick-taking game Spoils. Doug has always been an invaluable member of the DGF board and co-ownership team, helping steer, influence, design and build some of our most well-known and well-loved projects. Doug’s responsibilities, however, now rest more firmly in Australia, and he’s taken this opportunity to wrap up his relationship with Die Gute Fabrik alongside releasing Sportfriends as a free DRM-free download with our co-collaborators on that game.

Doug says:

Die Gute Fabrik has been a central focus of my professional life since at least 2011, so it is very bittersweet to be stepping away from the studio. I feel so honored to have worked together with so many talented and lovely collaborators over the years - not least of which include Nils, Christoffer, and Hannah. I am excited to see what Nils and the team make in the future, but in the meantime I am shifting my creative practice to my installation work - for example, my hanging controllers game Edgar Rice Journey, which I exhibited at A MAZE Festival 2024 - and also some interactive theater projects, together with my partner, comedian Melissa McGlensey.

Hannah Nicklin joined Die Gute Fabrik as a writer and narrative designer in 2017 to support the development of Mutazione, she quickly became a core member of the team, and also took over bizdev and production work to secure an Apple Arcade deal and sim ship the game across several platforms and in 17 languages. The Co-owners then invited her to join the leadership team as CEO and Creative Director after which she secured a full financing deal in 2020, before building a team to produce what’s now Saltsea Chronicles. Hannah worked hard to join the original Die Gute Fabrik principles of interdisciplinarity and excellence with her passion for equitable and accessible workplaces. She dedicated her leadership to further diversifying our teams and collaborators as well as investing in the development of diverse and marginalised talent through teaching, internships, and advocacy; supporting the Game Devs of Color conference, running entry level story internships, and producing a team which was majority gender marginalised, LGBTQ+ and people of colour. Hannah has chosen to hand Die Gute Fabrik’s creative leadership back to Nils Deneken and is now working as a Narrative Designer and Writer with Night School a Netflix Studio on an unannounced game.

Hannah says:

I’m grateful for the opportunity and trust that the co-owners offered me on inviting me to steward the reputation they had built as an innovative and interdisciplinary studio. I am so proud of the team we built who together made a game which pushed the boundaries of what it means to tell ensemble-cast stories. Saltsea Chronicles received glowing reviews, but in particular the processes we put in place; equal pay, entry-level internships, a four-day work week, and our carbon impact report; are things I will forever be proud to have led. I learned so much from leading Die Gute Fabrik, and I will remain firm friends and fond collaborators of Nils, Doug and Christoffer.

New Directions

Finally, some good news for fans of Die Gute Fabrik’s work. Nils Deneken, the original founder of DGF will stay with the company and make a return as CEO and Creative Director. Die Gute Fabrik will adjust to the current funding landscape for indie games, by keeping the team size smaller and searching funding opportunities for a new unannounced project with public Danish and European grants, art grants, as well as interested publishers.

Nils says:

I’m thankful to be able to look back over the past 15 years to see all the different directions we’ve taken with Die Gute Fabrik. The diversity of games we have in our back catalogue is owed to the partners I’ve worked with and from whom I learned so much.

Douglas was pivotal in shaping the understanding of local multiplayer and physical games at the time when we started working together in the early 2010, first on game jam projects, then on the crazy local multiplayer party game B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Ok Now).I witnessed the birth of J.S. Joust and how it rippled through the gaming landscape, and I’m proud of having brought him on board at Die Gute Fabrik, both to get Sportsfriends to an audience and to collaborate with him on the design of Mutazione. I miss the intense discussions we had about design and music, often involving Alessandro (Mutazione composer and sound designer) and I hope that we’ll be able to work on something at some point when our life situations align again.

When Hannah joined us on the Mutazione team, she immediately began making herself indispensable. The quality of her work, both her writing, her design- and production sensibilities were central to get Mutazione out to the market, and putting the leadership of the company into her capable hands felt like a natural fit. It was amazing to see the company take on a different shape and life on its own, as she implemented her vision of what a workplace could be. Looking at my first illustrations of Die Gute Fabrik, that is something that was always meant to be at the heart of it: A place where collaborators would be able to come in, squat the old company buildings and repurpose them for their ideas.It felt privileged to be an employee at my own company for the duration of Saltsea Chronicles, and I was impressed by its smooth and well-organised development- and production cycle.

Both Hannah and Doug have left an important mark on Die Gute Fabrik.

While the situation in the games industry and DGF might look grim at the moment, I’m optimistic of what the future will bring for the company. Maybe that has something to do with a new project I’m working on, which I’m genuinely excited about. Or maybe it’s having the company buildings for myself again for a bit, which feels both new and familiar. Maybe other lovely people will move in and squat the halls again at some point, but right now it feels ok to just take some time to figure out what to do with this space. I have the feeling it will be good.

Stay tuned to our socials, where any future news will be announced.