The most common question I encounter when talking with studios about ExDev is exactly that:  “How do you know you can trust them?”

This is such a big and nuanced question that I’m going to require multiple posts to properly answer it. Let’s start by looking at a common ExDev failure mode to illustrate what I mean:

Say a studio is outsourcing a particular chunk of work for their game: an environment for a level. They find an art provider, give them the requirements, and the outsourcer delivers on spec.

However, when the studio receives the assets, they realize they ‘forgot’ to mention a particular requirement. Maybe the polygon count is off the charts, tanking performance, or the collision handling is subpar because it wasn’t implemented bespoke—issues the studio had assumed to be "common knowledge."

The assets look great, but they won’t integrate, and now someone needs to go through and update every single one.  What a PITA.

So, dear reader—who is really at fault in this scenario?

Is it the service partner? Surely a company advertising its art capabilities in games would have the foundational knowledge of 3D assets to recognize these “basic” issues.

But… returning to the studio client, how much context did they actually provide? Was the performance and gameplay context documented for the project team, or just communicated in an early conversation with the sales rep?

Did the client provide the outsourced team with a venue for questions during the project? Or did every interaction loudly convey “I’m so busy! Do not take my time unless you have work to show!”

In fairness, I do consider these particular examples (polygon count, collision meshes) to be in the realm of "a quality art partner should probably have confirmed these details."

But there are many, MANY more nuanced examples across disciplines of similar project failures that follow this same pattern.

In my mind, the responsibility here lies with the client. After all, consider all the ways the client could have avoided such a catastrophe:

- Better documentation, to ensure these requirements are captured.
- Better examples, to demonstrate the expected quality.
- Better interviewing, to confirm the partner understands and routinely applies foundational concepts.
- Better due diligence, to see if this partner has had similar issues in the past.
- More hands-on management, to proactively provide a venue for questions.
- Early validation, to ensure the very first asset produced meets requirement.

…etc…

Sadly in ExDev, when projects go bad, the blame seems to always fall on the provider as scapegoat.  And the resulting stories that are told tend to be very one-sided, poisoning the well.

Which explains why I so often get the question: “how do you know you can trust them?”

When, what many people should be asking is “can a provider trust me?”