Code Wizards head Stuart Muckley shares tips to minimise the stress and maximise the fun of working with a studio partner

We created Code Wizards 24 years ago, and as an external development partner, we work with a mix of small and large companies on backend engineering, live operations, IT and more. Over the years we've learnt from our mistakes, and CEOs of new studios and service providers often ask me how they can best work together for success. Here, I'll share the top five simple rules that you can incorporate into your own playbook to help minimise the stress and maximise the fun of working together.

All games are a piece of art created in a digital form. Trusting somebody to enrich another artist's work is difficult.

Trust is typically built up over the course of years, but working with a new partner requires trust from day one – and that needs an investment.

Any engagement needs to start with an assumption of trust, but we can improve that by continually showing each party is trustworthy. This isn't onerous or difficult, but it does require transparency, planning, and a way of measuring and demonstrating progress. It goes both ways, too: the client is putting their trust in a co-developer or service provider, but the latter also has to trust the client.

Often the early stages of a game production cycle have largely invisible elements – it's like building a new house, and the foundation takes time, but it is hard to visualise the real effort and work involved.

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