In game development, the “follow-the-sun" or FTS method involves passing work between teams across global time zones to achieve continuous progress, faster bug detection, and accelerated time-to-market. While complex, this approach can transform how we build, test, and launch games.

What Does "Follow-the-Sun" Really Mean?

Just as our planet rotates and daylight travels from east to west, FTS development creates a continuous workflow where game development literally chases daylight around the globe. This approach can potentially increase total development time per day from 8 hours to 16 hours with two sites, or up to 24 hours with three sites, reducing development duration by as much as 67%.

Think of it as a relay race where the baton is your game's code, assets, or testing tasks. When Team A finishes their workday, they pass the baton to Team B. As they wrap up, Team C picks up the work. By the time their day ends, it's already tomorrow morning for Team A, and the cycle begins anew.

Here's an example: Your team in San Francisco discovers a critical bug at 5 PM on a Friday. Instead of waiting until Monday morning or burning the midnight oil, you hand off the investigation to your colleagues in Sydney who are just starting their Monday morning. By the time you return to work, the bug is fixed, tested, and ready for deployment. Welcome to the world of following the sun — a game development strategy that's as brilliant as it is challenging.

Why This Matters

In today's gaming landscape, speed isn't an advantage — it's a necessity. In a $184 billion-dollar industry, players expect constant content updates, rapid bug fixes, and seamless experiences across platforms. Companies who leverage remote collaboration and distributed teams will stay at the head of the pack, while those who don’t will fall behind. Take Gearbox, for example, who implemented new automated asset management pipelines and discovered major time savings on development of New Tales from the Borderlands.

Consider these real-world scenarios where following the sun enhances the game development process:

• Distributing work across global teams allows your teams to patch game-breaking exploits as soon as they happen, no matter when.

• Rolling out beta tests that follow the sun means real players test during their prime hours while regional teams process feedback in real-time, creating a continuous improvement cycle.

• Coordinating global teams during crunch eliminates 16-hour days with work that flows naturally between time zones, resulting in higher quality work without burnout.

Particularly Powerful for QA

While following the sun is beneficial for the entire development cycle, it completely transforms QA (Quality Assurance). In addition to getting games out faster, the FTS strategy makes them stronger. With teams spanning multiple time zones and continents, QA testers can better coordinate with international partners to provide 24/7 support, resulting in more consistent coverage, better communication, and more realistic testing conditions. Here’s how:

The global nature of FTS QA enables a level of depth, breadth, and speed that traditional testing cycles simply can't match.

Continuous testing cycles allow testers to catch and resolve bugs faster. This rapid iteration allows studios to push more stable builds to players with greater frequency. This momentum is reinforced by continuous QA coverage across multiple time zones, which helps ensure that no region or platform becomes a blind spot.

The presence of global teams also enhances platform diversity testing by allowing teams to specialize based on regional device trends and usage. With QA work flowing between global time zones, a team in Tokyo can focus on mobile optimization for Android-heavy markets, while another in Berlin stress-tests high-end PC builds. Each region contributes unique hardware landscapes, connectivity patterns, and user behaviors, and this continuous, location-aware testing ensures your smooth performance across all platforms and markets.

At the same time, these global teams enable real-world condition testing by putting games in the hands of testers who actually live in target regions. This allows teams to evaluate performance under authentic network speeds, regional settings, and device capabilities. A mobile game that streams assets in real-time might run smoothly in California, but struggle on spotty urban 4G in São Paulo, and with follow-the-sun testing, those issues are identified and resolved before launch.

The enhanced continuity, coverage, and conditions provided by follow-the-sun testing methodology yield significant market benefits:

1. Accelerated Time-to-Market

The FTS model can increase response time to solve problems more quickly and reduce development and production times to get products and services to market faster. In a competitive gaming market where being first can mean millions in revenue, this speed advantage is crucial.

2. Global Talent Access

Distributed teams allow companies to reach a global talent pool rather than being limited to specific geographic locations, making recruitment faster as companies aren't constrained by local skill shortages. Need a specialist in procedural generation? They might be in Prague. Looking for mobile optimization experts? Check Seoul.

3. Natural Work-Life Balance

Instead of grinding your local team to exhaustion, work naturally flows to fresh minds in different time zones. Most employees don't want to be at work 12 or 16 hours a day, and the follow-the-sun model gives employees their lives back while allowing companies to continue offering round-the-clock service.

4. Reduced Development Costs

Instead of incurring overtime costs or asking local staff to work night shifts, the follow-the-sun model distributes workload across global teams, maximizing productivity without sacrificing employee well-being.

The Truth About Follow-the-Sun Testing

Although following the sun creates numerous advantages, it’s not without difficulty. Here are the most common pitfalls of implementing an FTS testing strategy:

Communication Eclipse

FTS's largest strength, spreading development over multiple time zones, is simultaneously its largest weakness due to cultural and technical differences as well as time differences making coordination and communication challenging. Imagine trying to explain a complex game mechanic through written documentation instead of a quick face-to-face conversation.

Incomplete Handoffs

The most critical moment in follow-the-sun development is the handoff. Poor documentation during these transitions can derail entire features. The main reason why FTS is difficult to implement is because the handoffs are an essential element that is hard to get right, with poor communication being the largest factor causing this difficulty.

Cultural and Technical Misalignment

Different regions might have varying development standards, coding practices, or even different understandings of game design philosophies. What feels like an intuitive control scheme in one culture might be confusing in another.

Making it Work

While the challenges are real, the potential rewards — faster development, better quality, happier teams, and more successful games — make it a strategy worth pursuing. Here are the keys to a successful FTS testing strategy:

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation!

Successful follow-the-sun teams treat documentation like a holy scripture. Every code change, every design decision, every bug fix needs to be documented clearly enough that someone on the other side of the world can understand and continue the work seamlessly.

Overlap Hours for Critical Discussions

Setting meetings during "overlap hours" ensures everyone is awake and alert, with scheduling between 7 AM and 10 AM EST often working well for participants in both the US and Europe. Reserve these precious hours for the most important decisions and complex technical discussions.

Standardized Tools and Processes

For the FTS model to work, all sites must be using the same tools and development methodologies, including planning, bug tracking, version control, and reporting. Everyone needs to speak the same technical language.

Cultural Bridge-Building

Invest in cultural exchange programs where team members spend time working with their international colleagues. Understanding different working styles, communication preferences, and even humor can dramatically improve collaboration.

Helpful Tools and Resources

Modern development tools have made FTS development more feasible than ever. Collaboration platforms, automated testing pipelines, comprehensive project management tools, and cloud-based version control systems create the digital infrastructure needed to hand off complex game development tasks across time zones safely and efficiently.

The Bottom Line

As the gaming industry continues to globalize and remote work becomes standard practice, following the sun isn't just an innovative strategy — it's a competitive necessity. While the challenges are real, it’s a rewarding and worthwhile endeavor, provided you’re willing to put in the work.

The key is starting small. Begin with non-critical features or internal tools. Build your documentation practices, establish communication rhythms, and gradually expand to more complex game systems as your teams become comfortable with the handoff process.

The sun never sets on great game development. The question is: are you ready to follow it?

Want to learn more about round-the-clock development cycles, creating games with diverse global perspectives, and following the natural rhythm of our planet's rotation?

Get in touch with us, or check out the recommended reading, curated by one of our testing experts.

Continue Reading:

Follow-the-Sun Strategy: A Process for Global Software Development: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262412241_Follow-the-Sun_Strategy_A_Process_for_Global_Software_Development

Empirical evidence in follow the Sun software development: A systematic mapping study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950584917304639

Leveling Up Remote Game Development: Strategies for Distributed Teams: https://30dayscoding.com/blog/remote-game-development-distributed-teams

Comprehensive Follow-the-Sun Resource: https://follow-the-sun.github.io/

The Future of Gaming: Game Development Trends from 2024 Report: https://www.perforce.com/blog/vcs/future-of-game-development-trends

Top Game Development Trends in 2024 and Beyond: https://www.xcubelabs.com/blog/top-game-development-trends-in-2024-and-beyond/