Despite an impressive growth over the last decades, the creative industries display high selective mechanisms and low survival rates. Many are called but few are chosen. In this kind of environment the question for organizations is “how to muddle through to survive?”. Based on the comparison between multiple case studies in the French video game industry, we investigate to what extent studios adapt their business model to survive in this hostile environment. On the one hand, they are under the pressure of creativity and try to differentiate from the crowd. On the other hand, they have to deal with a high level of uncertainty concerning the success of their products. We find out that independent studios learn to favour rationalization in their business model. We show that the rationalization of their business model combines the search for a greater efficiency and for a more disciplined management of risk. Our discussion underlines that this rationalization should be better integrated in the business model literature and that risk management can be understood rationally with an option lens.
