Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
July 17, 2019
WWW FEATURE: NINA FREEMAN
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Nina Freeman, Game Designer at Fullbright. Read more about Nina in this interview:

Hi Nina! You are a Game Designer at Fullbright. You started working there right after finishing your studies at the NYU, all while still working on your own game, Cibele. What would you suggest to graduates who are about to finish their studies and are ready to find their first job in the games industry?

My best advice for folks still studying is to take advantage of the time you have in school to do smaller scoped projects. The most useful class I managed to take during grad school was Bennett Foddy’s prototype studio class, where we made a small game every week. This helped me hone in on my skills as a designer and programmer, while also building my portfolio. I actually made the prototype for Cibele in that class. Taking advantage of any chance to try a small thing is really smart, because it always has a chance to grow into something greater, or just teach you a skill you didn’t realize you needed.

If you have any way to turn a homework assignment into a small game you can make over a weekend, go for it. Use every short-term opportunity to make a game, or even just a prototype. Participating in game jams, especially if there are any run in your local community outside of school, is really invaluable experience. I got the job I have today at Fullbright because I tried my best to make a lot of small games as weekend projects, or as homework. I took two of these small projects to GDC and showed them at a party, which is how I met my current bosses!

So, those projects directly affected my career in that way, but they also taught me how to better scope projects, how to work with collaborators, what kinds of games I even enjoyed making. You don’t need to make a long game, or even work on a game long-term, in order to learn about these things–you just need to make a game, and release it. On a related note, you don’t need long games in your portfolio in order to make connections and get work. I have seen many people get hung up on making their masterpiece before they graduate… you definitely don’t need to. Make a lot of little things, find your voice and develop your processes before you get deep into a bigger commitment. You’ll be much better prepared this way.

What is the most valuable thing you’ve learned so far as a game developer?

In my experience, one of the biggest challenges for a game developer is their closeness to their own work. Working on games is often pretty solitary, and even small games can take a long time to build. It’s easy to get stuck in your own bubble, and to be the only person playing your game for weeks. However, games are interactive experiences, so it’s super important to get out of your bubble and talk to players. Show players your game as frequently as possible. Play testing is your most valuable resource as a game developer. It’s honestly more important than having great art, unique mechanics or optimized code… because if a player can’t understand how to interact with your game, they won’t be able to appreciate any of that stuff. So, playtest early and often. Make sure players are playing your game and understanding it in the way that you intend. If they’re not getting it, iterate on your game until your ideas come across clearly. Don’t be afraid to share prototypes or really rough builds. It will make your game a lot better in the long-run, even if it’s stressful or embarrassing in the moment. Sharing things is scary but important.

For your personal projects you are focusing on short, yet very emotionally driven experiences. What changes would you like to see in terms of storytelling in video games?

This is a hard question to answer, because I see great work being done in game storytelling all the time. The most awesome work is definitely happening in the smaller game space–games made by individuals or small groups that don’t have the backing of a huge corporation. Red Candle Games, Nathalie Lawhead and Robert Yang are all game developers whose work you should check out if you’re interested in great storytelling in games. The change I would like to see in narrative games are mostly around how we talk about and value these games. Games that are about daily life, or personal stories, are not often given the same kind of funding or attention as bigger games. I hope that we can move towards an industry where these kinds of games are valued more, and that the developers of those games are given the kind of money and attention that they deserve.

Thank you so much for your insights, Nina!

Nina’s Links:
Nina’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/hentaiphd
Nina’s Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/hentaiphd
Nina’s Website: http://ninasays.so/

Fullbright’s Website: https://fullbrig.ht/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
July 10, 2019
WWW FEATURE: JENNIFER PANKRATZ
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Jennifer Pankratz, Game Designer at Piranha Bytes. Read more about Jenny in this interview:

Hi Jenny! You are a Game Designer at Piranha Bytes. Since game design is a very broad field, can you give us a little insight on what your day-to-day tasks include?

As many colleagues in the games business, I started with Quality Assurance in 2008. During the project, I more and more also fixed different bugs in the story department and began to design own quests. In my second project at Piranha Bytes I had, like the other colleagues in the story department, a bigger part in the story development including the implementation of characters, quests, dialogues, daily routines and much more. Nowadays story design and implementation are some of the things I’m working at, but I also design mini games or riddles, give feedback to other story team members and work on social media and PR. It is usual that almost every team member at Piranha Bytes has several tasks, depending on the phase of development, because such a huge project lasts about three or four years till it’s done.

You’ve worked at Piranha Bytes for over ten years now. What are the key things you’ve learned since then?

I learned a lot during the last ten years, almost everything about storytelling, world design, different tools and especially planning and organization. Many creative people and game designers are often dedicated and euphoric about their work. To not to burn the candle at both ends, a good planning is the alpha and omega. In my opinion it is not necessary to have crunch times to make a good game, because happy and rested team members are much more productive than tired and demotivated people. If I’m working on a project that pleases myself and I have great colleagues and a familiar environment, the player in front of the screen can see and feel that in the game. Passion is the hardest currency.

During past interviews you mentioned that you more or less stumbled into the field of game development. Nowadays there are more and more universities and other institutes which offer game development related courses and programs. What is your personal opinion about the academic approach as a start into the games industry?

Nowadays it is much more usual to study game design or something similar before you work for a development company, I think. Ten or twenty years ago, many developers learned other jobs and tried to found a company or had connections to other developers. We recognize that in the meantime there are much more people from universities or institutes who apply for vacancies. But apprenticeships are often expensive, so I wouldn’t say it is important where you get your know-how from. I hope there will be more affordable possibilities to get a good education in the game industry in the future which include time for internships, but you can also give it a try with a good portfolio, for example. It is important that you have the passion for what you want to do and you’ve already done it before in one way or another. 

Thanks for taking time for us, Jenny!

Jenny’s Links:
Jenny’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/nachtvogel831
Jenny’s Twitch-Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/nachtvogel83

Piranha Bytes’ Website: https://www.piranha-bytes.com/
Piranha Bytes’ Youtube-Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
June 26, 2019
WWW FEATURE: CAROLIN WENDT
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Carolin Wendt, the Community Manager of CD Projekt RED. Read more about Carolin in this interview:

Hi Carolin! You are a Community Manager for the German-speaking region at CD Projekt Red. Before that you were project manager for the Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur. What led you to the job change?

During the four years at my former job, I learned that I had a great passion for communication and event organization. Furthermore, I wanted to tackle something new I haven’t done so far and challenge myself – and the job as Community Manager combined all of these requirements perfectly. Furthermore, community management deeply benefits from a strong foundational knowledge in project management, so I guess my job change isn’t as big as it looks at first glance.

At our last Womenize! Event you held a talk about Community Management and how important it is to build a bridge between community and developers. What is the most important thing for you as a Community Manager when it comes to interacting with your own community?

I think the focus needs to shift more to the positive impacts a well-managed community can have for people’s life overall. Bringing them together both on- and offline – instead of just talking to them in a monologue – is an extremely valuable (and fulfilling) thing. During my childhood and youth, I was lucky enough to be part of several communities that gave me a place where I could be myself and develop passions. If I can give back only a fraction of what my communities have done for me to other people, I’d be extremely grateful – and I think this aspect of positivity and potential empowerment deserves much more attention than it gets.

As the project manager for the Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur, you were also the organizer behind the Fake Jam 2018, a game jam dedicated to the ongoing discussions around fake news and their potential risks. What kind of responsibility do you think has the games industry as a whole in this regard?

Video games as a mass medium are experienced by an extremely large amount of players. I personally am convinced that art – which includes games – can shape perceptions and understanding of big social issues. Therein lies a great opportunity for video games and the industry in general to speak up about topics that otherwise might not get the spotlight they deserve.

Thanks for your time Carolin!

Carolin’s Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/coshy_90
CD Projekt Red’s Website: https://en.cdprojektred.com/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
June 19, 2019
WWW FEATURE KING SPECIAL: OLGA MASLOVSKAYA
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. In this special edition we highlight sHeroes from leading mobile game studio King. Today, we publish the last of five King features with Olga Maslovskaya who is Associate Business Performance Manager. Read more about Olga in this interview:

Hey Olga! You are a Associate Business Performance Manager at King. That kind of field is rarely talked about in the games industry, could you tell us a bit about what you do and how it relates to the game development process?

At King a Business Performance Manager is a sort of an analytical Product Manager. We work closely with the game teams, and advise them on a lot of things. My team (called Business Performance Unit) consists of Business Performance Managers and Data Scientists, and together we help the game teams by answering data-related questions and providing insights and learnings from past experiments within the game we work on, as well as across other games at King. I work on Candy Crush Saga, which is mostly developed in Stockholm. But in Berlin we have 2 small teams that contribute to that project, and I am proud to work with them on a game that’s played by millions of people each day.

One example of what I do would be supporting the game team during the phase of a new feature development: to answer questions like what’s the current state of the game (maybe we see that certain aspects of the game are not working / not attractive for our players), how many players would be affected by the change, how to set up the experiments we do (A/B Testing) so that we get the learnings we want and statistically significant results.

I also help producers define priorities for the game and make sure we have a stable backlog of things to do to improve the game. We are a business after all, and need to make sure the game performs according to expectations.

Before working as a Business Performance Manager you were a Data Scientist for King. What was the defining moment in your life, when you decided you wanted to work in these areas?

The switch from being a Data Scientist to being a Business Performance Manager happened rather naturally for me. I like dealing with people, and I love the product I work with. So I started being more and more involved with product-related discussions and decisions during my work as a Data Scientist. I also enjoy the times when I am able to translate statistics and sophisticated analysis that we do into simple learnings and take-aways for non-math people. That helps the game team understand better what the outcome of their work is, and hence makes everybody more involved.

My path to becoming a Data Scientist in the first place is a bit funny. I would say I took many detours in life to get to the job that I currently do. I have studied Japanese language and International Economics in my Bachelor’s. Then during my Master’s I focused on something more applied, and did a degree in Economics & Management, focusing on Marketing and Analytics. For my Master Thesis I was lucky to get an internship at Wooga and write my thesis with their data – I was building a churn-prediction model for one of their games, trying to predict when players are about to stop playing before they actually do, so that they can be targeted in-game and “saved”. That opened the door to the awesome world of analytics in the gaming industry, and I am happy to be part of it now.

What kind of advice would you give to someone who wants to pursue a similar career like yours, any first steps?

Don’t be afraid of changing fields if you are not yet doing what you actually want to be doing. It is always hard to start from scratch, and being an intern / junior member of the team might be a bit challenging at a certain age. But everything is possible, and it only takes some years to grow expertise and experience in the field you want.

When it comes to Data Science, I am mostly self-taught: did a number of online courses on R and SQL to get started, and then learnt by doing on the job. I was lucky that my team at King was accommodating for my slow pace in the beginning, and now I got to the level where I can mentor more junior colleagues and help them grow. It definitely feels very rewarding.

Thank you for sharing your insights with us Olga!

Olga’s Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olga-maslovskaya
King Website: https://king.com/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
June 5, 2019
WWW FEATURE KING SPECIAL: ANASTASIA GKELAMERI
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. In this special edition we highlight five sHeroes from leading mobile game studio King. Today, we introduce Anastasia Gkelameri who is Junior Data Scientist. Read more about Anastasia in this interview:

Hi Anastasia! You are a Junior Data Scientist at King. The role of a data scientist is not something you hear about a lot, can you tell us a bit about your job and what it revolves around?

Currently I’m working as a Data Scientist in King’s Berlin studio, mainly supporting one of our live games, namely Candy Crush Jelly which is part of the Candy Crush franchise. My job is to help the game team make data-driven decisions as well as to make sure that we avoid various pitfalls coming from the data we use. Most of the work we do boils down to providing sources of truth to our stakeholders so that they have all the right information to run the company; for instance, a simple but essential question to answer would be “How many players did we have yesterday?”. More complicated questions arise, of course, and we dabble in forecasting for the business as well as in solving various optimisation problems on a per game level while it’s in development in order to decide if it provides a good enough player experience before launch.

One of the most powerful methods we use to help us make conclusions about in-game elements is A/B testing; in a nutshell an A/B test is an experiment in which we use our player population to compare two (sometimes even more) variants, A and B, in terms of effectiveness, or which of the two players prefer most. This helps us decide which of the two to keep and make a permanent feature in the game. The tools we use for analytics and other coding work is usually some general purpose programming language like Python, as well as a language like SQL to manage data that we’ve collected that sits in storage, in some kind of database. So as to avoid more technicalities, on a higher level, the job of a Data Scientist is a mix of lots of statistics, programming and some solid math in order to extract knowledge from data.

Before working at King you’ve also been working in jobs outside the gaming industry. What made you want to be a part of this industry, are there any benefits?

The reason why I chose to move into games a couple of years ago was that I simply love the product. Gaming played a big role in my childhood and later life, and I find it very enjoyable to work for a product I personally support and have an intuition for. In various other jobs that happened to be unrelated to the gaming industry I found myself unable to relate to the product, which led to a lack of motivation that affected me personally and professionally. The core of the job is the same in theory; what changes depending on the industry is the application, and how much impact one can have as part of a team. At the moment, I’m grateful to be experiencing a friendly and open work environment that emphasizes diversity and inclusion, space to develop in skills and knowledge, and amazing people to work with and learn from.

If you would have to describe your job to someone else, what do you think is the very best thing about being a Junior Data Scientist?

This is quite a tricky question to answer. In my mind there is not one thing that is “the best“, so I’ll try to summarise the highlights of the job. It never gets mundane, at least for me. There’s always something new to learn or ways to become better in a technique you (think you) already know. The team dynamic plays a major role in ones development; there’s solidarity in knowing that you, as a unit, don’t know about most things, and this is very prominent in the field of Data Science, as most of us come from very different backgrounds and so we take care to complement each other’s skills. In my journey so far, I’ve met many people with such a thirst for knowledge that also fuels mine, actually maybe that *is* the very best thing.

Thank you for your time Anastasia!

Anastasia’s Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anastasia-gkelameri
King Website: https://king.com/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
May 29, 2019
WWW FEATURE KING SPECIAL: NAZARETH TEKESTE
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. In this special edition we highlight five sHeroes from leading mobile game studio King. Today, we introduce Senior HR Business Partner, Nazareth Tekeste. Read more about Nazareth in this interview:

Hi Nazareth! You are a Senior HR Business Partner at King. Can you tell us a bit about your work, what are your main tasks?

 Currently, I am the HR Partner for King’s London Studio, creator of Farm Heroes Saga and the Berlin Studio known for games such as Candy Crush Jelly Saga. I form part of the leadership team for both studios and I spend my time aligning with the leaders on which HR activities need to be delivered so that it’s in line with their business objectives.  I deliver cyclical HR activities such as performance enablement, talent planning, facilitate diversity & inclusion initiatives, training and off-sites and programs such as team effectiveness to ensure that our teams are engaged and delivering at their full potential, and much more.

 Departments like Game Design or Game Art usually have a pretty defined path on how to start out in the industry. How does one start out in your field of work?

I started my career as a Recruiter, firstly working in the agency world before moving into an in-house recruiter role. After a few years of focusing on UK hiring, I moved to Barcelona to broaden my experience. This led me to King where I hired for roles across multiple functions in our European Studios as well as for our offices in the US and Asia. Late 2014, I had the opportunity to take on a dual role as a Recruiter and HR Manager on an assignment with one of King’s newly acquired studio in Asia. I spent half of my time hiring and the rest of my time was focused on implementing HR frameworks, local induction, embedding King’s values, performance management, establishing a feedback culture, employee engagement activities, coaching management and collaborating with HR colleagues to design and deliver management training.

Every day I learnt what it meant to be a HR generalist and I loved it. I enjoyed the variety and no day was the same. I wanted to continue developing as a generalist and I found a new career path that I didn’t even know could be an option for me to explore. I didn’t have the traditional HR generalist background, however as a recruiter I had transferable skills such as establishing and building relationship, stakeholders management, influencing, managing multiple projects, etc. It was critical that I partnered with HR peers to deliver and learning on the job was the best way to practice and develop the technical skills and knowledge that I needed to succeed as a generalist. The assignment gave me this opportunity and I embraced it, along with guidance, feedback and coaching from my manager at the time. Patience, the willingness to test and learn, along with researching best practice, checking in with colleagues and applying common sense set me on the path to transition into a HR Generalist role.

What is the most important trait you should have when working as a Senior HR Business Partner?

True partnership means being a trusted advisor and your voice being heard at the leadership table. It’s vital that business leaders seek your opinion before decisions are made as HR play a key role in shaping how the business approaches their plans, therefore, relationship building, trust and strong communication skills are needed. Being commercially savvy and telling the story behind the data is equally important so take the time to learn and understand the business language and nuances, and get comfortable with people metrics as this will enable you to maximise your position at the table. Diversity and Inclusion should be top of mind and having an appreciation for cultural differences in the way we operate, work and engage with our employees is also key to ensure that the business is set up for success and all employees are performing at their best.  Finally, be authentic and bring your personality to work, we interact with the people at all levels of the organisation and we have a role to play in inspiring and mentoring others around us while we network with peers inside and outside our organisation. It’s important that we fail fast and learn, test and seek feedback before launching a new process or initiative and continue to evolve our HR practices to bring the best experiences for our people and business.

Thank you so much for your insights, Nazareth!

Nazareth’s Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nazarethtekeste/
King Website: https://king.com/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
May 22, 2019
WWW FEATURE KING SPECIAL: JOHANNA PLOOG
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. Over the next weeks we will highlight five sHeroes from leading mobile game studio King. Today we introduce C++ Developer Johanna Ploog. Read more about Johanna in this interview:

Hello Johanna! You are a C++ Developer at King. With over ten years of experience as a programmer, what originally made you interested in becoming a programmer for video games?

For me, becoming a programmer was an obvious choice, simply because I liked writing code. However, I wasn’t that interested in gaming and it never occurred to me that being a game developer could be a viable option. So I sort of got into game development by accident.

While studying something else, I spent a lot of my free time playing “Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup”, an open source game under active development. As a fan and active player, I contributed with feedback, bug reports and eventually patches, and at some point I was asked to join the dev team. I stayed on for a few years, during which I learned a lot about game development. And not just programming, either. Since everybody on the team wore all kinds of hats, I also got a lot of hands-on experience in game design, QA, project management, etc. Even today, I still benefit from this experience.

At some point I realized I was essentially working 40-hour weeks developing this game and spending hardly any time on my studies. That’s when I started thinking about doing this for a living. I still didn’t know if that was a realistic goal, but I sent out some applications and got my first job in the industry. I never regretted that decision.

Your LinkedIn profile tells me that you like to attend Game jams. What do you love the most about them, are there any benefits besides connecting with other developers?

I actually don’t participate in game jams nearly as often as I’d like to. As a full-time programmer I find I need to do something other than more programming in my free time to rest my mind. On the rare occasions that I do attend game jams, however, I enjoy them a lot.

A large part of what drew me to game development in the first place are the immediately visible (and often playable) results you get when implementing a new feature or tweaking an existing one. Game jams take this to the extreme: Within a few hours or at most days, you get to complete an entire game. This also makes game jams an excellent opportunity to try something new. Dabbling in a different genre, trying out a weird game idea, experimenting with new technology, you name it. There’s no risk. Even if the game idea doesn’t work out or you don’t manage to complete the project, you’ve hardly wasted any time and still managed to learn a lot.

And finally, game jams are all about the shared experience. About forming ad-hoc teams with people you’ve never met. About working together to come up with a creative game idea and then make that become reality. And of course seeing what others have created can be a great inspiration, too.

What should be the first steps for someone who is interested in becoming a game programmer, do you have any tips on how to start out?

My career progression is probably not generally applicable. That said, I strongly believe that having real project experience, even in a vastly different genre, gave me a leg up in getting that first job. If your school or university doesn’t already require you to participate in group projects, I’d definitely recommend to participate in a few game jams.

Game development is about much more than mere programming. What these group projects (or game jams) will teach you are things like an understanding of scope, task prioritization, cross-functional team work, and dealing with unexpected roadblocks while faced with a deadline. All of these are greatly valued by team leads and producers alike and make for good talking points in interviews.

In more practical terms, I’d advise you to get to know at least one game engine. I’d recommend Unity 3D, simply because it’s free and easy to learn. Personally, I hardly ever used this specific engine in my professional life, but I found that knowing one engine makes it easier to pick up another one. The same is true for programming languages. The syntax takes some getting used to, but usually the principles are the same.

For this reason, don’t let yourself be discouraged if the job postings out there don’t match your skill set exactly. If you check half of the requirements, you’re good. If more, you’re probably already ahead of the competition. You’ll have to do a lot of learning on the job anyway, simply because projects come and go and requirements change all the time.

Thanks for taking your time Johanna!

Johanna’s Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johanna-ploog
King Website: https://king.com/
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup: https://crawl.develz.org/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
May 15, 2019
WWW FEATURE KING SPECIAL: MIRIAM KASTELEINER
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. Over the next weeks we will introduce five sHeroes from leading mobile game studio King. Starting with Associate Producer, Miriam Kasteleiner. Read more about Miriam in this interview:

Hey Miriam! You are an Associate Producer at King. Can you give us a little insight on what you do?

I’m currently leading a feature team in Candy Crush Jelly. It’s up to me to provide my team with all necessary information and resources, help them plan their current tasks or next project, collect their combined expertise and evaluations, and guide them in decision-making. I also take care of communication with everyone from outside of the team so I can prioritize requests and mute unnecessary noise. Apart from being responsible for the successful delivery of features, I am part of the leadership team that plans Jelly’s roadmap and maintains the game vision.

What do you personally think is the most important thing in order to establish a well-working team?

At King, we have a strong team culture that values individual responsibility over authoritative leadership. It’s important for me not to micromanage people in my team, but to trust them to take care of their self-assigned tasks and to let me know in case issues arise or estimations were not correct and we need to change the scope of a project or move a deadline to the next release. That only works, however, if people are mature enough to take on the responsibility that is given to them and to always keep each other in the loop about the process of a project. As the lead, I try to make sure that everyone can voice their opinion without being interrupted or discriminated against, no matter if they are loud or shy. It’s my job as a producer to know how the people in my team think or act and to take that into account when working with them. In addition to that, I believe in giving people candid feedback on their work performance so there won’t be any surprises in the end of the year talks and people have a chance to think about and act on possible improvements.

What kind of advice would you give to someone who is about to start their career in the games industry?

From my personal experience, I can only give advice to those who want to go into production (as producers, product owners or product managers): Be proactive and don’t be afraid to pursue your career, especially if you are a newcomer who has experience in a different field. Build up a supportive network around you that will share information, provide feedback and sanity-check your capabilities. Learn to trust your knowledge, experience and gut feeling. It’s essential that you develop resilience: Particularly women and non-binary people need to learn how to stop second-guessing their opinions and decisions when entering an industry that has largely been shaped and populated by men and a male way of thinking. During your job search, you will encounter minor and sometimes major setbacks: Don’t allow them to discourage you but pick yourself up again and keep pushing forward. If you find it difficult to show this can-do attitude that will help you get across obstacles, a job in production may not be what you’re looking for after all, as it’s an integral part of this craft to pull all available resources to find the solution to a problem.

Thank you for your insights Miriam!

Miriam’s Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/galbrush
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriam-kasteleiner
King Website: https://king.com/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
May 8, 2019
WWW FEATURE: MAREIKE OTTRAND
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we had a chat with Mareike Ottrand, who’s Co-Founder and Art Director at Studio Fizbin as well as professor at HAW Hamburg. Read more about Mareike in this interview:

Hey Mareike! You are the co-founder and Art Director of Studio Fizbin as well as a professor for interactive illustrations and games at the HAW Hamburg. Before founding your own company you worked as a illustrator and animator for several projects, what made you branch out into the games industry?

I’m not going to pretend I always knew where I was heading in my career and that working in the video games industry was the only option for me.

I dived into video games fairly early, Mario Paint was my first „game“ and I loved that this piece of software made me a creator. That was the thing I always knew: I want to create things, characters, stories, pretend every-day-things were alive and give them a soul. Mario, Link and Megaman stayed close to me until I reached the age I was more interested in real humans and I didn’t play games for a long time. Later I studied media production, and it was there where I met my brother-in-crime Sebastian Mittag. We, basically, decided we want to work together and that led us both into being game developers, because it was the most interesting medium for us. Together with Alex Pieper aka. Pepe we founded Studio Fizbin. Some time later I found my way into teaching which I am doing as a professor since a couple of years.

As a professor you have a lot of contact with young game developers. What kind of advice do you usually give to aspiring developers who just started out?

Start small. I meet so many students who want to work on shiny AAA-projects straight away. I think it’s very important to start by working in small teams to learn how games are build up, and how everything is connected. It’s like Jenga, if somebody moves one piece  – no matter if that person is a director, producer, artist, coder or sound-designer – it affects all the other pieces and at worst the thing is collapsing 🙂 You learn so much in smaller teams, you have better insights, stay closer to other departments, can try different roles and finish more projects.

Being both the co-founder of a game studio as well as being a professor has to be a lot of work. How do you handle managing those two, is there anything you have learned from the other?

At Studio Fizbin I am passive at the moment, sadly, I miss it much. But the studio is doing very fine and has grown a lot. But: Right now I’m not doing any of the two jobs, because I got a baby and I’m still in parental leave and enjoying this deeply. I will get back to work soon and in the future I am facing the challenge of handling a couple of things: Being a parent, being a professor and doing little own projects. So ask me in a year again 😉

Thank you for your time Mareike, we wish you all the best!

Mareike’s Links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mar_ott
Mareike’s Website: http://ottrand.com/
Studio Fizbin Website: http://www.studio-fizbin.de/

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke

Womenize Wednesday Weekly, WOMENIZE!
May 1, 2019
WWW FEATURE: SHANAZ BYRNE
Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to freelance 3D Artist and Illustrator Shanaz Byrne. Read more about Shanaz’ work in this interview:

Hi Shanaz! After working as a 3D Artist for Klang you are now freelancing for Shedworks as well as working on some other projects. Having worked both as a freelancer and in a company, what are the pros and cons of each for you?

There are many pros and cons for each – the biggest pro for freelance is being in control of my time and work hours. I also enjoy being able to jump between several different projects, it keeps any monotony in life at bay! This sort of spontaneity and freedom in my workflow really fires my creative process. With that said the biggest pro of being with a company was the security of a full time job and being able to learn how a larger studio operates – you are much more invested in the project and culture of a workplace when employed. I learnt a lot of new skills whilst with Klang, and got to work in other areas of game development which helped expand my 3D and artistic skills.

Often the problem with freelance is not having a consistent income – unless you are prepared for a bad month, or spate of bad months with no work, then it can be very difficult to sustain this way of working. This can also have a really bad impact on your mental and emotional wellbeing which in effect can harm your creativity. When I made the decision to return to freelance, I had to make sure I was in a position to sustain myself before jumping straight into it – thankfully so far I’ve had the opportunity to work on some great projects, as well as make time for my own work, which was difficult to balance with the 9-5 lifestyle at Klang.

I think the pros and cons will totally differ depending on the person and their situation. Although I value the learning experience from working with a company, the freedom that comes from freelancing is really good for my creativity, and I feel happiest being able to work on different exciting and new projects. But to sum it up, as long as I believe in the work and enjoy what I’m making I don’t have a stronger preference for either!

When it comes to your work as an 3D artist you are known for a very soft Low poly Art Style that usually revolves around nature and sci-fi. What are the main sources of inspiration to you?

I am very in love with fantasy and sci-fi, but my inspiration for these themes often come from totally unrelated sources. I want to avoid cliches so I try not to reference anything obvious – I delve into things that aren’t related to games or fantasy to encourage new ideas.

I love anything experimental. Experimental fashion, story telling, music, graphic design – if it’s experimental I’m curious to know about it! I train in olympic weightlifting too, and I’m very inspired by strong women, and how such technical movements can be carried out so elegantly (I think this type of inspiration especially comes out in my machinery and female protagonist!) I also like to surround myself around a diverse range of people, with different interests and backgrounds – I’m often learning so much from them and being introduced to new endeavours which light fire for new ideas. Having an open mind, being curious and exploring different ideas always lead me to creating work that I am the happiest with!

What advice would you give to your younger self after just starting out in the games industry?

Be more confident!!! Treasure your mistakes, as you will learn the most from those. Your progress isn’t linear – there will be bumps, but as long as you believe in what you’re making, and love the work you do, you will eventually get to where you want to be.

Thank you for your time Shanaz, we appreciate it!

Shanaz’ Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/shanazbyrne
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nazbyrne/
Shanaz’ Website: http://nazbyrne.com

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke