As Mobidictum, we held our first Career in Games event! In our event, we hosted precious names and discussed many issues related to the industry. In another panel at our event, Erkan Bayol from Metaverse Game Studios, İbrahim Yıldırım from Gathering Tree, and Can Oral from Cultic Games discussed the PC game industry.
The game industry is growing, and this brings some questions. While game companies have difficulty finding a talented workforce, hyper-casual developer teams may want to shift to the PC side. On the other hand, due to its global structure, many game companies operate internationally and employ people from many nationalities and cultures. Our valuable panelists share their views on all these issues.
Does remote work help game studios find a qualified workforce?
With the pandemic, remote working has become a good and standard solution. In the digital world, people can develop their products without being in the same environment. This is also the case for games, which have become the leading title of the entertainment industry. Game developers can now work from home on games that need to go through many stages before reaching the end-user. This leads to the disappearance of physical boundaries. With remote working, companies can more easily reach talents from different parts of the world.
So, can the problem of finding a talented workforce of game companies be solved thanks to the remote working method? Is remote work culture an advantage for employees? On the subject, Can Oral from Cultic Games says:
“With our business system, we were using the remote working model before COVID-19. In particular, I had already worked remotely with people in the art design field. This system is not new to the game industry. Previously, people used to come together on various online platforms and start working in this way.”
When it comes to digital games, it is obvious that people far from each other work together by communicating somehow. Can Oral considers this communication network as almost as old as the internet itself.
Another panelist, İbrahim Yıldırım from Gathering Tree, adds the following:
“As Can Oral said, we used to work with people remotely. Some things that already exist have become very normal with the pandemic. Although the epidemic’s impact has decreased, some of our team is working from home. Remote work is normalizing, but risks need to be well managed.”
Companies can use several helpful business management platforms for risk and business management. Stating that with remote working, job control can be done from such platforms, Yıldırım says that the problems that come with remote working can be solved by this way, and adds:
“The aura of the whiteboard is different, of course. But I think remote work will be the ‘new normal.’ On the other hand, it is also important to come together from time to time, brainstorm face-to-face, and keep human relations warm. I believe that successful games are created through empathy, communication, and fine details.”
Erkan Bayol says that the remote working model solves many problems for companies that work with people from multiple cultures. On the other hand, he describes the unique difficulties of this model as follows:
“Our team has always been international from day one. We have been using the remote working model since our early days. Although we have created a professional environment, I can say that our office is Discord. It also has difficulties such as time differences. For example, it is necessary to synchronize friends in America with those in Turkey. It can be a problem when teammates who need to work together often are in different time zones, but these problems are solved somehow.”
In conclusion, we can say that game studios, regardless of whether they are relatively small or large, have somehow adapted to working remotely. The fact that the digital world is not tied to land borders does not always require being in the same place while working in the digital world. As can be understood, game companies have already been using the remote working model for a long time.
Working remotely can also be an advantage for game industry employees who are fluent in English, the primary language of the gaming world. They have the chance to find a job wherever they want, regardless of the country they are in. Today, many game companies are already operating with a remote working system. On the other hand, it should be said that the competition for employees has increased. The competition will also be fierce as people from all over the world have this advantage.
Switching from hyper-casual to PC games
Since the hyper-casual genre is relatively easier to develop than PC games, developers may want to start with hyper-casual and move on to the PC platform. So, is it possible to switch from hyper-casual to PC games? What difficulties are there?
Hyper-casual games have the potential to generate high income in a short time. Some developers want to make money using this potential and develop pc games. There are some important points to consider here. Hyper-casual games can generate revenue in a short time, but competition in this genre is also fierce. There are hyper-casual games that earn a lot of money by reaching their goals. Also, there are many games too that disappear among others.
Regarding the subject, Erkan Bayol states that some hyper-casual developers want to develop pc games after they have enough money, and they ask questions about it. He also underlines that money is not the only problem that needs to be solved to develop the PC game.
Can Oral makes the following comments on the subject:
“Hypothetically, it is possible. Statistically speaking, there are very few successful examples. Hyper-casual and other game sectors in Turkey, Europe, and America are quite different. Therefore, this transition seems to be statistically quite difficult. Of course, there may be some who succeed, albeit very few.”
Adding that it is statistically tough for teams that have developed hyper-casual games but could not achieve the desired success in the PC game industry, Oral continues:
“How can a team that could not hold on even in hyper-casual, for example, in a production of about five months, hold on in a three-year production with this loss of morale? This doesn’t seem very likely to me. If the team has been successful in hyper-casual, a cycle will begin this time. The team that succeeds with their first game will receive new incentives and investments and will be asked to make another game. In this case, money can be sweet to the teams. As this process progresses, you see that the years have passed. So it doesn’t seem likely for successful hyper-casual developers too. It’s not impossible, of course, but that’s the general picture based on observations.”
Competition between gaming companies can be cited as one of the reasons why there are many new job opportunities for those working in the game industry. Game companies that want to get a more significant share from the growing market tend to expand their activities by acquiring new talents. This can be a productive environment for a game industry employee, but you can feel tiny when you enter among these companies as an indie developer.
İbrahim Yıldırım makes the following additions:
“Many of the giant companies in the industry are on the PC and console side. It seems like indie teams can’t monetize mobile games. On mobile, it’s tough to gain visibility if you don’t have a seven-digit advertising budget. Huge corporations may crush you.”
Yıldırım underlines that pc game developers need to work hard. There are many differences between PC games and mobile games in terms of technique, design, and business plan. It is not easy for developers who have spent many years in the PC or mobile industry to adapt to these differences. From this point of view, it seems like a better option for new game developers to choose the platform they want to work on in the first place and specialize there.
