Understanding exactly what goes on in a mobile gaming studio and who does what can be a bit intimidating for those new to the industry. So when our latest work experience student, Malaika joined us for 2 weeks, we gave her free rein to interview a range of Hutchies across different departments and ask them whatever she wanted! And we’ll be sharing the interviews to help others exploring career options in the games industry. First up, it’s over to Malaika for a whistlestop tour of the Creative Services team!

Meet Malaika…

My name is Malaika and I’m an A-Level student currently studying English Literature, Graphic Design and Psychology. During my work experience at the Hutch London office, I had my eyes opened up to a diverse selection of career pathways within the games industry. I primarily shadowed and completed tasks from two departments that unexpectedly overlapped with my current studies: Creative Services and User Interface Art. 

With this, I would like to share my understanding of the various job roles I was exposed to with other students – using responses from actual Hutch employees – in hopes that, like me, you will be able to recognise how you can use your discipline to approach a job in the gaming industry that you may not have otherwise considered.

The Creative Services Team

When you think of an art team in the games industry, it’s most likely you think of the artists who work on concept art and 3D models. However, this is not actually the job description of Hutch’s Creative Services team... In short, the Creative Services team design and produce marketing materials for the UA (user acquisition) department to run campaigns for their projects to attract, engage and retain new players. The team tailor their work specifically to get players excited and anticipate their interaction with the game’s world, but to do this, a lot of research needs to have taken place first. 

Sitting in the Creative Services section of the office meant that I got to be exposed to some of the software they use to effectively carry out their tasks. When I joined their stand-up meetings in the morning, they would typically refer back to a chart which illustrated their monthly workload. I discovered that they use a shared board on a platform called ‘Miro’ as a medium for visual communication to collaborate and assign tasks. 

Through using Miro, they’re able to see each other’s schedules, links to each task ticket and how long each task was estimated to take all in one place, as well as brainstorm ideas and create storyboards. By using Miro as a tool for efficiency and communication, the Creative Services team can manage multiple projects and tasks simultaneously (despite the team being split across London and Dundee!). Typically when assigning tasks, the Creative Services team tend to work in pairs with one artist leading and the other supporting and learning: together, they share knowledge and are able to learn from one another as they create a shared piece. I asked one of the team’s senior artists, Anand, how this works and more questions about other areas of this job role.

The Interview

(with Anand, Senior Artist in Creative Services)

What sort of software and/or materials does your team use to effectively carry out tasks?

We’re all Adobe Creative Suite ninjas, it’s our bread and butter — helping us shape our trailers, digital ads, static artwork and storyboards. However, we’ve been known to get up to all sorts of pixel-wizardry mischief in other software like Blender and Maya. Outside of maker tools, we use Unity Engine to capture gameplay and assets from our live titles, and even some non-live titles ;) To make it all work we also utilise Jira, Miro and Confluence - but mostly because our producer and manager tell us to :P (for legal purposes, this is a joke)

Do you often find yourself collaborating with other departments?

Constantly! It’s close to impossible to function and achieve our prerogative as a Creative Services team without constantly working across most of the studio. Producers, dev artists, accountants, legal counsel, engineers, licensing managers, performance marketers — these are just some of the types of folks we talk to regularly.

What kind of content do you like working on the most?

For me, it’s about the journey and not always the destination. I love diving into the deep end on some technically-challenging video creatives that involve lots of Unity shenanigans, especially if I’m working with my peers. I always look back at my favourite projects and there is an extra layer of pride there because we achieved something as a team that we hadn’t done before, or employed a special mix of specific techniques, and it’s not something everyone can see looking at our work at face value.

I understand that people in your team have different skill sets. Does this strengthen your growth as a team because you can learn from each other?

Indubitably! We have a really unique make-up of people from very diverse backgrounds, all makers from heart - both from within and outside of the games industry. There is a lot of cross-pollination, holding a lot of experience and knowledge which constantly informs our ideation before a project and artistic choices whilst making content. Animation, creative computing, visual effects, game theory, fashion design, interaction design, conceptual art, illustration and game dev art are some areas that make up our history. Our team splits pretty fairly down the middle in terms of creatively and technically inclined individuals, so everyone has something of value to be learned from.

If you discover that something has not performed well, what's the next step?

Trying to understand why it may have not worked is usually the first thing, but without dissecting it or ripping it to bits. We learn what we can, see what we can reuse and move on. The mobile games industry shows us the meaning of haste, so we follow suit.

How do you wind down after work?

Fortunately I am, for the most part, creatively and artistically satisfied with my day job so I can focus on other things outside of work – putting time behind learning and mindfulness to decompress. This can be trying out new recipes, delving deeper into specialty coffee, going on walks/hikes, street photography and trips to my local independent cinema. And of course, playing the odd video game or two!

Thank you to Malaika for bringing this blog post to life and being a fantastic work placement person!

Like the sound of working at Hutch? Check our our latest vacancies here: https://www.hutch.io/careers/.

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