Live Ops

In the second quarter of 2019, I moved to the Live Operations department at Nutaku Publishing, where my responsibilities remained relatively similar to those I had on the publishing side, but with a few important differences. Instead of evaluating prototypes and helping developers prepare their games for release, I was now working with products that were already live, had an established player base, and were generating actual performance data. This changed the way we approached game design because our decisions were no longer based primarily on projections and assumptions, but on how players were interacting with the games and how those products were performing. We had to understand what was working, identify areas that needed improvement, and find solutions that could positively influence the games' performance without disrupting the existing experience.

Each month, I was responsible for overseeing a portfolio of approximately five to seven different games, which meant constantly switching between products with different gameplay mechanics, economies, progression systems, and monetization strategies. My work involved monitoring their performance, participating in design decisions, reviewing existing systems, and proposing new ideas that could improve the player experience and the overall results. Sometimes this meant identifying opportunities to improve an existing mechanic, while other times it involved considering new features or changes to the game's economy and monetization. Working with several products simultaneously was an interesting challenge because each game had its own audience, problems, and opportunities, and an approach that worked well for one product wouldn't necessarily produce the same results for another.

One particularly important aspect of this role was that our performance as Game Designers was directly evaluated based on the evolution of the KPIs of the games we were responsible for. It wasn't enough to come up with interesting ideas or produce good design documentation. What mattered was whether the changes we proposed helped improve the games' performance and whether those improvements could be sustained over time. This created a much stronger connection between our design decisions and their actual business impact. We had to pay close attention to how the different systems influenced player behavior, understand why certain metrics were improving or declining, and continuously look for opportunities to keep the products moving in a positive direction.

Another major difference was the pace at which we had to work. Unlike games that were still in development, live products couldn't always afford lengthy design iterations or extensive changes that would take months to implement. When a game was underperforming, we needed to understand the problem and identify practical solutions relatively quickly. At the same time, we had to consider the potential consequences of modifying systems that players were already familiar with, particularly when those systems influenced progression, rewards, or monetization. This made the work both challenging and rewarding, as we were constantly balancing the need for improvements with the realities of maintaining products that were already available to players.

Looking back, my time in Live Ops gave me a different perspective on game design. Until then, I had spent much of my career creating systems, developing mechanics, and evaluating the potential of games that had yet to be released. Now, I was responsible for helping existing products perform better, using actual results to guide decisions and measuring the impact of our work over time. Managing several games simultaneously also helped me become more comfortable with prioritization, identifying opportunities, and adapting my approach to different products. It was an experience that brought me closer to the business side of game development and made me appreciate how much work goes into keeping a game successful long after its initial release.