How I got to work at King's biggest game?
And what Pokémon GO has to do with it?
As a Brazilian of relatively humble origins, moving to Sweden to work in the main title of one of the biggest game companies out there, was a major personal and professional achievement. How did it happen?
Long story in bullet points:
12 years old started making my first games in paper and RPG Maker. My computer, internet and budget were just not enough for me to play anything cool, but RPG Maker was light and brought me much fun trying my own inventions!
Explored programming during university but deep dived into 3D modelling and UI during education and first startup opportunities. Fiddled with Game Design and one of my game prototypes got purchased by a company. All before hearing of UX as a thing.
Invested on my portfolio working on any game project I could find.
When the game industry opportunities in my region were scarce I decided to teach what I knew in technical courses. All to keep doing games, but also to improve my introverted communication skills.
In alternation with teaching, across 7 years I also worked for many small game startups, but seeing very few projects actually being released to players I felt the latent need to learn about design methodologies to help me help the organisations make better product decisions.
I studied design books and passed a (fairly competitive) test for a master degree program in one of the top ranked public universities from South America.
When I thought the academical master degree would help me get a better position as university teacher, my CV along with my portfolio actually started bringing attention from LinkedIn recruiters.
At this point I did interviews for different companies, King being the most interesting both for its franchise and location - Scandinavia being both to my adventurer and nerd sides like a mythical land I most desired being able to visit.
After passing King's first interview rounds I was given a week to perform a test: evaluate Pokémon GO's onboarding and propose UX improvements to the gym system. And so I hit stop in my life and dedicated all my next days to make the best deliverable I could possibly do in between physiological needs. If it wasn't good enough I would still learn something and have a new case to show in my portfolio.
Turns out the test received amazing feedback from the UX leads and Director, and (after a few more rounds of interviews) I got the position, hurray! It's been almost 5 years since and naturally I would do things differently today, but in the hope to help any new UX designer that may be looking for a similar opportunity, I decided to share the test deliverable it here.
Prototypes are no longer available because the primitive tools I used no longer exist, but my suggestion is to focus on the process: analyse the game, look for player insights where you can, define the main problems, design and present improvements. Then go the extra mile and describe how your design could be tested in qualitative and quantitative manners.
I'm always happy to advice new designers and talk to students, so don't hesitate to reach out to me through my LinkedIn!
Cheers,
Obi-Wan Knebel
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