Did you know that the number of gamers worldwide is projected to reach 3.3 billion by 2027? As a result, a lot has changed within the gaming industry! This has created unprecedented transformations for the industry, specifically for those in the post-game development cycle. The industry is in a constant state of change comprising of gaming habits, consumer trends and the integration of artificial intelligence which are all creating seismic shifts within three key functions: Quality Assurance, Localization and Player Community and Support. To gain insights into these developments, we interviewed three key personas in the post-game development cycle.

Interview with Evgeny Kolev, Quality Assurance (QA) Manager at SEGA Sofia

In this exclusive interview, Evgeny shares his unique insights into the evolving landscape of quality assurance practices. This interview provides first-hand insights into how those in Quality Assurance are not just adapting to change but staying ahead of the curve to build their voice, bring back actionable change and include their contributions throughout the game development journey. Let’s take a sneak peek into the interview:

In terms of looking to future opportunities, this could be hypothetical or happening now, what use cases are there for AI?

“I would say the top priority is to remove all the repetitive work we do in QA. There are a lot of daily tests which we run over and over, such as sanity or unit tests or Build Verification tests which can be handled by AI. I think it should also be able to perform test plans which require testing thousands of identical features and citems. This is key when for instance, there’s 1000 identical items that need to be tested, but you won’t actually be able to test them all, you will probably test 10 of them. If all of those work, we can assume that theoretically 990 others should also work, but we can never be 100% sure. This is where AI can help us verifying all of the 1000 items for a 100% guarantee. By removing that repetitive work, I think it will create more time for QA to get much deeper and actually perform the creative part of our work, such as how can we break the game in unexpected and interesting ways. So, that can be one of the scenarios, but another is just being able to help us optimise the tests we already have and help us save time, and I think AI can help us show more correct routes and approaches of testing something we have not thought of before.”

Find the full interview here

Interview with Jana Csanyi, Community Management Lead, Pixel Federation

In this interview, Jana shares her unique insights into the evolving landscape player community and support practices. This interview provides first-hand insights into how those in Player Community and Support are not just adapting to change but staying ahead of the curve to build their voice, create actionable change and ultimately enhance every player’s gaming experience. Let’s take a sneak peek into the interview:

We know that in the last year, the industry has faced unprecedented transformations. In your opinion, what major trends have you observed in player community and support over the last year? And how have these trends impacted the way support management is approached?

“Over the past year, multiple trends have converged in the player community and support landscape. One significant trend is increasing the amount for quickly excessive, personalised and immediate customer support players expect timely assistance tailored to their specific needs and issues. The shift towards a more individualised approach has prompted the game developers to invest in tools and technologies for better tracking and addressing player inquiries and concern with a huge influence of AI. Of course, game developers are recognising the importance of fostering a strong relationship with their player base by actively listening to their feedback and engaging with them. But this trend has led to the rise of dedicated community management teams and the implementation of various feedback channels such as social media platforms and various in game feedback forms.”

Download the full interview here

Interview with Katerina Florinskaya, Head of Localization, Strikerz

In this interview, Katerina shares her unique insights into the evolving landscape of localization practices. This interview provides first-hand insights into how those in Localization are not just adapting to change but staying ahead of the curve. Let’s take a sneak peek into the interview:

In terms of the future of localization, what trends do you think will develop over the next year?

"I suppose we’ll finally get some major results of AI development. So far, the AI integrations were rather on their trial stage or were not fully implemented into regular pipelines. I also think that we’ll see some major improvements in AI, and we might see how the market is divided into two parts: a lower, cheaper segment with AI translations and recordings, and a top-grade tier with real translators and editors, and real actors of voice-over. As this “easy and cheap” segment arises, we will see more games with voice-over, that would be just too expensive before and it won’t put us out of our work. Instead, they will add more editing tasks and more jobs in text and writing design. I also see the overall interest to go to the previously ignored regions, or languages that were too expensive or hard to work on before. Hopefully, we’ll see more games translated into Arabic, Thai, and Vietnamese, and with overall localization processes becoming easier, it will be easier to support more languages in one project, which hopefully will bring us more dialect versions into our games."

Download the full interview here.