Career Growth for a Mobile Game Product Owner
A Brief Introduction
Working as a full time Product Owner in Vietnam is tough and having different expectations from others. Most likely someone will find themselves in the middle of nowhere because there is nothing to lead a person in this brand-new field of working. For the shortest online-reading version, I would like to share some of the points which along the way that I skeptically choose the audience from different background so that we can have the same level of understanding.
Each role in the company shall perceive a different level of ownership. To be honest, there isn’t a perfect way to describe or giving a guideline of how to demonstrate a decent level of the mobile game product ownership. Having a cross-background is a challenge for a non-technical person like myself to pick up the demand the technical position, but still, I’m doing okay for the last 5 years of working with the Dev Team.
Career crossover
There are a few switches of focus along the way of becoming a Producer Owner as today. But the common thing that I could point out and strongly feel it is the way of serving other people. My customer could be an internal or external customer, also this is the core thing that builds up the Player Centricity sense within me throughout the years. Therefore, it could be a lot of storming and norming while I’m building up my own path of entering the Mobile Game Industry.
Prior to the point of becoming a Game Designer acting Scrum Master back in 2016, I was a Digital Marketing Specialist for an SEO Agency, so the approach of finding or formulate the hypothesis in designing a core game loop is not just about the fun or “game juice”, but rather of deliver the meaning to a specific level of my audience.
Keywords (ranking from high to low priority):
- Player motivational drivers, player persona.
- Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation.
- Hurrah moment, micro-moment design.
- Core game loop, meta game feature.
- Product vision, product timeline, product design.
- Design thinking, interaction design, UI UX.
- Cost of delay, weight shortest job first.
Keys takeaway:
- Customer Centricity is not Player Centricity because of their different characteristics.
- Player Centricity is the trump card for Mobile Game Product Owners.
- Define the one-line gameplay is the MUST have for Mobile Game Product Owners.
- Everyone is the stakeholder and shareholder of the Product Owner.
- Different background shall enhance different Product Owner’s trait in the future.
- Game Designer is not a Product Owner.
Level of ownership:
This is the hardest thing to describe for me to a young and new Product Owner with no prior experience in the field. It would take years to influence a person to build a lateral thinking in order to expose the ownership toward a product.
In short, eating dog food and go for extra miles are topics that relate to the Product Owner’ ownership. There shall be a time for you to stay up late until the next morning just to figure out a solution to a design problem or monitor the game status, though different dashboard before going to the studio, and there are many more. Since the product owner is there to represent the Why of the whole product design process, therefore it shall be a lot of work to apprehend the answer for the “Why this feature for my game?”
Level of responsibility:
The responsibility of a Product Owner may include some of the area that would not require a high-level expertise in a specific domain, such as Marketing, Legal & Terms, Backend & Server, etc. Mobile Game is a compatible product with a fast pace development so there shall be a chance for a Product Owner to be involved with those areas, and might require a cross-sharing knowledge for you to be able to work on some of the stakeholder request such as:
- Implement a new API from the internal team.
- Apply the new Consent Notice popup.
- Build an account synchronization with multiple platforms, devices.
The responsibility for those items is variable and it could require you to groom them or to coordinate to ensure the deadline is met. By receiving requests from different stakeholders, you need to know the missing piece of the request by raising some questions:
- Do you understand the request from the person?
- Can you describe the Definition of Done of the request?
- What are the acceptance criteria of the request?
- Will the deadline be met?
- How does this request shall affect other features?
Again, you shall determine what you should do in terms of creating or finding the missing piece of the stakeholder’s request. The more you interact with the request is, the more distinctive you can define your own experience. Thinking this as a pragmatic opportunity in which you are the Alchemist to leverage what you have versus what you don’t. In the end, a Product Owner’s responsibility is to determine the Why of the product for the whole team with reasonable backup, also making a data-driven decision.
Level of accountability:
The accountability of the Product Owner could be defined as your scope of work within the company. This is the daily basis for every Product Owner such as ensuring the game stability or frequent updates or event updates. Sometimes, your account does not mean you are responsible for that implementation such as implementing the new internal SDK version of the game: you know the deadline and whom to contact with, but you don’t have the responsibility to ensure the quality of the SDK because that would be from the Technical Product Owner of the SDK team.
Researched and references:
- The Game Production Handbook 2nd Edition by Heather Chandler
- Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
- Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
- The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Third Edition 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
- Freemium Economics: Leveraging Analytics and User Segmentation to Drive Revenue (The Savvy Manager’s Guides) 1st Edition by Eric Benjamin Seufer
