Cluster Structure: Succeeding at Production With a Wide Portfolio

[Music] thank you hello and welcome I've been a huge follower of GDC over YouTube for two years yet I'm finally here to make a contribution myself as well I hope you find it interesting in this session we're going to discuss why team Size Matters in game development and I plan on sharing real life examples with you from voloxia which I believe you will find very useful since the mobile gaming went through the roof recently the competition is now quite Fierce and We Believe In Darwin's theory which applies here too it is not the strongest of the developers that survives nor the most intelligent it is the one most adaptable to change of course I'm sure many of you must have heard of pieces to pizza roll a principle implemented for the early days of Amazon so the rule is basically a guideline to

determine how many people should work on the same problem or product in our case um according to the rule every team should be small enough to be fed by two large pizzas if you're my teammates though this might result in a team of one person but never mind um turns out this helps with people feeling way more engaged and spreading higher responsibility across the team leads to a much higher sense of autonomy learning from one of the top business people in the world the cluster structure is a modified implementation of this rule in fact well supported with additional self-determination of course so the structure basically encourages executors meaning the teammates to make decisions by themselves and for themselves this induces decision making faster among the team by enabling people of people who own the products and decide on the destiny of the product by themselves

also a small team for every product leads to a much higher ownership as well the station will probably be very interesting for any professional and gaming industry who has the same production and project management especially the ones struggling with efficiency and productivity while scaling the product portfolio and expanding their teams perhaps so um today I would like to begin by providing you with a quick background information about myself and deluxia um then we're gonna have a brief look at the Enterprise architecture models in general to make sure that all of us can Benchmark cluster structure properly against the other options available afterwards we're going to dive into the cluster structure perhaps discuss its ups and downs and having a system like that um later we will talk about how to implement such a structure and finally we'll take a look at how this model impact it looks yeah all over since the integration of it

foreign I'm a management engineer by education coming from a very multi-disciplinary and project-oriented background during college Years I did many internships and extracurricular activities which later on allowed me to experience different areas such as management consulting strategy and perhaps investment Finance also during my exchange here in Sweden I was very interested in behavioral economics and psychological design gaming was particularly interesting to me even before veloxia and as the industry as a whole is highly data oriented and has Endless Possibilities to apply my experiences and versatile skills as you can imagine I'm mostly involved in any process that isn't directly related to programming however I spent most of my time working with an incredibly talented team of game designers product people and marketing professions on a daily basis

okay veloxia is a mobile Gaming Technologies company based in Istanbul Turkey we make games in shorts but our intense engineering culture helps us generate competitive advantage in certain fields and we are really serious about being experience oriented and we praised data driven design our journey started back in 2019 and currently right with our second year in the industry we have just closed the fundraising ground and became a VC back company total Equity brace being 4 million dollars so far we look forward to Growing further and our International Teams so I highly encourage you to check out the opportunities at job.philoxia.com by the way relaxing is a female co-founded highly diverse and we take the inclusivity in design very seriously um our teams are spread across three different continents and as of today we

consist of three clusters and one cluster independent team let me talk to you about our first product a little bit for starters as the genre made the perfect fits with our modeling and behavioral design experience Biloxi started by delivering mobile games in strategy and simulation genres space Colony Idol is the first game we developed and launched and it has over a million downloads the team has always remained on five people and we have just started further scaling the product by expanding our marketing activities with the know-how created over the last two years we are now working on two new idle games to utilize our idle Noha further and scale our product portfolio as well so here comes the exciting sneak peek our latest cluster our largest cluster is working on a mobile product it has very easy to adopt cormic core game mechanics uh but we aim for gameplay that is easy to learn but uh very difficult to master in fact

um so the art direction is quite stylized I would say but one can also perhaps call it semi-realistic fantasy um here you see you can see a few examples of our characters and Unique Mechanics I would say the game is positioned somewhere between Brawlers and mobas in the complexity spectrum and we plan on enriching the gameplay via extensive and unique social features last but not least our experimental idea cluster is working on unique action and puzzle games the possibilities Within These genres are truly endless and this cluster is freely exploring around reaching further to find possibilities and opportunities with the constraints of mobile finding inspiration from simplifying complex mechanics is the heart and soul of this clusters processes here are some of the games we have developed I would say with uh without a pro without a proper integration of the cluster structure it would have never been possible to have a clear cluster work

structure like this that has teammates from Istanbul and New York let's talk a little bit about the Enterprise architecture I'd like to provide you a basis to be able to Benchmark the cluster structure more accurately so the textbook definition for an Enterprise architecture is a discipline that is concerned with the structures and behaviors of a business especially the roles and processes traditional organizations typically follow one of the four structures either functional divisional metrics or flats however with the rise of the digital Marketplace decentralized team-based organizational models are disrupting old and conventional ones as well so it's not only the economies that's you towards decentralization but this societal mindset is also shifting towards there and nowadays people are starting to find decentralized structures way more intuitive can you imagine how much the pandemic

must have contributed to this change so when we look at the sub elements of uh an Enterprise architecture which come together to shape up uh the whole thing it perhaps mainly consists of jobs departments processes and communication structured in a rational manner well the guidelines defined for each of these elements help you build up the architecture for your Enterprise perhaps a typical example of displaying this is the good old organizational structure yay as a former strategy consultant I like to perceive this from a microeconomics perspective it is very essence I think this is nothing more than just applying the one of the most basic theories which is about the most efficient way of allocating resources to meet the predefined goals um that's that now we can dive into our very main topic cluster structure itself

the essence of the cluster structure is building up internal teams of designers developers and artists who can deliver games without needing any help from any other entity within the firm thereby the cluster structure the cluster itself has the biggest say on the game's destiny this especially helps to avoid top-down decision making and to produce higher quality products stemming from Collective ownership because each sub-team is focused on one different game we call them clusters and they functions are and the functions are that are needed after the game has been launched such as live Ops marketing and back-end and optimization all that are handled by a class independent team that is always available at the cluster service when needed like a group of consultants in the center of the firm um this method has been implemented by many firms in gaming industry supercell to name one perhaps the structure also

followed also allowed veloxia to meet its business targets and kpis um successfully this is the integration now that the gaming Market is getting more and more fragmented over the time this should make a very impactful lecture for many of us as the name suggests cluster independent teams work on functions that are platform and infrastructure dependent that are indifferent for separate games in separate clusters good examples here would be engineering marketing data teams which are centralized as well within the firm kind of like serving all clusters and adapt for they are continuously changing needs and requirements yes advantages oh a lot of them so here are the three main benefits of having a fragmented product portfolio one it enables delivering prototypes rapidly and frequently helping to keep up with the need of agility while

competing in the in a mobile market two expanding certain parts of the teams when products are scaling reduces the efficiency loss by having to always rush within the development pipeline three keeping a large portion of the team remain unbiased because they work on different products who also have a good grasp on the overall company Vision eventually creating a great testing group who are much less biased but they can still look from a user's perspective the centralized teams mean decentralized Innovation and creativity is Unleashed with higher autonomy this way dedicated people know a lot better what products and features to focus on without getting constantly disturbed by other products which they spend just the time a little bit of their time on also work by large teams tend to be on more recent and popular ideas pretty mainstream while small teams reach further into the past finding inspiration in more obscure prior ideas

and possibilities feel more to feel more room in zero judgment Zone where they can question the interesting and weird ideas which they can which which afterwards can turn into fantastic ones tldr too many cooks spoil the growth when there are too many voices involved in decision making Innovation goes out the door fever but laser focused inputs create better product create better outputs small teams perform much better on know-how sharing the connections are stronger since there are less and people are more open to learning as everyone is has a higher ownership on their domains um additionally different teams work on different kinds of genres and projects um developing a know-how on distinct Fields as well since our team collaboration is fully remote and online as you would guess and people are also presumably way more isolated than ever the number of online

meetings happening within a day is so much more frequent than uh compared with the office times where we had only offline meetings one way to make sure that this situation doesn't create the information pollution and inefficiency within your organization is to establish a culture of dropping of a call or leaving a meeting as soon as it's obvious that they are at they are not adding value there we go this becomes that this becomes super simple with the cluster structure because the meetings are already classified and Communications are way more clear by definition also similarity builds Unity amongst the teams as they internally focus on the same product from different aspects rather than focus on rather than different people focusing on different aspects of various products at a time lastly when blended with the right cultural attitude autonomy gives people a higher sense of ownership and allows everyone to take more end-to-end

responsibilities in all parts of the processes eventually everyone contributes to the game design more accurately as well and basically decisions are made Faster by the executors themselves of course the cluster structure is not all roses and it has some trade-offs as well for example utilizing the expertise can become a challenge during the phase of scaling when you don't have many experts on your team presumably you would end up having that person cluster independent for some time learning the application might become unavoidable um the cluster structure makes teams people that makes teams of people with similar job descriptions separate from each other by assigning them on different products compared with the other Enterprise architecture models that are available um there are some work around statistics but still it is something to be cautious about also because the output gets fragmented compared with a very commercial Enterprise architecture where people are expected to work on different products

depending on the size and urgency of the needs this might possibly feel the teammates feeling dissatisfied as projects can become Everlasting and their expertise is focused on a specific product for a longer period of time if not planned well it might become difficult to suddenly expand the team when the demand increases uh on a certain game and production is Thoroughly intensified because the production the product was originally built by a few people so until established well this model might feel a little on the assertive side and even inefficient in certain instances however when positioned and planned well and Integrations completely done this is for the greater Goods this perhaps is the only efficient way game companies can successfully grow so now you know about the cluster structure but how on Earth can you implement it

as a people scheme cluster structure highly depends on people functions of the firm hiring should prioritize who are adaptable and able to work cross-functionally and in order to maintain the self-responsible company culture training becomes significantly crucial one great example here perhaps would be Netflix because they do a great job on training everyone in the firm about how the company makes money and what behaviors will drive its success lastly talented people perform the best when they are given a proper space where they can share their conflicts and thoughts so I would say periodic evaluations are also very crucial in terms of um exchanging Reflections on performance extensively defining your pre defining uh their transparent practice here would help everyone speak up uh leaders that

requires really interview um where they have a chance to share ideas and thoughts um and perhaps this is eventually creating an open space for critics towards the leadership as well so people are set and at the right positions but how do they operate periodic meetings play a significant role in keeping the team in close touch we have three types of periodic meetings in voloxia all hands meetings where the whole team is present and everyone's updated about what other clusters are working on um departmental meetings where all artists engineers and designers gather together with their peers to share practices and exchange know-how eventually reduce duplicate learning and most recommend of all cluster meetings which happen on a daily basis thoughts and updates are shared openly and making sure everyone's on the same page about the decisions made with their cluster mates a seamless and practical CI CD pipeline

lays in the core of a systematic approach to game development eliminating redundancies as much as possible Mudah is the Japanese word for repetitive work and having to always do certain tasks which don't have a direct value at it this method ensures the muda is kept at minimum when systematic approach is applied in game development having an automated internal distribution reduces wait times for developers also provides an easier access to all testers this way we have and we even have implemented a one feature one build drill for the times when rapid QA becomes necessary having an internal rapid QA system helps identify problems and bugs much sooner so that the developers can fix them right away this way fatal failures on production are also much less likely to occur integration of artists and merging builds are foolproof processes when certain guidelines are properly followed however very time consuming when you map

the development process within the company so it becomes a responsibility for the engineers and Technical artists to build an automation system for all the repetitive processes within the firm this might go without saying but creating various communication channels to ensure people can both communicate easily and perhaps follow their daily tasks with an automatic automated pipeline is also very crucial agile project management tools can be easily combined with each cluster specifically to visualize their prerequisites and enable a more clear roadmap for projects as a whole lastly I would like to discuss a real life situation how the cluster structure impacted veloxia for starters cluster structure helped us a lot on not to get stuck in one game genre for a long time and it let us analyze the market opportunities without sharp constraints this way we were able to build teams which can operate

independently eventually driving The Foundry independent valuation much higher additionally additionally this structure let us create the collective knowledge base which further enables and inspires people and uh people's people to focus on self-development and higher collaboration the teams formed under velocity have diverse experiences and have been successfully working collaboratively uh despite different time zones cluster structure requires people to have cross-functional approach in certain parts of the workflows this way our multidisciplinary problem-solving muscles have gotten a lot stronger voloxia has successfully developed five different titles within the structure of course the solid project management methodology was crucial to achieve this as well the integration process itself is a huge challenge as the team doesn't grow suddenly yet it is more of a Process Management anyhow

um although the results are of high importance we know that the success story is focused on journey and not on the destination you might want to take a look at the links for further information thank you very much I would be very happy to get in touch with any of you so feel free to drop an email [Music]