Working Culture and the Recruitment Process at Spoilz

Introduction

My name is Mohammad Bagar, I'm a Marketing Specialist at Spoilz and a huge nerd when it comes to several creative aspects (game dev, art, and music). Although my skills would place me as a "wanna-be", I still believe I will be decent at these aspects one day.

I studied computer science and then specialized in programming engineering at Gezira College of Technology in Khartoum, Sudan. Due to some life circumstances, I ended up taking Meta's professional degree courses for social media marketing.

The story of how I joined Spoilz is rather simple. I used to share content on Twitter about different topics but mostly about marketing for games and one of the people who loved my content was no other than Musab Almalki, CEO of Spoilz, which around one month later offered me a Marketing Specialist position at the company. Two interviews later I got the job.

As for the team, we are a multinational team living in different places around the world. Almost all of us are Arab but we are open to everyone no matter their nationality.

Spoilz was founded in 2020, and since then we studied the market and built our development process. We aim to produce more fun games for the market and enable local developers to make hit games.

Saudi Arabia's Gaming Market

The MENA market is growing rapidly, we noticed an increase in the number of development studios and developers who are working on local content aiming to reach a global audience. As for the market, last year Saudi Arabia's gaming market hit $1 billion and it is expected to reach 6.8 billion by the year 2030.

Work Organization at Spoilz Games

There is a huge emphasis on making a solid pipeline that details all the processes from game submission to the publishing and releasing process.

One of the benefits of being a small team is our ability to always test and optimize our methods of work, try new things, learning from our mistakes but our biggest guide is and always be data. As for our teams, we have a set of software solutions we use to organize work across the company but there's always a set of specific programs each team uses.

Hiring New Specialists

We prioritize our values and culture the most, we don't look for people who are necessarily industry veterans who are on top of their game, but people who can grow with us as time goes on. As for the skills, since we are operating on a global scale from three continents, the ability to communicate effectively is a must-have. Also, creative thinking is necessary for us for obvious reasons – we want our employees to be able to think outside the box and, most importantly, to know when to think inside it as well.

Working with Beginners

We could talk about the normal welcoming process like a virtual walk around the company's channels, and the regular welcome sessions during meetings, but what's important for us is to show that mistakes are a great opportunity to learn and not something to be punished for, this, combined with proper guidance, breaks beginners' fears of trying new things out, thus creating more creative environment.

Managing Burnout

To be completely honest, we haven't been into the kind of scenario when employees were burnt out (yet, and hopefully won't get into it), but delays are always an option and nothing should top our teams' health and well-being. If crunch is a "must", then we use that experience to learn how to better set future deadlines.

Creative Freedom

We are very open to giving employees creative freedom – every member of the team can suggest and comment on most of what's going on in the company.

We value every input no matter who gives it, one of the benefits of this is that it makes everyone care about each other in the company. For example, we have a Slack channel dedicated to sharing media if anyone finds anything helpful they can share it there.

Spoilz's Approach to Education

We already have trainees with us, whether it was in game design or game development. As for our employees, we encourage everyone to learn about what they like whether it has something to do with their line of work or not, because we believe the interchange of knowledge helps build a better environment as you will always have someone who knows something about anything that comes to mind.

How COVID Influenced Spoilz

We started in the early stages of the pandemic, so we had to adapt remote working methods quickly, what once was considered a weakness now has become one of our greatest strengths.

Tips for Artists

Candidates who apply for work at our studio are evaluated based on their experience and portfolio. Having a degree in anything related to game design (game art, game design, visual development, etc.) is a plus.

In a nutshell, we are looking for:

• creativity;
• knowledge of video games;
• attention to detail;
• dedication;
• good people skills & communication.

Mohammad Bagar, Marketing Specialist at Spoilz

Interview conducted by Ana Kessler