What I ACTUALLY do as a Game Dev | LiveOps PM (salary, day to day)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 2 июл 2022
- Here's an overview of what I do as a Live Ops Product Manager within Game Development! It's important to note that a role like this can look different depending on the game, team, and individual person in the role. Let me know what other types of roles within Game Dev you're interested in :)
🎓 TOPICS & TIMESTAMPS
1:31 - Responsibilities & who I work with
5:12 - 1 min TED talk about how games should make $
6:36 - What a typical day looks like
9:30 - What it takes to be a PM & salary ranges
🌺 ABOUT ME
Hi there! My name is Morgan and I'm a game developer (previously Riot Games and currently @ Amazon Games) based in LA! Some of the games I've worked on include Ruined King, Hextech Mayhem, and Convrgence. Thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoy :)
📷 SOCIAL MEDIA
⇢ instagram: @morganling
morganling...
⇢ tiktok: @themorganling_
www.tiktok.com/@themorganling...
⇢ twitter: @themorganling
/ themorganling
⇢ twitch: themorganling
/ themorganling
🕸️ PERSONAL WEBSITE
www.morgan-ling.com/
🔔 SUBSCRIBE
/ @morganling 
Игры
![TRASH or PASS! Eminem ( Houdini ) [REACTION!!!]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cB1WrZcMwMc/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi everyone! Here are timestamps in case you're only interested in certain parts or want to skip around :)
1:31 - Responsibilities & who I work with
5:12 - 1 min TED talk about how games should make $
6:36 - What a typical day looks like
9:30 - What it takes to be a PM & salary ranges
Incredibly informative, concise and came across unbiased. Great insight into what I should expect after/during uni. I look forward to future vids, cheers stay blessed 🙌
Really interesting video! I especially liked when you explained a day in the life of a PM. Not many people explain what a normal day is actually like working in the game industry. I would be really interested in a video about designer roles because I'm always hearing conflicting answers about what game designers actually do. This is an area of the industry I'm really interested in, but never know for sure if I have what it takes for the job. Just subscribed to your channel, and looking forward to your next videos whatever they may be!
Informative as always. excited to see the number of subscribers are skyrocketing!
Thanks for sharing these tips with us Morgan. They were really helpful and learned a lot from them.
Np! I'm glad you enjoyed the vid!
While 'game developer' is a broad term, I don't think most would consider what you do to be the work of a game developer (hence the comments under your video that pertain to your video titles being a little misleading). You could say that you work in 'game development', but saying you're a dev, to me, implies that you're a programmer. Might make sense for your titles to refer to your specific job, as I'd imagine a lot of software developers click through and feel a bit misled.
For me a game developer is in the part of coding or 3d modeling, animation, VFX.
Thanks for these videos! As someone who’s interested in the industry, they’re really helpful. As for people I would be interested to be brought onto your channel for a video, I think one with a game economy designer would be really cool :)
very very informative, felt like there was a lot to takeaway with so thank you so much for sharing!!
Keep the videos coming! These are very interesting topics that I enjoyed. I'm trying to get into the game industry and been applying to become a QA tester.
Thanks! Will def try to! And wishing you the best of luck!
Last thing the gaming circuit needs is another pro chi com working nobshiner & riot games is full these fun genocidal pocket lining rackeeters.
cool video, a series would be great !! (i don't even intend to ever work in the field, i just find it super interesting to learn more about AAA games from the inside)
I'm glad you enjoyed the vid! :)
Thanks again for the insight!
😊
I love this videos Morgan
thanks! :D
Hey! I'm A New Subscriber :). I love how you edit your videos and Thank you for this information.
Earned yourself a subscriber. Thanks for the insight.
Dude I love these videos! I was wandering if you know of somewhere that talks about all game development jobs that gives their descriptions tasks and responsibilities? I've been wanting to get into game development but don't know what my current skill sets would fit in. I saw your last vid and would like to make a graph like the one you showed to help me out :)
you're not a game developer quit lying to yourself xd
Yes I would love for you to bring other people on. And yes to voice actors as well. How cool!
I would be curious to hear you talk more about ethical monetization.
A lot of the times at my mobile game company we would A/B test making the user experience worse but making our company more money, for example just showing more ads. If we didn't see a drop in retention or engagement then we probably integrated that change. I remember we got to the point that we didn't really enjoy our own game. It sucked, and I want to believe that it was the wrong direction.
I would love to hear you give more thoughts on how to do it ethically and measure the results.
Ethical monetization can definitely be a complex conversation because I've noticed a lot of folks I've worked with have differing opinions on what that looks like. Ensuring that user experience is not worsened is an interesting approach, because I think it's hard to truly get a sense of the longer-term impacts from an A/B test. I often find (and this take a bit of groundwork) that setting some sort of philosophies beforehand with a team helps drive more productive conversations around monetization. Fortunately my teams were already aligned with the philosophy that monetization should tie into current gameplay rather than against it. Showing ads in a game isn't wrong imo, but when it takes away or interrupts gameplay, you'll often find that in the long run players are more likely to churn or its see as annoying to brand new players.
tbh I haven't worked on a more casual f2p mobile type of game where ads are common (players have been trained to some degree to kind of expect it in this space). When it comes to MTX specifically, a metric I love to look at is purchase regret. But often times I'm not just introducing new content and throwing it into a store - but tying content to engagement mechanisms (like seasons for examples) meaning that monetization is simply part of a larger wheel and we'll look at lots of different metrics including player sentiment, arpa, # of revivals, avg gametime, etc.
@@morganling Thanks for the reply. I'll definitely think about that next time we are laying the groundwork, and its fascinating to learn about metrics in the data, I've never heard of purchase regret. I'm definitely looking forward to future videos!
Would love to get your insight on how you use economics, statistics, and analytics in a production environment. It's all data-driven so it's probably super hard to do some kind of mock-up for a fake product but it would be awesome to get that over-the-shoulder experience.
Great video! What was your bachelor’s in? And your master’s if you did it.
Eye, this is the perfect follow-up video! Nice to see a game dev content creator out of the typical art, design, and coding wheelhouse! Thanks for sharing your journey; The PM role has slingshotted in value in this industry; it's wonderful you are shedding some more light on it!
Great video! Would you be able to make a video describing me what it is like to be to work as a Game Designer? - I’m doing a Game Design course and have been a little conflicted whether I need really good art skills to become one.
Thank you!
@@morganling thank you! ❤️
Hi, big fan of your content! I aspire to get in the game industry as game dev/designer (I'm still figuring out what I want to do 😊) . I was wondering ... there is a realistic chance to get in this industry as a self-taught?
Looking forward to more videos on different roles in gamedev! = )
Another great video! Great content and funny too! Definitely subscribing.
Make more videos like that. Those are inspiring
Do you have any videos talking about setting up your computer for game development?🤔🖥️⌨️🖲️Including processor, amount of RAM, video card, etc...
There are a lot of videos on RUclips about video game design, programming, modeling, and so on. There are not as many videos on RUclips that talks about video game marketing. I would love to see you make more videos on video game marketing. I want to hear more about all the things that you list at 9:52 including soft skills.
My personal knowledge around video game marketing is a bit limited so I'll see if I can bring someone on for that!
This a question not related to the topic of this video, but is there common to see non US developers working with you? I mean I am a developer wanting to work with game dev but where I live there is not enough opportunities, so I thought about trying to apply for some positions in the US and get a job in this field there. Anyway, nice video and keep going with the great job!!
Thanks
Thanks for the kind words! :)
In my personal experience, I haven't worked with many non-US developers. Largely bc the games I'm working on are developed in the US. At Riot I worked with people at different regional offices but those were more folks within marketing or strategy-type role so not quite game dev roles. It's definitely possible to become a game dev for a US studio but it's definitely more difficult. For US-based studios (and companies in general) It's usually more expensive and time consuming to hire someone from outside the country so that candidate usually has be above and beyond. Even for remote jobs there are legal implications to hire non-US candidates so they tend to prefer US based people. A lot of games that get popular in the US that were not released globally often need publishing partners in other countries so that they can get their games into other countries. That might be worth trying to explore!
@@morganling Thanks a lot for the answer and the idea, I will definitely be checking for some companies that might be working as partners around here!!
It may be a shitty thing to do, to ask you to justify your job, but I think it would be worthwhile to others watching this: The engineers and artists of this industry created amazing content before there were armies of administrative staff. Does every PM we add not just get us closer to the commodification of a game?
Organizational bloat both adds cost and (paradoxically) removes focus from the core value of a product- the story is the same in every industry: small company creates revolutionary product; large company creates cookie-cutter product- is gaming different somehow in that it can afford _separate_ LiveOps PMs?
what game engine you guys use over there .?? nice video
Unreal 5! And thanks!
Wow no bullshit, you're an inspiration. I've decided to learn coding because of this video. For my entire life, I've always thought of getting into game development as this herculean almost impossible task. And, If I was even able to get to that point the pay would be peanuts.
Thank you for proving me wrong. I'm currently a digital marketing specialist. I imagine that there is a role for people with that skillset (I mostly do PPC, SEM, and am experienced in SEO) in game dev or should I pivot completely into coding?
Anyways, good luck and have fun! I saw your previous video I hope that Amazon is treating you well. :)
With all the science and tech that goes into keeping players playing games and the ever increasing amount of dopamine related game mechanics being implemented... Do you think games should have warning labels that they could be habit forming? It's natural that lot of people want to do what their friends are doing or just escape life for a while. I know it's usually just up to that person or parents to set limits but some people are more prone to addiction than others. A video on the subject might be interesting.
Overall, I would be a proponent of having a label or calling out mechanics in a game that are known to be addicting (gacha mechanics for example clearly hits on that gambling nature). In general, I think our games should be more transparent (from things like the publishing the exact %s of types of content in lootboxes for ex) bc I believe healthy monetization means that players can make educated choices on their tradeoffs when spending and know the value of what they're getting. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong around building mechanics that hit on that dopamine release bc then games probably wouldn't be that fun haha. Its interesting bc I've been a part of discussions around setting limits and what the benefits vs not are.
A little too late. Im from the Nintendo generation 🙃
Interested!
Wow, totally misleading titles. PM != Game Dev
Hi there! Within the industry live ops pm (as opposed to traditional pms) are very often still considered game devs since they usually need skills in systems and monetization design, for new features we will put together GDDs (game design docs) as well as product requirements docs. For example we design the battle passes which you’ll see in a lot of games
@@morganling so by your logic a person who works in retail and designs window displays is a fashion designer. girl your entire brand is catfishing normies by promising a game dev career with no effort while wearing skimpy clothing. and you are gonna get hate from actual game devs who see right through it. not a good start in the industry imho
Do you know much about the analytics portion of game development?
Thx
Hello, Morgan
I have one question for you, I want to apply as a QA Game Tester but don't know how I can do this, can you help me please?
Do you also work with program managers? What is their role?
I don't work with program managers as much, from what I've seen its a role more common in tech and other industries (but ofc gaming does has roles with this title as well) and overall responsibilities are similar to gaming's producer role. From what I've seen a program manager role is pretty operational in nature is oversees multiple projects (so this isn't necessarily multiple products/game titles but multiple workstreams), helps their teams make sure they hit the right measures of success, conducts risk management, and makes sure that what the teams are doing aligns with the overall strategy.
I LOVE THIS VIDEO SO MUCH! PLS DO MORE MORGAN
Aww thank you!!! ❤️😍 I’ll try!!!
Great insights! Wonder if you have any on blockchain technology incorporation into "conventional" gaming/demographics. If not, any interest? Just sub'd, looking forward to more!
"Can I curse on youtube? " Someone needs to create a t-shirt of that saying
My goodness!
It's a lot of meetings!
Basically you do not spend your time working, it's more loosing your energy in talks.
Oh HELLO CAMERA QUALITY!!!
iphone 13 pro babyyyy 😎
So pretty
Thanks!
Its kinda weird cos as a gamedesigner i do almost the same list of tasks. But mine is even bigger.
Dunno how does it works, mb cos your studio is splitting tasks widely between teammates or smth.
I wonder what exactly gd's do then. GDD, configs, balance tables?
p.s. its very interesting that you highlighting onboarding in aerm. As for me this metrick already has name and it is "First time user experience", which covers all
Live Ops PMs have become pretty standard within AAA live-ops game development and any of the actual design is often only one portion of what we do (this can vary of course). I can only speak for AAA game dev but often our designers are simply better than live ops PMs when it comes to the majority of design work (like progression design, dungeon design, levels design) and bc those components can be so large we often have designers working on that specific thing! PMs do own the data, metrics, and all the business-related things (what does an acceptable churn rate look like, how many revivals are we targeting with this event, etc.) and a lot of us are pretty proficient in SQL to pull and analyze the data, some of us are well versed in basic research like A/B testing, maxdiff, conjoint analysis, and those with strong monetization or systems design background will also be pretty well versed in tools like machinations. PMs are pretty much a combo of strategy, analytics, and design in my experience and its mostly those on a live-ops team that have a design skillset. Those who work on like a single-player completable game for ex do not do design I'm pretty sure. For ex I'm only good in monetization specific design bc of my personal skillset. I'd really need to lean into my designer friends for any other component of the game. Hope that explanation helps!
so you are basically everything thats wrong with the game industry nowadays, got it
Wonderful video ❤️
Hey i really did try game dev it is very large like an ocean after 8 months of learning i made a sh*** game . I feel bad... Finally it is not easy (Ayee..🥲)
Keep uploading 🔥
Haha thank you! And yeah yo making games can be hard I feel you