Video Game Creators Need PPM, Too!

Video games took modern society by storm. You can even study them and obtain a Ph.D. in the field! Games are now a part of our daily lives and they continue to gain ground. The gaming industry maintains its status of one of the biggest and fastest growing ones out there. One of the newest trends is mobile gaming. It’s hardly surprising, since everyone has a smartphone nowadays, and mobile games are extremely easy to download and install.

Company: Gameloft

Industry: Video Games

Location: All Around the World!

Product: BigPicture

Try BigPicture for free!

Gameloft is one of the largest mobile video gaming companies in the world, with more than 5,400 employees worldwide. You probably have one or two of their games installed. Minion Rush: Despicable Me Official Game, Disney Magic Kingdoms, Dungeon Hunter Champions or the Asphalt series, just to name the most popular ones. Working in an environment like this is both challenging and fun. The industry moves at a cutthroat pace, instilling a sense of urgency in delivering new features and games. Move quickly and innovate, or get swept away by the competition. According to Gameloft, good communication practices and a shared passion for gaming are the secret to their success. They’re a dedicated and driven bunch who strive to create an amazing workplace and, as a result, release the most entertaining games out there.

“Video game development is deadly serious!”

 

– says Dmytro Ryzhykh, who is a local producer of new games. We got a chance to chat with Gameloft about BigPicture and how it helped Gameloft introduce a smoother and more efficient process, which, as always, is something we strive for. So, how do big games and big pictures come together?

Jira is a project management tool used in Gameloft every single day. When the company grew to over 5,400 employees and the amount of games released picked up, the need for a more advanced PPM solution appeared.  

“We were missing this beautiful perspective, which the Big Picture plugin adds to have an overview on the project macro planning.”

One Gameloft project usually involves a team of 20+ people working in various fields – 3D artists, developers, and game designers. That’s a bunch of people! Each of the departments has its own agile board to track progress against the project goals. At some point Gameloft had to export data to spreadsheets, which didn’t allow data to be synced in real time and led to misunderstanding. The company was looking for a different, easier and more Agile solution. That’s when Gameloft’s and SoftwarePlant’s paths crossed.

According to Dmytro, BigPicture made the whole production department’s work easier by streamlining their planning and execution. Creating games, with all the different team roles and complex processes involved, is an area where a PPM solution definitely comes in handy, not only for development teams, but for whole department.

Project Managers in these types of structures are always striving to organize all processes and resources as neatly as possible. Fast-paced work environments and tight schedules mean they need to have a plan B for the plan B. Showcasing these plans to their teams and management is much easier with the addition of the BigPicture. Here at SoftwarePlant, we are proud to support the best companies with our solutions and always take pride in adding another satisfied customer to our list.