Katya Dolgova, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Redhill Games, a game developer based in Helsinki, Finland is on the podcast this week! In a fun nod to Dolly Parton (intentional or unintentional), Katya's team just put out their first game, an FPS called Nine to Five. We talk about the startup environment vs. larger publishers, what is missing in the digital economy, and why it's fun to build a shooter game.

Episode Resources:

https://www.redhillgames.com/

https://www.ninetofive.game/

https://www.theesa.com/resource/2021-essential-facts-about-the-video-game-industry/

Welcome to the meadow woman podcast. We address the

issues, opportunities and challenges facing women in the

development of the metaverse the biggest revolution since the

internet itself. Every week we bring you conversations with top

female talent and business executives operating in the

gaming and crypto industries. Here's your host Lindsey, the

boss poss the metal woman podcast starts now.

Hello, and welcome to the metal woman podcast part of the

holodeck media Podcast Network. I'm your host, Lindsay the path

path from Charlotte to success recovering it all returning

listeners, thank you so much for supporting the show. And for all

the new listeners out there. Welcome. I hope you enjoy. One

of my favorite things about doing the show. And I mean, this

truly is talking to people from all around the world. And I've

been lucky enough to have some international guests, always

looking for more. So if there's folks you want to see, feel free

to send them my way. I'm so excited to introduce today's

guest all the way from the cozia. Cyprus. I will heartily

admit that I have not spoken with many people from Cyprus, if

at all. So I'm very excited to introduce a Katya del Cova, who

is the Chief Operating Officer and co founder of Red Hill games

to the game developer based in Helsinki, Finland, although she

hails from Cyprus redheal games release its FPS nine to five,

May of 2022. So very recently, and I'm very excited to hear

about how the process how that process went what it was like.

So Katya, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you.

Thank you, Lindsay. Happy to be here. Can you please introduce

yourself and give the audience a bit of your backstory?

Yes, just in a few words, not to bore anybody to death with my

with my life. So I'm Katya. Right now I'm co founder and

chief operating officer of retro games. And as Lindsay said, we

are working on the FPS game. For now we have one live game, which

is 95, which is available on Steam and stadia if you want to

buy it feel free. Otherwise, we decided that you want to work on

different shooting games and sell we have several r&d

projects in the work as well. But nothing is announced. So

unfortunately, we cannot share a lot of details here.

How did you wind up with a game to co founding a game

development studio that started in Finland while being in

Cyprus. I'm going to ask you about

the power of or internet I guess and online remote work. Together

with France, we decided that we want to set up our own company.

And so there are four co founders, two of our science

staffers, two of our co founders are in Finland. So from the very

beginning, we had two offices. One is in Helsinki, we just have

water that's inland and one in Cyprus. But then Cypress will

have a small operation.

Gotcha. Okay, so we're gonna start off by talking about your

role at Red Hill. And a past conversation, we talked about

how you do many of the things that aren't related to actual

game development from partnerships, illegal to

operations, marketing, game testing, user acquisition, the

wide world that is not game development. But I want to just

start right away and talk about how non software development

folks can get involved in gaming. So can you tell me what

your past experience was? How you got to founding Red Hill,

and how your you've been able to use what you previously did in

games and game development?

Well, first of all, before starting our own gaming company,

I've been working for another gaming company, so I wasn't

completely stranger to the gaming industry. Although before

that I was working in the finite financial industry and in, in

software in it. So it was somewhat related to dealing with

different developers, programmers, and so all these

creative professionals who need special attention, and so

require a lot of creative environments around them. So

from that perspective, I wouldn't say that everything I'm

dealing with is not exactly game development. So the main purpose

of activations is to enable game developers to develop the game.

So we are supporting them on the backgrounds with whatever

activities I needed, either bringing extra resources from

external providers, or working with communities or you know,

looking for for the audience to introduce the game to so we are

part of the development process as well. Although not writing

the code or creating beautiful art and not designing anything,

although of course, like everybody has ideas, what is the

best game and so how you need to make it and in turn So far

people getting into the gaming industry, I think like the main

prerequisite is, you need to love games. And then the gaming

industry is so diverse and so many different fields and

professions are needed here. So be it like finance, be legal,

Community Marketing, this intelligence, all of that is now

required in the game. So it's not only programmers, and not

only designers who are making games. So whatever you like,

Whatever you do, believing in general, it can be connected to

the games, you feel like the industry, and you want to be

part of

that makes sense. I there? I definitely feel and this leads

perfectly into the second question, because I'm going to

push back just a little bit, because I've met tons of people

who are passionate about games. And you're right, that is

definitely the first step. For sure. I've also met tons of

people who are passionate and kind of don't know where to

begin. So if you're starting from a place of passion, and

you're a non technical person, do you have any recommendations

for the best skill to learn? Or the best educational path? Or

from your point of view? Is it like, oh, the gaming industry

really, really needs more HR professionals, or the gaming

industry really, really needs more people who work on their

legal team? So go to law school, like, is there? Is there

anything you feel that there's kind of a real shortage of? Or

if you were a young person who was just really passionate about

games? Where would you start?

That's a good question. If we're looking at the shortage of some

roles, right now, I would probably mean business

intelligence, and data, data engineering. Those are in high

demand. And if you're good at statistics thing, you know,

being able to write scripts and work also, with developers to

answer ask and answer the right questions, you will be in demand

for sure. And some, another one is digital marketing as well.

Because these days, all of the companies are working with

communities, they're promoting the content to the end users.

And they are involving communities also into design and

into testing. Which means that if you know how to operate in

the digital world, and be the best representor of what your

company is doing, and what your game is about to say and bring

to the to the people, then those skills are also in high demand.

And otherwise, I would really say that, wherever you are,

whatever you learn, there is still a way to apply those

skills. It's not that of course, like every single doctor will

find themselves stuck in the gaming industry. But there are

also games, which are for the medical professionals to test

the comments and to play, and then discuss and, you know, be

blown away about that. So do not wait and see. If it is I don't

know, like finance or legal. There are always opportunities

for those two, it's probably a little harder to get into the

industry. If you already built up your career, like 30 years in

the profession, then changing the industry completely,

potentially you need to step down and go into the entry

level, if any special skills required, if not, some skills

are transferable. So if I would be looking for example, for a

financial controller is of course you read they have

understanding what gaming industries, but what is more

important that they know finance, right? And they can you

know create the Bucha cash flow and you know, afterwards they

define the logic. If they don't know how to do that than if they

weren't gamers doesn't go to hell is not going to help them.

That makes sense. Yes. If you're looking for financial,

financial, what did you say Comptroller,

Financial Controller accountant strive to be like, any rate,

which is not directly involved into the game development.

Right? Yeah. So if you're looking to get, I guess what I'm

taking from this is if you're looking to get kind of directly

involved into game development, and you're a non technical

person, then considering business intelligence and

digital media are good points. Of course, there's more. There's

other ones. Yeah,

those are in high demand for sure. Production roles, like

project management are also transferable skills. If you go

somewhere and you want to go into gaming, that's definitely

going to help you and always getting involved into the gaming

communities. Any game you like to play, there are communities

and you can start building up your involvement from from this

angle

as well. That makes sense and then otherwise special. Less

roles, or experience you may already have, you're looking to

transfer. So that makes sense. I have a lot of friends who are

trying to kind of break in and unsure where to start. So I

think that those are two very good piece of advice. I want to

shift the discussion a little bit and actually talk about what

it's been like to develop an FPS has Redhill just fully launched

in May. And that is so exciting. There's definitely a stereotype

that FPS games are developed and targeted largely towards men,

and that men are the only ones who play FPS. But we know more

and more that that's not true. I've I debated introducing some

of the facts on this show about that. But I have read facts

about shooter games several times in the past. So I will not

bore listeners. But please, if you don't know any facts about

shooter games, just go ahead and Google it really quick. I highly

recommend ESS annual report as a good quick breakdown of

demographics and games in general. We do know, however,

that many developers are men. So can you talk to me about your

development process? How you incorporated women into the

development and built a game for everyone? And was there any kind

of different approach you took in game creation? To make it

more inclusive? Or do you I guess, let me rephrase the

question. i You have mentioned previously that you worked with

a lot of of women developers on your team that there are quite a

number. Do you believe that in just having women developers on

the team, that you are inherently able to make the game

more inclusive just because it's more voices at the table? More

people working on the project? Or did you feel that you also

had to put inclusion kind of as a goal? It may be a mix of

those, but I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.

Right. So

let me take a few steps back so I can I can cover this topic in

full. So first of all, in terms of bringing female developers

into the table, we started a company already, like three male

co founders, and one female co founders. So like we brought up

diversity, agenda, diversity, you know, from the very

beginning. As well, we are all different nationalities. So we

all came from different backgrounds. And that adds also

to the diversity and inclusion attracts rescue in general, our

main inclusion and diversity comes from the National

diversity, because we are recruiting all over the world.

And in the company, right now, we have 25 different

nationalities coming from different countries. So we have

about 22 different languages we speak. And so all those

different cultural, you know, specifics, doing the Lord's to

be able to create a good game, because the game is for everyone

in the world, therefore, like perspective for every single

individual is kind of taken into account. In terms of the female

developers, and the general statistics. I unfortunately,

cannot argue that because FPS, shooting games in general, I

still predominantly play by male players, statistics, I think

that's about 30% of the players are female. Whatever, of course,

depends on which particular game, you know, the numbers

vary. In terms of our personal player, base, it's more male,

because at least at the beginning, it was pretty

hardcore. So females did try and some of them speak and some of

them decided that it's too hard, or to be, you know, too active

for them. So we had about probably 10% of our player base,

who are female. And so usually, those female players are very

vocal. So the members of the discord communities, they're

talking, they're making suggestions. They're actively

taking part in whatever tests and events you announced. So

they are usually white dude in cooperating with the developers,

male players, because it just didn't number them bigger

number. Of course, they also do that. But if you compare the

percentages, which match everybody from the female player

community who play the Alto as well, so therefore, their voice

is usually heard much more than the other genders. In terms of

the developers as such, again, you know, we are mainly male

male dominated company, again, for the obvious reasons,

although we do have senior senior developers who are

female, for example, UX designer, we had senior

animator, we have video art artist and 2d art Just as well,

for our representatives, also a different points of view, and

what we believe and all our male colleagues agree, whenever you

have a different mixture of genders in the team, that helps

you having the different perspective. Because otherwise,

it is pretty like, you know, streams and some, it's hard to

consider things from different angles, and it's having

different genders in the team kind of minimizes this issue. I

would definitely want to have more female programmers. Not

that many exist in the world, in the gaming communities. So we

have discuss, though, with the colleagues as well, how can we

change it in general, and we think that probably we need to

start really, really early at schools, explaining kids at

school, what is good about like being a programmer, and

encouraging girls to join programming profession, then we

will definitely have a bigger pool of candidates to choose

from. Because the raw studios who only have females, for

example, such studios exist. But they're not doing shooters, they

are usually doing like design games, or some fashion games or

something for the children. But of course, like there is still

an opportunity to bring them along and incorporating into our

world. So absolutely, there is a need for that. And supplements

will benefit a lot if they have females in their group.

I want to plug a different episode really quick, just

because I recently interviewed Dr. Jacqueline Thomas of Girls

Pursuing Science. And we almost exclusively talked about getting

girls into more science based professions and starting young

and all that. So I totally agree with you. When it comes to

starting them young, and I confessed her and I'll confess

to you, too, that I was also a failed science major in in

school, I had a very active interest in science and I wound

up leaving and women unfortunately leave at a much

higher rate, just something I found out much later on. But I

just didn't have the confidence as an 18 year old to stick it

out. And I wish I would have. So I completely agree with you that

starts early on, it definitely starts with education. Would you

say that being in this? I think that there's an obvious answer

to this question. So I'm not expecting anything crazy. But

I'm assuming because you're able to bring in so many different

folks in so many different nationalities that you are a

largely remote company. We're not, you're not Wow, all these

people are in our in real life. Yeah,

they're in Helsinki, and they are in Cyprus, and, in general,

we don't mind remote work. In Japan, as a concept, we started

the company office based, then we had COVID, and we'll learn

how to work remotely. And some people work remotely every now

and then. So we're not policing them, you know, being physically

in the office on a daily basis. But for the smaller company,

it's much easier to interact when you have space and life

quantum is much faster, it's more efficient, that discuss

ideas, you know, and they push a machine and then go to your

workstation and implemented straightaway. So going forward,

when we grow potentially we will be more remote than we are now.

But at the moment majority of the employees

so then how what were your recruiting practices like to get

so many people from different nationalities, especially with

being in an office? Oh, well, we

attracted them. So like feelings is a good place to leave very

family friendly, you know, good environment. So good ecology,

you know, good government doing a lot, a lot of things so for

for the population. And so also the Finnish government is pretty

good in supporting it industry and games in particular.

Therefore, it's pretty easy to attract people to validate and

start building their life or in a new country. And also some

people like when it's dark and cold, and every now and then a

little bit of stamina light now, and some other people prefer to

have, you know, cold weather and the close proximity of the sea,

and therefore we have Cyprus for that. But when you just start

the company, you're pretty much attracting people by the names

of the core team who is already there, and the attractiveness of

the work you can offer. Because of course, like developers are

not just you know, changing the life environment right you know,

a few weeks Yes, but in general, it's more important what you're

going to work for. And what game are you creating and see? If you

can, you know, picture what the game is going to be what your

role is there, what's your personal contribution? For many

people, it's attractive, and they give it a try, and they

move across the pond.

Very cool. Well, that that's unexpected, but very neat. I

want to we're gonna broaden this a little and still talk about

work environments. But we also had previous conversations about

the tech industry at large. And my own experience, which I've

shared, the most frustrating part is getting stuck at a

certain position. So I think that we've had the great

recession, and we've had people leaving their jobs. You know,

that's been, or the great resignation rather, I know,

that's been a US trend for sure. And one of the number one

reasons here for people leaving their jobs is lack of upward

mobility, you get to certain point, and that's the point

you're at, and there's there's no going beyond that. So as a

company that has gone put all this effort into recruiting

diverse talent and having them move to Finland or Cyprus, um,

how are you thinking about that next stage of providing paths

upwards so that people don't feel stuck? Actually stay where

they are getting new opportunities, constantly

learning and thinking? What's, what's your approach to that?

Well, in general,

I would say like, you know, friends, Billy's as guilty as

any other gaming companies, because of course, like, we have

so many senior positions and leading positions, as we have,

and some people leave, they have aspirations to become the next

to their most likely need to be their own company, potentially,

maybe the will, the opportunity with us

was a little different. I'll give him that one.

Right. But in general, we do have career progression plans.

And last year, we hired a dedicated person who is dealing

specifically with working with leads and with employees to make

sure they know where they want to go. Because also there are

two different paths. Some people want to become people managers.

And these are certain skills you need to learn in addition to

your personal profession, and some people want to become

experts. And then that's more technical, and they just need to

make sure that they grow professionally as much. And

there should be a good interaction in between. And

some, of course, like not every personal wish can be fulfilled

in a small company. But, of course, like we're trying that,

when we started the company, we had to hire seniors, because you

you have like 1020 people, and you expect it to create

something which comparable to AAA. So people have to wear many

hats, and therefore they have to be very productive in what they

are doing. So unfortunately, it's not usually the level of

the juniors or interns or even mid level employees. But even in

the first year, we already started the internship program.

So we brought very, very junior early in career people and

started teaching them and developing them inside. And they

grew with us. And they got promoted several times, and then

decided in the likeness path of law. So sometimes the best way

to get promotion is to leave unfortunately, and it's not

gaming industry specific. That would be any industry. In fact,

unfortunately. But of course, like for bigger companies, there

is more opportunities to have several projects in parallel.

Much, we're also considering that they're having several

projects that are being developed. So people can move

around and take different roles on different projects. And it

doesn't mean it's 100% Guaranteed. But there would be

opportunities start over time, doesn't mean that you join us

today as like senior programmer, and you will become a principal

program or lead programmer in the year, you may eat, right, or

you may become a people lead on a new project, if that's the

interest you have. And you want to develop into this into this

direction.

That makes sense. And we're talking about kind of big

studios versus small studios. I wondering if you have any

thoughts on startup versus indie publisher versus triple A

studio? So I guess so you have experienced definitely with the

startup studio, and I didn't you mentioned up previously worked

in games, we didn't dive into that too much. So I'd be happy

to learn more about what that was. But if you were on the job

market right now, is there one where you think there is more

growth opportunity? Or a better work environment in general?

Like, if you would you step back with the experience you've had

in the games industry, which of those is kind of the most

attractive and why.

And this point in time, I would say, I would probably go again,

to a startup or maybe, you know, to similar dark top myself with

some friends, because obviously, I don't have all the skills and

I would need complementary skills. The main reason for that

is, when you work in a smaller environment, first of all, we

have more responsibilities, if you're interested in that, you

can do more things. And it's good and bad in wearing

different hats. But, you know, never in the past, I was, you

know, doing user acquisition or marketing, right. And now I have

this opportunity to learn that also for myself, if I would have

been working in a big company like before, it would most

likely be in one discipline, you can, of course, make an

initiative and do something like just in disciplines, but most

likely, it still will be, you know, directed, quite handily,

within the p&l, corporate rules. So from their perspective, for

me personally, working in a smaller team, makes you more in

control gives you more responsibilities, more

opportunities. And also you can try different things. So right

now, for me, that would be the choice.

This is a distinction I hadn't thought about before, because I

am definitely a person who likes to have several projects going

at once. And so it's interesting to hear, you know, the larger

you go, the more kind of single singular your focus becomes. I

think that's a really astute observation. And especially as

someone who doesn't prefer to have a singular area of

expertise, that's something that I'll definitely carry forward.

I've definitely gotten pigeon holed, I guess is the word in

the past. And it's a little bit harder to be creative, when

you're only looking at one one area. So I, that's a great piece

of wisdom for folks out there. And that being said, there's

plenty of people out there who have one area of expertise that

they love, they're super passionate about and can spend

40 hours a week on, and maybe that it's worth going to a

bigger, bigger place where you just have the one thing that you

do and you love it. Well,

those roles also available in smaller companies and like, like

powers, and if you like to be an animator and you only like to

animate hands, you will still have a chance to do that. And

you can do it all your life. Right. But if you want to do

more, then of course, in the small environment, you will have

more opportunity to try new things, sometimes out of

necessity that the company can get, you know, as many people,

but that could be an issue a choice, if you want to do that.

And you should just be your manager to your to your lead

like let me try. Most likely they will agree.

Where did this hand Development Development example coming?

Because that feels very specific.

Well, you know, we have to rating the first person shooter,

right.

Hands were really hard to animate. That's funny. Um, can

we talk a little bit and again, we talked about this when we met

up before the difference in approach to the Western and

American environment versus where you are when it comes to

the Nordics and, and Europe in general. What are kind of the

differences you see in game development companies?

similarities? Yep, just comparison would love to get

your thoughts? Right. Um, well,

first of all, I don't have my personal hands on experience

with American game developers. Game Development per se. Of

course, I know plenty of people who are working in different

gaming companies than my previous company. We have

offices in the States as well. But so my main knowledge comes

from the discussions that are from what we read the in booths

and social media. And first of all, I would like to say that

American gaming industry seems to be like more developed,

developed and have a greater history than European one if not

more specific, but, like gaming started, not in Europe, and

therefore, like, the most experienced professionals are

coming from the US. And some most of the educational programs

are also developed in the US. And we are looking up at them

all the time. And all the all the great games we work we

played when we were children, in most of the cases are coming

from the US as well. So we'll learn from them. Otherwise,

European and specifically more the gaming industry, they are

much more focused on like work life balance, and that people

have like good environment, or not all working. And it's, you

know, having a good time while working. And you hear a lot

that, you know, in the States, there are lots of branches and

branch and branch. And afterwards, people, you know,

just want to leave and have a little bit of life, or sometimes

they have to jump into the new project as well. So in Europe,

it's much more regulated towards the employees, again, not

specifically gaming industry, but in general labor law is

dictating that. So we're our employees have very different

experience from that perspective. I'm not saying we

never have branches we do, of course, if there is a deadline,

which needs to demand, would you ask our people to put extra

effort, but we cannot mandate will always agree, we have to

notify them in advance, and we have to compensate with money or

time off. And it also cannot last forever, it has to have a

limit on that. And that's also one of the benefits which we

usually offer to the American developers, if they want to try

and sound you know, relocate and work for the European company,

you will have a lot of vacation, and Santa like paid time off,

you will use that at least five, six weeks, during the year you

can use then all the public holidays, all the extra time you

worked. And then you can compensate as well. Huge health

systems in Europe as well, can not be underrated. That's also

another benefits which all employees in European and

Nordics have, and they of course, like use it. So all your

background is supported and covered. So you can focus your

productive time on making, you know, new games. So from that

perspective, I guess that probably few things which are

different. But still, were looking at the American

developers and American conferences and everything. And

we want to incorporate this experience into what we do as

well.

The environment certainly is different. I will absolutely

give you that. Have you? Have you found that some of the

folks? I mean, I know you said you're recruiting people from

all over the world. Have you found any? Like, is there any

special kind of excitement from American developers to jump ship

and move to Europe at all? I this is I'm purely just curious,

because obviously, we've seen a lot of news about American game

publishers lately, and most of it has been negative. So I'm

wondering if a lot of developers are thinking, Oh, time to try

something new. And if you've been able to kind of capitalize

on that a little bit,

always hope but of course, like, well, people are still having

opportunities in the same country, they first consider

them because it's obviously you know, more familiar, and doesn't

require you to change the entire life. The younger people tend to

be more interested. But if you have family with several kids,

house mortgage, whatnot, then you will think twice, unless

it's not a remote. If it is remote opportunity, you can of

course, jump on it right away. If you need to go then you know,

more things are taken into consideration. So of course, we

try to extract those who seem to be available because of

something happening with the company. So far, I don't have

too many Americans working for us. We have two out of 70. So

they are coming from from the States. But in general by going

forward if we need to grow if you will be attracting

developers from the States, then maybe we were also talking about

remote engagement. We didn't consider that in the past

because we were very office base. But going forward,

obviously the world is changing and all the development is

changing.

Yes, I I will say I was a little shocked when you said that you

all go into an office. I bet that totally took me aback for a

second like Wait. People do that still. Yes. That's not That's

not a bad thing. It, it is completely team dependent. I'm

just so used to everyone moving in the opposite direction, and

I'm fully at home. And so I, I totally forget that other people

have different experiences. I want to talk also just about the

startup environment, because we haven't. We've talked a lot

about working at a small game developer, and we've thrown

around the word startup. And you've mentioned the story of

how you got it started. But what has it been like to actually

build a game development company from the ground up?

Well, probably the best comparison would be, then you

were building the bicycle when you write it the same time. So

that's pretty much what we've been doing in the past four

years. And there are like pluses and minuses like in everything,

and you have big ambitions, you want to create the best company.

And of course, the company wants to be the best game ever,

everybody's going to be playing and loving. You learn on the

way. And it's also like, sometimes you need to make

choices, which students make if you're part of the company, and

like well funded, then you don't need to decide, would I hire? I

don't know, again, I mean, nature? Or rather, I shall bring

develop a programmer? Or do I need some, I don't know, the

character artist, or environmental artist is more

important at this point in time. So you have to juggle things all

the time and make decisions on the spot. So that's probably the

biggest, the biggest challenge in the working in the startup,

which not yet earning the money from the game

if paid. Is there anything in particular that you wish you

would have known when you started? And I don't necessarily

mean any regrets, but it's like, Oh, if we just knew this thing,

it would have made our process easier? Or if we just had this

tool or, like, is there is can you think of any instances where

it really was? This one thing would have put a lot of other

things to rest? Huh? Well, for

me, for me, personally, I guess we should have brought the

person who is dedicating time to marketing earlier wrong. That's

in my team. And I was always thinking that, you know, before

the game is ready, and then we'll really start promoting it.

We can do bits and pieces ourselves, like always had

community people who, because we had community from the early

testing, we didn't have a dedicated marketing manager, for

example, that could have been different. So in analyzing the

audience and making sure that, for example, the characters are

much relative to the particular audience that we believe the

game is for. No, that was not in place. And I think, you know, if

I think back, I should have probably hired the dedicated

marketing person earlier. Again, you know, that's the choice, you

decide, bring it on, you do that or not? Now, I think I should

have done it earlier.

Well, another thing, you'd never be 100% on, on all the

decisions. So yeah, and what's the other thing

and another thing is that, when creating a new game, in the new

company, we thought that it would be good if the game will

be very different. Right? Of course, like people have so many

different shooters on the market, they can, you know,

choose whatever, and they are in general, continuing similar

path. So we introduced a little too many new things into design.

And, again, looking back, potentially, we should have

looked more into the industry, like the hands of the industry

in that sense, and be a little closer to them. Because

sometimes completely new things, meeting people off as well,

before they're becoming familiar. And so not everybody

is willing to be out try and test things. So from that

perspective, you know, being somewhere moving the needle

would have been more beneficial. But again, that's the choice we

made. And so here we are, like next time, maybe slightly, you

know, less innovative. But again, maybe not. We'll see when

the next thing

right, well, I really appreciate that you said that you said that

about a marketing manager because I am very pro marketing.

As someone who works in marketing, I think marketing is

so important, because if you build something great, but there

There's no one to look at it that it doesn't matter. And the

sooner you can bring someone in who's going to say, hey,

everyone look at this thing, the better off you are. And I do

think it's very salient to say, it's good to be unique, but

things are popular for a reason. And it's because they're well

liked. So finding that balance of introducing unique elements,

while incorporating the good all familiar with things that people

love. Anything is important, and hard to do. I mean, all of these

things, like you said, you're you're building the bike while

you're writing it, there's no way to know some of this until

you get started. So that's just the unfortunate truth about

startups. Exactly

what we learn, right? So after four years, it's probably

already harder to call ourselves startup because we created the

game, it can be played. We have very good team. But still, you

know, we have we were small and our general, attitude hasn't

changed much always kind of start off.

Again, it on speaking of tell people where they can play nine

to five, and let them know, you know, what's, what's next and

what's exciting at Red Hill games.

So obviously, we continue working on line five, and that's

on Steam. And on stadia, depending on what you prefer

keyboard and mouse or controllers. It's available on

both platforms. And some, as I mentioned, at the beginning, we

are planning to work on shooters. So something next will

be also in the shooting genre. We don't know yet what exactly

it will be we have several ideas, which designers and

artists and programmers are discussing internally. And at

some point, of course, like as soon as we are ready to announce

something everybody's gonna hear about that. The best way to

follow is the web sites than the LinkedIn page. And we publish

all the news there.

I love the name nine to five and the call out to Dolly Parton. I

don't know if that was intentional or not. But I

it was a reference to the Yes, working day.

Yes, I love that. That's great. So before we get into our last

time, and I'm just going to summarize really quickly what we

talked about, we started this whole podcast, really this has

been one of the podcasts have I really remained on theme. Kind

of rare. But we have been having this discussion about work and

work environments quite a bit. One of the you gave lots of

great pieces of advice that I'm going to now go over. One of

them was that business intelligence and data data

engineering positions are in shortage. If you can work with

developers and ask and answer the right questions, do the

project management portion, you'll you'll be in high demand,

digital marketing, also in shortage and as you mentioned,

better to hire earlier than later. So if you know how to

operate in a digital world, or if you can take marketing

classes, whatever that may be, you'll be in demand. And then

the last thing that I thought was really interesting was

basically you said, if you have specialist skills, look for

specialized roles. The example you gave was that there's always

games being developed in the medical community. So if you're

a doctor who's really passionate about games, go out and look for

those of us that are developing games for doctors that learn on

the job and things like that and be a tester for that. We talked

a lot about gender diversity within redheal games, not only

within the company, but within the community. And you mentioned

that a large portion of your audience is male, but that the

women have an outsized voice in the community that you do have

and are able to really get their input out there. Which I think

is a great way of building a game from the ground up that

doesn't include toxicity or, or anything like that is just

having people talk about the game and play the game and talk

about how to improve the game no matter what they look like. A

huge mix of genders, cultures and languages brings a different

perspective to your company. You are very adept at getting people

to move across whatever pond they may be coming from given

that you have 25 countries represented, I believe you said

I'm one of the most important things into getting more women

into these roles. getting even more diversity in that way, is

starting young with early education. One thing that I

think is very unique and very cool about Red Hill games is

that you have career progression plans and a person dedicated to

working with employees to know where they want to go. think

that that is becoming more important as we get through the

great resignation and hopefully more companies will will

implement a role like that. In some industries, it may be more

beneficial just to leave the company and be able to kind of

upward move upward that way, but for companies that can handle

several projects at once, there might be several opportunities

happening simultaneously. So I think the general piece of

advice there was both to look within and outside of the

company for opportunities. If you are kind of stuck at your

current position, we talked about working at Big developers

versus startups. And startups allow you to work either in one

area of expertise, or on several different disciplines at once,

depending on what you want. Startups are more agile, which

can mean exploring more paths, big developers might be more so

about fulfilling your singular role and kind of being a cog

that kind of keeps that machine going, which also absolutely has

its value. It's just you have to know yourself and what you're

looking for. And we talked about the differences between the

American and European game environments. One thing that you

pointed out that was really good is that Americans have, this is

where game development really started. So you're gonna get

that truly seasoned experience from the US. But European

systems and benefits are just the bigger draw when it comes to

quality of life. And maybe, eventually, that'd be a bigger

job when it comes to quality of things over time. Who knows? We

ended with a discussion on on building a startup and what's

that what that's like, and how it's building the bicycle while

you're writing it. If you're starting a company, the two

pieces of advice you gave, hire a marketing manager early and

strike a balance between being unique, and taking elements that

are already popular. I think those are good pieces of advice

for any startup, really. So I am going to broaden that to the

tech industry at large, not just game development. So I am

alright. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I always feel a little bad because

I hope people know when I'm, I'm looking down and taking notes.

When they're talking. I'm not writing an email to anyone, I'm

actually writing episode notes. So the last section that I like

to end on with everyone and I asked a version of this, but I'm

going to ask more specifically to you is what is one thing you

would like to tell your younger self about getting into the

gaming industry and being successful?

Well, to tell the truth, I came to the gaming industry pretty

late, just eight years ago, and before there was like, you know,

different industries, different companies, probably, if I would

be talking to younger self, I would say try gaming industry

earlier, because it's such an exciting world, you can do so

much. And it's such a creative environment you're part of and

you can do so, so much. And when I got my first job in the gaming

industry, my son, of course likes to play said that finally,

Mom, you have a proper job. Because everything I was doing

before by burning Well, you know, growing as a professional

for him meant nothing. Yes, what has stood in the fridge, good.

But during gaming company, you're well done now proper job.

So like also, that helps bring closer the next generation. And

so we have a lot more to talk about now the kids, because I

better understand what their interests are. And I can also

refer to different game developers and games. And I

definitely know more about the world they live in. So that's

for sure. You know, talking to my younger self, I would say

like, you know, think for the future. And that will definitely

help you talking to your children and also be like in a

very healthy and exciting environment.

That is so funny. Kids will say whatever's on their mind. Katya,

thank you so much for coming on. I know you mentioned where

people can find and follow redheal games, but where can

they find and follow you if you want to be found in follow?

Well, absolutely,

feel free to drop in notes. I'm on LinkedIn, and Facebook and

all the social media and also if you write in also on the company

page also, you know, I'll get back to you. Perfect.

Thank you so so much for being here. This was so much fun. I

love learning about game development. And it was

especially cool learning about FPS is that not not my usual

forte so it's fun. For all the listeners out there. Be sure to

leave those five star ratings and reviews. It's not going to

be five stars. Don't leave it. I'm just kidding. But also check

out other holodeck media podcasts including metal

business and business of esports. I'm on Twitter,

Instagram and LinkedIn at Lindsey pass. always send me a

note. And you can catch me live Wednesdays on the business of

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