Interview

How to get a job at Scotland's largest mobile game studio Outplay

HR and Recruitment Manager Emma Purvey shares insights

How to get a job at Scotland's largest mobile game studio Outplay

The Dundee-based Outplay Entertainment, founded in 2010, has grown to become Scotland's biggest mobile game studio in a relatively short amount of time.

The studio is already 120 strong, and it's not done yet - the venture-backed firm is currently looking to bolster its team with a number of new hires.

As such, we reached out to HR and Recruitment Manager Emma Purvey to discuss the current vacancies, what she's looking for in applicants, and company culture at Outplay Entertainment.

PocketGamer.biz: Could you give us some background on Outplay and what you do?

Emma Purvey: Outplay Entertainment is the largest independent mobile developer in Scotland.

Set to celebrate our 5th anniversary in April, our studio is a global leader in developing and publishing games for smartphones, tablets, and social networks.

We have a colourful portfolio of innovative casual and mid-core titles such as Angry Birds POP, Alien Creeps TD, Bubble Genius, Crafty Candy, and Mystery Match.

I am the HR and Recruitment Manager at Outplay, attracting and hiring talent into the studio and ensuring we have the right things in place to help our teams and company succeed.

What specific areas/disciplines are you currently hiring in?

We continually hire across all areas. Great talent is hard to find so we are always keen to speak to developers interested in making their first or next career move.

We have a fantastic relocation program which we offer to anyone joining from afar.
Emma Purvey

We like to encourage people to get in touch at any time and tell us what they are interested in working on at Outplay. We also have a fantastic relocation program which we offer to anyone joining the team from afar.

Currently we have live roles at all experience levels in Code, Art, DevOps and Marketing.

As you're overseeing recruitment at Outplay, what do you look for in candidates?

We love our games so it’s super important to us that our team does too. Therefore, we are always looking for a real passion for mobile development in our candidates.

We are looking for people who want to get really involved in development and are innovative and agile in their approach.

Quality is at the core of everything we do here so we like to see that reflected in the candidate’s application whether it’s a well-polished portfolio or a well prepared and considered cover letter.

Why do you think Outplay/Dundee is a good place to work? How will you be trying to encourage a strong company culture?

Outplay is an extremely ambitious company, in less than five years we have gone from 2 founders to a team of 120. We have released 13 titles which have been downloaded nearly 60 million times.

That’s an incredible success story in that timeframe so we have a progressive culture that means we are always leveraging our current success onto the next.

This kind of trajectory is incredibly exciting to be a part of. Our team don’t just join us for their next role they join us to be a part of our journey.

Each product is developed and owned by the team; they drive the development, design, and creative direction of the products in coordination with our directors, marketing, and analytics teams so we offer a real hands-on experience.

Being in Dundee we are based in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, Scotland. The quality of life here is just exceptional. We have beautiful cities, mountains, beaches all within easy reach of the studio.

Dundee is an amazing creative hub for game development and relocating here affords the opportunity to be a part of a game dev community that is inclusive, friendly and exceptionally talented.

What advice would you have for someone trying to get into the games industry?

Play a wide variety of games to understand the mechanics, the gameplay and how the combination of art, design, code and audio come together to make something special.

Play the games and think about how they make you feel. Act as a player and then try to understand why they may have been made in that way.

For a full list of vacancies at Outplay, you can visit its jobs page.

Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.