News

PGC Digital: A Thinking Ape's Tayber Voyer on implementing psychological safety into your live ops production

Be clear about your risks and make life easier for everyone

PGC Digital: A Thinking Ape's Tayber Voyer on implementing psychological safety into your live ops production

As part of Pocket Gamer Connects Digital #2, A Thinking Ape director of product Tayber Voyer gave a talk about live ops production in mobile games.

Voyer started by looking at psychological safety, saying that you need to create an environment in your game where mistakes can be made. This means making deployments easy and risk-free, such as by enabling designers and artists to fix any mistakes that they may make.

He also recommended creating a safe "playground", encouraging the team to be explicit about what they don't know and avoiding an environment which encourages a "fake it 'til you make it" attitude.

Be transparent

On top of this, Voyer recommended making sure the consequences of a mistake are low. This means being prepared for any outcome with a risk assessment, being explicit about people's performance, and making sure people are aware of what the actual cost-benefit of a task is.

As for creating a dependable environment, Voyer stated that you should make sure all your tools, processes, and data aren't broken, and suggested building a self-reflective culture - and, of course, being transparent about everything.

On the topic of structure and clarity, Voyer suggested making sure any goals you set are measurable, timebound, ambitious, and realistic, and they need to be communicated globally. You should also clearly define responsibilities, and make sure every process is written down.

PG Connects Digital #2 is the best of our Pocket Gamer Connects conference in an online form, with an entire week of talks, meetings, and pitch events taking place from June 8th to the 12th. You can read up on all the tracks taking place through the week here.


Editor

Ric is the Editor of PocketGamer.biz, having started out as a Staff Writer on the site back in 2015. He received an honourable mention in both the MCV and Develop 30 Under 30 lists in 2016 and refuses to let anyone forget about it.