It’s Time for Talent – with Selin Azak
Hi, my name is Selin , it’s nice to virtually meet you! 👋
I joined Tactile in January 2026 as a Product & Publishing Manager. In my role, I work closely with external studios and internal teams, acting as a bridge from early ideation to live operations. A key part of my role is building Tactile’s publishing arm from the ground up, defining how we work with partners and setting up the overall structure. Alongside this, I support teams in building, validating, and scaling puzzle games with strong market potential.
🚀 Before Tactile
Before joining Tactile, I spent over 6 years in the mobile games industry, mainly focusing on casual, hybrid-casual, and puzzle games.
Most recently, I worked as a Publishing Manager, collaborating with multiple studios on ideation, prototyping, and scaling games. Before that, I was a Product Manager, where I gained hands-on experience across product strategy and game development processes.
Throughout my career, I’ve worked on more than 20 games, with a strong focus on early-stage validation, CPI-driven testing, and achieving product-market fit.
💜 Joining Tactile
Since joining Tactile, it has been both exciting and challenging in the best ways. There is a strong opportunity to shape how we collaborate with external studios and build new products from the ground up, while also setting the right processes and aligning multiple stakeholders.
What stands out most is the collaborative culture and the level of trust, which creates a great environment to take ownership and drive impact.
💪 Having an impact
Our team focuses on discovering and developing new game opportunities, especially in the puzzle space. We work closely with studios to identify strong concepts, validate them through testing, and evolve them into scalable products.
The most rewarding part of my work is seeing an idea evolve from a simple concept into something players genuinely enjoy. At Tactile, I have the opportunity to influence both product and publishing decisions end-to-end, which makes the work both challenging and highly motivating.
📚 The keys to success
For anyone looking to enter the industry, my main advice would be to approach games with a product mindset. Don’t just play them, analyze them. Try to understand why decisions are made and how they impact player experience and performance.
At the same time, connecting with people in the industry and learning from different perspectives can significantly accelerate your growth.
Most importantly, test your ideas. In today’s market, data is key, and meaningful insights come from continuous experimentation and iteration.
An extra thought…
The mobile games industry moves fast and is highly competitive, but that is also what makes it exciting. If you enjoy solving problems, working creatively, and seeing direct impact from your decisions, it is an incredibly rewarding space to be in.
Time for Growth – with Laura Hummel
At Tactile, we encourage our team members to take ownership of their own development and drive their upskilling to match the needs of the company, as well as their own aspirations.
The desire to upskill oneself is crucial for the success of our business, so having team members with that mindset is what we believe is part of pushing us forward.
We chatted to our Player Insights Lead, Laura Hummel, to learn more about how growth journey from user support, through user research and into player insights.
Tactile: Hi Laura, can you tell us a little bit about what your role was when you started at Tactile?
Laura: I started at Tactile in the summer of 2019 as a Player Care Manager for the User Support team, which at that time was just Celesta and me; a small but mighty duo! 😀
Tactile: How have you grown and developed in your journey at Tactile since then?
Laura: Starting in Player Care, I began dipping my toes into User Research by interviewing players and speaking with them directly, while still focusing on my support role. Over time, that gradually turned into a full-time User Research position.
A few years later, User Research and User Support were brought together under the larger umbrella of Player Insights. That was when I stepped into the role of Player Insights Lead, helping guide both the User Support and User Research teams and giving the company a broader, more connected view of player insights across Tactile.
Tactile: How did the transition into a User Research role officially happen?
Laura: During my time as a Player Care Manager, Tactile quickly recognized the need to strengthen the connection between our players and the game developers. Since the Player Care team had already built relationships with many of our most active players, the transition felt very natural.
It started with me reaching out to players and having video chats with them about their experiences in our games. Those interviews turned out to be incredibly valuable, and from there, the ‘player insights’ part of the role kept growing until it grew into a full User Research team.
I was very lucky to work with some wonderful mentors here at Tactile, who helped train and guide me into the wide world of User Research, while also giving me the opportunity to learn on the job through courses and tools.
Tactile: How have you been developing as a Player Insights specialist since then? What does your daily routine look like?
Laura: Going from Player Care to User Research to Player Insights Lead has definitely been a bit of a roundabout journey; it feels like a full-circle moment. Player Insights is actually the perfect combination of the skill sets I’ve built along the way.
My role is a bit unusual in that I essentially work for the other teams at Tactile, and that’s something I really love. No two days are ever quite the same. One day, I might be testing a new game concept with players, and the next I might be designing a study to better understand our current player base for a particular game.
What I enjoy most is getting to be a bit of a detective: helping teams find answers that are not always obvious from game data alone, and bringing the player perspective into the bigger picture.
Tactile: What do your development plans look like going forward?
Laura: For User Research, development really means staying up to date with new and improved methodologies, tools, and ways of working. Games User Research is still a relatively young field within research, so it feels especially important to stay connected with peers and keep up with how the field is evolving. AI is also at the forefront of almost every conversation right now, so a big area of focus is exploring and testing which tools can genuinely support our work in meaningful ways.
On the Player Insights side, one of my personal goals is to become more independent and confident with the ‘slightly scary’ in-game data side of things! 😅 A lot of my User Research naturally focuses on qualitative data, so I’d really like to continue building my knowledge of how to combine in-game data with research findings to make our studies even stronger. At the moment, I still happily lean on our Data Analysts/Scientists when needed, but the goal is definitely to grow more confident in my own abilities there.
Thank you for the lovely chat, Laura 💜
This year, we are celebrating 115 years of International Women’s Day! For this special occasion, the topic is Give to Gain – embracing a mindset of generosity and collaboration.
At Tactile, we are proud of having an extremely diverse workforce. We are 75% international with Tactilers representing over 55 different nationalities. But one of the numbers that we are most proud of is that we have over 40% women 🩷
This International Women’s Day, we wanted to shine a spotlight on some of our amazing women who do so much for others at Tactile – whether it’s through mentorship, leadership, development, relocation support, language learning or knowledge sharing – the generosity they give increases the opportunities and support for everyone else. Giving does not take away, but instead, creates more.
As individuals, giving support doesn’t just mean celebrating each other, but also calling out stereotypes, challenging discrimination and questioning biases. When more of us thrive, we all rise.
We wanted to share these beautiful portraits of our amazing women and also share an insight into why giving to others is so important to them.
Sveta
Our ‘Office Mom’
“For me, Tactile is a second home, a place where you come and feel supported and cared for. And when you feel that way, you want to give back. I love it when people around me become a little happier if I do something for them, even if it seems insignificant, but is very important to someone at that moment. I love helping people, it makes me happy.“
Laura
Caring for our players & supporting game teams with insights
“Whether at work or in our communities, giving support is something that needs to be practiced with intention. In the workplace, it starts with sharing knowledge openly, avoiding gatekeeping, and creating an environment where people feel safe to ask questions, make mistakes, and grow.
Small actions matter: amplifying others’ voices, celebrating their wins, choosing to support women-owned businesses, contributing to mutual aid efforts, and highlighting others’ work that deserves recognition.
Giving doesn’t take something away from yourself, and support is not a limited resource. When we make space for others and advocate for those not in the room, we help ensure they’re invited into the room next time.“
Vera
Mentorship & Knowledge Sharing
“I try to support others the way I wish someone supported me when I was starting out – by sharing knowledge, giving honest feedback, and encouraging artists not to give up too early. Support from others helped me a lot at the beginning of my career, so I know how much it can matter.“
Anna
Enabling growth & development across Tactile
“I believe that my role is about giving people the room to succeed. I’m lucky to help shape our culture, and I want to use that influence to be a safe space for my colleagues. To me, that’s about being a sounding board for people’s ideas and dreams, and helping navigate them without judgment.“
Anja
Empowering Tactilers through language & culture
“The classroom is a small community where people join forces in learning new skills. I find joy and meaning in facilitating the best possible circumstances for a learning environment. My aim is to create a safe and constructive space where my students feel encouraged and comfortable to ask questions, make mistakes, take further steps and share experiences. And I try my very best to also make it fun along the way.“
Lene
Helping Tactilers arrive to and settle in Copenhagen
“It’s very important for me that people land on their feet when they come to Copenhagen. They have relocated to a completely new world and I know that helping them even with the smallest things, such as handling the bureaucratic processes, will help them arrive in a good way. Helping others should never be a question.”
Aleksandra
Enabling our game teams to thrive
“For me, it’s all about giving my team the space to express themselves and I focus on listening. Giving to others makes me feel useful in a personal sense but also ‘as a part of society’ sense and it inspires me a lot to see when people reach places they thought they’d never be able to.“
Tanya
Connecting Tactilers through cultural activities
“I find power and true joy in helping others because I know that by giving good things, good things will come back in compounding ways.“
Terra
Inspirational leadership
“I try to be mindful and open to those around me, noticing who might need an extra hand. Whether it’s reviewing someone’s presentation, offering a cup of coffee and a listening ear, or helping carry a stroller up the stairs, being able to help each other is what humanity is all about. We all need a little extra support sometimes.“
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