In casual mobile games, live game operations have become incredibly important within the last decade. Prototyping, developing and launching a game is just the first step. The big task is keeping players engaged long-term, and this is where LiveOps come into play.
As a game developer, it became increasingly more evident and important to Tactile to have a unified place from which we can configure our games. And so, over time, we have developed an entire suite of tools that empower our teams to take full control of their games. We call it our LiveOps dashboard. It allows our teams to control exactly what players see and experience in a game.
On top of this, the dashboard enables us to stay true to our core values (such as validating all of our results with data) and to keep the promises we’ve made to our players (like 24/7 user support). The LiveOps dashboard can therefore be used for a variety of purposes – to schedule live events and tournaments, run A/B tests so that we can see what features are most impactful, to send engagement rewards and in general support users when they experience issues in a game, as well as to create curated player journeys for new or specific user groups.
We could have used a variety of 3rd party tools available on the market to do this, but having our own internal solution enables us to have all these different tools in one. Completely interconnected and managed by our Core tech team.
Taking a walk down memory lane
We tried to dig out the first line of code we ever committed to GitHub for the LiveOps dashboard project, but we were not even using Git back then yet 😂. And so, we asked our CTO, Morten, to fill in the gaps.
“The LiveOps Dashboard started out as a reporting dashboard, similar to how we use Looker today,” he starts, “It allowed us to see all of our revenue and data, mainly for our first big game called Skyline Skaters. We used it to track a variety of metrics such as ad revenue, impressions and clicks.”
At some point, the team wanted to be able to configure Skyline Skaters remotely. This was when they built a remote configuration tool within the reporting dashboard, which still exists in our current set-up. “Though it has evolved many times since then,” Morten adds. This initial version of the tool was a way for us to safely edit a JSON file that would get downloaded by a game, which allowed us to configure whatever we wanted in the game, completely remotely.
“The first version of the dashboard was built in pure JavaScript with AngularJS for the front-end, along with MongoDB and Redis, both of which we still use today,” he explains. As part of the remote configuration system, the team also built an ad mediation tool, which enabled us to control the waterfall of ad providers we worked with, as well as an additional support for remotely downloading asset bundles. This was a way for us to remotely distribute assets, such as allowing players to download a new city in Skyline Skaters to skate in.
Around that time, live operations in mobile games started growing drastically. Morten explains that they noticed some of our big competitors running events and features on a scheduled basis. “And so we introduced live events and scheduled features to the dashboard,” he says, “We basically built a tool that enabled us to remotely configure and schedule events within a game.”
From that followed the A/B testing feature, to ensure we’re making data driven decisions when releasing new features and… the rest is history.
From an old Angular project to automated game set-ups
This is where Tyler and Vera, our LiveOps Backend Engineers, come in.
When Vera joined Tactile in 2020, the LiveOps dashboard was a, well … cluttered AngularJS project. By then, AngularJS was already quite old and it was painful to add new features and functionalities to the dashboard. On top of this, updating it to a newer version turned out to be really difficult.
“We were stuck,” Vera says, “Either way we had to re-build the entire front-end from scratch, either in Angular or in a brand new framework.” After some discussion within the team, they decided to switch to React, which would allow them to build a much more modern dashboard UI.
The challenge was that the developers on our Core team at the time were primarily backend experts, but they had to take care of the entire stack. This meant that all of our front-end was built by backenders, without a product designer, which caused some UX challenges. When we started transitioning the dashboard to React, we decided to do so step by step, page by page.
As the first step, we decided to do a little trick. We made a basic React page, but displayed our old AngularJS version within an iFrame. “This allowed us to be quick, instead of having to build an entire new version of the dashboard, which would have taken a long time before being able to release it to our users,” explains Vera. Building it page by page allowed them to show the new UI whenever it was ready, and then remove the old AngularJS in iFrame display.
At the same time, we also hired our very first Product Designer, who came up with a brand new dashboard design, and soon after also our first ‘proper’ frontend focused engineer, who worked on integrating it in React. Our Product Designer spent a solid amount of time with the teams who use our LiveOps dashboard to really understand what they do and come up with a design that serves their needs as best as possible.
During this transition process, the team discovered that the back-end, just like the front-end, was outdated and hard to manage. “This is why we started experimenting with Dependency Injection,” explains Vera, “Everything that we build new is built using dependency injection (DI) and the old code is being refactored along the way.”
Tyler, who joined the team in 2024, joined the dashboard project several years post migration. He shares his thoughts on the state of the current dashboard codebase: “We are an extremely opinionated team, but also very democratic and flexible. We adhere to guidelines, but are open to changing them when there is a strong argument for it and when it makes sense. When there is a pattern in the code, it’s easy to see what is happening, so I can really feel the impact of the transition to DI.”
Future plans
Post-migration to React, the dashboard kept growing and expanding with new features and tools to enable our teams to work even faster and more efficiently.
One of the most significant additions in the last few years was the Player Journeys tool – designed by our Solutions Architect in close collaboration with the LiveOps and Product teams, and built from the ground-up in-house. This tool allows us to segment players and give them completely tailored experiences based on what live actions they take within the game. As our games are picked up by a wide variety of players – from experienced match-3 players to those who have opened a mobile game app for the very first time – it’s important to recognize their unique playing styles and tailor their player journey based on that.
Another big system we’re currently working on will enable us to empower new game teams to set-up their own projects on the LiveOps dashboard. At the moment, we have a manually maintained list of games. However, as our new company strategy is to ship (ship ship) more games, we have started building faster and more often. This created a lot of additional work on the Core team’s side, having to set-up and calibrate all the new projects for individual game teams. “We want to hand over the building power to the teams,” says Tyler, “This will remove us from the equation and empower the teams to start new projects themselves and to choose the modules they need to start building live game operations.”
But… Why build it and not just buy it?
“There is no one single tool on the market that offers what our LiveOps Dashboard does,” explains Tyler. Building this huge tool happened very organically for us. It started small, but over time we started adding more features to it, as we found a need for them. Vera adds: “We have built this tool with the user perspective in mind, which has allowed us to both get and act on feedback from our users very quickly.” Another aspect is that building it ourselves has given us the flexibility to make it exactly as we want it to be. “We can do whatever we want with our dashboard. It’s already very dynamic and we are still implementing more things to it,” she says.
By saying we can do what we want, Vera means that we can optimize workflows for specific roles in the company. For example, our User Support page includes a lot of game-specific data. Instead of using an external tool to display this and forcing the user to switch between several platforms, our LiveOps dashboard automatically enables this connection for them. “This makes their workflow faster and less tedious,” explains Tyler.
The requirements for building new features come from different sources, but most often it’s from the teams themselves. Recently, we added a Scheduled Feature Importer tool because Morten (our CTO) found a pain-point when working directly with the LiveOps team. This was great because the users don’t always know how to make their workflows better or that there are ways to automate them.
Building it well and building it for the future
We have already talked about the team applying dependency injection to the codebase and switching from Angular to React. This idea, like most others, originated from their book club. All of our Core programmers regularly meet to read and discuss technical books. This stems from their culture of wanting to improve as developers, but also to make continuous improvements to the code base. None of the big changes happened as a ‘light bulb moment’ or an ‘order from above’. Instead, they spawned from the team democratically and developed through a gradual iteration process.
“It’s important to note that we do not look at the books we read as Bibles,” laughs Vera, “We use our common sense to take ideas from them that make sense for our team.” On top of the book club, they also meet weekly to discuss different ways to improve things. The main purpose of these meetings is to create a common mindset about coding best practices, as well as to ensure a common vocabulary within the team when talking about different software engineering patterns and strategies.
“One thing that has had a huge impact on upholding our coding practices have been code reviews (PRs),” says Vera. “And we have a culture of being very picky in them,” Tyler chimes in. The aim is not to bring someone down and mark their code as bad, but rather to leave small comments and/or suggestions for improvement, which do not necessarily need to be applied. It’s usually things like: “You could rename this…” or “Have you thought about doing it this way instead?” “We always want to make the best code possible,” he explains. Vera adds that we always try to make changes in iteration and therefore keep PRs small so that they’re easy to review and understand.
Unit testing, CI/CD and DDD
All of our code is covered in unit and integration tests. On top of this, we have a QA team within our Core team responsible for testing what the programmers produce.
We also have daily automated deployments and can deploy manually at any time. There are basically no barriers to what can be deployed, which is enabled by the PRs and our amazing QA team. This continuous cycle allows us to build and deploy quickly, but it also enables us to react quickly if something isn’t working as it should be. Tyler explains that if their daily release does not go out, then it becomes their immediate #1 priority – having longer release cycles is not an option for the team.
Whilst things on the surface of our LiveOps dashboard might appear ‘simple’, the logic underneath is actually very complex. This is mainly due to this tool being extremely domain-heavy. For the team this means keeping as much as possible focused within one single domain and building ubiquitous language in collaboration with other teams.
“During my onboarding, the most challenging part was navigating all the complexity and figuring out how everything ties together,” Tyler remembers. There are a lot of things happening within our games – there’s the user experience, engagement and monetisation aspects – and we want things to keep happening. The games need to run and we also need to be able to collect data at the same time. For Vera the challenge is managing it all on the LiveOps side and that’s what makes her work so meaningful.
It’s Time for Talent – With Pelinsu Ayas
Hi, my name is Pelinsu, it’s nice to e-meet you! 👋
I joined Tactile in February 2025 as a Level Designer, and I can’t believe it’s already been nine months, it’s flown by! I design levels for Lily’s Garden, creating experiences that bring joy to our beloved players.
💡As level designers, we collaborate closely with data scientists, QA engineers, gameboard artists, developers and producers. Our role is to bridge creative vision and player experience, translating data-driven insights into engaging gameplay. Beyond designing levels, we also design new gameboard mechanics, haptics, difficulty curves, and A/B tests to ensure a smooth and engaging journey for our players.
🚀 Before Tactile
Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of creating products that people would enjoy and spend quality time with. That passion led me to study Industrial Design. This was long before I even knew that “level design” was a possible career path!
During my studies, I discovered a love for designing digital products, especially through research and A/B testing. That curiosity for digital experiences, where a single design decision could impact millions of people completely hooked me.
With this knowledge, I joined the gaming industry. I started working as a level designer at Peak Games where I worked on a game called Toy Blast. Later on I joined Space Ape Games where I designed levels for a game called Chrome Valley Customs. Both games taught me a lot in terms of the gaming industry and level design. Despite both being casual Match-3 games, level design approaches and mechanics were quite different.
Working on both an established title and a brand-new game gave me the rare chance to see the full spectrum of product development and apply my product design background in meaningful ways.
After some time in the industry, I started looking for opportunities that would allow me to work more closely with a wider variety of stakeholders. I’d known about Tactile Games for a while, and when this opportunity came up, I knew it was the right next step for me.
💜 Joining Tactile
When I joined Tactile, I had a very smooth transition from London, where I was based at the time, to Copenhagen. Everyone was very helpful, kind and welcoming! I also already knew some of my future colleagues from my previous workplaces, which was a really nice plus.
Before Tactile, I worked in smaller teams and within more traditional work models. At Tactile, our team spans different countries and time zones, and adapting to this diverse, flexible setup has been a really rewarding experience.
We’re an agile and dynamic team. Whether it’s a quick 10-minute sync to solve an issue or adjusting our plans to tackle something urgent, we move fast and collaborate deeply. That adaptability is essential in today’s gaming industry, and I love being part of such a responsive and forward-thinking environment. Our team also got bigger, so now we have more capacity to experiment and innovate.
💪 Having an impact
My team is responsible for everything relating to our in-game gameboard. This means that we are designing new levels, blockers and gameplay mechanics, adjusting level difficulties, as well as designing and maintaining a variety of A/B tests all with the aim of improving our player experiences.
The most rewarding part for me is seeing how our work directly impacts players. There’s nothing quite like looking at the data after a release or an A/B test and seeing positive results, or spotting enthusiastic player feedback about a level or mechanic we designed. That’s the kind of motivation that makes me want to keep pushing boundaries.
Within my team, we have a strong culture of collaboration, which comes to everyone quite naturally and intuitively. In my opinion, this is very important and something that is not easy to find. It’s rare to have such high levels of shared creativity.
🗝️ The keys to success
If you are a designer aspiring to join the gaming industry, my only recommendation would be that you follow the latest trends in the industry and identify where your unique skills can make a difference. The industry is incredibly dynamic, which makes it exciting, but also challenging.
When you play games, try to think like a designer. Observe what works well, what could be improved, and what you personally enjoy. Imagine how you would design that level or mechanic differently. This mindset will naturally sharpen your design intuition and creativity.
As a final thought, collaboration, as well as giving and receiving feedback are keys to being successful as a level designer and team player. Having these soft skills are as important as having the technical skills.
Every level, every blocker, every A/B test can be improved, and being open to discussing improvements makes the process both more efficient and far more enjoyable. When ideas flow freely, creativity thrives and that’s where strong collaboration really happens.
‘Why I came and what made me stay?’
Uprooting your life and moving to another country is no small feat. It’s a decision that takes a lot of time, thought and bravery. With Tactile having grown from being an almost all-Danish company 10 years ago, to being 75% international today, we wanted to talk to some of our Tactilers who decided to make the big leap and relocate to Denmark.
We were curious to know what made them come to Denmark of all places and also, what made them stay? Was it the strong work-life balance, better career opportunities or the closeness of nature at every step? Or even the weather? 😂
Dive into the stories of Bea (Romanian), Phillip (American), Khrystyna (Ukrainian) and Alberto (Italian) who all came to Denmark for different reasons – in search of a better life, for love, wanderlust and studies – and stayed because they found themselves at home here.
Here are their stories ✨
Bea Storm, QA Automation Engineer
Statistics and an Excel sheet
For Bea and her husband, the decision to relocate came quite easily. After having struggled to find work in her area of expertise (having originally studied to be a dietician) and working long hours in retail, her desire to go out into the world grew bigger.
And so, they jumped on the quest to find the best country to go to. Their way of finding the answer was pretty simple – they made an Excel spreadsheet filled with statistical data. They looked into parameters such as educational costs, social security, conditions to raise children in, and the level of corruption. The top countries on the list were Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and… Denmark. The final decision was not easy, and they’ve never been to Denmark before, but they had a friend living here who they could stay with for a little while, and so they made their choice. This was 9 years ago.
A loan, a bike and a leap of faith
To be able to afford their move to Denmark, Bea and her husband took a bank loan. They resigned their jobs, packed 2 backpacks, a foldable bike and said: “Let’s do it!”
When they arrived in Copenhagen, they immediately started looking for jobs. Bea remembers printing her CV and walking through the famous Nyhavn, from restaurant to restaurant, until she found a place that would take her for the next 3 months. Her husband did the same. This was an important step for them, as it allowed them to get their Danish personal numbers as well as to move to their own place.
The first 2 years were tough. There were a lot of different jobs and a lot of moving around. “As well as a lot of vitamin D and magnesium and trying to make it through the grey winters,” adds Bea with a laugh. But after the first 2 years they were able to take a small loan and buy their own apartment. It was only a tiny place, but this was what ultimately made the big difference for them.
Smooth bureaucracy, a strong work-life balance, and nature at your doorstep
Bea’s first impression of Denmark was that all the authorities and systems are running as a well oiled machine. What is more, most things are done online. Just as a comparison: A few years ago, Bea and her husband decided to change their last name to something that felt more local. The process in Denmark took less than 30mins, whilst back in Romania, they spent 6 months and a lot of resources. “It’s very easy to do things here,” says Bea.
Besides the ease of processes, what she appreciates most about Denmark is the general society. Everyone is extremely helpful and also very funny – especially if they see you trying to learn their language. This is actually how she learned to speak Danish – through the help and support of a kind Danish gentleman who was a regular at one of the restaurants she worked at.
On top of this, she really appreciates the working hours here. Back in Romania, she would start her days at 8 am and finish working at 7 pm, and here she works 37h per week with the flexibility to start and finish her work day whenever it suits her best.
Bea also brings up the closeness of nature. Growing up in a very urban environment, she really appreciates the fact that even when you’re in the middle of the city, there are trees, parks, and lakes everywhere, and you’re not just surrounded by buildings. She now lives just outside of the city centre with her family, and it takes them less than 10 minutes to walk to a proper forest.
From hospitality to gaming
After the initial years in the hospitality industry, her husband got the opportunity to transition into a Quality Assurance (QA) role at Tactile. This was when Bea started playing mobile games as a hobby. After about a year or so, the team needed more testers and as she’s been playing Lily’s Garden a lot, she got the job!
This year, she celebrated her 5th Tactiversary 🥳 In the last 5 years, she moved from story testing, to functionality testing and finally, to QA Automation Engineering. The final transition was the biggest challenge, but she was really happy to have had the trust and the support of people around her to help her succeed. “If you want to move forward and do more, help will always be given to you,” she says.
The lure of the countryside
In the past year, Bea switched to working fully remote, as she moved further away from Copenhagen. Today, the family – Bea, her husband, and their son – is in the process of moving even further away, out into the Danish countryside, where they will have an entire house with a big garden around it. Though she says that she misses the vibe of the office and the lunch, the commute luckily takes only 45mins and she can come in whenever she likes.
They have definitely come a long way from living in a tiny apartment and working kitchen jobs. And next year, Bea is applying for her Danish citizenship.
Words of advice
The best advice Bea can give is to not rush into becoming a part of Danish society. You need at least a year to settle in and to truly understand where you are. It also takes time to embrace the weather, the seasons and the people. Making eye contact and acknowledging others is not a common thing here, but if you’re open and friendly yourself, and in particular, if you smile at people, they will smile back.
She also highlights the importance of learning Danish. This will help you to understand not just what people are saying, but also to learn about Danish culture. A lot of expats here feel isolated and not at home, but Danish really helps with alleviating that. Bea adds: “It’s not about learning the language perfectly, but about being able to understand each other. Danes know how difficult their language is, so they are open to talk to you, if you are willing to give it a try.”
And just as a final reminder from Bea: There is no bad weather, just bad equipment 😂 Get a thick jacket for the winter and good rain clothes.
✨
Phillip Louderback, Programmer
Moving for love
Phillip’s is one of those stories – he ended up moving to Denmark for love! He met his wife through some mutual friends back when they were both living in New York. She was working on her master’s degree in fashion design, and he was working as a Micromedia Director developer.
The first summer after they got together, he surprise-visited her in Copenhagen for an entire month. He had an amazing time and completely fell in love with the city. They rode around on bikes, explored food places and enjoyed great concerts. They even toured outside of the city, they visited Louisiana, the famous modern art museum, and the island of Bornholm.
Some years later, after a lot of travelling back and forth, they got married and were expecting their first baby. As they were not happy with the healthcare system in the US, they decided to move to Denmark to welcome their daughter and spend the first year of her life here.
After 2 years, they both got great work opportunities in the US and so they decided to move back. Though their reality looked very different there – they worked very long days and they needed an au pair to help them take care of their daughter. They were almost trapped in a vicious loop, needing to work to be able to live, and not being able to live their life because they had to work so much.
And then, 9/11 happened… With all the events that followed, Phillip and his wife decided to move back to Denmark temporarily, until things got back to normal. In New York, it was relatively easy to find an apartment once you had a job. In Copenhagen though, it was quite the opposite. You needed to find an apartment to make the move a possibility and they were able to find a place through a friend. Philip also quickly got a job as a Flash Developer, as they were in high demand back in the early 00s.
Quality of everything turned temporary into permanent
Time passed and slowly the thought of going back to New York started fading away. Phillip and his family were really enjoying their life in Copenhagen and what ultimately made them stay for good was the general quality of life they had here. Managing to work and also raise a child, spend time with them, go pick them up from school and dedicate time to other activities – this was not something they were taking for granted.
Phillip also really appreciates the flexibility around working hours here. For himself, he prefers to start his days early, so that he can be out of the office by 3pm and have the afternoon off for other activities. “I love music and I enjoy going to concerts in the evenings”, he says.
Besides this, Philip notes that you do not need the same kind of resources they needed back in the US to have a high quality of life. Housing is not as expensive and there are not so many extra expenses to take care of (like paying for private health insurance or having an au pair). Safety is built into the society, you don’t have to fear the push back from the institutions around you, because everything is set up to give you the flexibility you want and need.
From Flash to Playables
Phillip’s early days have been a ‘blur of different jobs’, as he puts it. He jumped onto the Flash train during the early days of the internet, which he did for many years. On the other hand, he always enjoyed working with interactivity and wanted to dive into the world of Unity.
And so, after some years in Copenhagen, when Flash really started going downhill, he got a job on a kid’s learning app, which was his first real taste of gaming. Then, in 2017, Tactile reached out to him. They needed someone to switch one of our biggest games at the time, Bee Brilliant, into a Facebook game. This was the first time in his life that he did an on-site test assignment for a job! Luckily for both sides, he passed and officially joined the team.
His journey with Tactile started in one of our first offices. It was a small space, but the project was really exciting and there was a lot of code in the game. After that, he joined the Marketing department and the rest… is history 🙂
Today, nearly 8 years later, he is mainly focusing on programming playables, which has finally brought together his programming skills and love for interactivity. “The cool thing with marketing is that we can do a lot of experimentation and research, and I’m always finding new ways to do things,” Phillip explains. In his day-to-day, he works in close collaboration with other teams who are doing very different things, for example developing a match-3 gameboard for our newest games.
Words of advice
‘Hop out into stuff!’ he says. For example, sports groups are a really great way to do something active and meet people.
Whilst Phillip himself was lucky to have been pulled into Danish groups through his wife, then he truly believes that it’s important to find Danish friends. They will bring you into their friendship groups, you will get to observe and learn things that are really hard to just read and learn about. And also, it’s a great opportunity to use the language.
✨
Khrystyna Pshenetska, Recruiter
Summer vibes in the city
For Khrystyna, the thought of moving to Copenhagen was born when she first visited the city in 2018. She immediately fell in love with its vibe, architecture and people. She will never forget seeing Danes swimming in the city’s canals that summer.
After coming back to Ukraine, the idea of moving stayed just that for a couple of years… until the war broke out. The worsened situation in Kyiv gave her the kick she needed to start looking for jobs abroad. Copenhagen was right on top of the list, and after getting the job offer at Tactile, everything fell into place, and she decided to make the big move.
Equality is real and systems care for everyone
Khrystyna remembers that the first few months after relocating were not easy, though things did slowly start falling into place after she got her own apartment and built a community of friends. This definitely helped her to feel more settled in. She can’t remember the exact moment it shifted, but at some point she really started enjoying her life in Denmark.
The thing that really made her want to stay in Copenhagen more long term was the general quality of life she experienced here. Systems are well organized, there is much more equality and people can easily get access to the basic things they need to feel well (such as education, health care and a good living situation). “Yes, the taxes are high, but it is clear that this actually goes towards improving everyone’s quality of life,” she adds. “I see less inequality and unfairness in society here, and the systems are set-up in a way that benefits everyone.”
The official Tactile photographer
Khrystyna’s journey with Tactile started in 2022 when she joined our Talent & Culture team as the newest Recruiter. The gaming industry was already familiar to her from her time at Playrix, and she quickly picked up on things.
Over time, she started taking on more branding tasks on top of her recruitment work and at some point, she was reminded of her passion for taking pictures. To strengthen her skills, she took a small photography course as a part of her development journey here at Tactile. What started as a small project, grew into her becoming the official Tactile photographer! She’s the one snapping all the pictures of our Tactilers which we use for SoMe, and she’s also become the main photographer at our various events – which she loves to attend herself.
As she approaches her 4th anniversary at Tactile, she has by now pretty much worked with every team in the business and she understands our niches well. This has helped her feel very integrated into the company and in turn, she’s become an important part of building future generations of Tactilers.
Embracing the spirit of hygge
After spending over 3 years in Copenhagen, the most Danish habit she has picked up is planning ahead more! She now uses her calendar not only for work, but also to stay on top of her private life. Besides this, she has gotten into the habit of celebrating Christmas for several weeks, which helps her a lot when the December darkness hits.
On top of this, she’s trying to incorporate more ‘hygge’ habits into her life. For Khrystyna it became important to acknowledge and accept that winter in Denmark is long and dark, and that she needs to actively make plans to get through the winter months – celebrations, gatherings, networking events and of course, plenty of relaxing things. And it’s not just about the big things. She loves to make little plans around things that bring her joy, so that she can keep herself distracted from the winter blues.
Words of advice
Besides ‘keeping it hygge’ her best advice for getting more integrated into Danish life and society is to use one of the many online apps available for meeting new people. For her, it was Bumble Friends. She met two of her closest friends in this way and she thinks it’s a great solution for more introverted people, who don’t do so well in big social gatherings and prefer smaller, more intimate settings. Khrystyna adds: “Building a strong community around you is important, big or small. Life gets much easier after that.”
✨
Alberto Dal Corso, Product Manager (LiveOps)
An educational experience abroad
10 years ago to date, Alberto enrolled into a master’s degree at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense. His initial idea was to just do an Erasmus student exchange, but in the end he decided to take his entire master’s degree here.
There were many reasons for why he chose Denmark as his study destination – they had a lot of interesting programmes to pick from, education is free and you get financial support from the government (called SU). For Alberto, Denmark was also close to home, as he originally comes from Italy. And, perhaps most importantly, his brother had been living in Copenhagen for some years at that point, so he had family close by.
Alberto enrolled into a Brand Management and Marketing Communications master’s degree. Even though he was based in Odense, he often visited his brother in Copenhagen. During the 2 years of his studies, he also had the opportunity to do a short student exchange in the US, so his dreams of doing an Erasmus came true in a different way.
From SoMe to Product Management
He never had a solid plan for what will be the next step after graduation. He just wanted to get there and then see what happens. After 2 years in Denmark, he had built a network of friends, he was a member of several sports communities (rugby – shoutout to the DTU Rugby Exiles 📢 – and golf), started a band with a group of mates, and also a part of his family was here. In the end, it just made more sense for him to stay.
And so 2 months after graduating, he interviewed with Tactile and got the job as a SoMe intern. Today, nearly 8 years later, he’s had the opportunity to change a lot of roles within Tactile and try different things, until he found what he liked and could be best at. “It was great to have had such growth opportunities,” he says.
Today, he’s working in a role that blends both his creative side and his interest in product. Over the years he has specialized more and more on LiveOps (live game operations), where he’s responsible for all in-game events which we offer across the entire portfolio of our games. It has also been an exciting journey to see the team growing around him over the years.
In general, meritocracy is something he really appreciates in Danish workplaces – as an employee, you get recognized a lot for doing good things and you get rewarded if you work well.
The advantages of living in a small capital
When Alberto first visited his brother in Copenhagen, before he decided to move here, he liked the city a lot. “It’s perfectly sized for a capital,” he explains, “You have the advantages of being in a capital where a lot of things and events are happening, but it’s not very big at all, so you can easily find places with only a few people, and enjoy a more small city atmosphere.”
Alberto also mentions the short commute time wherever you might be going and a public transportation system that works super smoothly. “In Italy, you need a car to get anywhere, and here we just use bikes and the metro” he adds.
Settling in as a student vs. someone’s plus 1
For Alberto, the process of getting settled in went very smoothly. As a student, he lived in a big collegium with a big community of students around him. When he then moved into ‘the real world’, he lived in a shared apartment, which again helped him to meet a lot of people, quickly. So he pretty much felt at home immediately.
Contrary to that, when his (now) wife joined him in Copenhagen back in 2021, she had quite a different experience. She didn’t have the university environment around her and the luxury of easily meeting new people. And so she often visited Tactile’s Friday bars with Alberto. “At Tactile, there’s a lot of people in the same situation,” he says, “expats that have moved to Denmark alone, with a variety of different interests, looking to meet new people and build a community around them.”
What’s next?
In the 10 years of living in Denmark, Alberto has picked up a few ‘Danish’ habits. Most notably, he changed his eating times and started eating a lot earlier than he ever did back in Italy. It is now completely normal for him to eat lunch at 11.30 and dinner at 18.00. Besides that, he also started biking everywhere, and rarely uses a car.
He is also currently in the process of applying for his Danish citizenship! He has already passed all the exams, including the Danish language exam, and is waiting for the official decision. Tillykke, Alberto 🥳