An interview with Joydeep Sengupta, our Product Designer

Joydeep Sengupta is our wonderful Product Designer and an integral member of our Core Team. Two years ago, he became the first building block in establishing our new Frontend Team (within the Core Team), focusing on enhancing the UI/UX of our internal tools. These tools were initially built by backend programmers, so you can imagine that they weren’t always very user-friendly or aesthetically pleasing. So, in honour of his 2nd Tactiversary, we wanted to share an insight into his daily work and show how he has been bringing Joy to Tactile for the past 2 years!

The role of the Core Team

The Core Team at Tactile is responsible for building a variety of in-house solutions, which are used to manage our live game (LiveOps), marketing and data operations. These include our business critical LiveOps and analytics dashboards, web services, build server, and loads more! All of these tools have been built in-house from the ground up and are extremely specialised and tailored to what we do. As a Product Designer, Joy along with the engineers on the front-end team, is responsible for anything and everything that requires a UI component.

In this article, we want to particularly focus on our live game operations (LiveOps), how the internal tools we have built help us to manage them, and what impact this has on our players’ experiences. Let’s dive into it!

Tactile: Hi Joy, thank you for taking the time to chat! How do internal tools factor into supporting LiveOps, or treating games as live services?

Joy: To best answer this question, I will first start by explaining what exactly LiveOps, or live game operations are. Think of it as treating a game as a live service, where you can release a bunch of new features, events and engagements without the players actually needing to go to the App Store and updating the entire game. Imagine that a game works as a billboard – every time you would like to put a new advertisement up, you first have to print it and then have people spend time putting it up and replacing the old one. If you instead use a digital billboard, you can easily update the advertisements displayed on it – and that’s basically what LiveOps enables us to do!

There are many aspects of our LiveOps platform, but we primarily use it for launching (new features, events and engagements), testing and measuring (we are completely data-driven as a company and use data to drive our success). And this brings us to why we need specialised internal tools – they enable us to do real-time analytics, targeted player communication and live event management. All of this gives us a unique insight into player behaviour and preferences.

There are not many companies that develop their own internal tools to support LiveOps and there is not a huge amount of companies that provide these services. We realised very early on that if we want to be able to react quickly to market trends and to keep our games relevant long-term, we need very specialised tools – these offer a simple way to keep our games fresh, without needing to change their core. For example, today we’re able to run several mini games with different gameplay mechanics, without having to change our core, match-3 game mechanic. We can also run scheduled events, features, limited time offers and personalised engagements, and we can do so fast!

Tactile: You have been at Tactile for over 2 years now and have worked on many different projects to date. What was the first tool you worked on and what impact did it have on the business as a whole?

Joy: My first project was working on the A/B test part of the LiveOps dashboard. Initially, the UI was very hard and confusing – it was basically a long list form with many input fields, and it was not clear which fields correlated to or impacted each other.

The way we improved the A/B test workflow was by introducing a card-based UI. Cards are now stacked side by side and all parameters are aligned, so that you can easily compare them and find correlations. A little bit like battle cards 🤣 We also improved the way the tests are created in the dashboard – there was a lot of going back and forth before, but now everything can be done in the same place.

For example, when A/B testing for scheduled features, there are often several test groups (i.e. one that gets 20 coins and the other which gets 40 coins), plus a control group, which doesn’t receive any changes. The UI for all the groups initially looked the same, which sometimes caused mistakes in the back and forth flow we had, in which we had to create a new group, then go back to the editor, create another group, go back again, and so on … Instead, we created a ‘drawer component’ within a tab layout, which shows the dashboard user only the parameters which they are changing (i.e. the amount of coins the player will receive). Besides this, we added a bunch of smaller features, which enable us to have different publishing mechanisms. For example, we can now launch a large number of new feature tests at the same time through the editor, because everything is in one place.

Thanks to these changes, the team now actually realised that their workflow for scheduling features isn’t as efficient as it could be, so they’re working on reworking that.

Tactile: What are some other exciting projects you’ve been a part of?

Joy: One of my favourite projects so far was redesigning the User Support part of the LiveOps dashboard. We spent a lot of time improving it and made some drastic changes!

When a player opens a User Support ticket, there are a couple of fields which are important for the Support Agent to check: (A) Player’s device information – phone model and OS version, (B) Player information – language & country, (C) player status information – level, boosters, and (D) user support metadata – A/B test participation, chat tags. In the original UI, most of this information was at the bottom of the page, so the Support Agent had to do a lot of scrolling and searching for the right information.

We redesigned the UI so that all the most important information is right at the top of the page and then the rest of the page is organised from the most to the least relevant data. Determining the sequence and placement of these sets was crucial due to limited screen space, with only two sets visible without scrolling. Initially, we organised the information in the order of user info (B), device info (A), and play info (C), as preferred by the user support team when receiving messages. However, testing revealed that the team also occasionally wanted to view metadata. Consequently, we adjusted the order again. Furthermore, we refined the arrangement of sub-categories within each set to enhance the visibility of relevant information.

Currently, I am working on the Special Offers part of the LiveOps dashboard, and I think this is one of the best projects I’ve worked on so far at Tactile! We are releasing a bunch of different special offers in our games (i.e. the Halloween & Christmas themed offers). The way the system is set up right now, our Producers and Product Managers need to go to the dashboard and configure the offer settings manually (i.e. the number of coins and/or boosters the player receives when they purchase the offer). Before they actually go to the dashboard, they plan the offers in an Excel sheet. So as you can see, there is a lot of manual data entry work. What my team and I are working on at the moment is designing and building a system, which will enable our teams to do all the planning in an Excel sheet, then port it to the system, and after that LiveOps will automatically configure and launch the offers for them. This means that they will no longer need to interact with the dashboard as much as they do now, which will make the process faster and more efficient for them!

Tactile: What is your work process when redesigning or coming up with a new UI?

Joy: The process always starts with talking to the user. We have very small, but extremely impactful groups of users and 90% of the solution is based on what they need. After that, I start checking other, similar products on the market to get some inspiration. For example, for the Special Offers project, I am looking into different CRM tools, which have a system that enables their users to port Excel sheets of customer data onto the platform.

Once I get some inspiration, I start making flow diagrams in Figma. When I am designing them, I am thinking of every possible decision the user might need to make when using the tool: What if they would like to create something new? Or delete something? Or add something to it? While this is a crucial step to kick-off the creation process, I don’t spend a lot of time wireframing, because we want to keep things moving fast.

What I like about the design process here compared to the other places I worked at, is that the developers get involved very early on in the process – the feedback loop is fast and short. It’s what we like to call ‘the tech check’. I speak with our Core Team Lead and Lead Frontend Engineer about our programming capabilities. Is the design realistic in terms of programming resources? Is there a library we can use to save development time? We want to be able to ship these very specialised, very complex tools quickly. This ties in very closely with our lean production mindset at Tactile – we try to avoid waste by overproducing and overprocessing. So instead of the developers getting involved only at the end, once the design is finalised (which could take several months), they are continuously giving their input from the very start of the process.

Tactile: People don’t find internal tools as appealing software, and are usually not interested in designing projects for internal use. Why did you sign up for this “boring job”?

Joy: I signed up because the tools we’re working on are extremely complex and specialised, and that makes our work really challenging and interesting! After 2 years at Tactile, I am still trying to wrap my head around how everything works and how it’s all linked together.

For example, if you have to make a company website or an ecommerce web application, there’s already been a thousand similar things done which you can use for inspiration. But if you have to build a LiveOps tool, something like Scheduled Features … Well, just try googling that and you will pretty much get zero results. This is because all of these tools are highly specialised for their own use case (in our case it’s for the production of casual mobile games with a story component) and that’s the beauty of internal tools – it’s hard to get inspired from similar projects, so you have to be very creative and come up with everything from scratch! And in order to be able to do that, you really need to have excellent business understanding. Even from one gaming company to another, the games are built completely differently.

Another thing that I love about internal tools is that there is no business pressure in terms of the look and the feel of the product, like there might be in more traditional product companies. Based on the data from the market, the business has to do what the customers want, but that might not necessarily be what you would like to do as a designer! Since we’re building tools for our internal teams, rather than our players, we have a lot of freedom in pursuing different design options, as long as the teams are finding the tools easy and intuitive to use. For me, when you have a lot of freedom to explore design options, without having to stick to a particular business angle, it’s the purest form of creativity you can have as a UX Designer.

It’s no secret that storytelling has been the driving force behind our most recent games, Lily’s Garden (2019), Penny & Flo (2020), and Makeover Match (2023). Our goal has always been to captivate players and create unforgettable gaming experiences. Behind every narrative in mobile gaming, you’ll discover an incredible group effort from artists, writers, and animators.

At Tactile, the creative powerhouses who bring it all together, are our awesome Cinematic Artists (CAs). Their magic lies in weaving all the essential elements of a great story into a seamless and engaging experience. That’s why we sat down with three of our CAs – Kiran, Maiko, and Jon – to dive deep into the art of storytelling at Tactile. In this article, we’ll explore their creative process, the tools they use, the challenges they face, and their commitment to delivering cinematic excellence.

The Role of Cinematic Artists

CAs play a pivotal role in shaping the visual aspects of story-driven mobile games. If you’ve played our games, you’ll know that our gameplay not only consists of match-3 puzzle levels and customization features but it’s all tied into a cohesive story, in our case through cutscenes that players watch in order to complete tasks. 

To construct these scenes, CAs make use of assets that are crafted by our teams of artists and animators. Think of them as digital camera people, responsible for framing and timing every scene, with a keen eye for detail. Maiko explains, “The end product is just a cutscene, you point the camera at something, and of course, me pointing the camera at this cup, it had a lot of decisions made prior to that. Right? What is it exactly and how is it that I want to show this cup and for what reason?” Hence, being a CA is all about asking: What do I want to show, how should I show it and for what purpose?

Tools

CAs create scenes in Unity, but it’s not the standard version they use. The team relies heavily on customized tools built by our Content Tools team, such as the Map Editor (check out this article to learn more about our in-house storytelling tools). This tool enables them to weave all the pieces together: Positioning the items and characters, picking facial expressions, importing the dialogue, moving the cameras, adding animations to characters, giving everything timing – basically everything necessary to tell the story.

Our in-house tools are essential for maintaining an efficient workflow, enabling the team to seamlessly integrate information from multiple softwares. It goes like this: The “instruction guide” for creating a scene is outlined in the flowchart, created by Story Directors. The assets are mainly produced in Photoshop or Maya and the dialogues are stored in Google spreadsheets. CAs then take all those storytelling pieces and put them together in Unity.

Timelines

Given that most of our story-driven games have weekly releases, it’s a flow they repeat week after week. Achieving weekly releases is no small feat, with each release typically involving around 20 scenes, each representing a task essential for the storyline’s progression. For example, whenever there’s an area in Lily’s Garden that needs to be renovated, there needs to be a story tying that into the overall narrative and gameplay experience.

Workflows

Collaboration is at the core of their workflow. They closely follow production cycles, dividing tasks among team members, ideally in accordance with the abilities and interests of each team member. For instance, if someone is skilled in animating or would like to upskill, the team always tries to give them space to do some animating.

A while ago, they also started working in rotations so CAs could learn each step of the pipeline. As Kiran describes: “Project responsibilities rotate amongst all team members where one person is responsible for receiving all the 2D character expressions in a timely manner, another for getting the environmental assets and so on”. With this type of shared ownership they make sure that all assets are in accordance with release schedules. Kiran continues: “Everyone learns to do all the tasks required, which ends up being very important when someone is out sick for a week, since our players are always waiting for the next chapter to be released.“

Balancing Creativity and Practicality

One of the primary challenges for CAs is balancing creativity with the demands of a weekly release schedule and limited options. They understand that while they aim for excellence, compromises may be necessary. One limitation is the camera angle for Lily’s Garden and Penny & Flo as it’s locked into a top-down view which limits cinematographic options as you don’t get to do normal movie shots like close-ups or over-the-shoulder shots. But the good sports that they are, they take it as a fun challenge and constantly find innovative and creative ways to work around that, always aiming for their ultimate goal of cinematic excellence. As Jon describes it:

“We want Tactile to tell the best stories in the mobile market, and we’ve been trying to push the cinematics to do just that. But there’s so many things that have to come together. It needs both good writing and pretty visuals. But even more importantly, we have to nail it for our target audience, and not end up being too vague in our delivery. There are so many things that we’re constantly trying to do better”.

The joy of creating memorable scenes is evident in their work. Maiko remembers one particular scene for Penny & Flo that was super fun for the team and at the same time it showed the possibilities you have, even with limited options:

“We had this whole arc about a ship, an airship, and it was actually entertaining as hell. And in retrospect, you look at it as sort of a top down view movie, right? And you’re like, well, this is legitimately fun and well paced. And it had a bunch of effects, characters and moving pieces – super complex. At that point, it must have been like, what, three, four months [for me] at Tactile? I was like, yeah, I didn’t really imagine coming in that you could do this much with such a limited sort of platform to build cinematics on.”

It’s all about finding the ideal mix of scene framing, dialogue timing and content amount, as you want players to not feel overwhelmed and center players’ attention on the most relevant narrative aspects.

Cinematic Excellence = Know your Audience

In the fast-paced world of mobile gaming, Cinematic Artists are committed to delivering storytelling experiences that are enjoyable and relevant to players. They understand the need to balance creativity with profitability and engage players with captivating narratives. Through A/B testing, qualitative user research, and analysis of successful competitor games, they continually seek to understand player preferences. As they highlight, it’s a fun challenge to think about what a player, who plays for 30 seconds on the subway, wants to see. You’ll want to start out very strong because you want to immediately catch someone’s attention. As Jon puts it, “We need to get the ball rolling very quickly, so we spend a lot of time thinking about the beginning of any new story – because that beginning has to make you thirsty for more!”.

Seasons in games

Have you ever thought about seasons in games as a tool that can make a game more attractive and interactive for players?

We believe that in order to succeed, a game needs to feel familiar and comfortable, but also fresh and exciting! In our daily lives, events, celebrations and seasons make life more interesting and diverse. We have a change of colours in the seasons of the year, as well as festive decorations and gifts during holidays. Why not give players the same experiences whilst playing our games?

We wanted to share how our teams come up with fresh ideas and bring them to life, season after season. We sat down with Alberto Dal Corso, one of our talented Product Managers, to talk about his role at Tactile and how this creative process works.

Hi Alberto, can you tell us a little bit more about your role at Tactile?

Hi there! I am a Product Manager on the Lily’s Garden team. My role is focused on the LiveOps (live operations) part, which relates to any changes or improvements made to the game, such as optimising all the events and tournaments that run within it.

I am also responsible for the monetization of Lily’s Garden, which means planning and scheduling sales, offers and pricing, as well as trying to optimise them as best as possible. Furthermore, I am responsible for the planning and managing of the seasons or themes that run monthly in Lily’s Garden.

Who else is involved in the process of creating seasons in our games?

The creation of these themes involves a wide range of roles. We have specialists who help with contributing new ideas and feedback on upcoming seasons. We then have talented graphic designers, who create all the graphics you see in the game – everything from the Start Screen, which pops up when you open the game, to the Season Pass. After that, the UI artists and game programmers join the process to finish up the work and implement the graphics in Unity, in order to make it a reality within the game.

What does the process look like from start to finish?

We typically plan the seasons out roughly at the beginning of each year, but we then go into more detail at the start of each quarter. We have discussions and brainstorm with Product Managers and other teams about trends and key topics for the upcoming months and make decisions accordingly. Fun fact, the theme for January was decided by our community through a poll on our Facebook page, so stay tuned to see what’s coming!

After the theme is chosen, we have a chat with the graphic designers and go through several rounds of feedback until we achieve the look and feel that we want. After that, our UI artists implement the graphics in Unity and finally, our game programmers integrate it into the game.

How do you keep the creative juices flowing to come up with new ideas?

It is actually a pretty fun process! Besides the themes that are already set in stone, such as Halloween and Christmas, it is very exciting to come up with new ideas for themes and seasons. One of the most important things that we always keep in mind is being relevant to that period of the year, so we try to look at particular events or fun recurrences happening in that particular month and start the creative process from there. For example, last year we ran a Gala Theme during the month of the Academy Awards, and that was very well received by our players.

What event have you been working on most recently?

Last month, all the excitement and preparation was focused on Christmas. The Christmas season is one of the best seasons, because we can do so much in the game to fit this festive season in and theme everything to the extreme! There’s Christmas trees, lights, decorations and so much more! This Christmas in particular, we have been working on something super exciting and new for all our players. You can check out the event and how incredible it turned out by playing Lily’s Garden right now.

So there you have it, this is one of the ways in which we’ve been keeping our players engaged since we first released Lily’s Garden in early 2019! A strong storyline is important, but it’s the little touches of familiarity and comfort that stand out in a player’s mind and keep bringing them back to the game, season after season.