He has 9 years of industry experience under his belt and has worked with people all over the world in Ireland and Spain! Our multicultural and multitasking game champ has also always been a huge fan of Asphalt 9: Legends, making him the perfect ambassador for the game.
Learn more about his job as a game champion and why he loves his job as much as he does below!
Hi, Deniss! Tell us about yourself.
I've been a gamer for as long as I can remember, and my morning always starts with watching news from the industry. I believe most people I've worked with also see me as an enthusiastic person because to me it's not just a job, it's my lifestyle.
Originally I'm from Latvia, but my journey in the gaming industry started in Ireland as a customer service game master for technical and billing support where I honed my skills and knowledge for 7 years.
I really wanted to get closer to the game development team though, while still using the skills and knowledge that I already had. I was very lucky because at the time, there was a game champion position open in Barcelona that looked like a perfect fit for my skills and was exactly what I was looking for.
However, this meant relocating from Ireland to Spain with my family (my wife and my son who was just 2 years old at the time), and I'm very grateful they supported my career change, especially since moving to a new country with a different language and culture isn't always easy.
Now we've been here for almost two years, and we're happy to live in Barcelona. It feels like we're in the right place.
What is a game champion exactly?
That's a very good question! Even people who have come across this role in their organization won't be able to guess what I do because this job can be very different from place to place.
At Gameloft Barcelona, I joined the Asphalt 9: Legends team with the aim to improve the connection between the customer care, community, and game development teams.
The goal was to maintain and develop the processes that would help with issues that we had in the game at that point, like toxicity in the Discord server or cheaters in the game, and make sure that the game team would be able to focus more on developing future content.
I don't really have an average day because my tasks depends on the game's current needs. One day, I might work with our community managers and talk with our players in Discord then assist our marketing team with some cool projects and then help our esports team with their events (like the ESL event going on right now).
The next day might be a deep dive into the logs with the QA and dev teams, analyzing data to resolve some issue, and collaborating with the customer care team to make sure that they have all the information to help our players.
Besides working with the game team and community managers, I also help write patch notes for each update, answer players' suggestions, and provide players with information about new features or status updates about existing issues.
One such issue are cheaters, which are an ongoing issue in many multiplayer games, and it's my job to work with the team to keep the game as cheater-free as possible.
To sum up, I believe that the key to success in this role is to be a champion of the game. Not in terms of skill but knowledge about every aspect of the game.
What are some of your most memorable moments at Gameloft?
Considering that I was already in love with Asphalt 9: Legends and looking forward to joining the team, I think my most memorable moments were my first days at Gameloft.
Working on a game you love is great, but when I started working with people from the team, that was a truly epic moment. Everyone knows that the people you work with are important, but here they're all rock stars at what they do, which explains why the game is so amazing and has received so many awards.
Anything you bring to the team is turned into something amazing, and you're constantly inspired by them too, which makes the day go by so fast that you don't even realize it's time to go home.
What advice do you have for people who want to work in gaming in a similar role?
I remember sitting with a piece of paper and pen to figure out the next steps for my career without realizing that I was about to make one of the best decisions of my professional life. That day, I figured out exactly what I wanted to achieve, which in turn helped me find what I was looking for.
As I mentioned before, a game champion role could have very different requirements from place to place. But my best advice would be to focus first on your skills, experience, personality, and passion, and look for a position that could suit them.
You most likely won't be able to get there in one go, but look at the requirements for your dream job and figure out what you're missing. Sometimes you might have to start with something that feels a bit far from your goal, but there are so many different positions out there.
Once you start, contribute to the business and use any opportunity you can get because you'll be able to learn something that will get you closer to your goal. And once you feel like you're ready, be prepared to take a leap of faith because starting a new position can be challenging. But with the right mindset—as Irish people say—you’ll be grand!
We have multiple positions available in our studios around the world, and you can find all of them here. Stay tuned next week for another edition of Humans Behind the Game!
