We continue to recognize Pride Month, honoring lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex and asexual people and their allies in our offices around the world. We are celebrating a long-lasting movement of authenticity, connection and visibility for the LGBTQIA+ community worldwide by highlighting Scopeleans who are proud members and/or allies of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Say “hello” to Jake.
Tell us a little about yourself and your journey at Scopely.
I've worked for Scopely for eight and a half years, three in Los Angeles and the remainder in Barcelona. Scopely was around 90 people when I joined and is now over 2,000, which has been amazing and fascinating to be a part of. I've had several roles in these years, including Director of Design for the company. I've led design and product on various games, I've been General Manager for some teams/studios, and now my title is Vice President - Product, but functionally I am the Game Director on "Stumble Guys," which is the most fun and interesting and rewarding game I've ever worked on.
What are you currently working on and how does your work impact the company?
I am 100% focused on "Stumble Guys" design, product, creative and production, evolving it from what it is today into a true forever game. We want it to be the go-to destination for multiplayer gameplay.
"Stumble Guys" is super unique to Scopely in a bunch of ways. It's an original IP where we historically work with established IPs. It's our first "real time" game where you control the action with twitch inputs. It's our first steam game. The size of the audience and community is a scale we've never had before. And the most exciting unique thing is the cutting edge relationship between us, content creators and the community. That's the future of games, in terms of how you attract and retain players, how you market, how you inform, how you engage. We've never had this before at this scale and depth, and the constant feedback it provides, the excitement, the relationships - it's all very exciting and so engaging both as a player and a game maker.
What does diversity in gaming mean to you?
The two big things for me are representation and team diversity and they are super connected.
Historically, teams of people who make entertainment content are not diverse, because of biases and prejudices. The content they make ends up being about characters who are like them - male, white, straight, cis, etc. Then, audiences consume the content, and members of underrepresented minority groups end up not seeing people "like them" in the content. This impacts those individuals and also individuals who are not from these underrepresented groups. For LGBTQIA+ identifying people and minorities, they don't get the benefit of representation, i.e. the examples, role models, aspirations, and dreams that good entertainment can provide. For underrepresented youth especially, seeing "yourself" in entertainment can help to tell you it's okay to be you, and the power of those dreams and role models is even stronger. For everyone else, especially those who don't have relationships in their life with underrepresented people, they miss out on the option to "get to know'' about the lives and struggles and dreams of people in these groups. Seeing stories about different people helps you understand them, it helps to educate, inform, and "normalize" differences that you're not exposed to in your own life.
And to loop these two priorities together, of course, the way to make great content about diverse characters is to actually have diverse teams, different voices in the room with different experiences and backgrounds and dreams and fears. And as an aside, more diversity = more experiences = more voices/ideas = better content! If everyone on a team has the same background, they're only going to be telling certain stories in certain ways.
And these two connect as a feedback loop. Diverse teams make diverse content which can impact our culture to be more accepting, not to mention can help a lot of people.
Can you imagine being the one trans kid in a town or the one black kid in a neighborhood and having never seen someone like you in any entertainment, then finally, one day, something comes out that does represent you, how much of a connection you might feel to that character, and how it might help you feel more proud and seen and "validated?”
That's why diversity in representation and in teams is so critical and important to me.
Which Scopely culture tenets resonate most with you?
I'll cheat and pick two, one more personal, one more operational.
EMBRACE THE ADVENTURE. This is just so big. Work and life has ups and downs, times you're more engaged and less, successes and failures, fun stuff and hard stuff. Looking at things holistically, staying focused on your goals, not letting the rising and the falling of the tides freak you out, set you spinning out, lashing out or shutting down, it's so key to doing hard things, making great things, and having good relationships and experiences, in life and in work. It's very key to Scopely and our culture here and an essential pairing of the Play to Win ambitions.
IGNITE PASSION, EARN LOYALTY. In terms of making stuff, I'm very inspired by Ignite Passion, Earn Loyalty. Make stuff with love that other people love and you will earn their engagement with your creations. Not about making stuff that's just good, not about making stuff that looks the best or wins awards or makes a bunch of money for a year or two, it's about making the right things for the right people that will be a major piece of their entertainment consumption for years. Entertainment is kind of crazy if you think about it. People love to talk about their favorite shows and movies and games and books. We spend a LOT of time with our entertainment. To be someone's favorite game, sometimes for years, to have them experience the output of our creativity, it's very special. We're service providers in that sense, like chefs, it should be our passion to entertain, amuse, surprise, engage, and if people connect so deeply with what we provide, it is a massive accomplishment and something to be proud of.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
I'll give some very basic advice to younger people who are starting their careers, and I don't think it matters if it's in games or retail or finance or anything: do what needs getting done, work hard, do good work, be good to people you work with, listen, empathize, be curious, ask questions, offer assistance and ideas, improve things for people, learn from other people, never ever ever think that you know enough or are good enough at something, always be skeptical of your own opinions, try to make other people successful more than you try to make yourself successful, do things you're good at and that engage you, care, enjoy, and don't stress about advancement. Be ambitious about the quality of your work and about learning. Ambition for its own sake will only get you so far and you'll end up not liking your work, but the people who are successful and enjoy the work got there because they worked hard doing things they care about and were more concerned with the quality of their work than with the rewards. Focus on learning and doing good work and collaborating well and having good relationships and the rest comes.
If you had to choose only three apps to have on your phone, what would they be? Why?
I'll say three mobile games, in the present moment.
"Slay the Spire," which I have probably played over 2.000 hours of, because I always come back to it, it is endlessly engaging and challenging. In my opinion it's one of the best games of all time and I think it was made by two people, which is very inspiring.
"Pokémon Unite," because I play it with my wife and daughter together. It's my daughter's first "hardcore" game and her first Massive Online Battle Arena (MOBA). Being able to play video games that all three of us enjoy (rather than boring little kid games) and that we can play together is a big source of joy for me, even though we do fight sometimes about kill-stealing. :)
"Stumble Guys" of course! I play it with my family and friends and colleagues and it's what I spend a big portion of my life trying to make as good as possible. Playing all the time and seeing/hearing what family and friends think about it is a big source of inspiration for my work.
Are you interested in becoming a Scopelean like Jake? Apply for one of our open roles: scopely.com/join-us.