Why Player Support? (Let Me Cook.)
The Player Support Newsletter - 30 MAR 2025
Introduction: Raison d'être
You could say that work in its most enjoyable form, for me, is about solving problems with friends. Part and parcel to the primary mission, however, is the very difficult task of coming up with new approaches to business operations. Human resources, finance, community, facilities, everything has to be reconsidered to various degrees. Experimentation is required. Failures along the path are certain. But if we can find a handful of effective approaches, maybe we can help other companies carve out their own futures together.
Anyone who thinks we are interested in directly competing with other BPOs really has no idea what we’re about.
We are not concerned with what others are doing other than to understand who are the best partners to work with, and who is doing really cool stuff.
To Be the Partner of Choice in the Video Game Industry for Support, Moderation, and Specialized Teams
We want it to be a no-brainer that every large scale games organization has at least one team with us. When you’re in a jam and aren’t sure what to do, or if you feel stuck and you’re looking for some innovative partners to jam with you on creating new methods for your particular brand of madness - we want to be there. Cooking takes time and we are in it for the long-term because we are interested in deeply understanding your issues, and crafting solutions that work for your specific ecosystem of concerns.
I take a lot of inspiration from chefs because they deal with one of the most common challenges all human beings face - creating great meals. Even if you have the recipe, the skill of the chef really matters. In similar fashion, I’d like us to be capable of creating awesome meals across a broad range of tastes. We will never be a fast food chain, but we can definitely make some comparably priced street food that just may have you coming back for more. There are fundamental skills that all great chefs share, and other areas where their creativity comes into play. Sometimes, a few small details can make a world of difference.
My hope is that Player Support becomes something akin to a cooking laboratory or experimental kitchen - a fantastic early stop in your professional career or the whacky (but also serious) place you’ve been looking for all along.
And to Innovate on Key Business Operations to Discover New Ways of Running Companies
I believe this will be extremely difficult to do, but I hope to create a handful of important innovations for running a healthy and profitable company. The idea of innovation in business for the past few decades has largely been confined to software, and sold to us in the form of digital transformation. If you want better HR all you have to do is buy the right software - a proposterous, but common idea. Not only have false promises been sold, but it has distracted us from the much needed work of thinking about the human beings behind it all.
The heart of any organization has always been its people.
Because one of our original lines of business is about building great teams and selling services, in my mind, we cannot divorce this part of the mission from the primary statement. If we want to be the partner of choice in the video game industry, we must discover better ways of running these kinds of companies. We must simultaneously deliver value, innovate, take good care of our employees, and develop them while making a solid profit. On the surface, it sounds highly unlikely that it will succeed, but that is not different than any other new business venture.
Why Now?
Besides the stories I’ve already shared, I believe one of the best times to start a business is when an industry is in turmoil. No doubt, we (and the greater CX industry) are in transition. Changing geopolitical relationships and the hype of generative AI/LLMs pose a lot of questions whose answers will greatly affect the trajectory of this industry’s future. I would rather have a front seat to see a company through this difficult transition than sit it out.
My simple thinking is this - if we can survive and navigate well through this time, we will emerge with a head start on defining the future.
I hope to partner with many of you on this great adventure.