Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Allegra Israel, Live Producer at Gameforge. Read more about Allegra in this interview:
 
Hi Allegra! You’ve been in the games industry for more than ten years. What are your expectations for the next decade?

Ten years sound like a long time indeed but when you enjoy what you are doing, time flies pretty fast!

It has been an exciting journey so far alongside Gameforge and my amazing colleagues, and I expect nothing different from that for the decade ahead. Change and how to adapt smoothly is a constant factor in the games industry – which also means it never gets boring. There is no standstill for us as a company. To thrive and remain competitive, we have to constantly challenge ourselves and look for different approaches – be it for the release of new titles like our latest newcomer “Swords of Legends Online” or to ensure the ongoing success of our existing portfolio with established games like “Metin2” or “NosTale”. Also on a personal level, I‘ve come quite a way – I started as a Game Writer and switched to Live Producing two years ago. So let’s see what the next decade will bring!

What do you enjoy most about being a Live Producer?

As a Live Producer, you always have to expect the unexpected. A day that started normal can make a sudden U-turn and bring you more excitement and sweat than you signed up for in the morning. But the feeling, when the challenge is managed, the emergency overcome, after everyone had put in their effort as a team, is amazing.

But Live Producing is not only firefighting. A big part of it is project management and organizing resources and time, to pull up a new content update for a game or implement a cool idea for new servers. What I totally enjoy is putting those puzzle pieces of different information and tasks together, so it forms a functioning project plan in the end.

How do you manage both: a challenging full time job and being there for your family?

I would lie if I said it is always easy. Same as in my everyday work, you must structure, organize and, most importantly, prioritize – or sometimes just go with the flow and accept not being in control of everything. In case of personal emergencies, I can rely on my nearby family or close friends and am aware that this is a huge luxury not everyone has.  

Progress is a blessing – use technical helpers as much as you can, no joke! Having Mr. Robot vacuum the floor gives you more time to focus on your family after a working day. And, well, unless it gives you sleepless nights, ignore the dust on the shelves and hide your laundry basket behind closed doors a day longer sometimes.

Public systems in bigger cities have improved over time and offer better support for working parents than a few years ago in countries like Germany.

Also, I am lucky to work in a very family friendly environment, which is not always guaranteed (even nowadays).

A lot of parents felt the double burden of home office and kids at home as extremely stressful. For me, to be honest, home office and especially the understanding my employer showed for us parents, was a big relief and helped a great deal to restore and manage work-life balance. As a key factor here, I see the possibility to organize your working day and the needs of your family more freely than within a normal 9-to-5 office day.

Thank you for your time, Allegra!

Allegra’s links: LinkedIn │ Gameforge Website

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Sophie Brügmann