Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Romy Halfweeg, Business Development Manager at Poki. She speaks about the value of openness in networking, learning from event management, and balancing creative and business aspects in game development. Read more about Romy here:
Hi Romy! Throughout your career, you have held various roles. What key lessons have you learned about building and maintaining professional relationships within the gaming industry, and how have these experiences shaped your approach to business development?

I think that overall in all of my roles, from Event Manager to Partnerships Manager to Business Developer, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to always be open and approachable. You never know who might want to talk to you, so I make sure to give people that chance. I do this by being present at events, attending smaller meetups, giving presentations, making myself easy to reach online, and being active in Discord servers and Slack channels. I also usually try to lower the barrier by introducing myself first. Basically I try to enter physical and virtual spaces with an outstretched hand 🙂

This approach has worked well for me in business development too. Instead of saying no to a meeting or walking away from a conversation if I don’t immediately understand the mutual benefit, I try to listen to what they’re looking for whenever I can. Even if we can’t collaborate right away, there have been times when it became relevant months or even years later. If I hadn’t been open to listening to what these people were working on in the first place, I would have missed those opportunities.

You’ve been involved in various aspects of communication and event management. Can you share a specific project or event that you managed which had a significant impact on your professional growth, and what skills or insights did you gain from that experience?

Though it was a small event compared to others I’ve been involved with, hosting my own Video Game Pub Quiz was probably the most challenging and educational event I’ve organized. Usually, I work with a team, but for this one, it was just me. I had to find a partner for the venue and prizes, spread the word, make sure all the equipment was working, and host on stage while keeping everyone engaged and having a good time. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun!

This experience made me appreciate even more how hard project and event managers work, especially during those workload peaks right before and during the event. It solidified my resolve to be more respectful of their time and avoid doing things last minute to lessen the burden for event managers I work with.

On a professional level, I realized that public speaking is always something you can improve on. Hosting is different from pitching, which is different from giving a talk or being on a panel. I want to take as many public speaking opportunities as I can to keep improving this skill because I still have a lot to gain.

As a co-founder of Benri Games, you have had hands-on experience in game design, art, and business. What advice would you give to aspiring game developers looking to balance creative and business responsibilities?

I recently gave a talk on this topic at INDIGO. For me there are three key factors for balancing creative ambitions with business needs. My advice is to consider these three questions:

  • What do we want to make? (Motivation and future plans)
  • What can we make? (Skills and available resources)
  • Where do we see a commercial opportunity? (Market research and development time)

Before starting a new project, I make sure to have good answers to these questions. For example: even if there’s a great market opportunity, like we build a racing game demo that people love, and we have the skills to make it (our artist is great at vehicles, our programmer excels at physics, and our designer has experience with racing games), it might still be a valid choice not to make it if we really want to make a tower defense game. Motivation is as important as your team’s skills and the financial viability.

On the other hand, if we want to make that racing game but don’t have someone good at programming physics, then we should consider not pursuing it at this point. Or, if we can make it and also want to make it, but a similar game just released and didn’t do well, it might not be the right time to pursue it either.

In the end, game development is both an artistic pursuit and a business. So my advice to aspiring developers would be to create games that fulfill you creatively, but also to keep an eye on your existing skills and the market throughout development. All aspects are equally important.

Thanks for this interview, Romy!

Romy’s links: LinkedIn

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Madeleine Egger