Maria Vasilchikova, Producer at Unbroken Studios, Women in Games Ambassador
Maria Vasilchikova, photo courtesy of the subject
In Career Spotlight, we profile women and marginalized gender professionals who work in the gaming industry. It is our goal to show the vastness and variety of jobs within the world of gaming and to share professional advice and perspective with our readers.
This week we profile Maria Vasilchikova, Associate Producer at Unbroken Studios, who works on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. She shares her perspective as someone who came to production from HR and recruiting, her advice for women entering the gaming industry, and her thoughts on what more can be done for increasing diversity in gaming.
Could you tell us about the work you do as a producer at Unbroken Studios?
As an Associate Producer, I work with game development teams to ensure tasks are tracked, prioritized, organized, and documented to optimize efficiency and avoid roadblocks.
What are the major skills you use in your role?
For a producer, it is crucial to work closely with people and be flexible to be able to accommodate any change in direction. It’s also important to hunt for information and identify and eliminate blockers.
How did the professional background you had previously prepare you for your current job?
I have had a long and varied game industry experience. When I started in the industry, I was focused in operations and accounting. I maintained the office and processed all company card transactions monthly. Eventually, as I got faster at what I did, I dipped my toes into QA and customer support on forums. Later, I also took on assisting recruitment. Eventually, the person in charge of hiring stepped down, so there was no one left to hold the reins but myself. I ran all hiring for over a year, hiring over 10% of headcount at that time. Eventually the opportunities found themselves, and I stepped into to my current job. When I first joined Unbroken Studios, my focus was on HR and recruitment with some operations and marketing support sprinkled in.
As of spring 2021, I am now an Associate Producer! I think the diversified experience helped me jump right into a small studio/startup environment where a diverse skill set was necessary and there was no shortage of work to go around. It also helped prepare me to better understand business needs across a variety of departments and how these departments support the broader operation of a studio financially, operationally, and on a human level.
Can you tell us about what it was like to transition roles in the industry?
Terrifying!!!! But exhilarating at the same time. Since my past experience had been so varied, I’d had a lot of self-doubt around whether people would see my experience as less valuable without the longitude. When I would tell people I’m trying to make the switch from HR/Recruitment into production, I would often get the response “Wow, that’s so different!” But in truth, it wasn’t. The deliverables were different, but the personal skills were exactly the same. Instead of pushing roles to be filled, now I’m pushing deliverables to completion. And as a bonus, now I get to work closely with all those awesome people I hired over the years. Win-win!
When did you decide that working in gaming was something you wanted to pursue?
Honestly, the realization arrived pretty late for me as no one ever told me that people make games. I had always been a gamer, but the concept of a game developer never entered my atmosphere. In 2015, I entered some circumstances where I simultaneously lived with someone in the industry and my father entered the industry himself. This led me to a referral for an interview. While that particular interview did not pan out, that’s when I realized, “Hey, I could do this!”
What advice do you have for women who may want to start a career in gaming or professionals who want to pivot their careers into the gaming industry?
We need you! Simply put, women make games better, and it is my goal to make sure we open the door into gaming to as many women and other underrepresented communities as possible.
My advice would be to:
Never doubt yourself; you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone but yourself. (This seems counter-intuitive in the context of interviews, job performance etc., but trust me!!)
Growth comes at the intersection of hard work, opportunity, and networking. All three of these are essential to entering the industry, and they are all inter-dependent on each other.
Connecting with other underrepresented communities in gaming has had a direct impact on my longevity in the industry, and as a result it is my responsibility to extend the ladder to those who come after me. I encourage everyone else to do the same. We are all stronger together.
Based on what you’ve encountered in your work in the gaming industry, what do you think the future of gaming will look like in the years to come?
I am hopeful that the game industry moves into a future that is diverse, equitable, deeply creative, ethical, and a boon to everyone who receives the fruits of it. I hope to be part of that change.
What do you think needs to change in the gaming industry to increase diversity and make the world a better place for women gamers?
I think sometimes, when we think about diversity in the industry, we shoot for the moon and end up in the ozone layer a bit. I sometimes see things like "This opportunity is for women" which is great for diversifying your candidate pool, but it completely ignores our nonbinary and transmasculine voices. Just the same for the diversity of race. There's talk of diversity metrics; but the harder work of seeing if POC employees feel supported and happy in their workplace, if there are people of color holding positions of leadership, and more, may go unnoticed. I think some people get caught so much on the "what", they don't really think too hard about the "how".
Don’t get me wrong, I am so, so grateful that these kinds of conversations are happening in the first place; but hopefully as a developed industry full of complex minds, we can push more towards this kind of holistic thinking around how we handle diversity.
Follow Maria on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mvasilchikova/
Learn more about Unbroken Studios at their website: https://unbrokenstudios.com/
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