Our Huuuge Story #3: Culture is King
In the past two posts, we’ve talked a lot about Huuuge Games’ history, and while technological innovation elevated us throughout the years , we’d be remiss if we wouldn’t mention the impact our Company Culture and our fantastic team have on our products and the way we design them. The third part of our Huuuge Story will show you how applying our values has helped us make Huuuge the #1 Social Gaming Company.
Innovating through Culture
Our 9 Core Principles have guided us from the outset of Huuuge’s existence. In a landscape dominated by a binary approach to creating content. We decided to challenge the status quo with something new. Our Principles are applied to every facet of our work — from HR all the way to development.
Through applying these principles, we have learned some valuable lessons. We’ve experienced failure, but learning from our mistakes made us stronger, we took on extreme challenges and — despite many hardships — came out as winners.
The key lesson we’ve learned concerned two words everyone knows so well — yes and no. Saying no is often hard, especially when you see a sweet deal coming your way. We’ve had big ad networks offer us seemingly great, low-risk deals that we had to reject so that we could stay in line with our core principles. On the other hand, we’ve taken big risks as well. We can tell you that we’ve taken on an innovative project that we will reveal very soon, where we combine brand new city-building mechanics with our trademark Slots. It would be easy to dismiss it as too risky, or too costly, but we took the risk, and seeing the current version of the project, we can certainly say we believe it was worth it.
The Huuuge way isn’t one of complacency or taking the easy way out. We take risks. We are not afraid of taking on challenges or failing, and that is an attitude that we feel makes us stand out in the industry.
Our Team
While the Core Principles are the lifeblood of our product, the people behind the scenes are even more critical. Over the years our team has become truly diverse, with over 400 employees from 22 nationalities in offices in Poland, Germany, Hong Kong and Israel. This diversity is one of our biggest strengths — with different cultures come different approaches. These differences create a broader, global perspective that makes Huuuge stronger.
Our diversity isn’t limited to where we are from, or what languages we speak. It’s what our team members have done before joining Huuuge and their collective and what their individual potential brings to the table. We don’t just try to hire people with “raw skill,” but people with an attitude that fit Huuuge’s values and a potential to grow their “raw skill” as we grow our Company.
This approach allows us to hire people who aren’t satisfied with the status quo; they challenge it. When creating our games, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of having tunnel vision. Hiring people from different places and different backgrounds ensures that, as if through osmosis, our products become more diverse, and thus resonate with more people.
We are proud of how we’ve been able to create a giant team full of interdisciplinary All-Stars which gels this well. We like to believe that working in Huuuge is an adventure — the work we do isn’t always by the book or simple. It’s challenging, hard work that is also fulfilling and rewarding. Thanks to our team, we feel that we can climb any mountain, solve any problem, and conquer every coming challenge, which is why we’re happy that we can work with such smart and kind people.
Think you’d be a fit with us? You can apply here!
Beyond our office walls
Our Company Culture goes beyond our office walls, as we ensure that we’re actively promoting our approach outside of the Company. We sponsor various Game Jams, as well as gaming/technology conferences and even university courses (started in Bydgoszcz and Szczecin), including internship offers!
On top of that, we organize a yearly Huuuge Game Jam in Poland. During last year’s Huuuge Game Jam, 35 games were made, including Headahead, a game from Wild Boar Studio, later named the best game created during a Game Jam in all of Poland. This year’s Huuuge Game Jam (November 18–19th) has already seen a lot of people register! Here’s some more info about the event!
We believe that communities should be fostered, from the community created by our players, through the local communities around our offices, all the way to the general gaming and game development community. That is why we make continuous efforts to support them in every way possible.
Innovation goes beyond Technology
While the technology creates a lot of our innovation, the driving force behind it has always been our Culture — starting with the people we hire, all the way to our approach to development. If our technology is a car, our culture is the driver. It challenges- sometimes even forces — us to go out of our comfort zone. To take the initiative and stray off the beaten path. To learn from our mistakes and to use them to grow.
Of course, we have to mention how important our players are to our company. We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without their help, and we love hearing their feedback. Catering to our players’ needs is a Huuuge part of our Culture; one that we’ve been fostering ever since day one.
All in all, creating great games is about more than the engine used or the servers they’re running on. It’s about the people who create them and the people who play them, and we can safely say that both our team and our players are the best in the business and the key to making us the #1 Social Gaming Company.
