With Playtopia, the annual destination of Indie Games & Immersive Arts festival and conference set to return in 2024, GIA has partnered with the event to share insights from the crop of supremely talented creators in attendance. Next up in a series of speaker interviews is UI/UX designer – Fey Vercuiel.

Would you kindly provide some background into who you are, your entry into the games industry and how you came into your current position as the lead UI/UX designer at Omeda Studios?

Hi thanks for inviting me to answer some questions. I have been working in games and tech for nearly 2 decades and started out my journey as a 3D Artist and 3D Character Animator. When I still lived in South Africa many years ago I was quite involved in community building efforts for the creative industry and got really deep into web development. When I moved to Europe I started out as Flash web developer and designer and really loved creating rich and engaging interactive experiences. The Flash community was a big source of creative inspiration and exposed me to the world of game development. I discovered that big franchise games such as Assassin’s Creed utilized a version of flash in games called Scaleform and took the plunge and applied for a job at Ubisoft and got the job somehow even though the art test required After Effects skills that I didn’t have a week prior to applying! The rest is history, I worked as a UI Designer on many franchises and gradually fell deeper in love with answering the question “why do people play games?” and “what motivates player behavior?” This led me into the world of UX Design and UX Research. 10 years ago no one in games really talked about UX and very few people had it as an official title. What often happened was that UI Designers fell into solving UX and Research problems within their day to day tasks and so the infamous unofficial title “UI/UX Unicorn” became a thing. I’ve worked in both AAA and Mobile and on various genres and now find myself working at Omeda in my first indie studio job after years of working on projects with very big budgets for big corporations. In my career I’ve managed design departments of up to 20+ people and currently manage a medium sized team on an exciting MOBA game called “Predecessor”.

For the uninitiated, what role does a UI/UX designer play in game development?

Before I describe my role I should provide context as to how design roles work in non-game studios. In tech companies design is often done by a product designer that is responsible for systems design, interaction design, research, behavioural science etc. 

In the games industry the role of a product designer is split into various roles but the common split is Game Design and UI/UX Design. In larger businesses these roles become more nuanced such as Narrative Design, Level Design, UI Design, UX Design, Content Design and UX Research.  As a UI/UX Designer I don’t really touch things like game balancing, systems design, etc. My role is a 50/50 split between Visual/Interaction Design and Behavioural Science/Library sciences. My job is to essentially design that thin veil between the player and the software. I like to describe my job as balancing the needs of the player and the business. UI/UX design requires a deep level of empathy of player needs and a deep understanding of creative problem solving. Some people often think my job is just making pretty icons and menus, however often I’m spending my time gaining qualitative insights on why players do the things they do so that I can influence business metrics through formulating hypotheses that leads into exciting divergent creative exploration. 

How did you come to be connected with the African games industry?

I am South African and left SA when I was 20, I am 38 now and had little contact with South African game developers other than my old friends from Freelives. I’ve always been impressed with the crazy cool projects they create!

What do you know about the African games industry and how do you intend to support its growth via your role?

I’m ashamed to admit I don’t know much about the African games industry and would love to get more involved if possible. I have a dream that maybe one day the opportunity will arise where I would be able to contribute to the growth of the African game industry and be able to share my experience working on large titles such as Halo, Total War, Candy Crush, Runescape etc. 

What are your expectations for Playtopia?

It is surreal to me to be going back to my home country to speak at an event as a subject matter expert where when I left there was no such thing as an SA games industry. My expectation is just to immerse myself in all the cool creative projects, make some new friends and leave feeling inspired and hopeful for the future. I hope that I can contribute to the event in a meaningful way and am looking forward to just being around other developers and designers. 

Check out the full program and consider joining Playtopia, which will run from December 6th to 7th December 2024 in Cape Town.