Many of us remember the competition of playing Mario Kart and the feeling of satisfaction as we whammy our friend with a red shell. This is the feeling that Aurora Klaeboe Berg describes in Fun Run. Aurora describes that familiar moment when you are “watching the split screen and seeing their reaction when you threw the banana, they slid and you won. With that in mind, they decided to tackle this challenge of creating a synchronous multiplayer game for mobile”.
Aurora Klæboe Berg is Vice-President of Business and Marketing at Dirtybit. Since they are a small team, she fills a variety of roles in the company; in fact, she describes her work as everything that isn’t coding or creating graphics.
The Impact of Entrepreneurship
Prior to coming to Dirtybit, Aurora co-founded another startup in the tech sector, giving her valuable experience that has been an advantage in her current responsibilities. She has also been very active in volunteer organizations, where she learned both teamwork and leadership. Two years ago, she graduated with a Master of Science Degree in Comm. Tech Engineering and Entrepreneurship from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. While there, she learned methods to rapidly solve new and unfamiliar problems. These lessons have been another significant asset to her work.
Aurora loves entrepreneurship and the startup scene where she can work with highly motivated people to make an impact on others in ways they can’t possibly imagine. She finds the gaming space and the power of gamification extremely interesting and is driven by a desire to understand why people do what they do.
She was drawn to the games industry through her connection to the founders of Dirtybit, whom she had known since her university days. They liked how she ran her startup, and asked her to join them to help build the company and run business’ ongoing development. She particularly enjoys growing together and making their own rules, but her favorite thing about her work is seeing the impact they have created with their games and gaming experiences.
Learning to Understand Games
Although Aurora is now an avid mobile gamer, she felt challenged by a lack of general gaming knowledge since she did not grow up playing console or PC games. She did however, enjoy brain training games and board games. After joining Dirtybit, she invested considerable time playing random mobile games in order to understand what made them fun and addictive. She also followed many blogs that would provide further understanding of the gaming space and watched videos from Casual Connect and GDC. Some of the Casual Connect videos she found helpful focused on analytics, marketing and monetization. She advances her knowledge of games while at work through a game scholar group where they play one game each month and then discuss what they liked and disliked about the game, something she finds very educational. The current game they are playing is the Norwegian horror game Among the Sleep.
If she was not involved in the games industry, Aurora believes she would certainly be working in the tech space, forming another startup. She has come quite a distance from her childhood aspiration of becoming a bicycle cop like those she saw on the TV show Pacific Blue.
The most exciting time in her career came last fall after they had all been working day and night to launch Fun Run 2 before Christmas; within twenty-four hours, even before most of their marketing efforts had begun, the game reached #2 in the US, where it remained for twelve days. She emphasizes, “It took a lot of focus and hard work to get there!”
Working Together With Focus and Fit
As for team members, Aurora looks for, “someone a little bit crazy and that wants to be better, and that sees what needs to be done and find a way to solve problems and obstacles, instead of waiting for someone to tell them what to do.” Focus and fit with the company are the most difficult attributes to find in team members, and they also need to have a huge capacity for work and a positive outlook.
She believes the co-workers appreciate that her oversight of a project is outstanding and that she is hard-working and able to get the work done.
The company has frequent evaluations with the entire team, as well as personal evaluations, to avoid developing difficulties within the team. These evaluations, in addition to their daily standup meetings, are effective ways to air concerns and complications. Their focus is on creating an open culture.
Aurora’s inspiration for her indie projects was a desire to find ways for friends to play together joyfully. The games they produce are free-to-play because the games are very social, and the company chooses to lower the barrier to entry.
She believes the games industry will soon see a greater focus on user-generated content, with developers providing a platform of possibilities to their users; only their imagination will set boundaries. At Dirtybit, they are already investigating and testing ways for their users to be more involved with their games.
Aurora finds her work leaves her with little free time, but she still enjoys staying active with hiking and traveling. She also enjoys cooking and then matching the wine to the meal she has created.
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