Rui Casais has been with Funcom for many years, playing a key role in the company’s technological development as CEO.
We asked him about the current situation at Funcom, what it’s like for a Norwegian company to compete in the games industry, and how COVID has influenced the way games are being made.
What was your first console, and your favorite game on that console?
My first gaming device was a ZX Spectrum but I started gaming for real on a pc with Civilization!
How did you end up at Funcom, and in Oslo?
A friend of mine was playing Anarchy Online and when I was in my last year of university he told me Funcom was hiring, and the position fit me quite well so onto Oslo I went 😊
How do you think production at Funcom has changed the most in the last ten years?
Well, 10 years ago we were finishing a small MMO called LEGO Minifgures Online after which we downsized and went on to make Conan Exiles, so were a much smaller team. Now we’re 6-7x times the size and with much larger projects so the production and management is quite different
How did you adapt to COVID? Did production decrease during the transition period?
Covid was a challenging time for all, we did see a decrease in development speed across the board and more or less all projects got delayed because of it.
Did you make any changes regarding remote work during the transition around COVID, and has it changed again since then?
The whole industry has had to adapt to the remote work challenges and opportunities that Covid brought and that have persisted. We have a hybrid work model where employees work from home a few days per week but also have fully remote employees especially for specialized roles that are hard to find in Oslo or other cities where we have studios.
How and to what extent do you integrate QA into your production?
QA is an integral part of the development process, we have DevQA, working very closely with each development subteam and CoreQA for centralized testing, in addition to a few specialized QA professionals. Meaning each development team has a dedicated QA in addition to centralized CoreQA.
What are the advantages of delivering from Norway to an international market, and what are the disadvantages?
Norway has a good support system for anyone that lives here to be able to focus on their work , but due to the small population the labor pool is limited. It’s also challenging to relocate people here due to climate, cost of living and the small gaming industry. We still find great developers here, of course, it just takes longer 😊
You must always be looking for good people; what is the hardest to find here in Norway?
Experienced developers of any type are very hard to find in Norway, we often need to find them abroad and relocate them.
If you could make one concrete suggestion to the government on how to boost Norwegian game production, what would it be?
A tax incentive scheme that encourages investment into the sector, maybe similar to what Canada does.
How do you see AI being most utilized by Funcom in the next 5 years?
I believe we will see productivity improvements in all major toolchains and development pipelines through the incorporation of limited scope AI, which is a natural step up from the procedural generation and algorithmic optimizations that these pipelines already have
What is the next major milestone for Funcom?
The launch of Dune Awakening in not that long is definitely our next major milestone 😊
In light of several games no longer being obtainable due to lack of physical copies and servers being shut down, what are your thoughts on this, and what are you doing to preserve your gaming history?
It’s a difficult topic due to the digital nature of the games as well as many games requiring servers to be functional. In Funcom we have kept our games running as long as possible, with Anarchy Online, Age of Conan and Secret World still being operational, but our LEGO Minifigures Online isn’t available anymore as we do not have the rights to commercialize or operate it anymore.
Thank you Rui for taking the time to answer our questions!
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Author: Retrogamingpappa.