Kasturi Rangan (LinkedIn), has been a gamer his entire life. But for him, gaming is more than a passion, it’s a calling. Rangan has devoted his professional career to building up the gaming community and helping gamers around the world connect and advance the movement. Today, he is the president of Pole to Win and manages around 2,500 people throughout the world dedicated to that same mission. And they’re succeeding. Pole to Win has worked on some of the biggest games on the market and the clients they partner with are so happy with the experience that Pole to Win has a 98% client retention rate.
But what does it mean to build a gaming community? How do you actually make sure that the gamer’s experience is not just good, but exceptional? What was the secret sauce that Pole To Win brought to the table to help launch eight of the last 10 games of the year? Rangan answered those questions and more on a recent episode of IT Visionaries.
Here are some of the highlights of what he had to say.
What is Pole To Win?
Pole To Win works with a boutique mindset and has helped create, test, and build some of the biggest games on the market. From QA to testing to audio production, PTW offers elite services to some of the top gaming studios and gaming companies in the world. But PTW is not solely for game creators. Rangan explains that PTW offers app software, website building, and other custom-experience creation for many industries.
One of the main focuses for PTW when it comes to gaming is Quality Assurance (QA). Every company that puts out a game invests in QA, but only as much as they can afford. The problem is that QA is the most important step in the process for a game.
“I think [companies] get pressured into ‘what’s the best bet I’m going to take right now to get the game out of the door?’ and ‘what can I just fix along the way?’” Rangan says. “And what I’ve seen in the past is the ones who make a wise decision on that, choose which bugs they really want to fix before launch and which bugs they want to keep postlaunch, that’s a critical piece right there. And sometimes they mess that up, where they choose some of the wrong bugs and they try to go more for the experience than for quality… It really comes down to what risks they take and that’s going to define it, and it’s going to make it or break it longterm.”
So while the company releasing the game focuses on getting the product out the door, Rangan and his team put the game through the wringer. They play the game every possible way and work through every possible player experience in order to fully understand what works, what doesn’t, where things can break down and what players can expect when they press the “on” button. When this kind of work doesn’t happen, players like Rangan get frustrated with the number of bugs and glitches that occur during gameplay. Gamers spend huge amounts of money on their gameplay setups, and games today have to meet those high standards. If they don’t, the companies that make them could be looking at losses in the millions.
The future of gaming
Everyone is excited about AR and VR technology advancing the world of gameplay. However, there are still challenges in creating what Rangan calls a seamless experience. Currently, there is a large population that cannot stomach AR or VR for any length of time. And it’s not enough to just discount that group. You have to solve for them and come up with a way to reach them with the technology in a way that will not affect them physically. Those types of technical challenges are exciting for everyone working in the industry.
“I haven’t found a game that I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I want to play it. I want to wake up and play that game because it was so good on VR,’” Rangan says. “And I think the day that the industry reaches that with an experience which is comfortable, when they can solve comfort without any issues… then the immersiveness becomes more of a happy place, it becomes more interesting and it’s more fun.”
If you look into the future, Rangan believes that AR and VR technology can become so good that you can use gameplay as a kind of immersive therapy because the experience will be relaxing. Plus, the advancements can become so good that they can be used in other fields such as medicine to practice surgery and other procedures.
The secret to client retention
With a client retention rate of 98%, Rangan and the crew at Pole to Win are clearly doing something right. The first thing Rangan points to is culture. Client retention, Ragnan says, is directly proportionate to employee retention, so you have to focus on creating the right environment for your employees to thrive. At Pole to Win, that meant giving employees 100% raises a few years back. And it means, even though margins are thin, finding ways to use those margins to give back to employees.
“People come first,” Rangan states. “That’s it. Period. However you want to put it, slice and dice it — take care of your people and they’ll take care of you.”
To hear more from Rangan, listen to his entire interview here.