Simon Pollard

Project: Project Astrid; Transformers: reactivate

• Production owner for combat overseeing roadmap and deliverables
• Introduced production gates/phases for the combat team features, establishing high-level quality requirements and deliverables by phase
• Milestone and sprint management of combat feature teams
• Build review, feature reviews and providing feedback to combat team.

Project: UE5, action rpg souls-like open world game, F2P IP-based

• Managed and grew development team from 6 to 50+ people, from project conception through first playable and towards Vertical Slice
• Established project org and production strategy, ensuring deliverable quality and development efficiency
• Created and maintained production roadmap, ensuring key milestone deliverables are set and tracked
• Managed combat production, including: 3Cs, combat systems, AI and AI systems and bosses
• Formulated monetization strategy and plan for product used during pitch/early prototyping phase, later presented to key stakeholders
• Developed quality gateway processes and oversaw pipeline setup for various feature types
• Setup project development tools (confluence, Jira, etc.), guidelines and workflow procedures for the team and oversaw training for these areas
• Direct management of QA team, setting up basic QA procedures and workflows in and out of Jira
• Direct management and mentoring of 3 other project managers on the team.

Project: UE4, anime art-style, online multiplayer, F2P, action role-playing PC/mobile game

• Created high-level Project roadmap and oversaw milestone planning
• Updated launch plan and content requirements based on monetization and revised metagame requirements
• Revised scope expectations based on capacity and timeline and where needed found creative ways to reduce content development cost
• Re-structed Project Org, optimized development strategies, Jira setup and workflows
• This was to foster better alignment, communication, cross-department collaboration and trust
• Ultimately to prepare team for full production
• Developed quality gateway processes and oversaw pipeline setup for various feature types
• Managed and mentored 7 project managers.

Project: UE4, AAA F2P third-person shooter multiplayer game, 3rd-party IP

• Daily project management
• Scheduling and coordinating a team of 40+ people
• Milestone planning, management, and review: setting milestone goals, gateway standards for various feature types/content and providing feedback (from pre-vis to polish phase)
• Sprint management: assigning, tracking and resource management
• Oversaw cross-region/cross time-zone production initiatives and meetings (co-development with: Certain Affinity in the United States; publisher: Athlon Games in the United States, Leyou in China)

Project: XKey; CBiBank

• Led market research to determine consumer needs, product vision and positioning strategy for product launch and future campaigns
• Established project goals and product roadmap from conception to launch to post-launch
• Responsible for product design and directly managing a team of team of 15+ developers
• Key speaker at large scale offline events and product launches, domestic and overseas (500+ people, both Mandarin and English); Interviews relating to product with multiple PR and media outlets; Malaysia, Korea, Hongkong, etc
• Led product sales with potential clients, whilst managing communications between external partners and in-house teams for all matters concerning product and marketing, including but not limited to software and hardware customization, packaging and market strategy.

Project: King of Avalon; Battle Warships; Slay.One

• Established product roadmap and workflow processes for the team whilst communicating progress and project status with key stakeholders
• Maintained communication with developers during development cycles to resolve any unexpected events or blockers, while ensuring roadmap deadlines are met
• Coordinated multiple departments including operations, marketing, development and other supporting departments during alpha/beta testing, pre-launch, launch and post-launch phases
• Assumed responsibility for KPIs of the game including LTV, retention, conversion rate, ARPU, engagement and so on
• Responsible for the analysis of in-game data used to provide insight and guidance to design (i.e., tutorial steps and event completion data) and operation teams (i.e., monetization and game performance metrics)

Project: Age of Warring Empire; Clash of Kings

• Manage user acquisition campaigns on mobile ad networks, including video & banner mobile ad networks, DSPs, RTBs, etc
• Responsible for NA and EU Facebook & Google campaigns, ensuring smooth and timely execution; real-time monitoring and analysis of live campaigns and quick adjustments when needed
• Develop App Store Optimization strategies and monitor campaigns
• Manage localization tasks (10+languages) for all games while directly handling CN to EN translations.