A Qualitative Study of the Estonian Video Game Industry Expectations

This paper presents a qualitative study of Estonian video game companies. In total, 11 companies were interviewed regarding their company values and expectations for employees. The interviews consisted of two parts. First, a regular semi-structured interview was conducted. In the second part, we used three persona sheets based on Bachelor graduates to provide an imaginary but tangible hiring situation for the company. This allowed us to explore in more detail what the companies consider important in certain employee candidates. Findings show that a strong common theme is that people working on video games need to be aware of the player and how the work shapes the game experience. Many companies encourage a work ethic based on individual responsibility and ownership in their employees. Interdisciplinary communication is very valued as well. Several companies said that employees need to be good fits, and a few even said that employees need to feel like part of a family. One company implied that, unfortunately, employees should be ready for crunch time. Overall, this paper depicts the peculiarities of different Estonian video game companies. While some of these might be specific to Estonia, we believe companies elsewhere also exhibit such properties. Thus, this observation paper provides insight into the video game sector for video game curriculum designers, video game scholars, and the video game industry itself.