There Is No Such Thing as a Typical Playable Artist

Katya Sabirova

Spend a few minutes talking to people in mobile games, and you'll quickly discover that nobody can quite agree on what a playable artist actually is. Is it a marketing role? A game art role? Part game designer? Part technical artist? The honest answer is yes.

Building playables means borrowing skills from almost every corner of game development. One day you're thinking about animation timing. The next you're discussing player psychology with a team. Half an hour later you're optimizing assets so everything loads instantly inside an ad.

It's not the kind of job people usually plan for. Most playable artists arrive there from somewhere else.

That's exactly what makes the SayGames Playables team so interesting. One person studied game design and went straight into product development. Another spent years learning everything from concept art to VFX. A third thought she was going to become a programmer before accidentally landing her first job as a 3D artist.

What's even more interesting is how they describe their work today. None of them talks about "making ads."

They talk about building games, solving design problems, learning new skills, and working with people who constantly challenge their thinking.

So what does being a playable artist actually mean? Let's hear it from three members of the SayGames Playables Artists team.

"I Thought I Was Joining Marketing. Instead, I Started Building Games Every Two Weeks."

When people imagine a career in 3D art, they often picture years spent building assets for a single game. That was the path Karina expected as well.

She studied game design at university, where she first discovered 3D art. Her first professional role was at a product company working on a single game — a traditional development environment with long production cycles and plenty of time to polish every feature.

Then SayGames reached out. SayGames was looking for someone with Karina’s background to join the Motion team. Over time, the team became more self-sufficient, so Karina was offered the opportunity to try a different set of tasks. Later, she was invited to join the newly forming Playable Assets team. "I realized it gave me everything I enjoyed about product development — but compressed into two-week cycles," she says. "You're still creating games. You're still solving design problems. You just get to experiment much more often." Every new playable became a fresh creative challenge rather than another iteration of the same project.

The work turned out to be exactly what she had hoped for. What surprised her at SayGames was the people.

Karina admits she arrived with fairly traditional expectations of what working life would look like: managers were supposed to be distant, ideas had to be defended, mistakes felt risky.

Instead, she found a culture where discussions felt remarkably open.

"It was the first time I realized I could openly discuss problems, suggest ideas, and simply be myself at work. Even when feedback is critical, it's always constructive."

That psychological safety fundamentally changed how she approached creativity. Instead of wondering whether she should speak up, she started thinking only about how to make each project better.

Inside the team, artists and programmers constantly exchange ideas, test solutions and improve each other's work. "It feels much more like a creative laboratory than a production pipeline."

Professionally, playables also transformed the way she thinks about 3D. Today, every asset is evaluated from multiple perspectives at once.

Does it look good?

Will players understand it immediately?

How can it be optimized?

Can it be implemented efficiently?

"You stop thinking only as an artist," she explains. "You begin thinking like a product manager."

That mindset, she believes, is impossible to learn from courses alone. It comes from constant experimentation.

Looking back, she wishes more artists would give playables a chance. "Some people hear 'marketing' and immediately assume the work is less creative. I actually think it's one of the fastest ways to grow. You're building products — not just assets. Every couple of weeks you're solving a completely different problem."

"The Best Career Decision I Ever Made Started with Being Laid Off."

For Maxim, becoming a playable artist wasn't part of a carefully designed career plan. It started with losing his job.

In May 2020, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the outsourcing studio where he worked suddenly lost a client. Within days, he was told he was no longer needed. "It was a difficult lesson," he recalls. "I realized that beautiful words about valuing people don't always survive difficult business decisions."

That experience permanently changed what he looked for in an employer. "After that, I understood one thing: the way people treat each other matters more than anything else."

SayGames had actually contacted him a year earlier, but at the time he politely declined. He wasn't actively looking and had never enjoyed interviewing simply to explore options. A year later, after the layoff, everything changed.

Following weeks of market research, freelance work, art tests and multiple offers, he deliberately chose to wait for SayGames. "A friend of mine had already joined the company and told me what it was like to work here. I already knew SayGames had a reputation for treating people well. That became my number one priority."

Nearly six years later, he says he has never regretted the decision.

Unlike many artists, Maxim never specialized too early. Drawing had been part of his life since childhood, but over the years he accumulated experience across almost every visual discipline imaginable: illustration, concept art, UI, animation, 3D, VFX and technical implementation. At the time, it simply reflected his curiosity. Today, it has become one of his biggest strengths. "Everything I've learned somehow became useful."

Playables require artists to move effortlessly between aesthetics and technology. One day he might be optimizing assets inside a game engine. The next day he's building visual references, analyzing successful mobile games or helping launch an entirely new project. "I genuinely enjoy working with graphics," he says. "Honestly, I could spend an hour moving two pixels and still have fun."

Over time, his biggest transformation wasn't mastering another tool. It was learning to think like a product creator. "You stop asking only, 'Does this look good?' You start asking why it works." Why do players react to certain visuals? Why does one idea outperform another? What makes an interaction instantly understandable? Those questions have become just as important as artistic skill itself.

Speaking about the future, Maxim comes back to the values that guide both his career and his life: "The most important thing is to keep learning, keep adapting, work with great people, and continue doing work you genuinely enjoy."

"I Thought I'd Become a Programmer. I Ended Up Somewhere Much More Interesting."

Yuliya’s career has never followed a straight line. She spent five years in classical art school before studying web design and computer graphics at university. Despite the name of the degree, much of the curriculum focused on programming. "I actually thought I'd become a programmer." Instead, after graduation she unexpectedly found herself working as a 3D artist. And not in mobile games.

Her early career took her through AR, VR, medical technology and architecture, forcing her to learn new disciplines almost from scratch every time. Alongside work, she continued exploring digital painting, stylized 3D, hand-painted textures and visual effects. More recently, she has returned to traditional art. "It's nice to create something you can actually hold in your hands."

Before joining SayGames, Yuliya worked on hypercasual games. Even then, one publisher consistently stood out. "SayGames was always the benchmark. Their games simply looked better."

When the opportunity eventually appeared, one surprisingly practical factor mattered most. The office. "I really missed working around people," she says. "I got tired of seeing everyone as little rectangles in Google Meet."

Today, what she enjoys most about Playables is the variety. Every project is different. Every project demands new ideas. Every project teaches her something new.

Having gone through a difficult job search during one of the industry's most turbulent periods, she has come to value something she hadn't thought much about earlier: stability. "The industry feels much more unpredictable now. It's nice to work somewhere that lets you focus on creating instead of constantly worrying."

There isn't a typical playable artist. And that's exactly what makes the role so exciting.

Every new person brings a different perspective. Every new background adds something the team didn't have before.

As the SayGames Playables Artists team continues to grow, we're always excited to meet people who are curious, eager to learn, and passionate about building games. If you see yourself somewhere in these stories, we'd love to hear yours.