Touch, Play, Feel: How We Bring Games to Life Through Playables — and Who We’re Looking to Join the Team

Read the article by Christina Stanelik, Head Creative Delivery, to learn how the team works and who we’re hiring.

Playables within SayGames ecosystem

Just two or three years ago, videos dominated the top-performing creatives. Today, it’s playable ads — and the reason is simple: a video shows, but a playable lets you feel the game. It’s a tactile experience — through your fingers, through the mechanics — and that’s exactly why our producers treat playables as a craft, not just an asset. 

Within the SayGames ecosystem, this approach gives our team a special role: for UA, QA, and producers alike, playables are a top priority because they directly drive product performance.

We create playables in-house. We’ve tried outsourcing — both as experiments and for a “fresh perspective.” The conclusion is clear: a successful playable is not just a showcase of assets. External teams often optimize for “showing,” while we optimize for playing.

How the team is structured

Today, our team brings together developers and asset artists, with responsibilities split deliberately to help us move faster and deliver higher-quality work.

The lifecycle of a playable consists of three main stages:

1. Asset preparation. Game assets are often too heavy and unstructured for ad engines, so we rebuild them from scratch, optimized for size and performance limitations.
2. Code. A developer quickly builds a prototype using simple placeholders — “squares and circles” — to test the core mechanics and game feel.
3. Integration and polish. We merge code and assets, fine-tune effects, and UX details to achieve the final “feel” of the game.

Team culture

Our team members are creative engineers — detail-oriented, sharp, and endlessly curious. They’ll argue first and say “no” to everything — and then go and make it perfect. They love precision and beauty in equal measure.

Each creator fully owns their project, which builds both responsibility and speed. Shared modules and technical solutions are always discussed together — no one works in isolation or reinvents the wheel.

We also take burnout prevention seriously, since the workload can be intense. Instead of a single “checkbox” team-building event, we organize a week of activities that combine both work-related and fully relaxing experiences. This year, for instance, we had producer-led workshops on game content and production approaches, mixed with total “off-work” sessions — laser tag, escape rooms, and cooking together — so there’s literally no chance to start talking about work.

The team genuinely enjoys spending time together — they play board games, meet outside of work, and often hang out with their families and life partners.

We’re hiring

We’re growing — and right now, we’re primarily looking for 3D Generalist. We need a strong, hands-on 3D artist — someone with a sharp eye, skilled hands, and a genuine feel for style and quality. You don’t need to be a multitool — we’ll help you grow into one. 

Here, you won’t just create assets — you’ll shape the entire playable experience. That means optimization, scene setup in the engine, lighting, VFX, sound, and even a touch of game design.

At SayGames, a 3D artist isn’t just a contributor — they’re the visual owner of the whole project. Don’t like the sounds from the original game? Replace them with your own creation. Think the color palette could work better? Reimagine it. Our 3D artist is essentially a mini art director of each project — you influence how the entire experience feels and performs.

Our general hiring process

1. HR screening + portfolio review by team leads.
2. Test task: we evaluate not only the result but also the “internal neatness” of the work.
3. Technical interview with team leads: we discuss the test, your thought process, and the trade-offs you made.
4. Offer.

When you join our team, you won’t go through a long onboarding — you’ll dive straight into real tasks. Of course, you’ll have a mentor and start with something simpler, but it will always be a real project, never a “training” one.

Our goal is to match you with a project you can handle and grow through. So act from day one — we truly value professional courage and ownership. Your teammates are always there to help, so please listen to them at first, apply their advice, and gradually bring in your own perspective. In our team, authority is earned through work and results.

A few thoughts on the future of playables

We’re already seeing players ask us to “upload the playable to the store” — because it feels like a mini version of the game. It’s quite possible that playables will evolve into something like “game trailers 2.0” — a standalone subgenre with its own rules, storefronts, and internal logic.

Technical limitations — like size caps — are slowly shifting, which means the creative space will continue to expand. Our task is to keep playables playable and honest in feel, no matter how “heavy” the format becomes.

Join us

We’re open to talent who love combining aesthetics and engineering. If you’re a team player who listens, collaborates, and feels game mechanics — send us your portfolio. We’d love to see what you can create.