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Managing LiveOps at Scale: Inside Respawn’s Build & Release Team with Julie Banta
29 Plays1 day ago
Guest: Julie Banta, Director of Engineering, Build & Release at Respawn Entertainment
Summary:
In this episode of Player Driven, Greg sits down with Julie Banta, Director of Engineering at Respawn, to explore the underappreciated world of build and release operations. From her unlikely start in finance and insurance to helping manage one of the world’s top live service games, Julie shares her unique journey, the role of real-time feedback in LiveOps, and how a great team culture can make or break success.
They discuss:
- What Build & Release actually does in a live service game like Apex Legends
- Navigating fast-turnaround bug fixes and cross-platform coordination
- How to connect your past experiences to break into the gaming industry
- Leadership, burnout, and the importance of a people-first team
- The need for diversity and inclusivity in both dev teams and the games themselves
Timestamps:
- 07:00 – From finance to EA: career pivots and transferable skills
- 16:00 – The pressure and complexity behind LiveOps launches
- 29:00 – Fast feedback loops and using Reddit as a QA tool
- 40:00 – How Julie leads her team with empathy and trust
- 46:00 – Women in gaming and why representation matters
- 54:00 – Advice for indie devs and those breaking into the industry
Links:
- Connect with Julie on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Respawn and Apex Legends
- More episodes at playerdriven.io/podcast
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Social Media Presence
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Player Driven. Here's what you're about to listen to on today's episode. Today, we're talking to Julie Banta. She is the director of build and release at Respawn for Apex.
00:00:12
Speaker
We talk about what build and release is and how it's the heartbeat of the live operations services. We talk about how career pivots are possible when you understand what your roles are, what you've excel at what your true skills are and that you want to keep building upon and we talked about people first leadership and inclusive team culture and how that drives long-term success when you're building a team in gaming it's a really fun episode julie is a ton of knowledge and has some great takeaways And if you haven't subscribed or liked or followed PlayerDriven, we're YouTube, TikTok, on Instagram, on LinkedIn, all the social channels. You can find shorts. You can find recaps of episodes. It's a lot of great stuff.
00:00:55
Speaker
We'd really appreciate if you could just check us out. And I hope you enjoy this episode. It's a really fun one.
Julie's Career Journey and Role in Gaming
00:01:04
Speaker
Good morning. Good afternoon. Welcome to PlayerDriven. Today, we are joined by Julie Bantha. She's the and director of build and release at Respawn. She has a cool background coming from USAA, being part of ea moving to the Respawn team. And I'm really, really excited to learn kind of what the build and release team does.
00:01:23
Speaker
I could take a lot of educated guesses, but it's best coming from her. Julie, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you doing? Awesome. Great to be here, Greg. Super excited to chat with your your listeners and your viewers and share my story.
00:01:36
Speaker
I'm excited to hear your story. You know, I reached out to you. You work on the Apex team. You you were part of the LiveOps team, and clearly that game lives and breathes LiveOps. And as we're talking, you're telling me you're part of the build and release team, which, again, I think is super fascinating because you're releasing many versions of the game across many platforms. And and I guess it makes sense. there's a process behind that. But from the outside, looking at it, never really thought about it. like oh, someone needs to do that.
00:02:01
Speaker
So before we dive too deep into it, can you kind of give me the rundown? And what is your day-to-day like? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you hit the nail on the head, right? Somebody has to get the game out the door to our players.
00:02:13
Speaker
The way that I describe my team and what we do to the average person is we're really responsible for that very tail end of getting the game out the door. We don't necessarily do like this super operations piece of, you know, triaging for or live bugs and things like that. But when the live bugs come,
00:02:31
Speaker
our team is the one that springs into action and determines, hey, how are we going to fix this? Who do we need to get involved? And what's the best way of the many levers that we have to be able to get content out to our players? Which one of those makes the most sense for us to get these fixes or content out as quickly as possible?
00:02:48
Speaker
Right. So it's a little problem solving. It's a little tactical. I really enjoy it because it is, you know, kind of high pressure moving fast. I feel like it's fast problem solving, which I really enjoy and kind of how this piqued my interest in the beginning.
00:03:01
Speaker
um But yeah, I mean, we have to get that content out the the door for our players. And we also have to make sure that everything inside the house in terms of making sure our developers and our engineers and our artists have everything that they need to be able to do you know their tests and make sure that what we're sending out there is valid for our players, right? That's also part of of building these students.
00:03:21
Speaker
is Is it fair to say you part of the reason you're on the front line like that is because if there's a hot fix or something that needs to come quick, you need to be ready to jump into action and say, we're pushing this out now?
00:03:33
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. um And depending on where the issue is, if it's like server side or client side, right? Again, there's different things that we can do to just try and act fast. And and yeah we we
Adapting to EA During the Pandemic
00:03:44
Speaker
listen to our players. I think Apex is you you know really unique in that sense is that we always have our ear to the ground for our players. We're listening for where the pain points are, not just in bugs, but things that we can improve quickly.
00:03:56
Speaker
Right. So yeah, we're like, okay, we have this thing has been identified, call build and release because we got to get something out as soon as possible. Do you work closely? I mean, you're talking about engineering and artists, right? Are you working with customer support as well to hear, hey, what are you hearing directly from players?
00:04:10
Speaker
Or you're mostly taking a look at kind of the back ends and making sure everything's clicking properly? Yeah, I would say that, um you know, are our support teams and customer supports are really the ones who are coming to us. You I think all that data is really interesting. So I almost wish I was more involved. But we have a whole team of specialists who are the ones listening.
00:04:28
Speaker
And then they kind of hit, you know, they throw up the bat signal, if you will and they're like, okay, we have a thing called build and release. Right. So. I love it. All right. let Let's take a giant step backwards. All right. You're Florida Gator. You went to USAA, which I learned from a previous job. USAA is one of the few insurance companies that's very technical, very high tech. They embrace new technology. ah And I remember at one of the social media companies i worked for, they were one of the biggest customers because they always wanted to push the boundaries on on how to use technology. And I found that fascinating.
00:04:58
Speaker
You went to EA. So kind of as a Gator coming out of college, what what was your kind of thought process of what you wanted to be doing for a living? Yeah, great question, Greg. i so at Florida, I was ah double major for finance and for information systems. And I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with that. Did I want to go you know to big banks? I lived in New York at the time. I could you know go into the city every day like my dad did, right? Be like a finance bro or whatever, right? I want to do i undo that or do I want to get more into the tech space and utilize
00:05:31
Speaker
the information system side of my degree. And that's ultimately what I decided to do. I applied for a bunch of internships across the board and I ended up getting the one at USAA. And you know it's funny you talk about USAA and their technology ah that also applies to their people.
00:05:47
Speaker
Their IT t intern program, they hire like 300 something interns. And then they their goal is to take those interns and hire them full time. That is a huge pipeline, along with you know their veterans pipelines, but their out of college pipeline is huge for their engineers.
00:06:03
Speaker
um So that was kind of how I got involved. i got the internship, I did pretty okay. And that's how I was able to get the job full time. there. And yeah, I was a hands-on engineer for for about a year. And then I started to kind of pivot because of a little bit more of my my business acumen. It was a a business degree.
00:06:21
Speaker
um i wanted to get an MBA. I have that skill set where I feel that I can translate really well between technical speak and what my engineers are trying to say. Versus requirements and business value and business props, right? So that was my my sweet spot.
00:06:36
Speaker
So they started pulling me more into architectural conversations, more early in the pipeline of development of, hey, how are we going to solve this problem? How long is it going to take? And so I got into architecture.
00:06:48
Speaker
And so I was a systems architect for several years. And, you know, I love San Antonio. San Antonio has a special place in my heart, but it's little too sleepy for me. Go spurs go for sure. But it was just not the best fit for me. And so I started looking at jobs in Austin, which is only, you know, for those who don't have a map, it's like 70 miles from San
Transition to Respawn and Game Development
00:07:09
Speaker
Antonio. So it's pretty close.
00:07:10
Speaker
And and i I've always had a passion for games, right? i had a GameCube and a PS1 growing up. I have vivid memories of my dad playing Sega Genesis growing up. And I would watch, like, as, you know, like, four years old, and watch him, you know, throw Scar over Pride Rock kind of thing on Lion King, right? So video games have always been my passion. And when I knew I wanted to move and change jobs, I started looking games.
00:07:37
Speaker
jobs that I had more of a passion for. right I'm not military. I don't have that drive and that passion like a lot of USA members and employees do. I wanted to find something where I could feel that same passion.
00:07:48
Speaker
um So I looked and I saw EA had an office in Austin. and I said, why the hell not? Right. So um I did. I shot my shot. I applied for for one role as a solutions architect over in EAIT.
00:08:00
Speaker
And I guess the rest is history. That's how that's how I got here. That's how i got my foot in the door. That's mad respect. I mean, you have to shoot your shot or so you're going to regret it. And the fact that you were able to move from military, even though was an insurance based job, right. To a a passion and gaming, right. That kind of, when you wake up in the morning, you're like, all right, like this is what I'm doing. And I, I,
00:08:20
Speaker
Love the solution architect role because I was a sales engineer and I think we kind of had same roles, except I think sales engineers more talk than doing where solution architect is more doing than talk. But I think kind of what you what you've explained was the same thing is that it becomes more businessy, right? You learn how to tell a story with this data, this kind of how you go, how you take this data and make it actionable and explaining it to other people. So I think that's super cool that you shot your shot, you made it and you got in into EA.
00:08:48
Speaker
When you first got into EA, was it kind of ah a blanket? You were working for EA technical or was it specifically Respawn at that point? it was It was purely central EA IT. It was what was called employee experience, specifically for what we called collaboration and productivity tools.
00:09:05
Speaker
The extra interesting piece about my start at e was my first day was March 2020. And if you throw throw your memory back, right, we started hearing about this thing, this virus, COVID.
00:09:20
Speaker
um You know, my boss, who I'm actually still very, very close with, my my first boss at EA, um you know, he was like, oh, you know, we might have to work from home for a little while. The same conversations everybody was was having, right, for anyone who worked in an office.
00:09:33
Speaker
um so you know two weeks later you know everything shut down and my role changed to try and develop new technologies for this completely we all hate this word but unprecedented situation right we still have um you know
Director Role and Team Collaboration
00:09:51
Speaker
uh sorry greg i'm forgetting the word what is that uh The actors who put on like the suits with the the balls on them, like the- Oh, the mocap stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So sorry. So to pause, we still had critical people who needed to get into an office. The motion capture people, our IT t folks who needed to help get everything up and running so folks could work from home, right? There were still critical folks who had to go into an office. And so now my new ask was we need to build something
00:10:21
Speaker
fast to be able to yeah legally and safely get folks back into the office and say, hey, you know are you healthy? Are you in a position where you can go into an office? you know Check this box on Slack, interact with this Slack bot, um and be able to get folks safely back. So we had to come up with something brand new, you know,
00:10:41
Speaker
day 12 into my job. um It's brand new job, new city, new company. um Yeah, so that was definitely, you know, I look back on that time fondly in the sense that that was the definition of problem solving for a brand new problem that we've never done before. Obviously, it was tragic and horrible for everything. But for career perspective, it was fascinating of just all the new problems that we had to solve.
00:11:07
Speaker
You know, something I always respected about EA is previously in another lifetime I've sold to them and their IT and technology is so ingrained into their tools that they already own things like Salesforce. And i am not a ah huge Salesforce fan, but when you see what they've built out in there, it is beautiful. It is fascinating. It is amazing. And I imagine, and you don't have to go into these details, that you have to learn how this whole system works. And this system's like,
00:11:34
Speaker
a Goliath of a system that I know we, I was selling help shift at the time and they integrated that into there and they integrated everything into there. it was just like a, so, so that I imagined learning remotely, being a part of a new team, trying to take all that stuff on. i don't know how involved you are. must've been an eyeopening experience on how different problems, I mean, you must've just learned so many different skills through that experience.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yes, and we learned so many different skills with with new technology. right we have Now wasn't the time to try and buy a new tool or come up with something new. right We had Slack, we had G Suite, we had ServiceNow, we had Nero, these were the things that were at our disposal and it was, hey, these are your building blocks, we need to come up with something now. right what nobody Nobody had come up with the technology behind this yet. That was months away.
00:12:25
Speaker
months away So we had to really make it work. And the other interesting part about this was it was my way to learn about all the different departments even within EA, right? Because we're trying to get people safely back into an office and utilize different technologies to do that.
00:12:42
Speaker
Think about all the different groups I would have had to interact with to make sure we are covering all of our bases, right? It's legal, it's workplace experience, it's people experience, it's security, it's IT, t right? it's and And then you have, you know, we have 50 different locations at the time across the planet, right? What's considered legal in Australia
Advice on Team Culture and Balance
00:13:01
Speaker
is different than what's legal in Cologne, right? it's It was just wild to learn about, hey, you know, I'm one person and I have to think about all these different repercussions across the entire planet
00:13:14
Speaker
repercussions across the entire planet And then think about all the different organizations that also have to worry about that. We think about like localization and things like that, right? So it was it was fascinating. I learned a lot and I met a lot of people.
00:13:29
Speaker
That's for sure. And then you move over to build and release. I don't know if there was a live ops stop in there. I assume build and release is a branch of live ops. And maybe you can say, Greg, you're completely wrong here just because content's coming out.
00:13:43
Speaker
And maybe they just work well together because they're going side by side. but But are the two fields related? um Yeah, I mean, dirt're that Venn diagram definitely has a lot of overlap.
00:13:54
Speaker
um You know, I think every game kind of handles their separations differently. But for us, our developer support team, build and release and and operations are kind of all tied together for, you know, like live services support, right?
00:14:08
Speaker
Those are all the things that are important in order to get our game out for for our folks. um But there was there was no stop in between. i had worked in IT for about two and a half years, and I wanted to get closer to the action, if you will. right It was cool in IT t that I get to interact with every studio in all these locations. And I had worked closely with Respawn, and I was a part of like different acquisitions and getting their technology ingrained and things like that.
00:14:36
Speaker
But I still wasn't on the front lines yet. yeah I still wanted to know what it was like to be a part of the entire game development life cycle. So i could I just, you know, i looked internally and yay does a great job of helping folks internally if they want to move and gain new experiences. And I just was able to utilize what was offered by EA and I looked internally and I saw...
00:15:00
Speaker
you know, release manager for build and release for Apex. And i actually did a talk about this internally for one of our resource groups, but I call it connecting your dots because yeah, I hadn't done live ops before.
00:15:16
Speaker
I had not formally been a manager before, but I had all these other experiences, leading compliance teams at USAA, managing unprecedented situations, the problem solving, the mass amount of collaboration I've had to do in my previous roles.
00:15:31
Speaker
And I was able to tie that to what Apex was looking for, for build and release. right So I call it connecting your dots because it's taking your experiences, and tying it to exactly what's being asked for because no one's going to make those correlations for you.
00:15:44
Speaker
You have to do that if you're looking to move or change roles or or get a new role. So I was able to to do that. and i And I work with an amazing team who's basically exactly the same from when I joined you know two and a half years ago. We have one of the most tenured teams within Respawn, which is
Inclusive Gaming and Industry Opportunities
00:16:00
Speaker
amazing. And yeah, that was there was a ah great jump. And i I'm so glad I did it. I love the work. I do love the team. um Yeah, I'm incredibly fortunate.
00:16:10
Speaker
I love a lot of what you said there, but but I want to harp on the focus that you took skill sets from USAA that you may have thought, hey, I'm not going to be doing this stuff again. And you saw the correlation between where it was with build and release and what you were doing there.
00:16:24
Speaker
I think a lot of people think they can't jump from one vertical to another because the skill sets they have are so ingrained there saying, hey this is specifically for insurance. But reality, maybe you're a product manager, you're a DevOps lead, you're doing this, right? those skill sets translate really well to other industries. They may call them something differently, right? Or you might have a different job title, but the truth is it's those same skill sets that you were using previously. So when you, Julie, look at build and release, right? Is it more solution architect-y? Is it more software developer? like what are you What skill sets are you using on a day-to-day basis to help accomplish what you need to?
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think for a live service game, you have to wear many hats. Yes, do I manage our roadmap and our workloads for the individual engineers? Yes. Am I also involved in conversations that are pretty technical of how can we make things better for internal development or get content to our players faster?
00:17:16
Speaker
I'm involved in that too. I'm also involved in some of the more product-related conversations of, okay, like what are some of the things that that we want to solve? What are some of the problems we're looking to to accomplish? And then you're also project management-esque, right? I put on a Scrum Master hat every once in a while, right?
00:17:32
Speaker
That's the uniqueness and why I love a live service game is because everyone has to jump in and do what needs to be done, right? There's no pausing a season, right? thats That's not acceptable. That's not something you ever want to to have to do.
00:17:48
Speaker
So if someone needs to jump in and facilitate maybe a product-related conversation, great, happy to do that. But I do like the fact that I can take my architectural background and and small bit of engineering background and be able to have intelligent conversations with the people around me and say, hey, you know what problem are we trying to solve and how can we actually solve these problems? What technologies are at our disposal to be able to, again, get content out to players faster?
00:18:17
Speaker
Cool. I want to keep digging down this kind of live ops journey as well as build and release. But before we do that, I kind of want to jump into my fireball round where I'm just going to throw some ah quick questions at you. Love it.
00:18:30
Speaker
Love it. Good to go? All right. Always my favorite to start and people don't like it, but what did you have for breakfast?
00:18:39
Speaker
um I did have cereal. i had cereal, milk, and probiotic. Oh, gosh. Okay. i had I had three wishes, protein, cereal, and milk. All right. Thank you. Thank you for the detailed answer.
00:18:55
Speaker
What video game are you currently playing? I am playing Split Fiction with my husband. um He was not a huge gamer when we first started dating.
00:19:07
Speaker
ah But when we first started dating, was really around when I got the job at EA. So I said, boy, you better start to like games. Okay. But I appreciate him being open and willing.
00:19:18
Speaker
And yeah, now he he's hooked too. So we played It Takes Two together years ago. and now we're excited for Split Fiction. We're really enjoying it. There you go.
00:19:30
Speaker
Keeping it in the EA family. Love it. What is your dream vacation?
00:19:37
Speaker
Oh, um I'm a tropical girly for sure. i love to be on a beach with a cocktail in my hand, but preferably i have done that after I've played a awesome round of golf before.
00:19:53
Speaker
So I'm a big golfer. You know, I would love to just like play, you know, Kapalua in Hawaii and Maui and then, you know, hit the beach, hit the resort with a cocktail in my hand and you know laying on a on the beach chair enjoying myself.
00:20:09
Speaker
but What's the cocktail?
00:20:12
Speaker
Preferably a Mai Tai. A real Mai Tai. None of this pineapple juice, orange juice that's not a Mai Tai. I'm a Mai Tai snob. Pineapple juice, and orange juice do not belong Mai Tai. The only fruit juice is lime juice. I did not know there were things like Mai Tai snobs out there, but today you learned about it.
00:20:30
Speaker
Hopefully it resonates with the fellow cocktail lovers. The last question, your choice. You could choose last show you binge watched or last book you read.
00:20:40
Speaker
Oh, gosh. um The last show I binge watched was The Pit. i love those medical shows. Actual medical shows where there's realistic, where there's actually reality in terms of the science going on behind it like I'm not no no shame to Grey's Anatomy I'm not talking about that but I'm talking about more um you know I loved House I love like the I think in another world there was a doctor is really what i'm getting at so um I think I was pre-med in college for five minutes so I would love to re-watch The Pit as if I didn't watch it before it was it was awesome I really enjoyed it
00:21:18
Speaker
I would love to know where the line is between house and greys. You know, where do we say, this is a little too much now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, are we, are we even like in a hospital anymore? Are we just like, yeah, it's not taking pills and just enjoying life. All right.
00:21:34
Speaker
Back, back to the real program here. All right. I, just just to kind of draw a picture here, right. Can you tell me if there's a launch, the new season of apex is going to come out.
00:21:48
Speaker
next week, kind of, what's what's going on? Who are you working with? who you collaborating with? What's your day-to-day like then? Yeah, and I think it it's probably no different than a lot of live-service games out there, but, you know, it's, where' we're in full...
00:22:04
Speaker
testing overload right now is the time for our QB partners and folks to be able to catch you know the the big rocks right so testing is happening we're finding those high priority bugs and blockers and trying to to get them in before launch obviously you always want you always wanna to get that stuff done before launch the other people that we're actually talking with would be you know our our partners at and Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft, right? You don't just take the game and throw it on the Xbox marketplace, right? Like you have to get approval, right? You have to make sure that a game, you know, you're anyone's game can't be so large that it's going to take up somebody's entire disk space on their console.
00:22:46
Speaker
right mean you need to make sure that it's stable need to make sure that whatever you know icon for the game store is is legit right it's it's goes from like really small things again to really big things like the size right um that's you know nintendo and sony and microsoft are picking on everybody in that regard right because you know hard drives aren't infinite space so um yeah so yeah there you go and we're And again, we're really close with our producers and our live production team, right? They're just keeping their ears to the ground. Because yeah, even though we have another season coming up, there's still one out right now, right? So that just never stops, which is, I think, what people may not realize is just because we have our our eyes on the finish line for you know season 26 in this case, like...
00:23:36
Speaker
Season 25 is still alive and kicking, right? We need to make sure that any new things that that come up there or um feedback that we're getting from our players is still coming through the pipeline, right? It's it's coming at you from all sides.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah. um You've gone from senior manager to director now. Does director mean you're now managing more groups of individuals there? what What type of responsibilities get added when you get the the bump?
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's, I guess all by the time we're recording this this podcast, that director title is relatively fresh. um I think the biggest thing is now the ask around looking at more of the bigger picture items. I think as a senior manager...
00:24:21
Speaker
I was pretty tactical, right? Yes, I managed our roadmap and that was influenced by the teams around me, but it was tactical in the sense of, okay, who's going to work on what, how do we make sure we meet our commitments, a lot of those things. and Now, looking at the director level, it's a lot more influence over that roadmap, right? It's working with the other technical directors around me and saying, hey,
00:24:44
Speaker
you know What can the tools team do that can help my team? What can you know Maps or Gameplay or these other teams, how can we all, I guess, I think, I have the opportunity now to be a bit more collaborative and influential for what build and release needs and what build and release can do, right? Build and release, as much as it's getting content out to players, we're also a service team, right? If there's things that we can do,
00:25:15
Speaker
to help the internal build pipeline for our fellow, again, engineers, artists, ah level designers, things like that. We need to be ear to the ground on that too. So that's what I think makes build and release unique is it's not just external content, but it's making sure that folks inside the game who are developing also can do that, you know, as, um,
00:25:43
Speaker
folks can do that with the least amount of complexity as possible. it so This is me jumping the gun here, right? But it sounds like you you have this cool and unique spot where you're understanding how different parts of the company are are clicking to make, I think of it giant symphony, right? Like you have, you're making sure that your trumpets and everyone over there, I don't know instruments, that was a bad idea, are playing one song, and playing one and right? Everyone's in order and You're happy where you are, but what what would a bigger picture for someone in this role look like? What would be that next logical step that one would consider taking after this? It sounds like you're getting higher and higher, getting more visibility. So is it more strategic?
00:26:24
Speaker
Is it getting more in the weeds again? Where where would you want to go from there? hey Next would be more strategic. I would love to know more about some of the higher level decisions that are being made again, not just for our players, but think this is where it starts to get a little funky is we are also company trying to,
00:26:49
Speaker
make money, right? No one no one works for free, right? At the end of the day. Of course, I'm sure, you know, Respawn would love to be able to just do everything possible for 100% player satisfaction, right?
00:27:03
Speaker
Free skins, free emotes, right? Like all of that. um But no game for any studio can do that, right? So... I would love to be more involved in understanding that balance of player satisfaction, getting players to come back with how do we make sure we are making money as a company, right? And again, that's that's not specific to to any studio or any game, um but I am an NBA. i I do have that product focus kind of screaming in the back of my head of like, okay, how...
00:27:42
Speaker
can we make decisions that get players back and also in turn that creates profit, right? yeah It's an interesting question.
00:27:54
Speaker
So when you're looking at kind of, so build release, you release season 25 of Apex, right? and you're looking at player attention, player stickiness, who's coming back, right? If we take a kind of a lateral step, what does great live ops look like? I mean, obviously players are coming back to the game and that would be great, right? That's just showing there's retention there, right? But like, you're a busy person, you know, like you said, 25 just came out, but 26 is on the on the eve, right? Which means you're... you're still working and you're working for the next one, right? Like what does great live ops look like and what gives Julie a weekend where maybe her phone or Slack or whatever tool you're using?
00:28:35
Speaker
Great question. um I think great live ops is fast feedback loops, right? Being able to hear about a problem, hear about a bug, hear about a pain point and being able to react to it quick.
00:28:51
Speaker
um Whether it be you have to turn a legend off because something is broken or um there's a server crash. right Again, these are all not not not specific to to Apex. right But any of these, it's it's fast feedback.
00:29:03
Speaker
It's being able to react to what, not only what your players are saying, but what the numbers are saying. right you know If we start seeing things on dashboards where, hey, Steam is crashing like crazy. you know Nintendo's crashed, the Switch is crashing like crazy. right Being able to react to that quickly.
00:29:20
Speaker
um So yeah, I think a weekend where I'm not having to to kind of get involved is when we're able to catch those things early. um Because I think that's that's the other kind of misnomer that even I didn't think about in the gaming spaces. why like Why can't we catch these things before we go out? there But these systems are just so complicated.
00:29:44
Speaker
There's so many moving parts, you know six consoles alone, right? It's incredibly complicated. Things are going to be missed. And yes, you want to make sure that you're dealing with the smallest volume of those missed things as possible, ideally, of course. But I think it's accepting the reality and then being able to have the fast feedback loop to be able to react quickly for, for your players.
00:30:09
Speaker
um So having a weekend where, Hey, during the week, we identified these issues. We know when their fixes are going to go out. We have everything queued up for, you know, Nintendo or Sony, whoever to to look at and be able to say, okay, on Monday, we're good to go.
00:30:25
Speaker
You know, that's, that's a quiet weekend for for me is when we're able to, react quickly, get everything organized, prepped, built, tested, and then it's just queued up for when we finally get the green light.
00:30:38
Speaker
Can we dig a little deeper into what fast feedback means? How are you proactively going out getting that feedback? Who are you pinging? and Not you in general, but just like how how does that feedback all come together?
00:30:51
Speaker
It's a combination of several things, right? it's making sure that we have good monitoring in place. And that's not done by by my team sir for live development. That's our operations team, right? So they have great monitoring in place to be able to sense, whether it's console specific issues, again, client, server, those types of things.
00:31:12
Speaker
And then honestly, the other thing is Reddit and Twitter, right? If you're trying to listen to your players, you got to go where they're at. um ah You would not, it would not shock you, i think, but it could shock some people how many bugs that sometimes are just their niche and they might be missed in some of our monitoring or we can't come up with a definitive pattern.
00:31:32
Speaker
But all of a sudden you get a post on Reddit that just keeps getting upvoted, upvoted, upvoted. And you're like, okay, we need to look at this. Right. um So you actually, I think that part's fascinating just as I think just an extrovert. And I think people are fascinating. I would love to just be more involved in that just for the sake of being nosy. I think it's fascinating, but um Yeah, there are there are people who are combing through social media and Reddit to try and figure out, okay, what are people saying? Not just, you know sentiment is also important, but right after a release, it is about trying to catch the things that people are talking about.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, we used to use this tool called Alphagata. It's a social listening tool, and you would just basically set it up on different forums, right, to hear what is your sentiment on different channels because it baffles my mind how many studios I work with still ignore Reddit.
00:32:24
Speaker
They don't think it's a thing. I'm just like – Some of the most gamer people are on Reddit but not social media. so A lot of people hate social media, but they're still on Reddit and they're still – And there's so much crap on there. And a lot of it's just crap. But at the same time, like you said, a bug that you would have maybe never found before that's getting upvoted. Like if you could nip that before it reaches that number one rank on Reddit and save yourself yes me in the ass later, it is so worth it.
00:32:51
Speaker
Yeah. And it's another outlet to show that Apex is genuinely listening, right? We don't just throw stuff out there and say, all right, everybody have a nice long weekend, right? we We are always, always trying to get feedback and put our players first.
00:33:07
Speaker
We work in such a cool industry with gaming. You already mentioned it. like We're gamers at heart, most of us, right? And we're excited to do it. But then there's days you wake up, you're like, shit, I don't want today to happen. Today's going to tough day.
00:33:19
Speaker
when you you wake up with that feeling what's usually on your calendar that they like oh god i don't want to be doing this today but the um oh that's a great question um having game that has been out for six years constantly delivering content never missing a release never missing a season
00:33:44
Speaker
you're not You don't have the opportunity to build the most sound code and infrastructure possible. time The balance of time and quality, right? Like, you know, that that triangle, like time, quality, and and cost, right?
00:34:01
Speaker
It feels like that triangle just gets... I guess more jerk. Everything gets more spread out when you have a live service game. So, you know, my I have teams that are hollering about things like tech debt, like, bro, you're not wrong. You know, like my girl, you're not wrong.
00:34:19
Speaker
um But having to convince leadership or anyone really that we should spend time to slow down to maybe clean things up That's what gives me heartburn is trying to figure out how to have those really tough conversations because we have engineers, they they don't want to be building spaghetti cook, right? Sometimes folks don't have a choice, right? If if we're trying to get something and out again for our players and sake our players, sometimes it's got to be a little hacky, right? Like that's what you have to do. And then all of a sudden you have six years of hacks, right?
00:34:57
Speaker
You know, it's it's it's such a tough balance. And i I love to listen to my people. Everything they have to say in that regard is accurate. But having to say, maybe that's it. Having to say we can't do that right now when folks can read between the lines of like, we're probably not ever going to get to that because of the nature of the beast.
00:35:19
Speaker
I don't know. I'm a people pleaser in that sense. in And its it's hard to have those thoughts. Julie, you're playing the most dangerous game of Jenga and it sounds like you're down to like one piece at the bottom and you're trying to navigate around it. I've used that analogy yesterday, i actually. talked about that so Yeah, you're right.
00:35:37
Speaker
I don't know how versed you are in the rest of the landscape of gaming. Are you familiar with the new Siege, Siege X that came out yesterday or today? I think they re-released all of Rainbow Six Siege, but they rebuilt the entire game from the bottom up. So they called it Siege Exit. And um I'm guessing that is to kind of cover their basis on exactly what you just said of 12 years of tech deck just building up. Like we need to change something. We need to start with a fresh set of code, right? Like depending on how well your game's doing, it may not be the worst idea to rebuild it from the bottom up if you still have a player base there. Would that be a fair thing to say?
00:36:17
Speaker
I would say so. You do just want to make sure you're not rebuilding for the sake of rebuilding, right? And just calling it, you know, X or two or or whatever, right? Want to make sure that when we do these types of things, there's clear benefit that our players are going to actually see, right?
00:36:33
Speaker
That I think is the the fine line to draw there. What advice would you give to these indie studios that are building their dream games right now? We've seen a lot of people kind of gather together to build these little indie studios.
00:36:49
Speaker
um If there's anything, any advice you would choose to give someone building a studio, what would you think?
00:36:58
Speaker
This might not be what you're looking for, Greg, but my advice would be make sure you have the right people from the start. You can have the best technology on the planet and you can have a great concept for a game that'll print money or make people really, really happy. But if you don't have the right people who are aligned in the same culture and core values and mission from the start, I think you could be in a lot trouble.
00:37:31
Speaker
I think... that it I think people make great games. I stand by that. um Yes, the technology is important. Your game engine is important. Your, you know, how you're actually making money is important, but none of that matters if you don't have the right people beside you and above you and behind you, right? You have to be surrounded by great people who have the same mission and want to do the same great things you want to do.
00:37:57
Speaker
I think that's perfect and well said. I think a lot of these individuals go in thinking they can do everything right. And they don't think about, how's multiplayer going to work? Or how am I going to market this? Or how do I eventually going to monetize this? They think if I build it, they will come.
00:38:12
Speaker
right And they don't try and get feedback. They're like, I'm going to build this baby of mine and going perfect. And I think it's tough. And yeah, you can do it. It's just going be a lot more of an uphill battle. It's something about surrounding yourself by great talent and letting that great talent do what you hired them for. Don't micromanage, don't oversee it. right like Set the vision and let people build towards that vision. And I think it's exactly what you said.
00:38:36
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. We had the pleasure of my entire team getting together back in March, spur an in-person summit. My team is fully remote. We're scattered across the entire continent. We have folks in Montreal to Seattle, right?
00:38:52
Speaker
So we all were able to get together. And i I tell them straight up, I love the fact that I am, you know, the dumbest person in that room when it comes to the technology, right? I hired them because of how incredibly talented and bright and amazing engineers and problem solvers that they were.
00:39:13
Speaker
And then I use my skill sets where I shine and where I'm strong to enable them to be successful, right? Making sure that I'm able to clear blockers, making sure that they get the proper work prioritized, that they have the time to do what they need to do.
00:39:27
Speaker
ah Pitching to you know our surrounding leaders, hey, these are the things that are important that we need to do. And here's why, here's the value. Those the things that are my job where I'm Well, not dumb and I'm really good at those types of things, right? But letting the people, to your point, who you hired to trust and to do their job well, i think the sign of a good manager, or even director, is to clear that path for them so that they can do everything that they need that you hired them for, right? I'm definitely not a micromanaging leader because I make sure that we hire folks who are
00:40:04
Speaker
borderline self-sufficient. Right. And I just, I clear the way I kind of like put them on the track and say, go do your thing, right. Do the thing that you are great at and that we brought you on to do. I think that's so well said. And multiple times I've heard now is, right, your role is to remove the roadblocks for others. Let them do what they need to do. That's what a great manager does is it removes roadblocks. And managing people is a whole different skill set. We've talked about this a lot than anything else that you've done, right? Some people just want to go into management because they're like, oh, I want to be a manager and they make more money. like
00:40:35
Speaker
It is a completely different skill set. If you're a coder, you're not going to want to be a manager because it's very different different skill sets, right? And you're not necessarily going to get paid. So I think... I think that's awesome how you put that.
00:40:47
Speaker
I have one last question, I think, is you work what I would imagine is a stressful job. You have releases coming out, previous releases.
00:40:59
Speaker
What do you do to mentally stay as sane as you can?
00:41:05
Speaker
I love that question. um I think it also comes back to the people, right? I'm surrounded by a team that genuinely cares about mental health and making sure nobody's getting burnout. We all hold each other accountable, which again goes back to the question you asked earlier. It's like, how do you make sure like a game from the ground up is successful? It is about the people, the culture.
00:41:29
Speaker
um I'm on central time and Respawn is based specific time. So now... Sometimes I catch myself at, you know, eight, nine o'clock my time. I'm on Slack. I'm checking up on things. And I do have teammates saying, Julie, it's eight o'clock. Like, go away. Right. We have it covered. Right. Like I, and that's what my team of just all caring about each other's mental health, work-life balance, those types of things. And we've all sprung into action, you know, on a weekend or an off hour, right? I'm not talking about those like, you know, very required, high pressure, you know, critical situations, but just on the day-to-day, knowing I'm surrounded by folks who I can trust and
00:42:11
Speaker
who are incredibly competent and then also care about their are leaders, sanity and mental health. I think that speaks volumes, right? Having that, that mutual care back and forth of, you know, but if I see somebody working really early, you know, engineers, sometimes they'll submit code at like midnight and like, you can see that. And, you know, I don't, again, I don't micromanage, but I say, are you okay? Right. Are you good? That's, that's everyone's adults.
00:42:35
Speaker
Right. So that's the extent of what I want to ask is just make sure, you know, um so yeah having having that that back and forth I think the other thing is that yeah know we have millions of players who count on us right who love Apex and I love that at the end of the day you know nope nobody's gonna die right like it's gonna be okay um and my team has actually personally gone through some
00:43:06
Speaker
some tragedies in their personal lives over the past 16 months, right? I had several people on my team go through some unimaginable things. And that just brings it all back around. We're all people, right? And I'm so grateful.
00:43:22
Speaker
grateful that both Respawn and EA took care of these folks in their times of of need. And the team was able to to rally and make sure, you know, and they're you don't want talk about their work in these situations, right? But making sure that these things were covered and that they didn't feel any stress, right?
00:43:40
Speaker
um So when those types of things happen, it really brings it back to We're all people just on this big spinning rock going through space.
00:43:51
Speaker
um And we're all just trying to do our best and and make it one day at a time. That's so well said. I spoke with a while ago, Ryan Burnett. He's the studio director for Respawn Madison. And he said the same thing. He said he preaches work-life balance. When you go home for the day, you shouldn't have to worry about looking at your computer anymore. You know, your work day is done. And yes, there'll be those times where you have to jump out on the weekend at nighttime. It's just part of...
00:44:16
Speaker
your job, right? But the truth is you need that work-life balance. And when you have that, you're going to stay at that company. And it's so great to hear that from from ea is that like You have that. They provide you those resources. They give you that ability to because then going stick around. And when you're going look for your next job, what going is going to open up that EA portal and see what else EA has internally, right? You're not going want to leave there. And I think that's what's important is these like you said, no one's going to die. And it's important to make sure that your company realizes like, all right, we're going to take care of you no matter what happens. and it's so great to hear that. So thank you for sharing that.
00:44:50
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Julie, you started as watching your dad playing Sega back when you were a real young and at four years old. You went to go work at USAA and completed the field. And then you came back to EA at the perfect timing right before COVID, at which time gaming then boomed for better or for worse. And now we're into 2025 where it's a shaky environment, but lots of games coming out.
00:45:14
Speaker
Overall this time, what change have you seen in gaming and what change do you want to keep pushing for?
00:45:22
Speaker
I love that question. um I think folks are trying to make games a place that can be played for all.
00:45:37
Speaker
I think Back when you know I was first playing, you know i don't mean to pick on Call Duty, but I will because that's that's what like cool you know I felt very out of the loop.
00:45:49
Speaker
I was absolutely bullied for playing Call Duty for that being my passion, both over the mic from friends. now... friends right um and now The effort that studios and developers are putting in to make sure that, hey, this is a safe space for everybody. This is a game that can be played by all.
00:46:13
Speaker
This is a game that we should... um A game that should bring in folks from all facets of life, all genders, all backgrounds. Like, this is a space for you.
00:46:28
Speaker
i think companies are starting to realize the way their games are most successful is if anyone feels at home playing them. It's not just about, you know, the men shooting them up in Call of Duty and then the women playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure, right? Like all these games are made for anyone.
00:46:48
Speaker
And developers trying to tap into that, that global acceptance and even playing field for all. i think that's only going to make things better.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, it goes back to what you said earlier is you can't make these games for free, right? And if you're going to start to discriminate against 50% of your potential audience, you're going to start in the hole, right? So why not create a game for everyone that's welcoming for anyone? And I completely agree with that. And again, as we said, it's going to allow for new unique games we haven't seen. We just passed Summer Games Fest, the Xbox and the PlayStation.
00:47:26
Speaker
And some wild looking games are being created, right? Because new people have the ability to make these games. Anyone can pick up a computer, install Unity or install Unreal and learn how to do this. It's not just for the college educated anymore, for lack of better words, right? Anyone can get in there and I think the more the merrier.
00:47:43
Speaker
Right. and And something I do really love about Apex is anyone can pick up a controller and look at the legends for Apex and find something there that they resonate with. um even you know Even Pathfinder, who's a robot, right? I think there's still people who will pick up that controller and find something that they can resonate with. And I love that we, you know, people think that any creator makes diverse characters just to be like PC, but it's not about that.
00:48:13
Speaker
It's about, again, having, you know, the teenage girl who just wants to play games, be able to pick up that controller. Maybe she resonates with Lifeline. Like that's cool, right?
00:48:23
Speaker
That's cool thing to be able to tie yourself to the game that you're playing, right? These games are escapes. both emotionally and and sometimes even you know physically, if you kind lock yourself in a dark room, right? I mean, these games are ways to spark joy and bring you away from the reality of things that are going on.
00:48:44
Speaker
And when you can get sucked into a character that reminds you you of you, that's just not... I was on something there, Greg. I loved it because...
00:48:55
Speaker
some people are afraid to show their true identity because of fear of bullying or what can go on. Right. But the beauty of, and it's also not the beauty. It's also the nightmare of online is that you can be anonymous. You can be yourself. You can be comfortable again. And unfortunately you're going to get really big assholes and trolls that do the same thing. But,
00:49:14
Speaker
For the most part, this gives people who are not comfortable in their own skin the ability to be comfortable in their skin. They can find the guild they resonate with. They can create a character that represents who they are, how they feel. And I think it's just so cool that we have that escape. And it's a privilege to have that escape, right? Years ago, we didn't. We just had, whether it be no video games or single player video games, right? But now we have this creative outlet where we can connect with like-minded people.
00:49:39
Speaker
And I think it's so great to be able to see people creating these experiences and being a part of those experiences. Yeah. completely agree. I mean, i you know I don't live in New York anymore where I grew up. I don't live Florida anymore where i went to college and I still play online games with some of my friends from growing up. Right. It's it's another form of human connection. And I think when these companies and these developers start to realize that's at the end of the day, a lot of what these but people are looking for is just human connection.
00:50:13
Speaker
and facilitating that in a positive experience, that's where they're going to start to see the most change. Cool. Well, on that, Julie, this has been a fantastic podcast. I really enjoyed learning what Build Release does and just about you and kind of how you went from kind of the New Yorker watching your dad play Sega to go into school to kind of do so information systems and business. and And I think it's so cool to be able to talk to someone from build and release someone from respawn and just everything that you've done. So first off, congratulations. And thank you for sharing your stories here before we do go. Is there anything you want to just talk about or share?
00:50:52
Speaker
No, I think, you know, anybody watching this, don't be afraid to try and get into the industry. There's no shortage of, you know, opportunities these days. I know we're hearing a lot about layoffs, but some games are still looking for folks. So don't be afraid to shoot your shot.
00:51:09
Speaker
um Don't be afraid to connect your own dots and show how your experience can connect to games um and your passion comes through. So just be who you are. Fantastic. On the player-driven...
00:51:21
Speaker
blog. We will have links, not that you need it, to find Respawn. ah We'll have information about Julie. Thank you again, Julie, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Awesome. Thanks, Greg.