Conference Day 2 – 9th September 2026

This panel explores how top-tier live service teams make high stakes decisions while balancing technical realities, human judgement, and the constant pressure of evolving roadmaps. Panellists will unpack how they improve upon:

• Ranking priorities when everything seems important.
• Making decisions without all the information they’d ideally like to have.
• Looking out for their team’s wellbeing to prevent bottlenecks and burn out.

Andréane Meunier

Sr. Director Production and Live Services
Sony Interactive Entertainment

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Tomasz Stanisławek

Director of Software Engineering
Huuuge Games

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Agnes Pinter

Senior Director Production
Product Madness

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Tomas Rawlings

Consultant
Nomad Games

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Players experience one game, one brand, and one relationship. But behind every live game sit dozens of teams, technologies, and disconnected sources of player data—each seeing only part of what is happening.

John Pompei

VP Gaming Practice
iQor

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Jonathan Shroyer

SVP - Gaming, AI
iQor

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Players don’t think about payments, accounts, compliance, or anti-fraud systems - but those “invisible” services determine whether the game feels smooth, trustworthy, and even playable. During this session Maksim Zaikin, the Head of Game Integration at Wargaming will share real examples from his experience running shared services across game titles like World of Tanks: what’s worth centralizing, what it breaks if you do it wrong, and the practical habits that keep platform work helping game teams instead of slowing them down. Attendees will take away:

• A clear rule of thumb for what to centralize vs keep game-specific.
• The real costs of centralization - coupling, priority conflicts, migration pain - and how to manage them.
• How these services impact player trust and revenue integrity (login, purchases, security, etc.).

Maksim Zaikin

Head of Game Integration
Wargaming

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The idea of a game being "finished" is rapidly disappearing. Players increasingly expect ongoing updates, content roadmaps, and long-term support, transforming launch day from a milestone into the beginning of a product's lifecycle. While indie studios have successfully embraced iterative development through Early Access and community-driven feedback, AAA developers face growing pressure to balance blockbuster launches with the agility of live services. This panel examines how evolving player expectations are reshaping development models, what different segments of the industry can learn from one another, and how studios can build sustainable strategies for games that never truly end.

• Navigating shifting player expectations beyond launch.

• Balancing live service demands with sustainable development.

• Learning from indie and AAA post-launch strategies.

Michael Schade

CEO
ROCKFISH Games

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Michael Hooper

Publishing Director
STEALTH

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Jeff Pabst

Founder & CEO
Gamesmiths Ltd

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Matthew Laurence

Engagement Director
Avalanche Studios Group

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Pavlo Poiasnyk, LiveOps Department Director at Plarium, leads an educational roundtable exploring how to construct an in-game economy entirely from scratch while keeping both player trust and commercial goals in balance. Drawing from relevant examples, Pavlo will guide attendees through:

• Identifying the right monetisation practices for your audience, project and genre.
• Knowing your player in a way that helps you understand what in-game transactions and prices won’t alienate them.
• Implementing additional key elements into a new project, necessary to build an in-game economy.
• Understanding what resource allocation and team structures are essential to support your new, sustainable economy.

Pavlo Poiasnyk

LiveOps Department Director
Plarium

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This session unpacks the art and science of planning content drops that keep live service players engaged without overwhelming teams or diluting the game’s identity. Panellists will explore how they determine the right volume, cadence, and type of updates that will keep players invested by:

• Assessing player behaviour and aligning content drops with realistic production capacity.
• Identifying player priorities by analysing feedback and data to understand what content resonates most.
• Transforming insights into updates by converting player needs into compelling, well timed in game experiences.

Jakub Trancik

Head of Game – Idle Miner Tycoon
Kolibri Games GmbH

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Dr. Kristie Fisher

Sr. Director of User Research
Sony Interactive Entertainment

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Tomas Rawlings

Consultant
Nomad Games

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Julie Jeong

Product Director
Tilting Point

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Marcin Lella works closely with Tencent's secondary studios and works with them to optimise and improve their user research strategies that directly influence smarter, safer, and more player aligned game design. By observing real players test early builds, he guides developers in identifying risks, refining in game assets, and continually adjusting features to better meet audience expectations. Through real world examples, this session gets into:

Applying user research insights to refine in game assets and align them with real player expectations.

Identifying design risks early and guiding teams through safer, more informed decision making.

Observing real player behaviour to drive continuous iteration and meaningful feature improvements.

Marcin Lella

Senior User Researcher
Tencent

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This engaging roundtable session led by industry veteran, Oscar Clark, invites attendees to exchange tactics and food-for-thought regarding how their studios approach truly understanding whether the games they’re building, and the updates they’re shipping, are creating the impact they expect. In an open dialogue, Oscar will outline his tried-and-true tactics based on years of LiveOps experience and encourage others to discuss how they connect real player data to practical, actionable strategies that guide live service decisions throughout full end to end lifecycles. Get into:

• Transforming player data into clear, actionable live service strategies.
• Evaluating whether updates and events deliver the intended player impact.
• Ensuring teams can maintain quality and pace during human interruptions such as leave, redundancies, team restructurings and more.

Oscar Clark

Author
Author

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Ed Badcock, Associate Director of Player Engagement at ZeniMax Online Studios, explores what it truly takes to revitalise a ten year old game, like The Elder Scrolls Online, in a way that renews trust with existing players, whilst also ensuring initiatives are deployed to bring back lapsed players and wider audiences. He will unpack how their publishing and development teams have collaborated in an intentional way that creates a game and community that builds player trust by:

• Designing updates that deliver long-requested features from players, alongside breaking the mould to deliver new experiences that inspire existing and wider audiences alike.
• Strengthening player trust by aligning publishing and development teams around transparent, player first decision making.
• Re energising long term engagement.

Ed Badcock

Studio Director, Player Engagement
Zenimax Online Studios

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This forward looking session explores what the live service landscape may look like by 2027, highlighting the emerging trends, technologies, and player expectations that will define the next wave of successful games. The panellists will share key learnings from their experience the past year while examining how studios are:

• Anticipating future trends by understanding the shifts in player behaviour, technology, and market expectations shaping 2027.
• Differentiating in crowded spaces by developing strategies that help live service games stand out and sustain attention.
• Applying industry learnings by leveraging insights from the past year to inform stronger long term planning.

Sahana Subraya

Director of Product
Socialpoint

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Tomas Rawlings

Consultant
Nomad Games

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Tomasz Stanisławek

Director of Software Engineering
Huuuge Games

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Phil Williams

Former Content Director, Scopely
Creative Leader

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