Universally Speaking: Providing QA, Localization & Audio Services for the Gaming Market

Introduction

My name is Andrew Brown and I’m the new CEO of Universally Speaking. I read Geography at UCL, what now seems like a very long time ago. I chose Geography as I was very curious about the world and had a passion for travel as well as a romantic idea about exploration. During my time at UCL, I did manage to organize an 8-week expedition to the SW Pacific to investigate sea-level changes as a function of climate change.

Living on small islands meant I lost 13kg... I wasn’t very good at catching fish. Along with playing rugby, this experience taught me the value of teamwork and how much more can be achieved when everyone is pulling together, which has become key learning and a theme throughout my career.

I began working in the FMCG (CPG) sector in Food & Drink for big brands such as Coca-Cola and Mars, so I soon regained the weight loss! After progressing up the Sales & Commercial side of the business I was invited to join Activision in 2005 as UK MD. This was my first role in games and was a very exciting time as I’d just bought my first console and was playing Medal of Honour at the time.

The big FMCG consumer brand companies are very established and have developed very mature processes and approaches over very long periods of time. This meant there was a need for ever refined strategies, great execution, and lots of analysis; a 0.25% market share change was a big deal! Making a difference in that environment required attention to detail, hard work, and thinking outside the box to find creative solutions. These are skills I was able to take with me into games at a time when the industry was still largely a packaged goods business and the ‘hit-flop’ nature of games meant new practices were needed.

Working at Activision

I joined Activision as UK & Ireland MD and was tasked with finding ways to accelerate growth. At that time, Activision was the #5 games company both in the UK and globally, and our biggest franchise was Tony Hawk, Call of Duty was our 3rd biggest game.

After we reviewed our line-up, it became clear CoD had much greater potential, and so my team put together an upweighted Sales & Marketing plan. This involved the first real use of digital media, outdoor campaigns, and even a red carpet event in Leicester Square with a bunch of celebs. It worked incredibly well, and CoD exploded in the UK with 50% of all console owners buying the game, and we jumped to be the #3 games company in the UK that year.

As the upweight was only in the UK, Activision remained in the #5 position everywhere else, with CoD actually declining by 20%, but they quickly adopted our approach, and CoD started its incredible journey to global games stardom. After introducing several new successful approaches, I took on the European role for commercial strategy as well as running the UK and German businesses.

In 2012, I was asked to take on the American side and moved to California for 3 years to look after what was then a $2 billion region. All in all, it was an incredible 10-year journey and I was very lucky to have that opportunity to get into games, which has to be the best industry in the world!

Universally Speaking

Universally Speaking was founded by Vickie Peggs, an incredible entrepreneur and passionate gamer, 18 years ago. Since that time, the company has grown into a multi-award-winning provider of post-production services to the games industry. This means, for example, that once the game or new game content is developed, Universally Speaking takes on the responsibility for localizing the game into every language needed for its global players, makes sure that there are no bugs impacting the player experience and that players are supported whilst in the game.

We currently have nearly 500 people in 2 UK locations supporting some of the world’s biggest and most successful games developers and publishers. I was drawn to Universally Speaking as they have an incredible reputation for quality and agility and are known as the go-to provider for fixing problems that other providers have struggled with.

I joined Universally Speaking as CEO at a time when demand for game services is growing rapidly as consumers play ever more games, and my role is to support the team to expand in order to provide more of the services our games partners require. This will involve adding to our headcount across multiple locations, further developing our team and their capabilities to stay at the leading edge, and adding additional extensions to our post-production services offering. It's a very exciting time! 

Playtesting

Ensuring the security of games on which we work is a critical element of our responsibility. Protecting the confidentiality of our partners' IP, particularly before they are launched, is key to ensuring public knowledge about the game is always under their control, and to this end, we employ state-of-the-art technology and rigorously train all of our staff.

Playtesting is a very important element in ensuring a game is ready for launch and is optimized for players around the world. Typically, this step involves putting groups of local expert testers into the game and having them play intensely for long periods to understand any elements which would benefit from changes across all aspects of single-player or multiplayer experiences. Outputs on user feedback are tailored to the project but often include, for example, feedback on how to improve onboarding and ongoing engagement.

To support scaled in-depth analysis, we gather appropriate player profiles to gauge the impact of the content from users with a range of profiles from highly experienced players through to ‘newbies’ to provide a comparative analysis with competitive IP.

Partners

We are privileged to work with some of the world’s largest and most successful developers and publishers across all types of games and platforms. The vast majority of our clients have come to us having heard of our reputation for quality, agility, and problem solving, either through recommendation or from seeing the awards Universally Speaking has won over the years at industry events.

Our relentless focus on quality means we only accept new work where we have the capacity to deliver and to this end we’ve been growing in a carefully planned and controlled way. For this reason, we’ve developed very strong partnerships with our existing clients which have allowed us to be a trusted extension of their own operation over many years. 

Business Model

The objective of our commercial team is to consult with existing and prospective new clients to really understand what their need is and to make sure we are creating exactly the right tailored solutions. This means we don’t really ‘sell’ our services but rather adapt our services to meet the client’s requirements and then we largely charge for the people needed to ensure the delivery of the agreed outputs. Given our reputation, we don’t spend money on, for example, advertising and prefer to invest in developing relationships with existing clients and with those that come to us through our network and via e.g. referrals.

Future Plans

Universally Speaking has been growing every year as industry demand continues to increase and as the quality of our work has become more and more widely recognized. To support this growth, we have recently opened a new state-of-the-art studio in Liverpool, which is a growing hub for games companies with a great talent base, and are already looking at plans to further grow our presence there as demand has grown rapidly. In line with requests from clients, we are now looking to extend our offering across the post-production and live service suite of services to support a truly end-to-end solution. It's a very exciting time! 

Andrew Brown, CEO of Universally Speaking

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie