<aside> 🌿 Hi everyone! I’m Amanda (she/her), the Community and Support Senior Associate at Lumi Interactive. We’re working on a mobile game called Kinder World, a self-care houseplant game focused on community and wellbeing. Lumi Interactive is a women-founded studio that started making Kinder World after experiencing pandemic burnout. We’re excited to be expanding our team to fully launch Kinder World on iOS and Android by the end of this year!
I’m relatively new to Lumi and to the gaming industry overall! I only started gaming over the pandemic and created a game recommendation TikTok account as a fun lockdown project. Through self-taught skills and making industry connections, I’ve pivoted into a game marketing role. I’m very happy to chat about our current open positions, our studio founded on kindness culture, personal experiences of TikTok marketing and breaking into the gaming industry, and anything else.
Links:
Our site: https://lumiinteractive.com/ Job listings: https://www.workwithindies.com/?search=lumi interactive Twitter: https://twitter.com/lumiinteractive TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@kinderworldgame
You can also find me on my personal Twitter and TikTok @cutieindierecs 🥰
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<aside> 🤔 To kick things off, please tell us a little bit more about yourself, about your journey into games, and how you got your position at Lumi Interactive! - Katherine
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<aside> 🌿 Amanda: Amazing! I am very new to gaming and the games industry overall. We had really intense lockdowns here in Melbourne, so I turned to games as a hobby and became somewhat obsessed. I started a TikTok during lockdown #6 as a way to share about the indies that I loved! I made a ton of connections with game devs through TikTok and that's how I met Lauren from Lumi. After quitting a pretty toxic job, she scooped me up to work at Lumi and it's been such an amazing experience!
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<aside> 🥰 I can't wait to hear more about your TikTok adventures! - Katherine
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<aside> 🌿 Amanda: TikTok is a really fun platform! There's an opportunity to grow quickly and reach a lot of people. More than that, I've found that it's a great way to connect with others. Everyone is putting themselves out there to film videos and it feels pretty vulnerable. So likes and comments go a long way. I've made friends with so many devs and connections are so important to get jobs in the industry!
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<aside> 🤔 Hi Amanda, thank you for doing this! I am about to start making Tik Toks for my game company, and am really lost with how to start, and how to get over the anxiety of putting myself out there, do you have any advice based on how you started and how you were able to get over that first bump of anxiety if you had it? - SusanatTursiops
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<aside> 🌿 Amanda: There's SO much anxiety over making TikToks at first!! I made my first few and posted them all together. They ended up taking so much time and energy. Things do get easier! It feels weird and cringey but that's something you kind of have to push through at first. Trying something easy like using a trending sound with gameplay is a good way to get started. Then you can build up to talking and showing your face. It's definitely recommended to actually scroll TikTok yourself because trends move really quickly!
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<aside> 🤔 Thank you! Which format have you found connects with viewers more, or in other words, what seems to get the most responses?
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<aside> 🌿 Amanda: I've found the most popular videos for my page are 20-30 seconds, showing my face, chatting with the audience like they're friends, and giving info they find interesting. For my personal channel, that's game recommendations and talking about indies. I'm still playing around with the Lumi channel! I've just been using trending sounds for now which do okay. But I think people are really looking to get to know you and the stories behind the game
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<aside> 🤔 What was the "lockdown Tiktok project" that helped you land your current role? - Shelby
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<aside> 🌿 Amanda: I started a channel to just recommend games that I liked! It ended up getting a lot of traction so I was able to make connections with lots of different folks, just from trading comments on each other's videos. It also helped develop the skills that I use in my job now to connect and manage a community.
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