SimCity BuildIt’s Stanislav Stankovic

There’s something special about making video games, and whether you love art, engineering or both you know how magical the experience can be.

We’re lucky to have lots of amazing creative people who make video games here at EA, and we wanted to find out more about why they’ve chosen to make video games.

Stanislav Stankovic has been playing video games for years. “Let’s just say I still have an original box of SimCity 2000 on my desk,” he says.

After joining the company in 2015, Stankovic has worked on all the content updates in SimCity BuildIt so far.

“My role evolves constantly with every feature we release,” he says. “One really great part of our culture here in the studio is that practically everyone is involved in design process. Everyone has a chance to contribute. I personally feel I learned a lot since I joined the studio.”

Like many do, Stankovic starts each day with a coffee.

“The rest of the day depends mainly on the phase of the update cycle we are in,” he says. “Whenever we start with a new update, there are a lot of brainstorming sessions amongst the design team. Later on, we start working more closely with artists, and it's always amazing to see your ideas slowly come to life.”

SimCity BuildIt will be bringing a competitive element to the game with the life Contest of Mayors update, allowing Mayors to play with others and compete against their friends.

Player feedback has been vital in building the Contest of Mayors content in SimCity BuildIt.

“People are active on forums, on Facebook pages,” says Stankovic. “They form trading groups and talk about upcoming features. They share screenshots of their cities, and if you share a screenshot of your city, it's because you want other people to see what magnificent job you are doing as a SimCity mayor.”

Direct feedback from players themselves helped drive the changes in the game. “We follow the feedback that we get from our players, in EA forums, on our Facebook page, even Reddit,” says Stankovic. “We were all players before we become developers, so we really always put players first.”

When the SimCity BuildIt team plans upcoming features, they put themselves in the player’s shoes.

“We begin all of our feature designs with three simple words "As a player..." and we start to formulate our design goals from the point of view of a player,” says Stankovic.

Players will be able to climb the leaderboards and advance through leagues in SimCity BuildIt Contest of Mayors. “We also prepared some really nice rewards,” says Stankovic. “Platinum keys unlock some really special parks and landmarks.”

Stankovic can’t wait for players to get their hands on the new content, and he’s looking forward to playing as well.

“As cute as Basket Bunny is I must say that MaxisMan is my personal favorite,” he says. “I believe that every great city deserves a superhero.”

This post was originally published on EA.com/news: http://www.ea.com/news/why-i-make-games-stanislav-stankovic