Curious to know what’s happening behind the scenes of Travian: Legends? He is a passionate gamer and unintentionally… a meme star! Meet Fabian, our Product Manager!
Hi Fabian! First of all, tell us something about yourself and how did you end up being the Product Manager for Travian: Legends?
Hi Giulia, thanks for having me ?
Well, my name is Fabian, I just turned 33 years old, and I have been working as a product manager within the excellent Travian: Legends team for five months now. How did I end up here? I’d like to answer this question from two different points of views.
First and foremost: I am a gamer by heart. It all started along with my brothers by playing with Commodore 64. It was love at first sight. Then, I continued with the console era (Sega Mega Drive, NES, SNES, N64, XBOX360, PS1/2/3/4) and I ended up with several gaming PCs. So gaming is – and has always been – part of my life. It is still one of the best things for me to do when I want to relax after work or in my spare time.
From the career point of view, I gathered experience mainly in marketing-, campaign, and platform management. I have always been working in the “online business.” At the beginning of this year, I finally found the courage to get to the next step and combine my profession with my passion. And here we are – I haven’t regretted a single day of my decision.
My advice: just do what you love.
Tell us a bit about what you do as Product Manager. How does your “daily routine” look like?
Well, to answer this question correctly we need to go a couple of hours backward because for me “a new day” starts the day before.
Part of my job is to make sure that the players’ experience is as agreeable as possible on a new starting game world. This means that, if a new game world is about to start, I make sure that every department who is involved in this process is doing its best to ensure a smooth server start. To do that, the evening before I take care that everything is set up correctly for the next day.
First thing I do when I get to the office is double-checking that everything worked as planned. After talking and following up with different departments on game-related topics, I deep dive into some figures and analytics like player numbers, game world progresses, costs, performance and so on. Basically, I analyze if there is something we could optimize for our players.
Besides that, together with the responsible product owner, I act as the point of contact between the community, game design, art, QA, development and the technical part of the game. Since Travian: Legends is a “living game” there is always something to add, edit, adjust or develop – we are here to gather the different needs of each department and put them together into the “big picture.”
What do you enjoy the most about your job?
I love putting pieces together to create the “big picture” I mentioned before.
Being in the middle of such a great game and being connected to all departments working on this project independently is challenging and satisfying at the same time. Besides that, I love analyzing why “things” are happening and having the opportunity to change details and see afterward the impact they have on the game. This is really cool.
Could you tell us one funny anecdote that happened to you in the office?
Let’s see, where do I start? 
When our team was shooting the behind-the-scene video for this year’s annual-special Path to Pandora I was asked to help out as a background extra. My task was just to act “normal” in a presentation. In the scene, I unwittingly nodded to what they showed me. Since I took my job very seriously, I put a lot of effort into it and that nod quickly became a company meme used on our internal work chat. Every time I see it – I have to laugh about it.
Ah, and today a colleague told me: “Hey Fabian, have you ever noticed that Fa-bi-an rhymes with Tra-vi-an.” I cannot agree more ?
Now let’s talk about games. What’s your top 3 all-time favorite games?
Since I have always enjoyed competitive gaming and like the genres MMO(RPG), RTS and MOBA, it’s Starcraft (1+2) + Dota 2 and also… WoW. I guess I must commit to this love-hate relationship.
Now time for a random question to uncover your deepest secrets. What’s your favorite ice-cream flavor?
Alright, I have three options. If I want to go for something light, I always pick yogurt. If I want to go for something heavier, I pick hazelnut or (chunky) chocolate, and if I am in the mood for something fruity, my go-to flavor is wild berry.
Thank you for reading our interview, we hope you enjoyed getting to know Fabian a bit more! If you have any questions for him, don’t hesitate to leave a comment, otherwise, stay tuned for the next edition of Meet the Team!
