VIP Player Services Lead

VIP Player Services Lead

Toronto, ON
Hybrid, 4 days per week in office
Full-time
Department: Product
Reports to: Product and Studio Leadership

About Big Viking Games

Big Viking Games is a Canadian gaming company focused on building, operating, and growing long-standing online game communities. Our games have entertained players for years, supported by loyal audiences, live operations, evolving content systems, product innovation, and deep player-driven economies.

Our flagship titles, YoWorld and FishWorld, have served millions of players over their lifetime. These are enduring live-service virtual worlds with rich in-game economies, virtual goods, social interaction, and long-term player engagement at their core.

We are entering a new phase of modernization and growth, with a focus on stronger player relationships, better service operations, smarter retention programs, practical AI adoption, improved workflows, and scalable systems that help our games and teams perform at a higher level.

About the Role

Big Viking Games is hiring a VIP Player Services Lead to own and elevate the experience of our most valuable and highly engaged players.

This is a hands-on, player-first role that blends VIP relationship management, retention strategy, player services operations, team mentorship, reporting, and cross-functional influence. You will help shape how we engage with top players, how we respond to player needs, and how player feedback informs decisions across the studio.

The right person is proactive, empathetic, highly organized, commercially aware, and comfortable operating directly with players while also improving systems, workflows, and service quality behind the scenes.

You will work closely with leadership, Player Services, Product, Live Operations, QA, Engineering, Marketing, and external or distributed support teams to strengthen player trust, improve satisfaction, identify friction earlier, and support stronger retention.

This is a hybrid role based in Toronto, with an expectation of working in office three days per week.

Requirements

What You’ll Do

VIP Player Relationship Management

• Own and evolve Big Viking Games’ VIP player program across YoWorld, FishWorld, and future live-service initiatives.
• Personally manage relationships with high-value and highly engaged players through thoughtful, professional, and personalized communication.
• Build VIP engagement strategies that support retention, satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term player trust.
• Plan and coordinate VIP outreach, events, promotions, social engagement, special experiences, and tailored communications.
• Monitor player behavior, spending patterns, sentiment, service history, and engagement signals to identify opportunities and risks.
• Support appropriate upsell, re-engagement, and retention opportunities while maintaining a player-first service mindset.
• Ensure VIP players feel heard, respected, supported, and valued without creating unsustainable one-off processes.

Player Services Leadership and Quality

• Partner with Player Services leadership to improve the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of player support.
• Help refine workflows, escalation paths, service policies, macros, knowledge articles, templates, and communication standards.
• Provide hands-on support when needed, including reviewing tickets, refining responses, identifying trends, and helping resolve complex or sensitive player issues.
• Help ensure players receive clear, timely, accurate, and empathetic support.
• Identify recurring pain points, service gaps, bugs, policy confusion, or product friction that may impact satisfaction and retention.
• Improve how the team handles escalations, difficult player interactions, VIP issues, and high-sensitivity cases.

Voice of the Player

• Serve as a key advocate for player sentiment across the studio.
• Translate player feedback, VIP insights, support trends, community signals, and behavioral data into clear recommendations.
• Partner with Product, Live Operations, QA, Engineering, Marketing, and leadership to help prioritize player-facing improvements.
• Identify emerging risks before they become larger player experience issues.
• Balance player advocacy with business priorities, operational realities, and long-term product health.
• Help the studio understand what players are experiencing, what they value, where they are frustrated, and what actions may improve satisfaction and retention.

Reporting, Insights, and Player Pulse

• Own a regular Player Pulse report for studio stakeholders, summarizing player sentiment, VIP insights, CSAT trends, recurring issues, service risks, and recommended actions.
• Use support data, player behavior, qualitative feedback, and VIP interactions to identify trends and opportunities.
• Track the performance of VIP engagement, retention initiatives, promotions, outreach, and player services improvements.
• Present insights clearly to leadership and cross-functional teams.
• Help convert raw player feedback and service data into decision-ready narratives.
• Use AI tools thoughtfully to summarize feedback, identify patterns, draft reports, improve response quality, and accelerate insight generation.

Team Enablement, Training, and Process Improvement

• Mentor and support distributed or offshore Player Services team members, helping build stronger communication, empathy, judgment, ownership, and problem-solving skills.
• Create and maintain training materials, playbooks, workflows, escalation guides, and service standards.
• Help improve onboarding and ongoing development for Player Services contributors.
• Partner with team leads or external service partners to improve quality, consistency, and accountability.
• Identify workload trends, skill gaps, capacity risks, and opportunities to scale the service function more sustainably.
• Build repeatable processes that improve player support without relying only on individual heroics.

Tools, Automation, and AI Workflows

• Identify opportunities to improve Player Services tools, reporting, documentation, automation, and workflows.
• Help implement practical AI-assisted workflows for ticket review, sentiment summaries, VIP notes, macro drafting, knowledge management, and recurring reporting.
• Partner with operations and systems teams to improve how player data, service history, and VIP activity are tracked.
• Help maintain clean, useful records of VIP interactions, player issues, retention activity, and follow-ups.
• Ensure tools and workflows support better service quality, faster response times, and stronger player relationships.
  
  
• What You Bring
• 4+ years of experience in VIP management, player services, customer experience, community management, retention, account management, or a similar player/customer-facing role.
• Experience managing relationships with high-value, highly engaged, or high-touch customers or players.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to communicate clearly, warmly, and professionally with players and internal stakeholders.
• Strong judgment when handling sensitive, emotional, escalated, or high-value player situations.
• Experience using player behavior, service trends, sentiment, or customer data to identify issues and recommend improvements.
• Experience creating or improving support workflows, macros, knowledge resources, escalation processes, training materials, or service standards.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with Product, QA, Engineering, Live Operations, Marketing, Operations, and leadership.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to manage hands-on operational work while also contributing to longer-term player experience strategy.
• Comfort working independently, identifying emerging issues, and making sound decisions when priorities are not fully defined.
• A proactive, curious, player-first mindset with strong follow-through.
• Comfort using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or similar platforms to improve workflows, reporting, communication, and insight generation.
• Nice to Have
• Experience in mobile, social, casual, free-to-play, casino, puzzle, virtual world, or live-service games.
• Experience at companies such as Zynga, Moon Active, Playtika, Scopely, or similar online gaming companies.
• Experience designing or operating VIP programs, loyalty programs, player events, retention programs, or re-engagement campaigns.
• Experience managing a large VIP portfolio or high-volume player community.
• Experience with customer support platforms, CRM tools, knowledge management systems, social channels, reporting tools, or workflow automation.
• Experience supporting offshore or distributed teams across multiple time zones.
• Experience presenting player insights, service trends, or customer experience metrics to leadership.
• Experience with Zendesk, Helpshift, Salesforce, HubSpot, Intercom, Jira, Slack, Notion, Airtable, or similar tools.
• Experience with player segmentation, retention analysis, LTV, ARPPU, churn risk, CSAT, response time, resolution quality, or service operations metrics.
• Ideal Candidate Profile
• The ideal candidate is a player-first operator who understands that great service is a competitive advantage. They can build trusted relationships with valuable players, handle difficult conversations with professionalism, and turn player feedback into useful insight for the studio.
• They are not just reactive. They look for patterns, identify risks early, improve workflows, and help the team operate with more consistency and care.
• They are equally comfortable writing a thoughtful player message, reviewing support trends, building a VIP engagement calendar, coaching a support team member, escalating a product issue, or presenting player sentiment to leadership.
• This role is best suited for someone who combines empathy, commercial judgment, data awareness, process discipline, and hands-on execution.

Benefits

Compensation

The expected salary is depending on experience, player services background, VIP program experience, gaming experience, and overall fit. There will be a base pay plus commission for this role.

Candidates with strong free-to-play gaming experience, VIP program ownership, retention strategy, and distributed team enablement experience will be considered at the higher end of the range.

Benefits

• Group Retirement Savings Plan matching and participation.
• Comprehensive benefits package, including health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Health and Wellness spending account.
• 15 vacation days.
• 10 wellness days.
• A founding-level seat on the systems that will define how an AI-first game studio operates.
• Exposure to live-service games, content production, game operations, internal platform development, and autonomous engineering workflows.
• A high-ownership role with meaningful influence over how AI is adopted across the company.
• A leadership team that is all-in on practical AI adoption, not performative AI theatre.

Accessibility and Accommodation

Big Viking Games is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible environment for all candidates. We welcome applications from individuals of all abilities and will provide accommodations throughout the hiring process as needed.

If you require accommodation during the hiring process, please contact [email protected] so we can work with you to support your needs.