When Jay Peng downloaded the first version of PrizePicks’ Pick ’Em Arena game on his mobile phone, he nearly burst into tears.
Tears of joy, that is. “It was easy to understand, fun to play and didn’t explode when I pressed buttons,” he recalled.
For the principal product manager, this was a true “aha moment” — the moment when he realized that all of those months of careful planning, strategizing and technical labor had come to fruition.
The tech teams at the fantasy sports company are always seeking new ways to create products that will make the gaming experience more enjoyable and exciting. And for VP of Innovation Brian Huss, Pick ’Em Arena is a significant step forward in that direction.
“We know that our members love to talk about their picks and challenge each other, so we built Pick ’Em Arena as a way to enjoy the fun and challenge of PrizePicks in a peer-to-peer-based way,” he explained.
Ambition, coupled with a strong technological backbone, created the canvas upon which the product was built, while collaboration was the artist’s hand that brought its vision to life. According to Engineering Manager Jonathan Wallace, countless teams played a direct role in the development process, offering essential knowledge, guidance and support all the way from the initial stages to launch day.
“Whether we leveraged previously excellent work from product, quality assurance, design and engineering or devised completely greenfield, innovative functionalities, there wasn’t a person at the company whose cooperation wasn’t critical to the success of this project,” he said.
This strong cross-functional teamwork enabled Wallace and his peers to overcome any roadblocks that popped up along the way. And as problems were solved one by one and the product reached fruition, everyone involved recognized an underlying truth about PrizePicks’ culture: team members love what they do, and they love getting work done together.
“You don’t see a lot of politics here,” Huss remarked. “There’s a true spirit of collaboration; of feeling that we are one team.”
HOW PICK ’EM ARENA WORKS
Pick ‘Em Arena enables players to compete for guaranteed prizes by being placed into groups matching their number of entries, selected entry fee and experience level on the platform, offering them the chance to win prizes by creating the highest-scoring entry within their given group. The game gives both serious fantasy sports fans and casual participants the opportunity to test their skills and sports knowledge.
The Road to Realization
Huss still vividly remembers the day during the development phase when everything seemed to fall into place.
“One day, it all came together,” he recalled. “We could see the magic we had in our heads actually play out in the product, and we got a real sense that it was going to be a huge hit.”
But arriving at this magical moment wasn’t easy. Before the company’s technologists could see the fruits of their labor, they had to dive deep into the technical weeds.
Wallace explained that, to ensure the product could be delivered to market quickly and was stable, reliable and high performing, the engineering team leveraged their existing infrastructure of Ruby on Rails, Go microservices and a cross-platform React FE. They also relied on other tools, such as GitHub for source code control, Linear for project management and Notion for documentation.
While the company’s product, design, engineering and QA teams worked in tandem to construct the product, Huss added, the revenue and analytics teams gauged how the contests should be structured in a way that would be enjoyable to users. Meanwhile, the government affairs team offered guidance on shaping the game to be aligned with regulatory frameworks, and the marketing department ensured that users could discover the product and its potential.
According to Peng, the biggest challenge that arose from this cross-collaborative effort wasn’t a lack of communication or technical missteps — it was extreme ambiguity.
“As a company trying to create innovative, industry-leading games, we don’t have clear blueprints to follow; we’re the ones making the blueprints for others,” he explained.
“As a company trying to create innovative, industry-leading games, we don’t have clear blueprints to follow; we’re the ones making the blueprints for others.”
To overcome this ambiguity, Peng shared, team members relied on educated opinions, speedy alignment and a fast-paced “build-and-break” mentality that ensured they were learning more often than not. And considering 80 percent of those involved in the project were onboarding at the same time, this seamless teamwork was especially extraordinary in his mind.
For those involved in developing Pick ’Em Arena, the greatest aspect of the experience wasn’t just seeing their dreams come to life on their phone screens. It also proved to be a growth moment for many of them, including Huss, who feels that his work on the project made him a more effective strategist and, most importantly, a stronger leader.
“I became a more empathetic leader by understanding all of the different challenges that resulted from the product’s frequent evolutions and learned how to help team members feel heard and empowered to do amazing work,” he said.
The Passion Behind the Product
When Wallace joined PrizePicks, he knew that he would be helping the company enter new markets and build out its user base. Yet there were some aspects of the job he couldn’t have foreseen.
For instance, he had no idea that he would be working alongside peers who are as passionate about achieving company goals as they are about helping each other thrive.
“I see a company filled with exemplary employees who value the impact of their work, the opportunity of our company and, most importantly, how we collaborate with one another to grow our craft as individuals and our output as a whole,” Wallace said.
Wallace was merely three days into this role as engineering manager when he was tasked with the Pick ’Em Arena project. From the moment his team started developing the product, he discovered new truths about himself — and his peers.
“I learned I can rely on them through the toughest challenges and that people of their skill and expertise arrived at their level through a relentless willingness to speak up and make things better while continuing to deliver,” Wallace said.
At PrizePicks, people hold the key to building influential products, which is why the company strives to hire the right kind of individuals; those whom Peng believes have the characteristics needed to make work feel more like a fun side project.
“Everyone I’ve worked with has shown zero ego, an extreme willingness to help whenever needed and a shocking level of transparency,” he said. “When you like your coworkers, it’s easier to do work — who would have thought?”
“Everyone I’ve worked with has shown zero ego, an extreme willingness to help whenever needed and a shocking level of transparency.”
As PrizePicks continues to amplify its presence in the fantasy sports space, the company is crafting plans to deliver players even more memorable experiences, making the creation of Pick ’Em Arena simply the first step in an exciting journey fueled by cutting-edge technology — and passionate people.
“It has been a transformational product for us, outperforming our expectations and laying the groundwork for an even broader set of games our members will love,” Huss said. “We’re just getting started.”
