Associate producer · Double Eleven · making games in KL
I'm an associate producer at Double Eleven. My job? Keep a huge live survival game shipping. That means wrangling engineers, designers, QA and a very loud community across two studios, and helping Rust leap onto next-gen consoles. Massive puzzle. I love it.
About
Hi, I'm Zarifah. I've been a gamer for over 20 years, so building games for a living is basically the dream job. I'm now an associate producer at Double Eleven, the studio behind Rust Console Edition. My route here was a little unexpected: I started in commerce and accounting (a BCom from the University of Auckland, plus ACCA), then spent a few years in project management and venture building at Boustead. Turns out shipping products and keeping a room full of stakeholders aligned is exactly what a producer does all day. So I made the jump to games and never looked back.
Live games never sleep. The calendar is fixed, the players are always watching, and something always needs deciding. That's my happy place. Before Rust, I led a product launch that pulled 20,000+ downloads in a single month, so shipping under pressure is kind of my thing. Now I turn giant roadmaps into real, dated milestones, keep teams in two countries rowing the same way, and make the tough calls when something has to give.
Projects timeline
Rust Console Edition ships on its own roadmap, separate from PC, with an update almost every month. Here are the highlights during my time on the title, from joining on Gen 8 in 2023 to the Gen 9 launch for PS5 and Xbox Series and World 2.0. A numbered patch still lands almost every month between these.
Expertise
Short version: I'm the person making sure a build actually ships. Here's the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Running a game that never stops. Roadmaps, update schedules, and the wipe cycle that keeps Rust ticking.
Turning a giant wishlist into real dates and real builds. And holding the line when the clock won't budge.
Keeping our UK and KL teams in sync across time zones, handoffs and the odd early-morning call.
Sprints, stand-ups and a living backlog. I run delivery on Scrum and Kanban, and keep everything visible in Jira and Confluence.
Talking to every team, platform and partner so nobody's left guessing what the plan is.
What's in, what waits, what gets cut. Honestly, saying no is half the job.
Bringing newer teammates up to speed, smoothing cross-discipline handoffs, and keeping the team unblocked and happy.
Spotting the blocker before it bites. Tracking dependencies, managing risk and keeping a release on the rails.
Pushing builds through testing, the public test branch and platform checks all the way to a clean launch.
Experience
From finance and venture building to producing a live game. The throughline: shipping things on time.
Double Eleven
Producing Rust Console Edition through nonstop live updates and its big next-gen launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
One group, four roles. I joined as a trainee and worked my way up to analyst, moving from group strategy into the digital-ventures arm along the way.
Sized up investments and new ventures: financial feasibility, market research, and pitching the cases to the investment committee.
Wore the product manager and project manager hats on a venture build. Took it from idea to launch with Agile, and the go-to-market hit 20,000+ app downloads in its first month.
Project-managed "Reinventing Boustead," a 50+ initiative turnaround that helped the group swing back to profit after three years of losses.
Where it all kicked off. Analysis, valuations and five-year business planning, and my first real taste of working life. (This was my PROTÉGÉ placement.)
Education
The accounting era, before the plot twist into games.
The University of Auckland
Majored in Accounting. The number-crunching years.
UOW Malaysia KDU
Chartered accountancy studies. Spreadsheets: officially mastered.
Achievements
Receipts from before the games chapter.
Topped the cohort in Advanced Performance Management in the June 2019 sitting, at UOW Malaysia KDU.
Won a 10-week national competition on the New Zealand economy, in a team of four, with MADE.
Ran the Malaysian Festival and helped the Auckland UMNO Club take the university's club-of-the-year award.
In the press
A couple of interviews on the jump from finance into games, and life as a producer at Double Eleven.
A profile on the path from accounting and corporate planning into live-service game production at Double Eleven, and being a 20-year gamer who finally made it in.
Read on The Star ↗An interview on the day-to-day: keeping the KL and UK teams in sync, managing communication, and owning the planning and the project's task list.
Read on Aksiz ↗The full history, every role and every date, lives over on my LinkedIn. Come say hi.
Check out my LinkedIn →Contact
Got a project, a question, or just want to nerd out about live games? My inbox is wide open.