PULASKI, Wis. — There’s a lot of work that goes into building a commerce arcade game.
What You Need To Know
- The Village Companies in Pulaski is growing and seeking people to help fill open positions
- Businesses in the company include Bay Tek Entertainment, MCL Industries and Skee-Ball
- Hiring is expected to take place into 2023
It’s something Austen Sinnaeve knows intimately. He’s a game assembler with Bay Tek Entertainment in Pulaski.
“It gets built in the cabinet shop for us out here and we do all the internals. Putting in circuit boards, all the gears and all the main functions for the game to work,” he said.
Sinnaeve has been with Bay Tek for about a year and estimates he’s built as many as 150 games that are found in places like Dave & Busters and Chuck E. Cheese.
“The game I’m building today is called the Hyper Nova. It’s a game… where you pull the lever down and it brings up the fan and you have to get a certain amount of points to get the tickets,” he said.
Bay Tek and its sister companies are seeking people as they grow. That includes people for at-home arcade games built by Skee-Ball and contract manufacturing through MCL Industries.
Brittany Dieterich is the talent acquisition specialist for The Village Companies. She said production, management and office jobs will be available in the coming months.
“We’re looking primarily for game assemblers. We’re also looking for — on the MCL side — mechanical assemblers,” Dieterich said. “We’re also going to be looking at Skee-Ball brand, our consumer product sides of things… That’s going to be amping up as well, so we’ll be looking for game assemblers for Skee-Ball.”
She said variety is attached to the jobs.
“We are looking for someone who is ready to take on new challenges and take on change,” she said. “You won’t be building the same game every day, you won’t be building the same thing at MCL every day, so there’s a lot of awesome change that’s happening and we’re looking for somebody that is ready to be a team player.”
But The Village Companies isn’t all games. MCL Industries works on parts that can end up on a fire truck or military vehicle.
David Hoffmann has been working there for 35 years.
“Just the variety of things we build,” he said about what’s kept him there those years. “We’ve built stuff that can actually save people’s lives.”
At Bay Tek, Sinnaeve routinely tests out his work as the games are checked over before delivery.
“It’s rewarding knowing you’ve put your hard work and sweat into it and then somebody else out there is enjoying playing the game you built,” he said.