Enduring Play

The final episode of Enduring Play Season 1 launches today featuring Riot Games Senior Producer Yesenia Cisneros, whose iconic self-made journey through the gaming industry has seen her build a video game production career on a strong personal brand of people-focused problem solving, empathy, and well-executed game development fundamentals. In this practical episode, you'll get concrete examples of some of the most common failures to thrive amongst aspiring games and game developers, along with advice on what to do to avoid those pitfalls yourself. Yesenia is a repeat presenter at the Game Developers Conference and her perspective has helped her…

The penultimate episode of Season 1 of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast is available worldwide featuring the versatile veteran video game artist and interface designer Tamara Knoss. Currently a Senior Technical UI Designer at Wizards of the Coast, Tamara’s experience spans animation, lead artist, UI artist, and technical artist roles. Her expansive experience is a perfect example of the pragmatic cross-disciplinary problem solving required to create thriving games whether you’re shipping on modern PCs or classic handheld consoles. This episode is a fun look at a developer/publisher relationship since Tamara and Cheryl first worked together as developer and publisher…

The eighth episode of Enduring Play, A Game Development Podcast hosted by Cheryl Platz is now available with guest Joe Magdalena, better known around the internet simply as joemag, sharing his perspective as an experienced systems designer on games like Hearthstone and Teamfight Tactics. Listeners will learn about what it takes to design content for live operations games and why joemag believes all game designs are systems design challenges. You'll hear about the magic of spreadsheets and tuning curves, learn some basic truths about progressions, player rewards, and community relations, and get insight into how designers partner with other disciplines…

The sixth episode of Season 1 of Enduring Play: hosted by Game Development Strategy Guide author Cheryl Platz, is now live with guest Eric Kabisch, a seasoned gaming design executive with experience at companies like Scopely, Roblox, Google, and VRChat. This episode provides a rare look behind the veil of the life of a design executive working at global scale in the video game industry and succeeding with multiple companies, while learning from the engagements that didn't go as planned. Eric's approach is deeply people-focused, with advice about leading with curiosity that can apply to people at all stages of…

The fifth episode of Season 1 of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, hosted by Game Development Strategy Guide author Cheryl Platz, is now live with guest Whitney Beltrán, a multiple award-winning Mexican-American Narrative Director with over 12 years of experience in narrative design and professional writing whose experience spans triple-A video games, mobile games, extended reality games, tabletop roleplaying games, and pretty much anything interactive. Most listeners will be learning plenty of new concepts as the field of narrative design is fairly specialized - but understanding what goes into good narrative design can improve everyone's game development craft. Our…

The fourth episode of Season 1 of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, hosted by Game Development Strategy Guide author Cheryl Platz, is now live with guest David Ventura, CEO and Creative Director of Swedish indie gaming studio Ichigoichie Games. This unique episode also features music from Ichigoichie's games in the transitions between the podcast levels, helping listeners get a sense of what they can create when playing David's games. The conversation covers some of the early history of the music game genre tied to David's early career at iNiS Corp in Japan, and expands to bigger philosophical discussions about…

The third episode of Season 1 of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, hosted by Game Development Strategy Guide author Cheryl Platz, is now live with guest Amy Kalson, Executive Design Producer at Meta. This week's episode starts out a bit like an episode of Apple TV's hit series Mythic Quest with a real-life story of video game development shenanigans that seem almost too scripted to be real, but were a shared core memory for both Amy and host Cheryl during their time on Disney Friends DS. After the walk down that memory lane, the talk turns towards life as…

The second episode of Season 1 of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast, hosted by Game Development Strategy Guide author Cheryl Platz, is now live with guest Carlos Figueiredo, Director of Player Trust and Safety for Mojang Studios/Minecraft and co-founder of the Thriving in Games Group. Today's conversation brings hope for the future of positive gaming experiences, and is a must-listen for anyone creating multiplayer gaming experiences but also any parents of gamers who are wondering what goes into creating or encouraging safe online gaming experiences. https://www.gamedevelopmentstrategyguide.com/enduring-play-season-1/enduring-play-season-1-episode-2-safe-and-thriving-gaming-communities-with-carlos-figueiredo/ Key Quotes: "Prosocial behavior is something that's actively contributing to a thriving community.…