Enduring Play

What does a technical designer do, and how does games education shake out in a modern context? How does design-oriented programming like prototyping really look as part of the game production process? Jo Cronk is a software engineer and UX specialist with over two decades of professional experience in the tech industry. From their start at Microsoft working on titles like Age of Empires 2, Age of Empires: Rise of Rome, Urban Assault, Outwars, Pandora’s Box, Close Combat III, Motocross Madness 2, the MSN Gaming Zone, and Asheron’s Call they went on to build a unique career as a technical designer at renowned studios like Crystal Dynamics,…

Video games take years to develop, but often game studios make choices as if they're going to be hiring for months at a time. The failure to build in the systems that support the people at a studio - hiring, management support, career frameworks, company values and goals - are failures to thrive that can harm your studio at the moment you need the support the most, when you're about to pivot to broad scale. Amy White has served as Director of People of Fusebox Games as they doubled in size from the crucial 26 to 48 person size, and…

If you're looking to start or grow a thriving community of game developers, you're probably going to want to take a page from the notebook of Seattle Indies Executive Director Tim Cullings. From his time in indie and AAA gaming to his time running the biggest indie game development organization in North America, Tim is a passionate organizer who constantly organizes organizers, trying to bring energy to the people educating the next generation of game developers, people creating the next generation of studios, and people who just need some support with a nasty bug in their engine. This conversation dives…

Discover an astonishing variety of community insight in this candid conversation with video game event professional and nonprofit board member Cristina Amaya. Cristina's love of gaming was forged like many of her peers with late nights in World of Warcraft guilds and inspiring trips to the Penny Arcade Expo, and those formative experiences led to a career organizing esports, developer, and player-focused events around the video game industry. This episode is full of new things to discover: explore third space theory, prosocial gaming patterns, the fighting game community and their flagship fighting tournament EVO, dive into some of the history…

You don't need to be a games user researcher to confront the need for playtesting in your video game. All game developers, from solopreneurs to indies to AAAs will have to put their games in front of players at some point, hoping to learn from the experience. Steve Bromley is one of the world's foremost experts on the art of video game playtesting, and for over a decade he's been mentoring future generations of games user researchers through the International Game Developers Association and his own books and classes. In this week's episode, get insight from Steve that you can…

Celebrate GDC week by listening to one of the many talented GDC speakers hitting San Francisco in 2026: Narrative designer, games writer, and games researcher Adanna Nedd brings her extensive knowledge of what's current in gaming to expand our horizons. Explore unexpected questions like: what's "friend slop" and why does it matter? What does self-expression really mean to marginalized groups in games? How is one of the current breakout games innovating in women's health? Why are some vintage consoles still getting playtime? And... what do spiders have to do with AI? While Adanna's research focuses on the experiences of players…

Season 2's bonus-length debut episode features a candid, constructive, and hopeful conversation with Women in Games International CEO Joanie Kraut. Recent reports indicate that 46-48% of gamers globally are women - but only one third of game developers identify as women or nonbinary, and that's still far larger than the representation numbers seen in esports. How do we break these cycles, and how can we lift up marginalized groups in gaming in a way that benefits everyone - all genders, all ethnicities, all races, all sexual orientations - with an eye towards equity? Joanie Kraut has been exploring these questions…

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…