Enduring Play

Are retro games truly lost to time? Lindsay Barnett and James Deighan are at the forefront of a massive revival: the return of the Backyard Sports franchise. Once beloved, it faded into a loss so complete that the source code was destroyed, leaving only the IP rights in a form so hard to find that Lindsay, now CEO of Playground Productions, had to hire a literal private investigator to track them down on her mission to create gaming experiences worthy of her students at Chicago Public Schools. IP rights in hand, she found James Deighan and his unique company Mega…

Desirée Rincón is a woman of many talents: leader, military veteran, video game program manager, social media manager, graphic designer - but at her core, always a gamer and community organizer. Her resilience has also been tested in a way few people ever face, and she continues to choose community and hope even in the face of repeated adversity. As we explore her story, you see how she repeatedly uses video gaming to connect communities - military units, orphaned military children, disabled gamers, and out of work game developers. And that's not getting into the magic of her service dog…

Some of the most influential people in the industry have been too busy doing the work to talk about the work - until now. Engineer turned producer Cory Tsang is one of the few original Sims object engineers who has gone on to a second career in production on live-service games at Elder Scrolls Online and beyond, taking what he learned building some of the world's top games and applying that insight to how we make games. People with this rare cross-disciplinary insight are the ones who can help us understand each other and truly become better than the sum…

Learn how cultural technical designer Timothy Staton-Davis is charting a new path in game development, drawing from his experiences across the industry to drive games where the technical implementation is inextricably linked with narrative and game design goals. In a game industry crowded with 10,000+ releases a year, the ability to craft unique experiences that immerse players in specific emotions, experiences, and educational moments is a differentiator that may mean the difference between surviving and thriving for you, your game, and your studio. Timis now Creative Director at Melanated Game Kitchen, taking his unique skills and putting them to use…

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, technical designer, 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…

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…