Enduring Play Season 1 Episode 9: Doing More With Less for Video Game Art and UI/UX
Tamara Knoss has played many roles in the video game industry: character animator, lead artist, UI artist, and now Senior Technical UI Designer – or, as she describes it, “UI/UX unicorn” thanks to the rarity of her combined skillsets navigating the “why” of user experiences and the “how” of executing high fidelity user interface art in game engines like Unity. She’s seen the rise and fall of multiple console generations, and created game art for some of the world’s most famous IP, including The Sims, Disney, and Harry Potter. We had the opportunity to work together directly on multiple titles, and this wide-ranging episode serves as a great look at the history of some early handheld development and a challenge to current developers to think smaller when developing for mobile games. Why aren’t we learning from the past when trying to build games that get the most out of as many devices as possible? This episode doesn’t just ask that question, but it pulls back the veil on some of the techniques and mindsets used to solve for extreme constraint when games were shipping on cartridges no larger than 16 megabytes. That’s right. Megabytes. But there’s also plenty of modern insight about how specialization in an engine like Unity unlocks creativity in new ways, firsthand insight about shipping console launch titles, fun stories from time at now-defunct handheld indie studio Griptonite Games, and industry-agnostic insight about the nature of UX roles and their ability to serve not just software, but the organization around them.
For readers of The Game Development Strategy Guide, this episode is a particularly great complement of themes from Chapter 3: Putting the Dev in Game Development, Chapter 8: Creating Immersive Worlds, and Chapter 12: Gaming Technology Platforms.
Listen Now: Enduring Play Season 1 Episode 9
Enduring Play Season 1 Episode 9 Transcript [PDF]
Featured in This Episode
Tamara Knoss, Senior Technical UI Designer / Unicorn Wizard
Tamara Knoss has turned chaos into opportunity during her video game art career, constantly evolving as the technology platforms she works with change around her. Her past employers include Griptonite Games, Glu Mobile, and Big Fish Games where she worked on games with big names like The Simpsons, High School Musical, Sesame Street, Disney, and LEGO Star Wars – but you probably know her more recent work at Wizards of the Coast on Magic the Gathering: The Arena. Trained as an animator, Tamara graduated into a world that had declared animation dead – so she moved to the handheld gaming world and became an expert at getting the most out of the highly constrained Game Boy Advance platform, which also put her in position to work on a launch title for the Nintendo DS. This turned out to be foreshadowing for a career that would then evolve to focus on early mobile gaming, again adapting at the cutting edge of the industry. Her years as a lead artist gave her a deep appreciation for the planning and cross-disciplinary problem solving neccessary to make thriving games. Tamara’s current role as Senior Technical UI Designer is one of the rarest and hardest to train and hire for in the video game industry, which is why she invokes the “unicorn” title – those who can both create art and effectively implement it in the digital engines that bring it to life are truly a rare sight in the video game industry.
Show Notes
Supporting Links
| Hardware History | Game Boy Advance specs at Nintendo.com Nintendo DS specs at Nintendo.com |
| The Electronic Entertainment Expo | History of the Electronic Entertainment Expo The Rise and Fall of E3: Lessons Learned from The World’s Biggest Gaming Stage (InEvent.com) |
| Studios | Griptonite Games at MobyGames Big Fish Games at MobyGames |
| Urbz DS Launch | The Urbz Announced for Nintendo DS (GameDeveloper) Hands-on: The Urbz (IGN) The Urbz: Sims in the City Hands-On (GameSpot) Clip of Cheryl’s Urbz demo at the Nintendo Gamers Summit in 2004 (with the world’s worst audio) |
| The games Tamara and host Cheryl Platz worked on together | The Sims Bustin’ Out (GBA) The Urbz: Sims in The City (GBA / DS) Disney Friends DS |
| Jason Bay’s* Gaming Careers book | Start Your Video Game Career (Amazon referral link) |
| Tamara on the internet | Tamara Knoss on Mobygames Tamara Knoss on Linkedin |
* Jason was a fellow developer at Griptonite Games during our time there.
Episode Outline
| Scene | Time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Podcast Level Start | 1:57 | Introduction |
| Level 1 | 2:22 | A Unicorn’s Career Journey |
| Narrative Cutscene | 4:17 | Development for the Game Boy Advance |
| Level 2 | 5:13 | The Electronic Entertainment Expo |
| Level 3 | 6:58 | From Animator to Lead and UI Artist |
| Level 4 | 8:22 | User Experience Deliverables for Game Design |
| Level 5 | 10:23 | How user experience improves teams and Process |
| Level 6 | 12:38 | Stakeholder alignment through prototyping |
| Host Commentary | 17:36 | The role of cross-disciplinary insight in problem solving |
| Level 7 | 18:27 | The People Problem |
| Level 8 | 19:51 | Finding The Fun |
| Host Commentary | 22:54 | Griptonite Games as a Handheld Game Developer |
| Level 9 | 23:27 | Coping with Short Shipping Timelines |
| Host Commentary | 25:03 | Universal console launch title challenges |
| Level 10 | 25:22 | The challenges of shipping a console launch title |
| Level 11 | 27:03 | Minimum lovable games |
| Host Commentary | 28:45 | Defining publisher and developer as company roles in the industry |
| Level 12 | 29:15 | Between publisher and developer |
| Level 13 | 30:40 | Grandpa Game Boy |
| Host Commentary | 32:02 | Psychology as a differentiating skill |
| Level 14 | 32:37 | Navigating crunch culture |
| Level 15 | 34:41 | The power of “no” |
| Host Commentary | 35:56 | Getting to the root of problems |
| Level 16 | 36:13 | The pain of exclusion and prescriptive solutions |
| Level 17 | 37:53 | The simple gift of stupid questions |
| Level 18 | 39:18 | The variability of UI/UX titles |
| Level 19 | 40:18 | Building teams around unique skillsets |
| Level 20 | 42:09 | Unlocking the power of video game engines |
| Level 21 | 45:18 | Wobbly tools |
| Podcast Boss Level | 48:23 | Waste not, Wi-Fi Not |
| Bonus Level | 52:58 | The importance of networking |
| Final Podcast Level | 56:15 | Links, follow-up, and LinkedIn advice |
The Game Development Strategy Guide
Tamara Knoss is featured as Player 9 in Cheryl Platz’s new book, The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Modern Video Games that Thrive.
Use code ENDURINGPLAYS1 at RosenfeldMedia.com to get 15% off your order – and all physical orders at Rosenfeld Media receive a free ebook. Podcast Season 1 discount offer expires November 30, 2025.
DISCOUNT CODE
ENDURINGPLAYS1
Bonus Level
Amy Kalson, lead designer (Episode 3), Tamara Knoss, lead artist (Episode 9), and host Cheryl Platz, lead producer along with lead programmer Bill Harding posing as the leadership team of Disney Friends DS in the Griptonite Games studios. Along with that Stitch doll wrapped in that crepe paper post-prank.
