Join us for an exceptional Fireside Chat with the incredibly talented Brian Feeney, Design Director at Riot Games. Brian has helped build some of the most unique worlds in the gaming industry, including his work on League of Legends: Wild Rift.

We had the honor of speaking with Nathan Tiras, a unique and thoughtful game tester and manager with one fantastic career! His lessons from past work and insights on being the best manager are priceless for anyone trying to succeed in the video game industry.

After befriending Brandon Beck, CEO of Riot Games, Nathan Tiras landed a position as a game tester for League of Legends. His years of experience helped him build a reputation as a committed and passionate manager, eventually helping him become the Director of Game Testing at Singularity 6.

Nathan speaks to us about how he learned valuable lessons from his managers and teammates at both companies.

We also go in-depth about the best managerial styles for game development, new forms of revenue for gaming companies, trust between developers and players, and even his favorite games to play with his kids.

Additionally, Nathan offers a rousing review of the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. 

This episode is an excellent conversation for listeners in the gaming industry and anyone trying to lead their team to better success.

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FULL EPISODE NOTES: https://gamedesignskills.com/podcast/episode-12-Nathan-Tiras

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Hosted by Alexander Brazie and Ariana Isbell

Rian Trost is a veteran of video game QA from Sony to Blizzard, he’s helped make some of your favorite games work. If you ever wanted to build a career in testing and QA, you don’t want to miss this!

Rian Trost started his career at 19 years old testing his dream game Tribes at Sony. After finishing QA work on Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest Online Adventures, and PlanetSide, he moved to Blizzard as a QA Lead. His years of experience offer amazing insight on what it takes to test video games, work in QA, and how to build a career with very little to start.

Rian offers great insight for anyone interested in working in QA as a tester including the expectations of a QA tester, how to excel as one, and how QA testers and designers work together. Along with some behind-the-scenes QA talk, Rian also offers his thoughts on the changing gaming industry and how to follow your passions to land the jobs you want.

Hosted by Alexander Brazie and Ariana Isbell

FULL EPISODE NOTES: https://gamedesignskills.com/podcast/episode-11-rian-trost/

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[This is the last interview with my colleague Travis Day before he passed away recently. This episode is dedicated to him]

As a two decade game design veteran, Travis Day has a unique perspective on game systems! Known as "The Items Guy" for the extensive catalog of items he created for World of Warcraft, Travis has some stories that will surprise you with how much drama an item drop system can cause!

Travis Day is a lifelong gamer who chose to turn his passion into a career. He has been making video games since 2005, when he started working at Blizzard. After a long term there, Travis began working as a game designer at Phoenix Labs, and eventually moved on to Tencent, where he is currently a senior systems designer.

In this episode Travis talks about what it takes to work in the video game industry. We'll go over topics such as

FULL EPISODE NOTES: https://gamedesignskills.com/podcast/episode-10-travis-day

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As a 20+ year video game art veteran, Peet Cooper has had the privilege of working with some great IPs including Star Wars, Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, 007, League of Legends and more.

He has worked on every sub-discipline under the umbrella of "game art" which includes, but not limited to concept art, animation, illustration, level design, 2D/3D environment art & character art, art direction, and game art leadership.

In addition to starting his own game studio, Peet's current primary focus is helping people become stronger artists, game devs, and collaborators by providing education and mentorship.

In this episode, Osama Dorias shares different leadership and managerial styles to improve collaboration in a diverse game dev team setting. He also dives into how to deal with prejudice and ignorance in the workplace as a game development professional, especially if you’re still in an entry level position in an organization and thrive.

Osama Dorias is the Senior Partner Relations Manager at Unity Technologies. In the past, he's worked as a lead game designer at studios such as Warner Brothers, Gameloft, GEE Media, Ubisoft, and Minority Media.

Currently Osama teaches game design at Dawson College, where he loves to empower people in expressing themselves through game making. He has hosted game jams, workshops and other community activities to this end, which culminated in co-founding the Montreal Independent Games Awards.

FULL EPISODE NOTES: https://gamedesignskills.com/podcast/episode-8-osama-dorias/

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You might know him as Doctor M64 or as the creator of “Another Metroid 2 Remake.” - Milton Guasti (Currently at Moon Studios) gives us a play by play of the process of redesigning one of Nintendo’s classics, from changing the map and character art to fit a bigger screen, to keeping the heart of combat pure while at the same time making it more sophisticated and fun.

Milton Guasti is a .NET C# developer, with knowledge of web development, and extensive experience in designing and developing multimedia applications. He also has a background as a Sound Technician specialized in Recording and Music Production, with experience in editing, mixing and mastering.

FULL EPISODE NOTES: https://gamedesignskill.com/podcast/episode-7-milton-guasti

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According to Elon Musk:

Dr. Kelly Tran and Kevin Caldwell are the founders of Evolved Play, a “Games and Learning” company that focuses on designing ethically and creating software that helps kids develop not just as players, but as human beings. Specifically to help learn life lessons in a seem less and effortless way.

In this episode, we discuss the differences that come with developing games for kids, especially the ethical considerations of creating products for children and balancing monetary gain with mindful design.

Our two experts (the first design duo we've had on our show!) explain their backgrounds and what motivated them to purse this path of weaving learning and kids games together.

Barry Hawkins is a product development consultant with experience in orchestration at scale for lean, agile teams that practice iterative development. He has done this with software product development companies ranging from 5-person start-ups to hundreds of team members practicing distributed development within loosely-coupled, cross-functional teams.

In this episode, we will discuss management styles with Barry and learn how to be the most effective leader you can be, whether your team is just a few people, or as big as Blizzard and Hulu! He has great advice for anyone looking to take on a leadership role in their place of work on how to best support their colleagues.

Paul Forest is the current Pipeline Technical Director at Amazon Games with the latest release New World. He’s a veteran technical artist and director, who has worked on games across consoles such as

Notably, he has worked on World of Warcraft and has contributed from the expansion pack Wrath of Lich King all the way to Legion. Overall, Paul is also a rare polymath who’s able to hone his skills as a superb artist and a skilled programmer, in addition to a great understanding of game design.

In this episode, we are exploring what a technical artist actually does and why this role is so important in the making of graphic dense Video Games. We’ll also go into the technical steps necessary to turn a design concept into a playable version with proper graphics, modeling, and animation. Paul will also share some wisdom on how to grow and thrive as a game development professional, no matter which role you’re in.