Learn from Leaders Podcast

What will the future of management in the games industry look like? What is changing, and how it affects culture and management? Tune in to hear the thoughts of two inspiring industry leaders.

Guest: For the past 18 years, Zoë Curnoe has held production positions at a range of companies that include working with artists in the Canadian Rocky Mountains at the Banff Centre, as well as working with smaller independent companies and large powerhouses, such as Riot Games and Electronic Arts. In 2021, she left her role as Production Director of the Story Campaign for the massively popular Gears of War franchise at The Coalition to found Timbre Games, where she took on the role of Studio Director.

Guest: Kevin Johnson is a Game Producer with over 14 years of management experience and 3 years of design experience working on high-profile AAA console and PC titles as well as premium mobile titles.

For Antti Sartanen, CEO of Return Entertainment, part of the charm is solving problems nobody has touched before. With that mindset, he’s stepping out to the gaming frontier and aims to make cloud-native gaming accessible. In this episode, Patric and Antti discussed the differences between cloud gaming and cloud-native gaming, the prospects of the latter, as well as democratizing gaming and handling uncertainty. Tune in to also hear their thoughts on Stadia's flop and Nordic companies’ key to success.

Game Production Leader Frank Fay stayed with us for another podcast episode, where we discussed the benefits of async work and building a remote team culture. Being forced to be “always online” and respond immediately to your distributed teams leads to undesired multitasking, decreased productivity, and increased stress, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Tune in to hear Frank’s take on meetings, daily standups, retrospectives, and involving executives. It’s all about being more effective at work without becoming inhumane and cutting off all connections.

In this episode, we look beyond game development and explore the ever-present issue of burnout with Frank Fay. Having worked in the video game industry for three decades, Frank understands the challenges of stress, crunch, and maintaining a work-life balance. “When someone has burnout, it’s already too late,” he says and shares his checklist of what employees and managers can do to avoid it.

In this episode, gaming industry executive and entrepreneur Brian Graham joined us to discuss best practices around game production. Having brought over 40 Game SKUs to market, he certainly knows the drill. He shares his tips on getting more productive, overcoming common frustrations, embracing failures, as well as managing investor expectations. "Make sure you're scheduling unscheduled time" and be ready for pivoting, says Brian referring to the fact that the gaming market is constantly changing. His industry insights will be inspiring for battle-tested and junior producers alike.

In this episode, Viktor Nyblom, CTO at Baby Journey and angel investor, talks about the current investment climate and the challenges startups face at each growth stage. He also shares his thoughts on what he looks for when choosing to invest in startups, especially in the B2B space. “I need to see that founders are enough of a 'hustler' to get something out in the world,” says Viktor.

If you're an entrepreneur or a startup founder, tune in to this episode to learn more about how to get investors' attention and what to watch out for when scaling your startup.

In this episode, we invited Hannah Meiton, Co-Founder & Partner at Ampli Ventures, to join us and share her insights both from an investor's and a team member's point of view. This time we talk about the trends in SaaS and what growing pains companies should be ready to face. Hannah also shares some good indicative metrics that she has found useful in her career and how to align objectives between the team and board members.