On this episode of Creators at Work, we had the chance to speak with Shane Sareli, the former Senior Director of Product Management at Zynga and now a top consultant—if not the top consultant—in mobile gaming. He shed some light on how implementing great ideas can only happen when testing and data meet off the wall creativity.

On this podcast, we spoke with Mike Sherrill, one of the founders of Machine Zone. In case you’re not in gaming, Machine Zone released the legendary titles Game of War and Mobile Strike and generated over $5 billion in revenue with 310 million downloads.

So, how did Mike go from an Atari play tester to launching Machine Zone? Why did he get cease and desist letters from record labels? How did his company get Apple to include in-app purchases on their platform? You’ll find out all that and more on this episode of Creators at Work.

On this episode of Creators at Work, we chat with Justin Wickett, who worked at Zynga from 2010-2013, and was the former Director of Product for Zynga Poker. We unpack his takeaways from his time at Zynga like the balance between analytics and player experience needed to make impactful decisions, the importance of short and long-term goals to unify a company, and the perils and pitfalls around hackers, bots, and fraudulent accounts.

We chat with Katie Bolich, co-founder and Head of Product at Playstudios, to discuss the importance of establishing a company culture, keeping a growing team’s vision aligned, and how coaches can help grow and maintain top notch leadership skills.

This episode was recorded in February of 2020. On this episode, Brett sits down with Gonzalo Fasanella, the Chief Marketing Officer of Tactile Games, to chat about his unique approach to advertising, and how Tactile’s flexible company structure allows for effective and engaging ads that lead to highly successful games like Lily’s Garden.

On today’s episode, Brett talks with Berto Alvaro, one of the earliest employees at Zynga who was the Lead UX Designer and then Art Director for Zynga Poker.

They discuss in detail the process that they took to create a bold beat that became one of the most successful features released in Zynga Poker.

On this episode, Katie and Brett chat with Sam Ahn, former co-founder of Blue Shell Games, and current advanced product manager at WB Games. We chat about the importance of setting goals, strategies for communicating with all types of team members, and more!

On this episode of Creators at Work, Brett and Katie are joined by Niko Vuori, current founder of Drive.FM, and former GM at Zynga and COO of Rocket Games.

Join Brett and Katie as they unpack the early days of Zynga’s approach to product management with Andrew Ice, Senior VP of Product & Game Design at Zynga.

On today’s episode, Katie and Brett chat with Anton Krasnyy, former CEO and current Chairman of the Board at Murka, one of the most innovative and successful social casino game developers out there. We’ll hear about Murka’s journey from a small Ukrainian startup that faced staggering odds to a social casino powerhouse, plus all the obstacles they faced along the way.