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Realtime Roots
Realtime Roots episodes
- Joe Brammer | Studio Head of Bulkhead on his roots in growing a 100 person team and the challenges faced with leadership
Joe Brammer is the Studio Head of Bulkhead, a game development studio with projects such as Wardogs, Promod, Battalion 1944 and The Turing Test under their belts.
A lot of us can relate to the moment you have to step into a new role as a team grows, in Joe's case, this was a leadership position from being a 5 person startup and the trial by fire that came with it.
Joe's candid nature and openness about the development at Bulkhead whilst growing a team that's over 100 people is inspiring to listen to.
We dive into discussions around how to hire external leads whilst imparting your culture, dealing with community criticism and how it's not always easy to find a way to deal with it, and conversations around burnout.
Their current initiatives include project flex which is a remote first philosophy and a 4 day work week.
Bulkhead's values include honesty, being fearless, having curiosity & passion whilst being decisive. This show's in the conversation ahead so I hope you enjoy my conversation with Joe Brammer.
About Joe Brammer
Website: https://www.bulkhead.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Brammertron
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 2 min - Rachael Rose | Producer at Bithell Games on her roots in handling production from large scale projects to small teams
Rachael Rose a producer at Bithell Games where she works on titles such as the solitaire conspiracy & Archsmith.
Rachael's roots are in production but go even further back to studying architecture for 7 years before making the leap into the games industry.
Although she's mostly produced titles in the video game industry, we identify the comparison with other real-time industries where Rachael worked at Cubic Motion on multiple commercial titles.
In this episode, how to balance multiple projects at once, working your way from QA to production, tools and tips Rachael uses to manage game projects and how Bithell Games is approaching hiring 7 people, almost doubling the team and the impact that may have on culture.
About Rachael Rose
Website: https://www.bithellgames.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rae_ami
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 13 min - John Tearle | CEO of Flix Interactive on his roots in growing a 100 person team with a focus on leadership and collaboration
John Tearle is the co-founder and CEO of Flix Interactive.
John's grow a team from founding to over 100 people. Flix have supported the release of some large AAA titles such as Sea of Theaves, Zombie Army 4, Crackdown 3, Worms Rumble & more recently the first person shooter, Hell Let Loose.
John thinks a lot about his team and how he can best support them. In this conversation we discuss how to support career development and maintain a strong team, trust and respect within a team along with a lot of discussion around finance, funding, how 'no' can be the start of a negotiation and when it gets to contract negotiations, some key tips to look out for.
About John Tearle
Website: https://www.flixinteractive.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonnytdesigns
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 13 min - Jonathan Burroughs | Co-founder of Variable State on his roots in taking a leap to create original narrative driven games
Today’s guest is Jonathan Burroughs, a co-founder of Variable State.
I really enjoyed this conversation, Variable State are a peer of ours in the games industry and create narrative driven experiences heavy with great animation and strong voice acting.
We open with talking about what the video game industry looked like in 2014 with the emergence of walking sims and transition into discussing the impact of long development cycles when you’re a small team.
We then dive into how Variable State thinks about having a voice and confidence in the work they create, working with constraints and bootstrapping as a small team in the early stages of development.
About Jonathan Buroughs
Website: https://www.variablestate.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HilltopClose
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley1 hr 20 min - Andrew Crawshaw | Founder of Thunk'd games on his roots in crafting evening-sized games
Today’s guest is Andrew Crawshaw, the found of Thunk’d.
Thunk’d design evening sized games and this was a great opportunity to pick Andrew’s brains about the processes he has in place when designing these shorter, more narrative driven titles.
With his 20 year history in the games industry, he's shipped titles at The Chinese Room such as Dear Esther, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. Andrew’s recent release under Thunkd’d is called The Magnificent Truffle pigs
We dive into many aspects of game development in a small team such as what the messy middle looks like during development, how to design into your constraints and bootstrapping your own projects.
We also discuss how having a small side project can help protect your mental health when working on small projects with limited budgets.
About Andrew Crawshaw
Website: https://linktr.ee/andrewcrawshaw
Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewcrawshaw
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley55 min - Gemma Foster | Operations Director of Dlala on her roots in creating operating infrastructure in a growing team
In this week's episode, we deep dive into all things money and operations with Gemma Foster, the operations director at Dlala studios.
It's a very practical podcast with a lot of great process tips about how to operate a growing team whilst keeping track of costs.
We touch upon how to approach legal and other contractual situations that can arise when you’re small and have limited budgets.
Towards the end, we also chat through the difficulties Dlala went through in surviving the loss of a $3million Disney deal.
If you have anything to do with the finance, operations, legal or production in your team, this is a must listen.
About Dlala
Website: https://www.dlalastudios.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dlalastudios
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomleyChapters
00:50 Gemma's operations at Dlala
20:20 How to handle accounts with different currencies
25:15 How to approach legal agreements
31:55 What documents to start as a small teams
37:45 Inserting culture into your documentation
41:00 Surviving the loss of a $3,000,000 deal
49:00 Reinvesting in your studio
51:40 Identify what your long term goals are
53:30 Delegating large amounts of work during maternity leave
55:50 Delegating in multi-disciplined role
1:04:25 Projecting to execute on vision1 hr 9 min - Aj Grand-Scrutton | CEO of Dlala on his roots in building & growing a studio working on licensed IP
#1 Aj Grand-Scrutton - CEO of Dlala on his roots in building & growing a studio working on licensed IP
Aj has a wealth of knowledge about running a business in the creative industries. Alongside his team, he's grown Dlala studios to more than 25 people who work with large entertainment companies around the world to create video games.
In this episode, Aj chats through the trials and challenges of starting a team independently and provides practical tips on how to overcome stressful situations that can arise.
About Dlala
Website: https://www.dlalastudios.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dlalastudios
About Peter Bottomley
Website: www.whitepapergames.com
X: x.com/pete_bottomley
Top 3 resources from the episode:- The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
- That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix by the first CEO and co-founder Marc Randolph
- The Imagineering Pyramid: Using Disney Theme Park Design Principles to Develop and Promote Your Creative Ideas
Chapters
0:53 - Defining a Dlala game from day 1
4:48 - Finding the right development partner
11:22 - How to lock the direction you want to move in & work with your team
15:40 - Dealing with creative disagreements
19:15 - Losing your temper
34:27 - Delegating work
38:00 - Differentiation between Game Director and Lead Design and communicating the vision to the larger team
44:50 - Figuring out the team structure
50:25 - Having patience when communicating your ideas
59:10 - Setting strong pillars
1:01:39 - Using OKRs
1:05:15 - Resources
1:10:22 - How to contact Aj1 hr 13 min
About Realtime Roots
From the publisher's feed
I'm fascinated by how teams do what they do in the real time space.
Whether it be small independent video game teams going it alone or large animation houses hand crafting every frame, each…
one of these creators has an interesting story to tell and a different approach to production through their tools and processes.
Realtime Roots is an excuse to pick their brains and tease out best practices so that we can all use them in our own work to become better creators. Whichever real time medium you might be in I hope you find something you can take away and use in your own creative endeavours.
Realtime Roots is an excuse to pick their brains and tease out best practices so that we can all use them in our own work to become better creators. Whichever real time medium you might be in I hope you find something you can take away and use in your own creative endeavours.