This week, Aaron chats with Nat Loh, a game design and leadership consultant with nearly 20 years of experience, including character gameplay design on every Skylanders game, mobile free-to-play, VR, and more! We spoke about designing characters in Skylanders, the need for better leadership training in the game industry, how to run better meetings, and why game developers need a seat at the table when big companies discuss the use of AI. This might be the most simultaneously topical and timeless conversation I've had on the podcast!

00:00 Intro and Industry Start

02:21 Character Gameplay Design in Skylanders

07:35 Leadership and Leadership Training In the Game Industry

12:41 More On Masking

15:02 Having A Seat at the AI Table

17:42 A War Story That's Not A War Story

19:10 The Importance of Asking Questions

25:00 Current Projects and Future Excitement

Links:

Nat's web site:

https://www.natlohdesign.com/

Toys for Bob's website from 2005 on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040224212701/http://toysforbob.com/

Dragon Sweeper on itch.io:

https://danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

[email protected]