🎮 Episode Summary

What can a former QA tester at EA, a punk-rock producer at Midway, and the exec who helped launch No Man’s Sky teach us about today’s game industry?

In this episode, Adam Boyes (founder of Vivrato and longtime industry vet) joins Greg to talk about why handcrafted games still matter, how studios can ask for help before it’s too late, and what happens when we actually listen to the people who’ve shipped the games we love.

🧠 What We Cover

– From Floppy Disks to LiveOps:
How QA used to be “log bugs by hand and pray,” and what that taught Adam about modern workflows and AI.

– Midway Was Punk Rock:
Inside stories from Blitz, Slugfest, and the golden era of arcade innovation — where game feel was religion.

– The No Man’s Sky Redemption Arc:
What went wrong, what went right, and why Hello Games stuck the landing where others didn’t.

– The Quiet Crisis in Game Dev:
Discoverability. Burnout. Studios not knowing when to ask for help. Why Vivrato was built to change that.

– Why Every Studio Needs a “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” Moment
Real talk on vision, identity, and how to build games that last longer than the launch window.

🔥 Pull Quotes“There’s an art to talking to people who’ve made games before. Those are the stories we need to share and learn from.”“They’d sneak into arcades and swap out boards just to watch how players reacted. That’s how they tuned gameplay.”“We logged bugs on paper and stored them on floppy disks. Now we have AI. But the craft still matters.”“No one knows what they’re doing. Game development is improv. The secret is doing it together.”📌 Episode Timestamps

• [00:00] Intro and 90s QA stories
• [05:00] AI tools vs. handcrafted game design
• [10:30] Midway memories: Blitz, Jam, and chaos
• [17:00] Game feel and the obsession with precision
• [24:00] Nostalgia meets the digital era at Capcom
• [33:00] Vivrato: Helping studios find their path
• [40:00] No Man’s Sky and the power of second chances
• [47:00] What we’re playing now + retro game pain
• [51:00] Why the future of gaming is built on collaboration

🎧 Listen & Follow

🎙️ Listen now on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
🌐 More episodes and insights at playerdriven.io
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