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This one was a real pleasure. Harvard and I go back to our Sony Santa Monica days, which involved a lot of late nights and a lot of pizza. Even so, I learned things about him I never knew. The biggest was that underneath decades of production and project management, he’s still the kid who mailed game ideas to Atari. We also got into the side of game-making we rarely cover on the show: frameworks, milestones and the operations work that gets a game out the door. Harvard explains all of it in a way that makes it clear why it matters to everyone on a team. Highlights A horse-track win, an Atari 5200, and the best investment his parents ever madeGetting hired over breakfast the day after a layoff, without realizing it had happenedOwning the friction he caused by stepping outside his lane as a young producer“Rules of play,” and why teams should write them before they need themWhy milestones should feel like Christmas season, not Christmas DayTurning a layoff into the best summer in years, building a Roblox game with his daughterGrab a coffee and give this one a listen. It’s a different angle from what we usually cover, and I think you’ll enjoy it. Find the Podcast at: SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠NewsletterEmail: [email protected] Harvard At:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/harvardboninharvardbonin.com

This one made me smile. Derin Halil has a habit of asking the question most of us only think: why me? He even asked it out loud, swivelling round in his chair to put it to his head of design. Underneath the laugh is a real story about imposter syndrome, meditations on being lucky, and about finding the kind of work your brain was built for. It also landed for me personally. Derin's moment of wondering whether he was any good, or just good at one studio, is exactly where I was after eleven years at Sony Cambridge. Highlights Growing up in a big gaming household, and why his mum saw games as the best bargain goingHow a physics degree, not a games course, ended up shaping his systems designA four-hour round trip commute for one week of QA work experience, at fifteenThe job interview where the interviewer told him to take the other offerThe website feature he pitched in an interview, didn't get the job for, and then saw go live six months laterSeven and a half years on Elite Dangerous, and why he still had to leaveGive it a listen. It's one of the most honest takes on "luck" we've had on the show. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠NewsletterEmail: [email protected] Derin At: https://bsky.app/profile/derinahalil.bsky.socialhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/derinhalil

Hey folks — this week's conversation is one of the most unique yet. Heather Chandler has been in this industry for three decades, and what struck me most wasn't any single credit on her resume — it's how honest she is about the limits of her own expertise, and how she's built an entire career turning that honesty into trust. We talk about her accidental start at Activision (she was gunning for a film career), the two books she wrote because nobody else had written them, what it was actually like inside Epic during Fortnite's pivot to Battle Royale, and the gutsy — and gut-punching — decision to open a physical escape room right before the pandemic hit. Highlights: How a stray résumé at Activision in the '90s rerouted her entire career pathWhy she wrote the book on game production because the book didn't existWhat it was like inside Fortnite's live-service pivot, and the lesson about not going "110% forever"Betting on herself twice — the escape room, and the freelance restart that followedWhy she's found more satisfaction backing small indie teams than she ever did at scaleGo give this one a listen — Heather's got a wonderful grounded, no-ego perspective and I think you'll walk away thinking differently about what makes a good producer. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠NewsletterEmail: [email protected] Heather At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermakesgames/heathermakesgames.com

Hey everyone, this week I got to sit down with Jamie Smith, and it's a conversation I really enjoyed. We'd never met before we hit record, but within minutes it felt like catching up with someone who'd walked a road very like mine. Jamie grew up in Middlesbrough believing games were simply magic. Now he's the one making it. What struck me most was how little he's chasing. He isn't chasing the title, the hype, or the next big genre. He's just trying to add value every single day and to putting what’s important first. That's a mindset I only really landed on in the last ten years, and he's got there much sooner. Highlights Why he didn't know games were made by people, and what finally broke the spellThe pitch event where a hostile judge tore his idea apart, and how fixing it led to an internship at ReflectionsDriver: San Francisco, and the spreadsheet lesson that changed how he designs"It needs to feel good to miss": the Call of Duty rule, and his Mortal Kombat obsessionHanding over the lead role on The Crew, and why the title is just recognitionWhy he now puts health first and works to live rather than lives to workGo and have a listen. It's a great one. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠NewsletterEmail: [email protected] Jamie At: https://linktr.ee/smithstockhttps://bsky.app/profile/smithstock.bsky.social

I love this conversation with Lana Bachynski (Associate Art Director, Riot Games) — because it's not really about animation, even though she's one of the best in the business at it. It's about what happens when you decide to be the person who shows up. Lana grew up in a house that banned video games, which somehow made her more obsessed with them, not less. She talks about rotating on footstools with her siblings waiting for a turn at the family computer, about a teacher who connected her secret animation habit to an actual career, and about landing a Blizzard internship with a demo reel full of monsters instead of the walk cycles everyone else submitted. But the part that stuck with me most was after Blizzard — when Lana got to Riot and found the studio's animator community was basically three people in an empty room. She didn't shrug and move on. She built it into something dozens of people show up for every week. Highlights: The banned Super Nintendo that started it allThe mentor who connected animation to a games careerWhy she chose games over a Pixar-track path — it comes down to replayabilityRigging and animating a Blizzard test character in seven days, on a bicycle with no seatTurning three people in an empty room into the Riot Animation Team Go give this one a full listen — it's one of those episodes that's really about community dressed up as a career story. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠NewsletterEmail: [email protected] Lana At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lana-bachynski-3281991b/https://linktr.ee/latienie

This week's episode is one of my favorites so far, and it's not because Jay Powell has some big design philosophy to unpack — it's because he doesn't. He told me straight up: "I would never claim to be a world-class game designer." What he's spent thirty years building instead is something almost nobody talks about: the ability to sit between two people who don't understand each other and make a deal happen anyway. Jay started as an English Literature major with zero interest in games as a career — the games industry basically didn't exist as a career when he was in college. He fell into it through a beer-money job testing games, and from there built one doing things nobody had a manual for: inventing contracts one country at a time before digital distribution existed, translating for movie studios and museums who had no idea how games worked, and eventually running scouting for publishers who couldn't articulate what they actually wanted. He also told me one of the most honest burnout stories I've heard on this podcast — an ulcer, throwing up blood at 4am, and quitting on the spot the day a manager told him to just stay quiet behind a closed door during layoffs. If you've ever felt like this industry asks too much of the people who love it most, this one's going to hit. Highlights: The floating cube that sold an entire publishing deal — no playable demo requiredHow one careless word nearly got him in real trouble with the SmithsonianWhy Nickelodeon's character bible for Dora the Explorer remains the gold standard of licensing paperworkThe exact moment — mid-ulcer, told to hide during layoffs — he quit with no planWhy every young developer needs to understand "the Hollow Knight problem" before picking a genre Go give this one a listen — it's a masterclass in staying indispensable to an industry for thirty years without ever writing a line of code. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠NewsletterEmail: [email protected] Jay At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaypowell/https://powellgroupconsulting.com/https://indiegamebusiness.com/category/podcast/

Dev to Dev is back and this first episode of Season 03 is a bit special for me — Steven and I go back, and it was great getting to sit down and finally hear the whole story, not just the bits I already knew. What gets me about Steven's career is how little of it he actually planned. He failed his way out of a computer science degree at Glasgow, and it was his Mum who pushed him toward Abertay's games course — one of only two in the world at the time. He burned out hard on his first industry job in Japan and quit on the spot the day it shipped. He recovered by playing World of Warcraft, and it was, once again, his Mum who pointed out that people actually make that game for a living. Twenty years later, he's still there. Every "failure" in his story turned out to be a redirect. I don't think you can plan for that — you can only trust it when it happens. Highlights: Growing up on a proto-console called the Grandstand, and a Pac-Man handheld that started it allFailing nearly every class at Glasgow University except geographyLanding at Abertay — one of only two game-specific computer science courses in the worldA year in Japan, fifty cold applications, and a job on Sonic Riders that ended in burnoutThe unforgettable Blizzard interview: handwritten algorithms faxed into a grainy video callSeventeen years on WoW's tools team, and what it's taught him about institutional knowledge Go give this one a listen — Steven's honesty about the parts of his career that didn't go to plan is exactly why I wanted to have him on. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Steven At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdwy/

For this week Dev to Dev is exploring another themed episode, this time from Season 01 around the theme of “Leaping First” — it's three people who all did the same reckless, brave thing: they leapt into a role before it was fully formed, and figured out the rest by doing it. Highlights: Matthew Brunhofer went to LA to write for WWE, took a Square Enix QA contract to pay rent, and felt more at home there than he expected to.Joel Morillo bet three years of his post-Navy life on being a creative, moved coast to coast for it, and talked his way into defining a role called "camera designer."Nick Heindl got offered a job title he'd never heard of, felt insulted by it, and ended up spending years building an accessibility career nobody had asked him for. These selections from each episode have some great insight into how to take a leap for a role and make it your own — you'll want to hear how differently each of them describes the exact same kind of jump. The full conversations are available on Dev to Dev’s Patreon. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Find My Guests At: Matt Brunhoferhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewbrunhoferJoel Morillohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-morillo-58861395/Nick Heindlhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-heindl/ Find Me At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ https://www.instagram.com/pelicanpeculiar/https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/https://bsky.app/profile/peculiarpelican.bsky.social

Ahoy folks. This week I’m pulling another excellent episode from the Season 01 archive for a Dev to Dev revisit, because it's one I still think about a lot. Zane Draper and I worked together for a couple of years before our project at Zenimax Online Studios was shut down, and this conversation is a good reminder of why he was always so unbothered by whatever got thrown at him. We get into how a traded set of toy cars turned into a genuine obsession with Pokémon Yellow, how he stumbled sideways out of a robotics degree into game design without ever meaning to, and what five brutal, brilliant years at a tiny studio called Workinman Interactive taught him about never being afraid of a problem. Highlights: The Game Boy trade that started it all (his friend's Mum was NOT happy)Why an ASCII command-line demo convinced him to ditch robotics for gamesWhat it's like sharing a niche with another senior designer on a big team — and the actual doc he and that teammate wrote to keep from stepping on each other's toesWhere his "there's always a solution" mindset really comes from (hint: it's his Dad!) Give it a re-listen (or a first listen, if you missed it) — it's one of those conversations that explains a lot about how someone gets this unbothered about their job. I hope you enjoy this revisit and remember if you haven’t previously had the chance you can catch the rest of the Season 01 content on Dev to Dev’s Patreon right here: https://www.patreon.com/DevToDevPodcast Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Zane At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zdraper

Hey everyone — this one's personal. I pulled four clips from Season 02 that all circle the same uncomfortable truth: loving this industry doesn't mean it loves you back in equal measure. What struck me pulling these together is how differently that cost shows up. Sometimes it's your body clocking out before your mind is ready to admit something's wrong. Sometimes it's the strange blankness of a day with nothing built into it anymore. Sometimes it's just holding on long enough for the people around you to catch you when a project falls through. And sometimes it's quieter than any of that — a relationship that couldn't survive the location the job required. None of it looks like the trailer for "Making Video Games or a Living." That's exactly why it felt worth pulling together.  Highlights: Mark Acero on discovering he'd been having panic attacks without realizing itScott Nisenfeld on the strange, aimless days after a layoff ends a project you believed inNathan Kellman on surviving back-to-back cancellations and what got him throughBrian Kindregan on the personal cost of chasing the job across the country — and what he's learned since about knowing when to stop climbing Go give the full episode a listen — hearing these costs in their own words hits different than any summary I could write. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Find My Guests At: Mark Acero - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markacero/Scott Nisenfeld - https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottnisenfeld/ Nathan Kellman - https://nathankellman.wixsite.com/portfolio - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathankellman/Brian Kindregan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/briankindregan/ Find Me At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/

Here’s another excellent episode from the Season 01 archives of Dev to Dev. I've known Bill a long time, but this conversation still surprised me. I learned things about his path I never knew — like the fact that he almost became a music teacher, or that he got his ZeniMax job offer literally while his wife was in labor. Highlights: His origin story starts with a Commodore 64, a Nintendo obsession, and a moment at Disney on Ice that quietly rewired how he saw entertainmentWhy Bioshock made him walk away from a stable career in radio and TVThe producer job he took with zero games experience, just to get his foot in the doorThe "triangle" mixing principle from a college professor that still shapes his sound design todayLosing his job and health insurance at 38 Studios — and getting the ZeniMax offer while his wife was in laborWhat 13 years on Elder Scrolls Online has taught him about never hitting a ceiling again Go listen to the full episode — it's one of the most honest conversations about risk, timing, and the people who show up for you that we've had on the show. I hope you enjoy this revisit and remember if you haven’t previously had the chance you can catch the rest of the Season 01 content on Dev to Dev’s Patreon right here: https://www.patreon.com/DevToDevPodcast Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Bill At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williammueller/

For this revisit of a Dev to Dev episode from S01, I’m going back to the wonderful discussion I had with Landon Hood. Landon and I go back, and getting to sit down with him for Dev to Dev felt like catching up with an old friend as much as recording an episode. Landon was a franchise producer at Blizzard at the time (he’s now Brand Marketing Manager on Heathstone), but his road there is anything but a straight line — GameStop, a community college art show that changed his life, a run at a scrappy production shop making everything from AR birthday cards to Kevin Bacon narrating a phone app, a hard move to Florida that didn't work out, and eventually ZeniMax Online Studios, where he ended up quietly running three creative teams with no director in sight. A few of the moments that stuck with me: How a community college teacher basically forced him into the meeting that started his entire careerThe four weeks it took at his first studio to go from "filling creative gaps" to accidental producerTreating his ADHD and hearing loss as tools instead of limitationsThe moment a new creative director looked at what he'd built and just said "it's yours" Landon's one of the most genuinely empathetic people I've had on this show, and it comes through in every story he tells about the teams he's led. I hope you enjoy this revisit and remember if you haven’t previously had the chance, you can catch the rest of the Season 01 content on Dev to Dev’s Patreon right here: https://www.patreon.com/DevToDevPodcast Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Landon At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/landonhood/

In the interim between seasons I thought it would be fun to explore some of the themes that snuck up on me a bit while I was editing Season 2. For this week, I kept noticing how many conversations circled back to family — not as a footnote, but as the actual reason a lot of these folks are doing this job at all. So here's a short collection of some of my favorite moments on that theme, look out for more soon! Highlights:Leyla Lacombe on how her dad's love of tech became her love of games — and how the teaching has since reversedBrandon Van Haren on the brother who started it all, the arcade dad, and the levels he used to draw for his mumNathan Kellman on parents who said yes to everything, and the moment he finally showed them the Diablo IV creditsLuke Shingleton on a grandfather who never quite mastered a controller, and what living away from home in Ireland taught him about family Give it a listen and let me know whose story hit closest to home for you. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] My Guests At: Leyla Lacombehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/leyla-lacombe/Brandon Van Harenhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-van-haren-5ba62544/Nathan Kellmanhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nathankellman/Luke Shingletonwww.linkedin.com/in/luke-shingleton-542580225Find Me At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ https://www.instagram.com/pelicanpeculiar/https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/https://bsky.app/profile/peculiarpelican.bsky.social

Season Two's Done — Here's What Stuck With Me Twenty episodes down, and before season three kicks off I wanted to properly reflect on this one — not just recap it. Highlights from how the season came together: Leaned hard into talking with people I didn't know well — harder to prep for, even more alive to recordA clear pattern emerged: most guests didn't plan their way into games, they backed into it — a factory floor, a VFX career, a mistaken belief that you had to code to belong, etc.Empathy turned out to be the quiet thread through almost every conversation, whether it was about players, teammates, or the person a tool was built forProduction got fast — one episode went from record to published in about ninety minutes — though a scheduling hiccup with no backup plan was a real lessonSeason 3 starts soon, and I've already got a few episodes banked and ready! Season 2 will archive behind Patreon once Season 3 begins, so if you want the full run of conversations (audio and video), now's a good time to catch up. Go give it a listen — I think you'll hear the thread too. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: [email protected] Me At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ https://www.instagram.com/pelicanpeculiar/https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/https://bsky.app/profile/peculiarpelican.bsky.social

In the final Episode of Season 01 of Dev to Dev - the podcast about everyday videogame developers and why they do what they do every day - I take a moment to reflect on the first season, dive a little deeper into my takeaways from this first season, and talk a little about the future of the podcast. Just me and my thoughts that I hope y'all enjoy! Find the Podcast at: Patreon: DevToDevPodcast RSS: https://feeds.castos.com/r37p9 Instagram: @devto.devpodcast Bluesky: @devtodevpodcast.bsky.social‬ TikTok: @devtodevpodcast YouTube: @DevToDevPodcast Email: [email protected] Find Me At:  Instagram: @pelicanpeculiar Bluesky: @peculiarpelican.bsky.social LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ My Portfolio: https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/ Email: [email protected] Chapters (00:00:00) - Dev to Dev: Reviewing SEASON 1(00:05:49) - Lucky in Game Development: Season 1(00:09:45) - How To Get Out Of A Development Trap(00:13:24) - How Having a Game Development Career Changed My Mind(00:16:21) - Appreciating The Game Development Podcast(00:20:40) - Lehman vs Orlando: The Battle(00:25:48) - Episode 11 Landon's Story(00:26:47) - Interviewing Zachary on Engineering(00:28:18) - John and Bill's Stories(00:31:10) - PODCAST: The Design Process(00:38:08) - Season 2(00:42:53) - A Toast to "" Season 1