Join us for an exceptional Fireside Chat with the incredibly talented Brian Feeney, Design Director at Riot Games. Brian has helped build some of the most unique worlds in the gaming industry, including his work on League of Legends: Wild Rift. In this episode, we talked to Brian about how he got started as a game developer and how his early years of reading video game strategy guides helped him expand his imagination and view gaming differently from others. In addition, Brian has an incredible skill for prototyping, specifically paper-prototyping, and he walks us through his process and lesso ..read more

Rian Trost is a veteran of video game QA from Sony to Blizzard, he’s helped make some of your favorite games work. If you ever wanted to build a career in testing and QA, you don’t want to miss this! Rian Trost started his career at 19 years old testing his dream game Tribes at Sony. After finishing QA work on Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest Online Adventures, and PlanetSide, he moved to Blizzard as a QA Lead. His years of experience offer amazing insight on what it takes to test video games, work in QA, and how to build a career with very little to start. Rian offers great insight for anyone in ..read more

[This is the last interview with my colleague Travis Day before he passed away recently. This episode is dedicated to him] As a two decade game design veteran, Travis Day has a unique perspective on game systems! Known as "The Items Guy" for the extensive catalog of items he created for World of Warcraft, Travis has some stories that will surprise you with how much drama an item drop system can cause! Travis Day is a lifelong gamer who chose to turn his passion into a career. He has been making video games since 2005, when he started working at Blizzard. After a long term there, Travis began w ..read more

In this episode, Osama Dorias shares different leadership and managerial styles to improve collaboration in a diverse game dev team setting. He also dives into how to deal with prejudice and ignorance in the workplace as a game development professional, especially if you’re still in an entry level position in an organization and thrive. Osama Dorias is the Senior Partner Relations Manager at Unity Technologies. In the past, he's worked as a lead game designer at studios such as Warner Brothers, Gameloft, GEE Media, Ubisoft, and Minority Media. Currently Osama teaches game design at Dawson Coll ..read more

According to Elon Musk: "Generally you want education to be as close to a video game as possible, like a good video game. You do not need to tell your kid to play video game. They will play video games on autopilot all day." Dr. Kelly Tran and Kevin Caldwell are the founders of Evolved Play, a “Games and Learning” company that focuses on designing ethically and creating software that helps kids develop not just as players, but as human beings. Specifically to help learn life lessons in a seem less and effortless way. In this episode, we discuss the differences that come with developing games f ..read more

Barry Hawkins is a product development consultant with experience in orchestration at scale for lean, agile teams that practice iterative development. He has done this with software product development companies ranging from 5-person start-ups to hundreds of team members practicing distributed development within loosely-coupled, cross-functional teams. In this episode, we will discuss management styles with Barry and learn how to be the most effective leader you can be, whether your team is just a few people, or as big as Blizzard and Hulu! He has great advice for anyone looking to take on a l ..read more

Paul Forest is the current Pipeline Technical Director at Amazon Games with the latest release New World. He’s a veteran technical artist and director, who has worked on games across consoles such as Playstation 1 Playstation 2 Playstation 3 Xbox Xbox 360 PC. Notably, he has worked on World of Warcraft and has contributed from the expansion pack Wrath of Lich King all the way to Legion. Overall, Paul is also a rare polymath who’s able to hone his skills as a superb artist and a skilled programmer, in addition to a great understanding of game design. In this episode, we are exploring what a t ..read more

Candace Thomas is the former Lead Game Designer on World of Warcraft and Diablo 3 at Blizzard Entertainment and the current Principal Game Designer at Riot Games. In addition to mentoring many game designers, she has a range of design experiences through 15+ years of experience in the video game industry such as Single and multiplayer combat, Enemy design and AI Game modes and narrative In this episode, we will explore insights from Candace on how to get into the game development industry, her experience starting from a play testing position all the way to becoming a Lead Game Designer for o ..read more

Note: We ran into some recording errors, so there will be parts where our guest co-host David's voice is cut off. We are able to put the captions including the few in-audible parts. This will be fixed for upcoming episodes. Click here for episode 2 full details and notes. Alexander Brazie has been a full-time video game designer for over 16 years. He has worked on games that have sold hundreds of millions of copies, including World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and more recently, Ori And The Will of The Wisps. He has helped train professional game designers at Riot and on Activision’s Call o ..read more

Click here for episode 1 full details and notes. David Zheng is the behind the scenes Co-Founder of Game Design Skills. He’s a growth marketing strategist and an avid self learner who has acquired a range of skills during his entrepreneurial journey. In this episode, we had a nuanced discussion on how to increase your chances on getting your foot in the door in the gaming industry as an aspiring game designer. How to get get noticed by hiring managers and best practices for your game design portfolio ..read more