Game Dev Unchained

Telltale Games recently shut its doors and laid off 275 full-time employees with no severance and week left on health insurance. Although, this type of malpractice and ill treatment of game developers isn't new, the lasting impact is being felt throughout the industry. Larry and Brandon sits down this week to give a game developer's perspective on what needs to change and what developers need to do now to prepare themselves for what will eventually happen to all of us. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

If you are curious about working in AAA, startups, or in the mobile industry then you have to tune in to this week's episode with Richard Khoo. He is a Game Design Director that has been working in the industry for over 15 years. He spent a decade at Blizzard shipping StarCraft 2 and was the lead systems designer for Heroes of the Storm. His extensive experience working in AAA led him towards consulting, helping indie projects and pitching to investors. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

In honor of our 156th episode, we’ve pulled some of the interview highlights from our past year episodes to share. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

This Roundtable News brings you discussions from game industry vets about last months biggest news. We talk about the biggest headliners starting out with condolences to friends and families of the victim during the Madden tragedy. The new RTX graphics cards, Riot Games and how they are battling sexism at the workplace, also on how to behave outside and inside of work. We conclude the episode with the Epic showdown between Fortnite and Google Play. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Deep Dive is a segment where we breakdown the success and game design of a genre-defining game. This week we analyze Heroes of the Storm made by Blizzard Entertainment with Richard Khoo. He is one of the lead designer that worked on Heroes of the Storm and a veteran of the industry that has spent over 10 years at Blizzard working on many other titles there. His resume includes being at Riot as well, so needless to say, he is quite the expert on MOBA and its impact on our game industry. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Pop Culture Thoughts is about all things that are news in entertainment and nerd culture. In this episode we discuss how discussing taboo subjects can be dangerous. The hype vs quality on movies like the Black Panther. Cultural representation and impact on Crazy Rich Asians. Racial undertones in Zootopia. What you are missing out on UK's 'Love Island.' We also briefly touched based on the Battle Royale genre. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Would you believe a team of game developers in Egypt came together to form a company and development academy in order to create their very own AAA action adventure game? We do now, thanks to the story of Ahmed Fouad and the team members of Rumbling Games. He sits with us this week to go over the humble beginnings of an Egyptian game development community, making the switch to Unreal and what it means to him to develop their historically based fantasy adventure game Knights of Light! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Glassdoor Confessions is a segment where we look at reviews of a company like, Riot Games, and read the pro and con of anonymous employees on glassdoor. We also draw from our own second-hand accounts to try to breakdown and get closer to the reality of what life is like working at the company. In addition, Riot Games is in a bit of a pickle in result of a Kotaku investigative article of 'Sexism at Riot Games.' https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 http://meagan-marie.tum --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Dare to enter the future of technology and games, with our tour guide Matt Brown? Matt returns for a second round of our podcast to update us on projects in AI learning, game streaming and the impact of technological advancements on society. Before things get too intense, we lighten the mood with talk about the takeover of social gamification and VR/AR trends we're excited to see. Matt Brown is a Principal Software Engineer 'building machines that build themselves' at Microsoft. He started his career worki --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Kinman Chan is a concept artist that has a portfolio that spans over 15 years of experience and in multiple industries. His career has taken him from first working on Red Dead Redemption to working 'close to' George Lucas at ILM and many many more places. He gives us a preview of his life going through the industry as a concept artist and dives deep beneath the depths of creative growth. http://kincept.co/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kinman-chan-6696031/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2199209/ https://kotak --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Carl Armfelt is a Portfolio Manager at Swedbank Robur with a focus on technology and the game industry. He sits with us to break down the investment side of game development. Find out what makes a game company attractive, what things an indie company should focus on if they want to get investor funding and lastly, the not so obvious do's and don'ts developers should be aware of when considering starting their own company and hoping to partner with VC funds. Some of the investment companies includes : Take- --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

This Roundtable News brings you discussions from game industry vets about last months biggest news. We talk about the biggest headliners from E3: Microsoft buying up studios, Sony leading the charge, Nintendo doing its own thing, Google entering the arena... How PubG and Zenimax is doing with their respective lawsuits against Epic and Occulus. Smaller studios like Telltale ditching proprietary engines for safer bets like Unity. The stubbornness of Sony with cross play. Also we round it out with how Valve is --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Dating developers, the advice and trials as we came up in the industry as a husband and a boyfriend. Hear the benefits of dating in industry, and the difficulties you may be faced with when dating someone at your company or on your team. And to really spice up this episode, we get into wives having our backs against EA and what the industry developers need to do to keep history from repeating. This episode is brought to you by Quixel Megascans. Megascans is the definitive standardized content resource, wit --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

A true believer of the unchained life, Jonathon Holmes tells us NOTHING about making secret government military games, but everything about how his environment art career and personal ambitions allowed him to achieve his absolute dream job in the game industry working at Quixel, FROM HOME! Check out his work https://www.artstation.com/synaesthesia Night Dive Studios (Streams every Thursday) http://www.nightdivestudios.com/ https://www.twitch.tv/nightdivestudios https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNFs4mUpyf3 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Danny Oakes is the Director of Operations and Marketing at SpeedTree. He is an experienced marketing manager with demonstrated history of working in the information and service industry. In this episode, we talk about his career and how he got involved in the game industry, traveling for work, and how procedural generation is changing everything. Goto https://store.speedtree.com/ and try it out! This episode is brought to you by Quixel Megascans. Megascans is the definitive standardized content resource, --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Eric Valdes made all the right moves to go from Miami to LA and become a Character Artist working on God of War at Sony's Santa Monica Studios. Hear the story of how he accepted a challenge that changed his life forever. Hear how he started, and found his way and what he's looking forward to working on in his career. Lastly, he talks about sculpting his FAVORITE character model ever and the unlikely bond between that character and one of our podcast hosts! http://www.ericv3d.com/ Goto megascans.se and ent --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Nina Freeman is a video game designer known for games with themes of sexuality and self-reflection. She is currently a game designer at Fullbright. She was included in Forbes 2015 list of influential video game industry figures. In this episode, we talk about ways to self-promote and stay relevant. How streaming narrative-driven games is more helpful than harmful. Follow Nina on twitter : @hentaiphd https://www.twitch.tv/hentaiphd https://www.instagram.com/hentaiphd Check out her latest game https://tacom --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

This Roundtable News brings you discussions from game industry vets about last months biggest news. We talk about some backlash with Total Biscuit's passing, Fortnite continuing to print money with a $295 million dollar month, Cliffy B's studio closure, Call of Duty and Battlefield having a Battle Royale mode, and finally catch up with Star Citizen and its $27,000 premiere class mode. Goto megascans.se and enter code GDU for 30% off for the first three months! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/gamede --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Emma from Game Workers Unite gives us the roadmap for seeing a unionized game industry come to fruition. We find out what the importance of unions are, and what benefits and rights us developers should look forward to. Also, from the perspective of employers and companies we discuss what unionizing could mean in FAVOR of a company and how companies and corporations can co-exist with unionized game developers! Follow on Twitter: @EmmaKinema @GameWorkers https://www.gameworkersunite.org/ Goto megascans.se a --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support

Galen Davis is a evangelist for Quixel and is afforded the ability to travel the world and help studios across the industry with tools and support using megascans. In this episode, we talk about his journey from his beginnings in the Art Institute to working on God of War PS4. How he planted his roots at Quixel and what his job entails. This episode is brought to you by Megascans and Quixel. Megascans is the definitive standardized content resource, with everything fully PBR calibrated, and all 3D scans c --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gamedevunchained/support