Playmakers - The Game Industry Podcast
Media & Entertainment Podcasts
Jordan Blackman interviews the leaders and legends of the video game industry so that you can succeed with your game project, career, or venture. Discover how you can produce, market, and operate games more successfully so that your career can be more satisfying and impactful, whether you're a game designer, engineer, or entrepreneur and whether you work at a studio, publisher, brand or startup. Jordan is an industry insider, who has worked as a Senior Producer at Ubisoft and a Lead Designer at Zynga. Since 2012, Jordan has been helping clients like EA Sports, AMC Networks, The Pokemon Company, Ellen Degeneres, and Capcom create and grow hit games. In each episode of Playmakers, he goes to work uncovering valuable insights, tactics, and know-how from a wide range of entertaining personalities including designers, writers, product managers, technologists, studio founders, executives, and more. Why? So that you get practical perspectives and insights week after week. No matter your experience or discipline, this is the show that can level you up on everything from raising funds to live operations, and everything in-between. Oh, and you'll have fun every step of the way, because there's a magic sprinkle of goofiness in each episode. So thwack that subscribe button and buckle your safety belt, 'cus this here is the wildest ride in the metaverse.
Location:
United States
Description:
Jordan Blackman interviews the leaders and legends of the video game industry so that you can succeed with your game project, career, or venture. Discover how you can produce, market, and operate games more successfully so that your career can be more satisfying and impactful, whether you're a game designer, engineer, or entrepreneur and whether you work at a studio, publisher, brand or startup. Jordan is an industry insider, who has worked as a Senior Producer at Ubisoft and a Lead Designer at Zynga. Since 2012, Jordan has been helping clients like EA Sports, AMC Networks, The Pokemon Company, Ellen Degeneres, and Capcom create and grow hit games. In each episode of Playmakers, he goes to work uncovering valuable insights, tactics, and know-how from a wide range of entertaining personalities including designers, writers, product managers, technologists, studio founders, executives, and more. Why? So that you get practical perspectives and insights week after week. No matter your experience or discipline, this is the show that can level you up on everything from raising funds to live operations, and everything in-between. Oh, and you'll have fun every step of the way, because there's a magic sprinkle of goofiness in each episode. So thwack that subscribe button and buckle your safety belt, 'cus this here is the wildest ride in the metaverse.
Twitter:
@playmakerspod
Language:
English
Contact:
4156225108
Email:
jordan@brightblack.co
Episodes
The Mindset of Personal Success in the Game Industry, with Tommy Tallarico
9/14/2021
Tommy Tallarico is a veritable video game industry icon. As one of the most successful video game composers in history, he has helped revolutionize the gaming world, creating unique audio landscapes that enhance the video gaming experience. Now CEO of Intellivision, Tommy has worked as a designer, product manager, producer, writer, hardware executive, games tester, and heads of both music and video departments over the span of his 32-year long career in the gaming industry. Listen in to this...
Duration:00:47:29
How to Create Breakthrough Worldwide Hits, with Amy Jo Kim
9/8/2021
Named by Fortune as one of the “Top 10 Influential Women in Games”, Amy Jo Kim is a game designer, community architect, and innovation coach. Her design credits include Rock Band, The Sims, eBay, Netflix, nytimes.com, Ultima Online, Covet Fashion, & Happify. Amy Jo helps entrepreneurs & innovators bring their ideas to life at gamethinking.io. She pioneered the practice of applying game design to digital services and is well-known for her books “Community Building on the Web” (2000) and “Game...
Duration:00:40:59
Shots On Goal, with Jon Radoff
8/25/2021
Jon Radoff is the founder of Beamable, the creator-centric platform for building live games in Unity. Before founding Beamable, Jon built one of the first commercial games on the Internet, took a web content management company public, grew a game advertising network, and launched mobile games played by millions of people including Game of Thrones Ascent and Star Trek Timelines. He fights for the game makers of the world by helping make it possible for creative people to make the games they...
Duration:00:51:04
How to Win as a Mobile Game Entrepreneur, With Joakim Achrén
8/17/2021
Joakim Achrén is a gaming entrepreneur, with fifteen years of experience from two venture-backed gaming startups, including Next Games, which IPOed in 2107. Joakim is now running Elite Game Developers, a company that helps entrepreneurs start their first game company. He's also an angel investor in Skunkworks Games, Lightheart Entertainment, Savage Game Studios, and more. Joakim recently took on the role of Venture Partner at Play Ventures and hosts his own podcast, Elite Game Developers...
Duration:00:44:09
What Games Truly Are, with Tadhg Kelly
8/10/2021
Tadhg Kelly is a highly experienced consultant in augmented reality, virtual reality, and video games. He has a deep background in game design and production, as well as partner and developer relationship management. Since the early 90s, Tadhg has worked on all sorts of game projects, from board games and live-action roleplaying games to multi-million dollar PC projects. He has served as lead designer, senior producer, and a number of other roles at several companies including BSkyB,...
Duration:00:58:44
How to Start a Mobile Studio, with Travis Boatman
8/3/2021
Travis is CEO and co-founder of Carbonated, an LA-based mobile games studio. A 25-year veteran of the game industry (with over 20 years in mobile), Travis has also served as SVP Mobile at both Zynga and Electronic Arts, where he led global studios and mobile game strategy. Travis quickly rose in the ranks from producer to Senior VP, and now runs his own studio. We’re sitting down to chat about the keys to his success with topics like: - The three pillars of the game industry - Following the...
Duration:00:40:32
How to Create Innovative Game Designs, with Nick Fortugno
7/27/2021
Nick Fortugno is an entrepreneur, interactive narrative designer, and game designer based in New York City. He is a founder and principal of Playmatics, a game development company that has created a variety of digital and real-world experiences for organizations including Pro Publica, Red Bull, AMC (such as the CableFAX award-winning Breaking Bad: The Interrogation), Disney, American Museum of Natural History, the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and...
Duration:00:37:59
Crypto Gaming 101, with Emma-Jane MacKinnon-Lee
7/20/2021
Emma-Jane is a space engineering dropout liberating gaming and fashion in web3 through mod culture. She is the Founder & CEO of DIGITALAX, the pioneer Digital Fashion NFT protocol and marketplace for gaming and esports. In short, she’s a dynamic innovator living at the intersection of gaming and emerging internet technologies. In this mind-bending episode, we deep dive into the metaverse and discuss how the game industry stands to be disrupted during the rise of ”web3” technologies that...
Duration:00:51:56
From Late-Night Game Hobbyist to Successful Studio Owner, with Colm Larkin
7/13/2021
Colm is a programmer, game designer, and board game enthusiast. He jumped into game development by founding Gambrinous in 2014 and has released two titles so far: Guild of Dungeoneering and Cardpocalypse. He is also involved with the Irish game development community, including spending four years on the board of Imirt, the association for Irish game makers. This highly insightful episode packs a punch with topics like: -How Colm transitioned from a part-time to a full-time game developer...
Duration:00:40:19
Season 2 Trailer of Playmakers: The Game Industry Podcast!
7/6/2021
Playmakers is back with a brand new season by and for game industry professionals. We're bringing you actionable insights you can use to grow in your career, make better games, and improve your game industry business. The pandemic has been called "The Great Accelerator" and it's important to stay on top of where the industry is going. That's why we're bringing you an amazing variation of game industry leaders and legends to light the way. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you love...
Duration:00:01:45
The Art of Transmedia Storytelling, with Chris Ferriter
6/29/2021
Master of cross-medium storytelling, Chris Ferriter, joins us on the podcast today. Chris is an award-winning Producer and Designer whose career has spanned the motion picture and video game industries beginning in 1994 before transitioning to the game industry in 1998, where he went on to produce over 50 games for several of the game industry’s top publishers including THQ, Midway, and Ubisoft, and EA Sports. Chris is currently CEO and Executive Producer of Halon Entertainment, a...
Duration:00:47:26
How to Succeed in the Indie Games Business, with Jay Powell
6/22/2021
In this value-packed episode, we’re joined by Jay Powell, founder of The Powell Group, a video game consulting firm focused on business development, publishing support, and licensing with clients like Other Ocean, Spill Games, and Deep Silver. Jay has also spearheaded the Indie Game Business Initiative which produces both a weekly podcast and hosts multiple virtual business conferences each year in order to help game creators develop a solid understanding of the business and marketing...
Duration:00:37:50
Rapid Prototyping Secrets for Better Games, with Bernard François
11/11/2020
Bernard François runs Preview Labs, a company dedicated to helping studios create prototypes. They have created prototypes for Amazon, Wargaming, Unity, Google R&D, Disney Imagineering, and many more. In this highly actionable interview, we cover how to make prototypes that are efficient and effective. What kinds of problems prototyping can solve, the difference between internal prototypes and prototypes for a pitch, common prototyping mistakes, key variables to include in prototypes, and...
Duration:00:46:32
Inside the Mind of a Game God, with Steve Meretzky
9/15/2020
I mean, it's Steve Meretzky, one of the greatest game writers and puzzle designers of all time. He's also served as VP of Games at King, VP of Creative at GSN, and VP of Game Design at Playdom/Disney. Steve is a hilarious creative force for good, and in this interview he shares stories and insights from his wide ranging and impactful career making games. Interested in contacting or working with Steve? You can find his LinkedIn profile in the show notes.
Duration:00:51:44
From Table Tops to Live Ops, with Bruce Harlick
9/7/2020
Bruce Harlick is a prolific game designer and a beloved member of the bay area design community. He's worked at Monolith, LucasArts, Zynga, TinyCo, Hanger 13, and more on everything from MMOs to Facebook games. In our talk, we dive into live operations, content calendars, and managing KPI from a designers perspective.
Duration:00:49:51
Product Management & Monetization 101 & 201, with Gordon Rowe
8/31/2020
Gordon Rowe was a product manager on Mafia Wars, and then served as Zynga's only product manager on the 3rd party publishing team working with external studios to help them improve the performance of their games. He also worked on PC f2p as the Director of Product at Daybreak games. He's currently working at Facebook as an in-house consultant. Gordon has worked with dozens of external studios and has problem solved their products, and evaluated their chances of success. These are superpowers...
Duration:01:26:21
How to Become (or work with) a AAA Game Composer, with Michael Bross
8/25/2020
AAA audio composer and sound designer Michael Bross has composed on games like Ratchet and Clank, Counter Strike, Odd World, X-com 2, Simpsons Tapped out, World of Tanks, Arena of Valor, and many more. In this interview, you'll learn: * How Michael broke into the industry * What he looks for when hiring young composers and sound designers * When is the right time to bring an audio team into the game development process * How producers and developers can get the most from their audio teams *...
Duration:00:21:04
015: Managing Your Game Industry Career with Marc Mencher
8/3/2017
Marc’s first gaming job was at Sphere, which was later renamed to Spectrum Holobyte. He worked as a software engineer on the games Vet and Falcon 1. When Spectrum Holobyte merged with Microprose in 1993, Mencher was asked to staff the entity and hired over 200 people. He later joined The 3DO Company, a game console manufacturer, as Staffing Manager, and helped to build The 3DO Studio (The 3DO Company’s Game Development Studio) from scratch, hiring over 300 people. In 1996, Mencher decided...
Duration:00:39:31
Managing Your Game Industry Career, with Marc Mencher
8/3/2017
Marc’s first gaming job was at Sphere, which was later renamed to Spectrum Holobyte. He worked as a software engineer on the games Vet and Falcon 1. When Spectrum Holobyte merged with Microprose in 1993, Mencher was asked to staff the entity and hired over 200 people. He later joined The 3DO Company, a game console manufacturer, as Staffing Manager, and helped to build The 3DO Studio (The 3DO Company’s Game Development Studio) from scratch, hiring over 300 people.
Duration:00:40:33
014: Aligning Game Chi on Deadspace & Battlefield with Ian Milham
7/27/2017
Ian has been in the gaming business for twenty years, including time as an environment artist, the art director for the Dead Space games, and the creative director of Battlefields 4 and Hardline. In 2016 he became Game Director for Crystal Dynamics directing the Tomb Raider Series. Visit www.playmakerspodcast.com to get access to the full blog post for this episode and much more!
Duration:00:41:57