Game Dev Unchained

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...

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...

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://ki...

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 st...

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 eng...

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. Thi...

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:/...

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! T...

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 unlike...

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 : @hentaip...

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 megasca...

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...

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. Megas...

Game Trailers has a significant influence on announcing games, demonstrating gameplay, and the ability of squeezing a 2-hour plus experience to a comprehensible 90 seconds. It's a tough job and we can't think of anyone else than Derek Lieu to explain the process of making trailers. Derek has worked on many AAA and Indie titles such as Firewatch, Tacoma, and Absolver and this week he stops by to gi...

Getting your game funded and published has never been easy, but Mario Valle and his video game venture capital team Altered Ventures, LLC are definitely are making it easier. Mario walks us through the process, and gives us some solid gold advice on preparing your pitch all the way to selling a game idea and getting it funded! http://www.altered.vc/ Follow Mario Valle on twitter @bilbeny Games men...

In this month's Roundtable News session, the crew talks about the biggest news to hit the game industry recently and analyze how it affects game developers. The panel discusses the Dawn of Battle Royale Games like Radical Heights, what's up with Destiny 2, Micro transactions, and Valve's move to acquire Campo Santo.

How to design games with your wife and sell them! Wait no. How to develop a mega hit indie game like Canabalt and put your indie company on the map? No that's not it. The Indie game dev survival guide with Adam Saltsman! That sounds like a winner! http://finji.co/ http://www.nightinthewoods.com/ Road to Quixel 2018! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UMjzjgcvbU Goto https://megascans.se/ and enter c...

Cecil Kim gives us one of the best interviews on concept art and a career of breathing life into games through his craft. We follow a young man working in Hawaii for Square, working on FFIX, moving on to develop God of War as the Visual Divelopment Lead in the early days and then finally finding home with a studio (Section Studios) of his very own. https://www.linkedin.com/in/cecil-kim-ba4985/ htt...

Roman Goroshkin currently resides as the frontman for Epic Games' PR and Event Manager in Europe and gave us an hour of his time to talk about getting in kahoots with him to attend future Epic events, how to get your software noticed and promoted the right way. Lastly, we have a good time discussing some entry level career tips for anyone seeking to go into Journalism or PR! https://www.linkedin.c...

We really needed an expert to talk to us about game design for mobile and console and give us the best career advice on that subject. So we found him! This week’s guest, Lucas Gonzalez sits with us to go over a career of mobile game design after a career of console game design, he tells us how kids can accelerate your career climb and what’s most important about being a good designer that can crea...

Another great year at GDC 2018 as we wrap things up in this episode about what we saw and what to look forward to. Also, we introduce our first live on-the-floor interviews with indie developers. Akuto Mad World from Hut 90 featuring Lovepreet Singh http://hut90.com/press/akuto-mad-world/ Dreams from Media Molecule featuring Abbie Heppie http://dreams.mediamolecule.com/ Can't Drive This from Pixel...

In this episode, we cover the biggest topics of last month. We discuss how Fortnite is dominating the charts, our childhood dying along with Toys r US stores, Trump fake meeting with big hitters in the game industry at the game summit after the school shootings, Crytek CEO stepping down, and finally Amazon chugging along with their 'game engine' that doesn't produce games. Thanks for our Patrons f...

Click this podcast to hear everything you need to know about getting into all the best GDC parties this year. Yea, that and an extensive list of do's don'ts and definitely don'ts for over an hour as Brandon and Larry share their clutch advice on making the biggest impact at GDC. This is a cant miss episode for anyone who wants to go to this or any future GDC. We also share one last secret you have...

Welcome travelers, gather round for another deep dive podcast as we discuss the design and success of Hearthstone! We talk about how Blizzard was able to refine and release this game and continue to support it for the last 6 years with fresh cards and creative PVE content. Join us on this adventure is Phil Mauer, a seasoned Hearthstone player and professional game developer! Thanks for our Patrons...

Our second episode of Glassdoor Confessions hits very close to home as we tell the tragic tale of Spark Unlimited. See how the company came to be and end, through the first hand trials and tribulations we endured as we worked on Lost Planet 3 and narrowly escaped that project with our careers intact. hanks for our Patrons for support: Paul Miller Jr., Jarvis Mcgee, Habib Khan, Jan Tverdik, Kelvin...