Rise and Play Podcast

Marie Mejerwall has an extensive career in gaming and design. She started in esports in 2001 and in game development in 2008 and has been involved in both ever since. During her career, she worked at studios such as Ubisoft, Warner  Bros, Eidos, and Capcom and climbed to become a game director. Today, she is an advisor to game studios, publishers, and esports companies, and a popular host and event speaker. Marie shares her journey of building her own path in gaming, from engineering, to game design, to game direction, leading teams to building her own business. We talk about women (or the lack of them) in E-sport, what skills are expected of a Game Director, why game design is still such a young and evolving field and how to stay on top of it. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Perfect timing for this episode, ending the year with reflection thoughts and taking a step back on your life vision! In this episode, we discuss with Tom Hammond (serial entrepreneur in games) a few exercises to help you gain clarity on your life vision: Why do you work, what do you live for? What are your priorities in life (when you are not working)? How are you building a company that will outlive you?  Here are a few tools we are sharing in this episode: value and life vision examination every 6 months, priorities and plans in the 5 core areas of your life (the 5F), envisioning your Ideal Day, life reflection from the deathbed, create accountability in your life change, timeline and moodograph... More about Tom Hammond: Tom has been an active contributor to the Live Ops community with his podcast Mastering Retention and recently the UserWise Academy. Tom is sharing his entrepreneurial journey in creating his two companies TheoremReach and UserWise, his company culture and values, and what led him to create the Mastering Retention podcast. To "give back" to the community. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Isabelle Henriques has an impressive track record in games: 15 years of experience in management, operations, strategy, and production in the gaming industry. She is Brazilian and has a diverse background in gaming, previously acting as Studio Director and Lead Producer at Maxis and Electronic Arts, and has worked on multiple AAA blockbuster franchises including The Sims, Call of Duty, and Madden. With solid experience in large AAA companies, Isabelle took a new journey as the co-CEO and COO of Klang Games, one of the best-funded gaming start-ups in Europe and is also acting as the Executive Producer for SEED, an MMO society simulator being developed at Klang. In this episode, we cover the exciting challenges of joining a startup in a growing phase. How to integrate a leadership team that has history before you and build trust in a sustainable way? What is the pace of change when you come in to improve the culture, organization and process? I can relate a lot to Isabelle's challenges as I joined Savage Games and faced similar challenges. That's what we cover and debate about in this episode! Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Forest Swartout-Large is the co-founder & COO at Twin Suns Corp, a new fully remote, global video game studio developing action games for console and PC, leveraging existing IPs. Previously, Forest worked on Tomb Raider, Inside, and Hitman, and most recently shipped Hitman III as the Executive Producer. With their new company, Forest aims to make AAA game development more ethical, inclusive, and sustainable. In this episode, learn from Forest how to build large AAA teams who embrace remote work from the start, with no crunch. What are the processes to make such a remote team of 50+ people collaborate well,  work in a healthy way, and trust each other?  Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Should the leader of today be a coach? That's what we cover in this episode with Aaron and Ben, ex-leaders at Riot Games. They are now running a consultancy organization called Valarin to grow holistic leaders across companies and our industry because better leaders make better games.  Sharing the same mission as Rise and Play, that's how the three of us met in this episode. We are going back to the basics to remind the mission of a "Leader" vs a "Manager". How a Leader differs from a Manager, and why being a Leader requires different skills such as influencing, setting a vision, managing change, and active listening. What can you learn from being coached or being a coach? Why is it a competitive edge for you to grow your coaching skills now to become the leader of tomorrow? Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io To get in touch with Ben and Aaron, visit Valarin website here: https://valarinconsulting.com/

Join us for a special and meta episode on... how to make podcasts! Have you ever considered starting your own podcast, and why should you consider a podcast to create content? That's what we are deconstructing with Lauren Kaye, the founder and host of the podcast She Plays Games. I was so happy to connect with another female podcaster in games, as we are very rare! Learn what you should consider before you create content (on youtube, on a podcast, or any media platform). Learn about our processes on how we design our content, source our guests, and edit our podcast episodes. Even if you're not planning to have your own podcast, this is still a young and untapped media platform you can experiment with!  SHE PLAYS GAMES is a podcast dedicated to celebrating women who work in the games industry. We want to make the various roles in games visible to anyone looking to join the games industry whether through programming, QA, producing, streaming, content creation, and so on. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Marko Kecman was my ex Studio co-Lead at Voodoo. During our collaboration time at Voodoo, we spent long hours of thoughtful conversations to rethink how we could make our 1:1s meetings meaningful and impactful. It started with a simple question: What are the 1:1s for? Is it for us (as a manager), or for the people to grow? The format highly depends on what the goal is. We are sharing in this episode actionables on how to run your 1:1s when the primary goal is to develop your people: how to develop their self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and reflection skills? how to grow your future leaders? We will share the coaching tools we learned from being coached and trained (active listening skills, mirroring, the 3 levels of listening...). Marko is an experienced Product & Project Manager with about 20 years of professional experience. His career started as a full-stack web developer where he quickly grew to become a Tech Lead, having to manage teams of developers. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Julia Palatovska is the co-founder and CEO of Dorian, a new creator platform that enables anyone to turn fiction into games and make money out of them! With Dorian, Julia's team is democratizing how digital stories are created (no-code platform), empowering storytellers from all around the world to tell the stories that deserve to be told. Julia shares her journey as an entrepreneur, from Ukraine to the Silicon Valley, leveraging her prior experience as a venture partner at LVP. Julia also gives advice on how to fundraise and pitch, who to hire for an early-stage startup, and why it is important to have more female-founded companies make an exit to bridge the gap in the number of VC funds led by women as well.  Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io Read more about Dorian at: https://home.dorian.live/

Lauren Clinnick is the CEO and co-founder at Lumi Interactive, an Australian, female-founded mobile game studio focused on games that make the world a kinder place. With a focus on social connection and well-being, their latest plant-focused title Kinder World is in development for iOS and Android for a global release in late 2022. Lauren shares her journey, failures, and learning building the game company. She shares how she approaches game development as a marketer exploring platforms like Tik Tok, leveraging the community of the game, getting a deep understanding of the audience, and understanding subculture trends. She shares their fundraising journey, their hurdles as a fully female-founded team, and how they iterated their pitch to finally find the best partner to support their mission and purpose.  Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io Read more about Kinder World and open positions at Lumi Interactive: https://jobs.polymer.co/lumiinteractive

Who hasn't played The Sims when they were young? The Sims has been part of our lives over the past 20 years and has evolved with our times as we evolved as a society. Join my conversation with Catharina Lavers-Mallet, VP/GM of The Sims & Maxis at EA. We talk about team culture, distributed teams at scale, and the evolution of The Sims franchise.  Prior to EA, Catharina also acted as General Manager and Head of Studio at King. She built and scaled their London games studios and played a key operational and product leadership role in the growth of the company. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

This is our first episode format with 2 guests, addressing the misunderstood and unspoken topics of motherhood and leadership. Betty and Emily share their personal journey as former Executives in big companies (Google, EA, Glu mobile), and what led them to build their own businesses once they became mothers. You will get insights into what is really happening when your employee goes through the experience of parenting, especially as a mother, and why many workplaces today are not adequate anymore for mothers who want to keep growing in their careers.  How could we design a better work environment to support parents and mothers to keep thriving? The change starts with more awareness, education, and appropriate reintegration programs for parents.  Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io About our guests: Betty Lapeyre is a certified Integral Development Coach, who supports people live their lives truthfully and fully. You can book a coaching session with Betty here: https://www.bloomingwithbetty.com/ Emily Yim has over 13 years of experience in mobile games and held several product management leadership roles at companies such as EA, Glu, Dots, and Zynga. Emily gained her mobile gaming expertise in casual and lifestyle genres while working on successful franchises such as Covet Fashion, The Sims Mobile, Two Dots, and SongPop, and has led teams of various sizes.

Vanessa Rouhani hasn't started her career in games or business. Still, she climbed the career ladders step-by-step thanks to her curiosity, and constant drive to learn and grow, which led her to become the SVP of Publishing and Product Marketing at Jam City. Vanessa shares how she is leading her marketing team at Jam City, focusing on people first while driving results. She also shares openly her vision of an inclusive workplace where mothers in executive roles can professionally thrive while keeping clear personal boundaries. Vanessa advocates how it is important to prioritize your personal life while having ambition for your career. Those are not mutually exclusive.   Prior to joining Jam City, Vanessa served on the Mobile Publishing team at global video game publisher, Electronic Arts. She contributed to the successful launch of highly-rated original and licensed games, such as Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, The Simpsons Tapped Out, FIFA. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Julie Beaugrand, former VP North Americas Studios at Gameloft and Head of Studio of Toronto, shares her journey building a new game studio at Rovio on a mission to crack the next casual hit game. From her 6 years running a successful large studio in Toronto, operating the hit game Disney Magic Kingdom, she took those learnings to build her new dream team. Take away from this episode how to start your new studio when you are embedded in a company, who to hire as new talents, who to bring with you from previous teams, how to build your network of mentors, and how to approach the current casual market.  Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io Check the open positions in Rovio Toronto.

Take away from this episode how to think differently about money as an instrument to fulfill your life vision. Do you work for money or is money working for you? I am debunking the key misconceptions about money and personal finances with Marcela Barrera, the founder of Investors Abroad and financial coach. Are you diversifying your portfolio of assets? Have you started to invest? Do you know the difference between a liability and an asset? Why is there a knowledge gap in finances for women, and what can we do about it? That's what we will bring to you in this episode. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io Join and follow Afrogameuses: https://www.afrogameuses.com/

Hear Jennifer Lufau's insights on how you can effectively repair racial inequality in your organization, and be part of the change too. Jennifer shares her journey as a young player, not finding representation of herself in games, and what motivated her to later fund the non-profit organization Afrogameuses. Jennifer experienced racism playing online games. She could have remained a silent victim among many others. Instead, she decided to fight against racism and sexism in games and build a supportive community for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People Of Color) who stream, play, and make games. Additionally, Jennifer works as a social media and content manager at Ubisoft. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io Join and follow Afrogameuses: https://www.afrogameuses.com/

In this new season, I am kicking off a series of episodes in the format of coaching discussions, with experts on leadership and self-development themes.  Today, I am sitting down with Tamara Rose, the Founder of Berlin Boss Babes, and a High-Potential and Leadership Coach for women. Berlin Boss Babes' mission is focused on accelerating female advancement across career, business, and money. Prior to becoming a coach, Tamara was a top executive with 10+ years of experience in corporates and start-ups as a talent consultant. In this episode, we tackle one of the most challenging life questions: What Do I Want In Life?  Why is this question so hard to address? A lot of our life scripts come from our childhood, education, and culture. If we never had the chance to examine those, we run on auto-pilot until we hit the wall.  Tamara will share in this episode some practical tools on how to start to examine those questions for yourself: - The 5 Whys - Reconnecting with your inner child's dreams - Prototype your new life - Work with a Coach! Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io If you liked Tamara, reach out to her for a coaching trial session at tamara@berlinbossbabes.co More info on her website!

I am kicking off a new season for Rise and Play with our special guest Maria Sayans, the CEO at Ustwo Games. Maria has been helping games companies succeed in the digital space, build great brands, launch games and engage players for nearly two decades. She spent 14 years at EA building online functions and on marketing leadership roles for franchises like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Dead Space, Star Wars, Mirror’s Edge and Battlefield. In 2015 she joined CCP Games, the Icelandic developer of EVE Online, as their Chief Customer Officer. Since she joined Ustwo games, she has been helping the company evolve beyond their Monument Valley heritage and expand into new platforms and business models. Among the notable success of Ustwo games: Monument Valley and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. In this episode, we are discussing what it takes to build a purpose-driven company culture and create games with meaning. - What are the core values at Ustwo games, and how do they translate those values into team culture and game development? - What is Ustwo's magic recipe for creating meaningful IPs such as Monument Valley and Alba? - How Ustwo made a real impact in the world planting 1M+ trees with the success of Alba Maria sets the example for a new generation of CEOs who are people and culture-focused. She enables the teams to create at their best, and she walks the talk! More info about their B-corp certification and Alba's initiatives to plant trees. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

This episode is all about how to build a culture attractive for A-players dedicated to achieving big goals. You don’t want to miss it! I am talking to Valerie Alfimova who is the CRO at Appodeal Stack, a mobile AdTech and gaming group of companies. Appodeal Stacks’s mission is to enable creators to start and scale successful mobile app businesses.  Valerie is a global sales and marketing executive with more than ten years of experience leading media, mobile AdTech, and gaming ventures. Over the last five years, Valerie has been instrumental in driving the company’s transition from a single product startup to a multi-subsidiary company serving 100K+ mobile app developers worldwide. Valerie shares her perspective on the role of a strong culture in a company’s success and on what it takes to scale a company from a few employees to a team of around 150 people. In this episode we will also talk about: - A sports team mindset vs we-are-a-family-here - The role of cultural alignment in a long-term company’s strategy - Skin in the game and how to get your team genuinely invested - How to keep it lean by promoting business units’ mobility Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io Where To Connect with Valerie Alfimova: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valerie-alfimova

Bakyt Aidaralieva is a product management and player experience executive with 9+ years of experience supporting players, leading teams and building tools in companies like Supercell, EA, PlayRaven and Rovio in the Finnish Games Industry. Among the hit mobile games Bakyt has worked with are Hay Day, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Simcity Build It. She has built player support and community functions in two startups, the latest company being PlayRaven which was acquired by Rovio Entertainment, the creator of the Angry Birds brand.  Bakyt is driven by learning new things, taking risks, and learning from failures. She shares in this episode her journey starting from Kyrgyzstan to international politics to working in games, to becoming a business coach. Among the highlights of our conversation: -  What makes a great empathic leader? - About the importance of finding a balance between personal and professional life. How developing your personal relationships makes you a better leader. - Bakyt's approach to building automated tools for player support, saving the precious full-time of 5 backend developers. - Bakyt's learnings failing a startup, and why the most life important life lessons happen with failure. - What led Bakyt to the path of becoming a life and business coach, helping leaders to be more "whole" in workplaces. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io

Salone Sehgal is the world's first female General Partner of a games and interactive VC fund. She co-founded Lumikai Fund, India's first early-stage interactive media and gaming VC, anchored by the world's largest games and media conglomerates. She has 15+ years of experience as a global games & new media investor, games entrepreneur, and former M&A banker. Previously, she was Principal at London Venture Partners (LVP), Europe's pioneering seed-stage gaming VC (with a track record of backing 40 companies delivering $14Bn in shareholder value). My conversation with Salone is very insightful and debunks misconceptions about venture partners, investing, and why does venture capital still repeatedly fail female founders? - How and why Salone decided to start her own fund, focusing on India as an underserved market, and female founders - How Salone approaches her team building and managed to hire 40% women to join the fund - Why there is still a barrier for women to join the venture partners world, and what we can do about it - Why the lack of women and diversity among investors is a huge missed opportunity? Even when a female-led team makes it to the deal flow evaluation meetings of VC funds, they often don't progress. Lack of female decision-makers in VC is often cited as a cause for this. There is often no one to champion the deal or resonate with the product (particularly if it's female focused). - Salone's lessons being both a founder and an investor, and how being a founder helps to be a better investor - How Salone overcame the challenges of being the "only woman" or person of color in the rooms of the corporate financial world I hope this conversation will inspire you to take a step forward in the venture world and be part of the change to have more women as investors. Thank you to our sponsors. Game Refinery: https://info.gamerefinery.com/riseandplay to get a free product tour. Build better games + live events with leaner teams. Appodeal: https://appodeal.com join the all-in-one growth platform for mobile app creators of any size. Don't forget to subscribe to Rise and Play: https://www.riseandplay.io More resources about venture capital: #NoVenture$ForWomen: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/noventureforwomen-salone-sehgal/ Morgan Stanley statistics: https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/trillion-dollar-blind-spot-infographic