Hey folks — this week's conversation is one of the most unique yet. Heather Chandler has been in this industry for three decades, and what struck me most wasn't any single credit on her resume — it's how honest she is about the limits of her own expertise, and how she's built an entire career turning that honesty into trust.We talk about her accidental start at Activision (she was gunning for a film career), the two books she wrote because nobody else had written them, what it was actually like inside Epic during Fortnite's pivot to Battle Royale, and the gutsy — and gut-punching — decision to open a physical escape room right before the pandemic hit.Highlights:How a stray résumé at Activision in the '90s rerouted her entire career pathWhy she wrote the book on game production because the book didn't existWhat it was like inside Fortnite's live-service pivot, and the lesson about not going "110% forever"Betting on herself twice — the escape room, and the freelance restart that followedWhy she's found more satisfaction backing small indie teams than she ever did at scaleGo give this one a listen — Heather's got a wonderful grounded, no-ego perspective and I think you'll walk away thinking differently about what makes a good producer.Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreonRSSInstagramBlueskyYouTubeBlogNewsletterEmail: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Heather At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermakesgames/heathermakesgames.com
Hey everyone, this week I got to sit down with Jamie Smith, and it's a conversation I really enjoyed. We'd never met before we hit record, but within minutes it felt like catching up with someone who'd walked a road very like mine.Jamie grew up in Middlesbrough believing games were simply magic. Now he's the one making it. What struck me most was how little he's chasing. He isn't chasing the title, the hype, or the next big genre. He's just trying to add value every single day and to putting what’s important first. That's a mindset I only really landed on in the last ten years, and he's got there much sooner.HighlightsWhy he didn't know games were made by people, and what finally broke the spellThe pitch event where a hostile judge tore his idea apart, and how fixing it led to an internship at ReflectionsDriver: San Francisco, and the spreadsheet lesson that changed how he designs"It needs to feel good to miss": the Call of Duty rule, and his Mortal Kombat obsessionHanding over the lead role on The Crew, and why the title is just recognitionWhy he now puts health first and works to live rather than lives to workGo and have a listen. It's a great one.Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreonRSSInstagramBlueskyYouTubeBlogNewsletterEmail: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Jamie At: https://linktr.ee/smithstockhttps://bsky.app/profile/smithstock.bsky.social
I love this conversation with Lana Bachynski (Associate Art Director, Riot Games) — because it's not really about animation, even though she's one of the best in the business at it. It's about what happens when you decide to be the person who shows up.Lana grew up in a house that banned video games, which somehow made her more obsessed with them, not less. She talks about rotating on footstools with her siblings waiting for a turn at the family computer, about a teacher who connected her secret animation habit to an actual career, and about landing a Blizzard internship with a demo reel full of monsters instead of the walk cycles everyone else submitted.But the part that stuck with me most was after Blizzard — when Lana got to Riot and found the studio's animator community was basically three people in an empty room. She didn't shrug and move on. She built it into something dozens of people show up for every week.Highlights:The banned Super Nintendo that started it allThe mentor who connected animation to a games careerWhy she chose games over a Pixar-track path — it comes down to replayabilityRigging and animating a Blizzard test character in seven days, on a bicycle with no seatTurning three people in an empty room into the Riot Animation TeamGo give this one a full listen — it's one of those episodes that's really about community dressed up as a career story.Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreonRSSInstagramBlueskyYouTubeBlogNewsletterEmail: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Lana At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lana-bachynski-3281991b/https://linktr.ee/latienie
This week's episode is one of my favorites so far, and it's not because Jay Powell has some big design philosophy to unpack — it's because he doesn't. He told me straight up: "I would never claim to be a world-class game designer." What he's spent thirty years building instead is something almost nobody talks about: the ability to sit between two people who don't understand each other and make a deal happen anyway.Jay started as an English Literature major with zero interest in games as a career — the games industry basically didn't exist as a career when he was in college. He fell into it through a beer-money job testing games, and from there built one doing things nobody had a manual for: inventing contracts one country at a time before digital distribution existed, translating for movie studios and museums who had no idea how games worked, and eventually running scouting for publishers who couldn't articulate what they actually wanted.He also told me one of the most honest burnout stories I've heard on this podcast — an ulcer, throwing up blood at 4am, and quitting on the spot the day a manager told him to just stay quiet behind a closed door during layoffs. If you've ever felt like this industry asks too much of the people who love it most, this one's going to hit.Highlights:The floating cube that sold an entire publishing deal — no playable demo requiredHow one careless word nearly got him in real trouble with the SmithsonianWhy Nickelodeon's character bible for Dora the Explorer remains the gold standard of licensing paperworkThe exact moment — mid-ulcer, told to hide during layoffs — he quit with no planWhy every young developer needs to understand "the Hollow Knight problem" before picking a genreGo give this one a listen — it's a masterclass in staying indispensable to an industry for thirty years without ever writing a line of code.Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreonRSSInstagramBlueskyYouTubeBlogNewsletterEmail: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Jay At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaypowell/https://powellgroupconsulting.com/https://indiegamebusiness.com/category/podcast/
Dev to Dev is back and this first episode of Season 03 is a bit special for me — Steven and I go back, and it was great getting to sit down and finally hear the whole story, not just the bits I already knew.What gets me about Steven's career is how little of it he actually planned. He failed his way out of a computer science degree at Glasgow, and it was his Mum who pushed him toward Abertay's games course — one of only two in the world at the time. He burned out hard on his first industry job in Japan and quit on the spot the day it shipped. He recovered by playing World of Warcraft, and it was, once again, his Mum who pointed out that people actually make that game for a living. Twenty years later, he's still there.Every "failure" in his story turned out to be a redirect. I don't think you can plan for that — you can only trust it when it happens.Highlights:Growing up on a proto-console called the Grandstand, and a Pac-Man handheld that started it allFailing nearly every class at Glasgow University except geographyLanding at Abertay — one of only two game-specific computer science courses in the worldA year in Japan, fifty cold applications, and a job on Sonic Riders that ended in burnoutThe unforgettable Blizzard interview: handwritten algorithms faxed into a grainy video callSeventeen years on WoW's tools team, and what it's taught him about institutional knowledgeGo give this one a listen — Steven's honesty about the parts of his career that didn't go to plan is exactly why I wanted to have him on.Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreonRSSInstagramBlueskyYouTubeBlogEmail: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Steven At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdwy/