Dev To Dev Podcast

Dev To Dev Podcast

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Dev to Dev - the podcast about everyday videogame developers and why they do what they do every day - explores the untold stories of the developers whose work makes the games we love possible https://linktr.ee/DevToDev https://devtodevpodcast.com

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Dev To Dev Podcast
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Max Pears was the only student who walked up after a guest talk. It got him his first job in games. Dev to Dev S03 E08 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comEscape, Grow, GrieveMax Pears was eight when games became his way through grief, and he’s spent his career giving that back. From a Flash asteroids game made at fifteen to The Division, Cyberpunk 2077 and leading level design at People Can Fly, Max talks about being the only student who walked up after a guest talk, the Grandfather who asked when his student game was coming out, and why a good lead makes sure you leave a better designer than you arrived.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Harvard Bonin's rule: protect the team. Legal, QA, marketing orbit devs like satellites, and most needs are known on day one. Their fire doesn’t have to be your problem. Find Dev to Dev here: linktr.ee/DevToDev . . . . #DevToDevPodcast #producer #production #projectmanagement #gameindustry

Dev To Dev Podcast
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Harvard Bonin's early-career confession: as a young producer, he figured leading the team meant his design ideas counted extra. These days? Same weight as everyone else's. Find Dev to Dev here: linktr.ee/DevToDev . . . . #DevToDevPodcast #producer #production #gameindustry #IndianaJones

Dev To Dev Podcast
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Harvard Bonin pitched games to Atari at twelve. Decades of production later, he’s building them again, with his daughter as lead reviewer. Dev to Dev S03 E07 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comHired At Breakfast Harvard Bonin was mailing game pitches to Atari at twelve. Decades later, by way of a breakfast that ended in a job offer, Westwood, God of War and Bethesda, he’s still building things, just not the way he expected. We talk about producers knowing their lane, setting rules of play before a team needs them, why a milestone should never be a surprise, and how a layoff became the summer he started making a Roblox game with his daughter.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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A physics degree, a week in QA, and a stint gamifying muscle-sensing hardware. Derin Halil's odd route into games is exactly why he got hired. Dev to Dev S03 E06 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comBuilt for SystemsDerin Halil got into games with a physics degree, a games course he finished after he'd already been hired, and a few months gamifying experimental muscle-sensing hardware. On paper it was an odd fit. In practice, that odd fit is exactly why Frontier called. Derin talks about growing up in a big North London gaming household, why physics shapes his systems design more than any games course, seven and a half years on Elite Dangerous, and the question that pushed him to move on: am I a good designer, or just a designer for Frontier?
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Derin Halil’s games offer landed on the way to another job interview. Derin went anyway, got offered that job on the spot, and the interviewer’s advice? Take the other one. Find Dev to Dev here: linktr.ee/DevToDev . . . . #DevToDevPodcast #gameindustry #careerjourney #firstjob #gamedesign

Dev To Dev Podcast
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Heather Chandler stopped waiting for marketing to ask. She built their needs into the dev calendar and offered first. That one shift smoothed things over for everyone. Find Dev to Dev here: linktr.ee/DevToDev . . . . #DevToDevPodcast #gameindustry #producer #production #gamedevlife

Dev To Dev Podcast
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Heather Chandler didn't plan a games career — a stray résumé at Activision changed everything. Thirty years later, she says her secret is knowing exactly what she doesn't know. Dev to Dev S03 E05 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comChasing People, Not TechnologyHeather Chandler didn't set out to work in games — she wanted film. A stray résumé at Activision in the '90s changed that, and thirty years later she's helped ship everything from Ghost Recon to Fortnite's Battle Royale pivot, written the books nobody else had written, and bet on herself more than once (Escape Room business included!). Her secret? Knowing exactly what she doesn't know — and using that to build trust across every department she touches.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Jamie Smith says teaching sharpened more than his public speaking — it taught him to find the one idea that has to click before anything else does. He calls it a threshold concept. Find Dev to Dev here: linktr.ee/DevToDev . . . . #DevToDevPodcast #gameindustry #gamedesign #careerjourney

Dev To Dev Podcast
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Designers at Lana Bachynski's studio used to sit behind a literal wall. The team knocked it down once they had to compete with something as big as League of Legends. Find Dev to Dev here: linktr.ee/DevToDev . . . . #DevToDevPodcast #gamedevlife #devlife #crunchculture #gameindustry

Dev To Dev Podcast
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Lana Bachynski's house banned video games for years — she became an Associate Art Director at Riot Games anyway, and turned 3 people in an empty room into one of its biggest creative communities. Dev to Dev S03 E03 is live now on all good podcast platforms alexsulman.wordpress.com/2026/09/21/o...

alexsulman.wordpress.comOne Frame at a TimeLana Bachynski’s house banned video games for years — so naturally, she became an Associate Art Director who’s spent her career building the teams behind them. From rotating footstools …
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Jay Powell built a thirty-year career in games without ever designing one — he learned to translate what one side of the industry needed into language the other could use. Dev to Dev S03 E2 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comReading What People Mean Jay Powell never wrote a line of code or designed a level, and still built a thirty-year career inside the games industry — by learning to translate. From inventing distribution deals one country at a time before digital existed, to talking movie studios and museums through how games actually work, to burning out so badly he quit on the spot mid-layoff, Jay's story is about staying indispensable to an industry you can't quite build yourself.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Steven Dwyer failed his way out of a computer science degree, burned out on his first games job in Japan, and quit day it shipped. Twenty years later, he builds tools on World of Warcraft. Dev to Dev S03 E01 is live on all good podcast platforms & Patreon alexsulman.wordpress.com/2026/09/07/b...

alexsulman.wordpress.comBuilt By DetoursSteven Dwyer didn’t plan a single step of his career — he failed his way out of a computer science degree, burned out on his first games job in Japan, quitting on the spot the day it shipped.…
Dev To Dev Podcast
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None of these three guests had a plan when they took a role in Game Dev — they leapt first and wrote the job description after. Dev to Dev's "Leap First" Season 01 themed episode is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comLeap First, Ask LaterNone of my guests in this themed episode of Dev to Dev had a plan when they found their way into a Game Dev role. Matthew Brunhofer chased a WWE writing dream into a Square Enix QA line. Joel Morillo bet three years of his post-Navy life on being a creative and ended up inventing his own role. Nick Heindl got offered a title he'd never heard of and built an accessibility career nobody asked for. Three guests, one Season 01 revisit of Dev to Dev, same lesson: leap first, the job description comes later.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Zane Draper traded ten toy cars for a Game Boy — and never stopped chasing the next problem to solve. We're bringing this one back. Dev to Dev S01 E13 Remastered is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.com(REVIST) Ten Toy CarsWe're revisiting Season 01 with this one: Zane Draper traded ten toy cars for a Game Boy in kindergarten and never really stopped playing. Now a Senior Tech Designer, he talks about stumbling out of a robotics degree into game design, the five-person-studio crunch that built his confidence, and why he's never once cared what game he's working on — just the problem in front of him.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Four Dev to Dev guests on what this industry actually costs — panic attacks that snuck up on them, a layoff that erased routine, back-to-back cancellations, a marriage it couldn't survive. Dev to Dev's "What It Costs" theme episode is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comThe Price of the DreamFour voices, one uncomfortable truth: the industry asks for more than your time. Mark Acero on crunch-induced panic attacks he didn't recognize as panic attacks. Scott Nisenfeld on the aimless days after a layoff ends the project you believed in. Nathan Kellman on surviving two cancellations in two months. Brian Kindregan on the marriage that didn't survive a move he made for a job he loved. A themed episode about what staying in this industry actually costs — and why they stayed anyway.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Revisiting Dev to Dev S01! Bill Mueller kept chasing challenges — radio, live TV, then Bioshock changed everything. Here's how a bar chat, a role he'd no business taking, and a mid-labor job offer built his 16-year career. Dev to Dev S01 E15 REVISIT is live now on all podcast platforms and Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.com(Revisit) From Broadcast Booths to BioshockRevisiting Dev to Dev S01! Bill Mueller kept chasing the next challenge — radio, live TV, then Bioshock changed everything. Here's how a bar conversation, a role he had no business taking, and a job offer that arrived mid-labor built his 16-year career. Dev to Dev S01 E15 REVISIT is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Revisiting Dev to Dev S01! Landon Hood started organizing World of Warcraft raids at 14 — now he's a Brand Manager at Blizzard who built his whole career on people believing in him before he believed in himself. Dev to Dev S01 E11 REVISIT is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.com(REVISIT) Chance, Creativity, and Career Green LightsIn this revisit of a Dev to Dev S01 episode we rediscover the conversation with Landon Hood who was raiding in World of Warcraft when he was in 8th grade — twenty years later, that same instinct for organizing chaos has taken him from a scrappy production agency to ZeniMax Online Studios to Blizzard Entertainment. This episode traces how a self-described "Swiss Army knife" who never mastered one craft became the person three creative teams reported to, and why every pivot in his career started with someone else believing in him first.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Twenty strangers, twenty stories, and the same thing waiting at the end of almost every one: empathy. Dev to Dev S02 Wrap Up is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comSeason 02 WrapTwenty episodes in, and the thread running through Season 2 wasn't a game or a studio — it was empathy. I close out the season reflecting on strangers-turned-guests, the moment it "clicked" for people who never planned to be developers, and the pattern of empathy showing up again and again, and how the craft can consume you. A season reflection before we roll into Season 03.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Luke Shingleton had a job interview and a wedding proposal booked for the same afternoon in Paris. He said yes to both. Dev to Dev S02 E20 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon

alexsulman.wordpress.comOne Day, Two Life Changes APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY!! Had a slight scheduling snafu but we still made it this week!!! On this episode of Dev to Dev, I caught up with Luke Shingleton, a Quest Designer at Double Eleven who's spent the last four years shaping the same AAA world from the inside out. We talked about growing up an only child in a tiny Northern Irish village, the marketing course that nearly pulled him off the dev path, and the single afternoon in Paris when he had a job interview and a wedding proposal on the same clock.
Dev To Dev Podcast
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Cancelled projects, eight months of crunch, a layoff that took his whole team — Scott Nisenfeld kept coming back to the same desk. Twenty years in, he still loves the build. Dev to Dev S02 E18 is live now on all good podcast platforms & Patreon.

alexsulman.wordpress.comI Had a Hand in ThatThis week on Dev to Dev, I caught up with Scott Nisenfeld, a gameplay engineer whose career runs from Command & Conquer to World of Tanks to The Elder Scrolls Online — nearly two decades spent building the systems players never quite see. Under the Hood Scott’s first love was a story. King’s Quest, on an IBM PC Junior, showed him a game could tell one.