Game Dev Unchained

Telltale Games recently shut its doors and laid off 275 full-time employees with no severance and week left on health insurance. Although, this type of malpractice and ill treatment of game developers isn't new, the lasting impact is being felt throughout the industry. Larry and Brandon sits down this week to give a game developer's perspective on what needs to change and what developers need to do now to prepare themselves for what will eventually happen to all of us.

If you are curious about working in AAA, startups, or in the mobile industry then you have to tune in to this week's episode with Richard Khoo. He is a Game Design Director that has been working in the industry for over 15 years. He spent a decade at Blizzard shipping StarCraft 2 and was the lead systems designer for Heroes of the Storm. His extensive experience working in AAA led him towards consulting, helping indie projects and pitching to investors.

In honor of our 156th episode, we’ve pulled some of the interview highlights from our past year episodes to share.

This Roundtable News brings you discussions from game industry vets about last months biggest news. We talk about the biggest headliners starting out with condolences to friends and families of the victim during the Madden tragedy. The new RTX graphics cards, Riot Games and how they are battling sexism at the workplace, also on how to behave outside and inside of work. We conclude the episode with the Epic showdown between Fortnite and Google Play.

Deep Dive is a segment where we breakdown the success and game design of a genre-defining game. This week we analyze Heroes of the Storm made by Blizzard Entertainment with Richard Khoo. He is one of the lead designer that worked on Heroes of the Storm and a veteran of the industry that has spent over 10 years at Blizzard working on many other titles there. His resume includes being at Riot as well, so needless to say, he is quite the expert on MOBA and its impact on our game industry.

Pop Culture Thoughts is about all things that are news in entertainment and nerd culture. In this episode we discuss how discussing taboo subjects can be dangerous. The hype vs quality on movies like the Black Panther. Cultural representation and impact on Crazy Rich Asians. Racial undertones in Zootopia. What you are missing out on UK's 'Love Island.' We also briefly touched based on the Battle Royale genre.

Would you believe a team of game developers in Egypt came together to form a company and development academy in order to create their very own AAA action adventure game? We do now, thanks to the story of Ahmed Fouad and the team members of Rumbling Games. He sits with us this week to go over the humble beginnings of an Egyptian game development community, making the switch to Unreal and what it means to him to develop their historically based fantasy adventure game Knights of Light!

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 Riot Games.' https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483 http://meagan-marie.tum

Matt Brown, Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft, discusses AI learning, gamification, and VR/AR trends. They talk about the accessibility of game development, gamification in everyday life, the rise of Twitch, and the challenges and potential of VR and AR in game development.

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://kincept.co/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kinman-chan-6696031/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2199209/ https://kotak