Yenni Desroches

Name: Yenni Desroches

Twitter: @yennijb

Gender: Female

Nationality: Italian American

Birth date: 12/01/1988

Title: Board of Directors for Boston Festival of Indie Games
Some games that you have worked on: 

Project Resurgence (Nectar Games Studio, Unity/PC, Producer/Consultant)

After the Storm (Fablevision Studios, Web, Associate Producer)

Cave Bro (Fablevision Studios, iOS & Android, Associate Producer)

Solar Skate (Fablevision Studios, iOS, Associate Producer)

Maritime Gloucester (Fablevision Studios, Touch Table, Associate Producer)

Mayan Mysteries (Fablevision Studios, Web, Android, & iOS, Associate Producer)

Disney Fairies: Hidden Treasures (Episodes 1 & 2) (HitPoint Studios, Windows 8, QA Associate)

ADERA (Episodes 1-4) (HitPoint Studios, Win 8, QA Associate)

Bejeweled 3 (HitPoint Studios, Win 8, QA Associate)

Plants vs Zombies (HitPoint Studios, iOS, QA Associate)

Seaside Hideaway (HitPoint Studios, Facebook, QA Associate)

Words In Space (HitPoint Studios, iOS, QA Associate)

Guardians of Magic (HitPoint Studios, iOS & PC, QA Associate)

iAMFAM (HitPoint Studios, iOS, Web, & Android, QA Associate)

Cappella (HitPoint Studios, Web, QA Associate)

Industry Islands (Kognito Interactive, Web, Producer Intern)

At Risk (Kognito Interactive, Web, Producer Intern)

The Witcher (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

ArmA: Armed Assault (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

ArmA: Combat Operations (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi (Atari Inc., PS2, Marketing Intern)

Test Drive Unlimited (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

You Are Empty (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

Fantasy Wars (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

Dawn of Magic (Atari Inc., PC, Marketing Intern)

Website: yennidesroches.com

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I wanted to do something with 3d art after enjoying the cad portion of an architecture course. While in college I switched to game design, and then producing. I enjoy the creativity and watching something go from plan to complete.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

Happiness, love, animals (dogs especially)

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

Episodic narrative driven RPG

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

Biggest challenge in my career was getting laid off mid project while at Hitpoint Studios working on Disney Fairies Hidden Treasure, but since my contract only had 2 weeks left, I asked if I could stick around to see out the end of the contract instead of breaking contract....Sitting at my desk for 2 weeks while half the rest of the studio packed up their stuff was very difficult, and I didn't overcome it, I more existed through it, and then became very depressed afterwards. GDC luckily was the next week, so that perked me up quite a bit seeing all my CA family/friends.

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

Ensuring that everyone on the team has personal needs met for family, activity, and space. An unhappy team will rarely succeed and still be a team.

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

Your art lacks passion, you should change majors. I think you should be a producer (told to me freshman year by a professor, took me 3 years to realize he was right)

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

The biggest are:

Advantage: Sense of accomplishment

Downside: Time/overtime/crunch

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Make sure this is really what you want to do, and be ready to be put through the ringer for it. Be ready to do things you don't want to, to reach for the job you do want to do.

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

Producers are people managers, you need to have empathy, but also be able to be tough when needed.

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

Play them all, Read them all. Absorb as much Media and History as you can, the more obscure the better. Find historians, authors, architects, paleontologists, doctors, etc that you like, and follow their work. Don't just look at games or books, Media in all forms from any point in time is important.

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

Equality for diversity, less layoffs because projects are done, we need a industry that we can grow up and grow old in, not one fueled by youthful dreams. We need sustainability.

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

My first game project I ever worked on was in college. Freshman year we're in a class that put us in groups of 4 or 5, and we are supposed to make some sort of game in flash. Somehow our point-and-click escape the room game, which had 3 levels, managed to have each of those levels be a 15gb fla file. It barely ran on the computers in the lab lol

Andrew Greenberg

Name: Andrew Greenberg

Twitter: @hdiandrew

Gender: Male

Nationality: USA

Title: Executive Director

Company: Georgia Game Developers Association

Some games that you have worked on: 

Mall Tycoon

Fading Suns

Emperor of the Fading Suns

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Warhammer 40K: Final Liberation

Website: www.andrewgreenberg.com

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I was a reporter writing about lawyers, and got rather tired of that. I started writing about vampires, and found them a better class of people, and have just kept going.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

The world around us is an endless source of inspiration. From political battles at the highest levels of power to the bizarre nature of human interaction, there is always something going on that can be a character, situation or game mechanic.

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

One that really explored what is involved with accumulating and utilizing power, in a modern-day setting, with real-world sources.

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

The biggest challenge was always in keeping a company going to turn out good games.It is an ongoing process that requires working with the best people you can, and ensuring that those relationships stay strong.

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

Get a good team.

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

If things are not working, end them quickly and cleanly

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

The advantages are the endless opportunities for creativity. The downsides come from everything that pulls us away from those.

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Start with something you know you can complete and build from there

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

Patience, an ability to interact well with others, and a knowledge of one's own limits (as well as a desire to raise them)

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

All of them.

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

Better communication between developers around the world.

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

Very few are printable. At www.siegecon.net, I always find that the funniest and most enlightening game development discussions come at the Scotch tasting party ...

Jesse Lindsley

Name: Jesse Lindsley

Twitter: @jesselindsley

Gender: Male

Nationality: White

Birth date: 28/02/1974

Title: CEO

Company: Thrust

Some games that you have worked on: 

Cashinko
Cash Darts
Keywords
Words & Cards
Dungeon Crawlers
Zombie Smokeout
Boomblastica
Button Men

Website: http://th.ru.st

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I wanted to make a living doing what I love to do.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

As a game agency, I am inspired to solve problems/challenges by thinking differently, which for us is about using game science (games, game mechanics, game environments, game tools etc.) to creatively accomplish our goals.

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

I would spend my time and money to continue to develop "Boomblastica", which was a passion side/summer project that we haven't touched in about four years, due to being busy with client projects.

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

For a massive multiplayer mobile game, we selected a back-end-as-a-service as part of the architecture for a project with a fairly tight timeline. About a month before launch, during load testing, the BaaS solution was acquired and subsequently sunset. Our game never launched as it didn't  scale and it was slated for a large tv audience. We were devastated. After dusting ourselves off, we overcame this setback by using the framework/engine that we had created to successfully launch another game in a similar genre. 

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

We find partners to bolster areas where we require support, including distribution, brand awareness, content, contacts, budget, etc.

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

You have to love what you are doing. i.e. if you weren't getting paid to do game development, you would be doing it on the side.

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

The downside is that it's a hit business and there are very few winners in the space...i.e. 10% are making 90% of the money. 

On the other hand, the barrier to entry (of launching a game) has come down, which is very exciting and empowering. However it's still quite hard for an indie to make it and the percentages that do are embarrassingly low.

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Do it on the side...i.e. not your day job. That is, until you have a stable, unconstrained and properly capitalized environment to give your all to this extremely competitive, hit business. Game development, like most creative outlets, is a subjective venture, so take advice with a grain of salt, meaning you should attempt to get as much advice as you can and then triangulate that shit ;)

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

It takes top notch talent in your discipline, combined with intangibles like being able to problem solve and communicate and you have to have drive and dedication.

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

If I knew that I would probably be farther along on this journey...It's easy to say that you should be spending 10% of your time reading and playing the latest and greatest, as the space is moving so fast. I just know for me, finding the time to do this is quite difficult and my reading and playing to-do-list is growing every day. I do however read all of the headlines...

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

Surely, the mobile platform for game developers is broken and not sustainable. I would think that giving up 30% to platform providers, who have driven down the accepted price for games to $.99 or free-to-play, leaves lots of room for improvement. 

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

Nine years ago, which was two years into starting our game dev studio, I was at my first GDC and planning to attend a session on Starting a Game Development Studio. Unfortunately, right before the session started I got an invite to a meeting that I needed to take. So, after my meeting I rushed over to meet up with one of our team members, who had attended the session, and I asked them to tell me what they learned. And they preceded to tell me that the moral of the story was "to NOT do it". Well, looking back, I'm glad that I have lots of funny stories, because if I didn't, I would probably cry! ;)

Timothy Johnson

Name: Timothy Johnson

Twitter: @atlgamedev

Gender: Male

Nationality: USA

Birth date: 22/03/1978

Title: CEO

Company: No, You Shut Up Games

Some games that you have worked on: 

Thred

Adventure Time: Legends of Ooo

Adventure Time: Library of Doom

Adventure Time: World War Wizard

Mike The Knight: The Great Gallop

OddSquad

The Secret Castle

Zombie Room AR

Website: http://www.noyoushutupgames.com

1-What did motivate you to become a game developer? 

I always wanted to make games but I lived in Atlanta and there were few opportunities and the barrier to entry was high. As the internet became more ubiquitous and access to knowledge about engines became easier I stepped closer and closer to it.

2-What does inspire you creatively? 

It depends on the day, but mostly it involves deep reflection on things that I care about, usually by poking holes in it and destroying it logically. From there I spin off into untaken directions. It's crazy fun.

3-If you had unlimited resources to make any game you wanted, what kind of game would that be? 

I don't need unlimited resources, in fact that would be the worst thing that could happen to me. Limit my resources, limit my abilities. That's where true ingenuity and creativity lie.

4-What was the biggest challenge of your career? In which game? How did you overcome it? 

Biggest challenge was overcoming poisonous people with higher positions of authority. I won't tell you where or the circumstances, but I overcame it with cold calculated reason. 

5-What do you usually do for raising the possibility of success in your projects? 

Listen to the ideas and opinions of others, but don't let it pivot you from your goal. Also, boil the idea down to one sentence and then write it on the wall in big block letters. Judge all of your decisions by this sentence.

6-What is the most helpful piece of constructive criticism you ever received? 

I can't recall. I've gotten a lot of constructive criticism, but nothing sticks out as being profound. 

7-What are the advantages/downsides to working in games?

It's the entertainment industry, meaning it can be feast and famine. Also, the whole indie movement has both progressed gaming and harmed it. Due to the continually lower barriers to entry the mean quality overall is being depressed. It's a problem that will correct itself, but now is a difficult time.

8-What is your best advice to a beginning game developer?

Don't specialize, ever. Are you a designer? Go pick up a book on LUA or JS and start scripting. Are you a c++ graphics programmer? Learn more about the art of design or the overall infrastructure architecture.

9-Which skills are the most important for a game developer in your field/position?

C++ is a must. So many devs are coming out with very little knowledge. They're all learning node.js or some other functional stack. I know that's out of fashion, but that doesn't make it less true.

10-If I want to become a great dev in your field, what games should I play, what books should I read, and whose work should I follow?

John Carmack, Will Wright, Gareth Bourn. Find a game you love, find out who made it, find out what they read, what they follow. Do that.

11-What changes do you want to see in the game industry?

It would be great if people thought games were worth spending money on again, but that goes back to my earlier point about the mean level of quality currently being depressed. 

Bonus: Tell us a funny story from your adventures in game development.

Working on a prototype for The Sims and accidentally reclassified toilets as refrigerators. It was equally gross and hilarious.