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