The Valued Cultures Podcast

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Firaxis Games--producer of the legendary game “Civilization”--we welcome Heather Hazen, President and Studio Head.  Heather speaks with our own Daryl Ogden about her gaming journey:  starting with building Flash(!) games for Cartoon Network, she went on to PopCap where she expanded the platform reach for games like “Bejewelled” and “Plants vs. Zombies”, and then became an Executive Producer at Epic for “Fortnite” when “Battle Royale” first launched.  
 
As her own career has matured, the importance of a values-driven culture–mirrored in her own family’s dedication to yearly defining their values–became ever more central to how she anchors a successful studio.  “You get to a point in your life where it's like I want to be around people every single day that see the world similarly,” she tells Daryl, “and I felt like Firaxis was that place for me.”  And in “Civilization VII”, she has found a game that is the  ”the culmination of everything that [she has] learned throughout [her] career,” and  she appreciates the “idea of being the steward of a brand, of a franchise… so deeply loved by our fans and our community.”

“In every human being there is this ambition to find your superpower,” Peter Zetterberg tells Daryl Ogden.  And in Xbox Game Camp, where Peter is Senior Director, “[we] can provide the tools and the access to realize those superpowers [and] creative aspirations.”
 
Peter goes on to provide a brief account of Game Camp’s origins: From Sweden, to Louisiana, to Detroit he and his team sought out “a certain type of people that have this kind of burning curiosity, but not really the tools or the access to the gaming industry.”  By leveraging the incredible talents of those from the Xbox studios who have donated their time, Game Camp “ignite[s] a moment of self-confidence” in its participants, who can then both build better games as well as develop better studio cultures from the ground up.
 
Level Up Game:
To Walk Alone

Maybe it’s no shock that young Jerk Gustafsson–now leader of MachineGames–was a fireplace designer before he was a video game developer:  Afterall, when you grow up in the Land of the Midnight Sun, designing chimneys is a great way to learn about the alchemy of art and engineering.  But it may be more of a surprise to learn that Jerk’s first computer wasn’t the Amiga that his older brother brought home, but the relatively late purchase of a Pentium with $400 he won sports betting.
 
Jerk details all this and more in his conversation with Daryl Ogden.  He explains how a 7-person team travelled to Dallas to secure the rights to work on the Wolfenstein IP, and how the playbook they developed there over several weeks not only served as the foundation for that game, but lives on in their continuing focus on first-person, immersive experiences.  He talks about how under the Zenimax umbrella they have consciously and intentionally grown their team, and why Sweden may be such a prominent maker of video games.  And he and Daryl explore the important work they have done together in building MachineGames’ managerial capacity.
Level Up Game:  Elder Ring

Today we are joined by Garrett Young of Empty Vessel.  We get pretty deep into his 25-year “journey in gaming”, and explore some of the facets of the various studio cultures he experienced at Microsoft, Activision and Disney.  He describes moving from developing software to building teams to founding a studio–as well as the continuities and discontinuities he experienced along the way. And we spend some time on the lazy river that winds through Empty Vessel’s–and Garrett’s–home town of Bend, Oregon, an incipient gaming hub.

Brian Fargo founded Interplay 45 years ago.  He founded inXile nearly 25 years ago, and sold it to Microsoft in 2018.  Why is he still–happily–making great games? “I'm pretty sure that Ridley Scott has enough money to quit,” he tells our own Daryl Ogden, in the way he often frames games in the context of other media.  “What is he, 88 years old and he's still making films?” 
 
Fargo tells Daryl how the years of running ever-growing companies–Interplay reached 500 game makers at one point–never dimmed his love for developing games,, for pursuing creative ideas, for nurturing creative teams.  He tells of how working for Microsoft has freed up both him and his team to focus on the game, and to not worry overly about the business.  And he explains as well how a focus on the player allows them to compete with an ever-burgeoning plethora of alternative consumer experiences, all in competition for the ever-shifting attention of the market.
 
Level Up Games:
Red Dead Redemption 2
Little Nightmares and Little Nightmare 3
Ball x Pit
Whispers from the Star

Starting a new studio is always challenging, but what does it mean for two people who had never even met before?  Oksana Kubushnya and Travis McGeathy of Seeker Entertainment tell Daryl Ogden how they joined forces, built trust, and developed a studio culture in support of their yet to be launched game.  They explain why they emphasize passion for games and the game-making process when hiring new studio members, and what it means to focus on winning rather than not losing.  And what do mushrooms have to do with it?  So take a trip with us to the burgeoning game center of Bend, Oregon to meet these new founders!
 
Level up Games:
Dead as Disco
Kaizen: A Factory Story

Speaking with Jason Della Rocca is a trip:  an actual journey through the years and around the world.  Starting out as an accountant at PWC, Jason went on to developer network jobs at SGI and Matrox before leading the IGDA–both internationally as Executive Director as well as becoming a founder of the local Montréal chapter.  He then launched both the incubator Execution Lab (devoted to a small cohort of incipient studios) as well as the related Gameplay Space (serving a broader range of studios with an “open door” approach).
 
Armed with knowledge both local and international, Jason now works as an “Ecosystem Strategist”, advising governments at every level about best approaches to building a burgeoning game industry.  Join us as Jason brings us the gaming news from all over the globe:  Australasia, the Middle East, and Africa.  Finally,  find out why launching an incubator in the desert may not be a great first step, and discover how you may be better off trying to first serve the world rather than your own regional market.

Today, our Co-Founder Daryl Ogden speaks with Gordon Bellamy, who serves as Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts at USC and is a long-tenured veteran of the video game industry.  They discuss Gordon’s “brute force” approach to entering the game industry, what mentorship meant to him then and what it does now, and how “digital civics” might play out in today’s game culture.  Finally, they explore how Gordon’s own quest to live and work as his full, true self–as well as his desire to give back to a field that has nurtured him–finds expression in his work with Gay Gaming Professionals and the Collegiate Games Challenge.
 
Level Up Games:
Donuts!
Smoke Break!

Joining us on the pod today is Jen MacLean, Co-Founder and CEO of Dragon Snacks Games.  She speaks with our own Co-Founder Daryl Ogden who has known her since she was heading up partnerships and business development at Xbox.
 
Jen speaks to her rich, varied career in games–one which began as a play tester– with a focus on why she recently decided to take the plunge and start her own studio, including a life-defining story of a friend who asked her what she wanted to be said in her eulogy. She explains why she believes there is an opportunity to serve Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that the market is demanding a studio where, in her words, “players don’t just exist, but connect, create, and build something lasting.” Finally, she goes on to walk us through the culture that she and her co-founders are building to deliver on that opportunity.
 
Level Up Game:  Metaphor:  ReFantazio

Today Ed Fries joins us on the pod.  Ed is a long-time veteran of gaming, having founded Microsoft Game Studios, and been there at the birth of Xbox.  He is now a founder of 1Up Ventures which funds and supports independent game developers globally. 
 
Ed tells us about his early days in gaming, which actually started in high school on an Atari 800!  After the game industry crash of 1984, he began working as a programmer for Microsoft Office, and only then moved over to games.  We discuss the differences in work and culture between these two experiences, and go on to explore how he thought about integrating studios he brought into Microsoft, as well as how 1Up seeks to build community amongst its portfolio studios.   
 
Finally, Ed provides a characteristically optimistic view on the state of the games industry.  We all left feeling a bit better.
 
Level Up Game:
Star Rail