S1 E3: Creative Strategy for Thriving Teams with Amy Kalson
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
Release Date: 09/02/2025
S1 E10: People, Process, and Players: Human-Centered Video Game Production
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
How do you navigate the incredibly high stakes of video game development (even AAA video game development) without losing the fun, and your humanity along the way? Senior Producer Yesenia Cisneros helps us close out Season 1 with her signature blend of world-class production, problem solving, and people focus. All listeners will walk away inspired by techniques for more human-centered video game production along with some of our top tips for building more successful thriving games from the ground up. We touch on topics like globalization, telemetry, esports, crunch culture, planning, user...
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S1 E9: Doing More with Less for Video Game Art and UI with Tamara Knoss
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
Tamara Knoss has played many roles in the video game industry: character animator, lead artist, UI artist, and now Senior Technical UI Designer - or, as she describes it, "UI/UX unicorn" thanks to the rarity of her combined skillsets navigating the "why" of user experiences and the "how" of executing high fidelity user interface art in game engines like Unity. She's seen the rise and fall of multiple console generations, and created game art for some of the world's most famous IP, including The Sims, Disney, and Harry Potter. We had the opportunity to work together directly on multiple titles,...
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S1 E8: The Methodical Magic of Systems Design with Joe "joemag" Magdalena
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
In today's episode, we demystify another specialty within the game design discipline: systems design. Joe Magdalena is better known as "joemag" (lowercase j) to many of his followers, or "joemag3d" to the maker communities that follow his 3D printing hobby work. But during the day, joemag serves as a systems designer with experience on world-renowned titles like Hearthstone and Teamfight Tactics, designing unique game mechanics while wielding the powers of math and communication using a deep foundation in competitive analysis to strike a balance between exponential and logarithmic curves in a...
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S1 E7: Engineering for Scalable, Sustainable Games with Caerie Houchins
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
This week we speak with accomplished engineering leader Caerie Houchins, who played a critical role in the initial global launch of VALORANT, the global smash tactical shooter from Riot Games. Caerie has now expanded her career from triple-A gaming to become a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of an independent game studio, Wicked Fox Games, which just successfully funded their first Kickstarter. Caerie walks listeners through insights that are not just useful for game engineers, but for anyone who dream of building video games at global scale and complexity. Hear about wide-ranging...
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S1 E6: Growing and Shepherding Thriving Design Culture in Games with Eric Kabisch
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
Some leaders speak with their actions, and video game design executive Eric Kabisch is one of those leaders. A seasoned gaming design executive with experience at companies like Scopely, Roblox, Google, and VRChat, Eric has spent most of his career with a laser focus on the teams and products he supports and his record speaks for itself. This rare, frank, and transparent conversation with a people-focused design executive like Eric brings actionable insight for any leader of creatives in the video game industry: from applied business insights to from advice for helping team members navigate...
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S1 E5: Ludonarrative Harmony for Narrative Designers with Whitney Beltrán
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
Explore ludonarrative harmony and what it really takes to create nonlinear interactive narrative in modern videogames in this week's episode with a multiple award-winning Mexican-American Narrative Director with over 12 years of experience in narrative design and professional writing whose experience spans triple-A video games, mobile games, extended reality games, tabletop roleplaying games, and pretty much anything interactive. As a creative leader, she understands that visionary leadership isn't just about having the ideas: it's creating the space and structure in which teams can thrive...
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S1 E4: The Global Heartbeat of Music Games with David Ventura
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
David Guiseppe Ventura is one of those creative minds who knows exactly what part of the industry he's most excited to innovate in after two decades of shipping innovative video games: music games and cross-cultural storytelling. He lives in the liminal space between disciplines as a Creative Director of , listening to the needs of his teams and creating spaces where creativity and unexpected experiences can thrive. In this conversation, we explore David's career from his start at Rockstar Games and iNiS in Japan to his current work connecting European and Japanese gaming companies and their...
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S1 E3: Creative Strategy for Thriving Teams with Amy Kalson
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
In this episode, we welcome versatile game designer and producer Amy Kalson, who is currently working as an Executive Design Producer at Meta on one of her biggest passions: extended reality. Amy's experience has carried her all the way to the C-suite and she is an alumnus of companies like SYBO Games, Disney Interactive Studios, and Bad Robot Games. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction: hear from two veteran video game producers about the nuances of navigating design for AAA games and the world's biggest IP, even when things get weird. Amy worked with me as Lead Designer on Disney...
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S1 E2: Safe and Thriving Gaming Communities with Carlos Figueiredo
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
Learn about prosocial gaming from a leader in player safety who has been innovating with moderation tools powered by technology and human ingenuity for over 16 years, Carlos Figueiredo. Carlos began his career in the company of hundreds of millions of penguins at Club Penguin, and went on to work on the widely used community moderation tool Community Sift at Two Hat Security before eventually ending up at as the Director of Player Trust and Safety with the responsibility for ensuring the Minecraft community can thrive at scale. During his career, Carlos’s passion for creating safe spaces...
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S1 E1: Using UX Strategy to Put Players First with Celia Hodent, PhD
Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast
From her work as UX Director at Epic Games on classics like Fortnite to her widely respected published books on the psychology of video games, UX Strategist and author Celia Hodent, PhD has helped a broad variety of games, gamers, and game developers wrangle the complexity of possibility using classic human-centered design and research psychology techniques. In this first episode of Enduring Play, Celia and Cheryl go far beyond wireframes to redefine your mental model of what the discipline of user experience can truly bring to the table for video game teams. We also explore ethics for modern...
info_outlineIn this episode, we welcome versatile game designer and producer Amy Kalson, who is currently working as an Executive Design Producer at Meta on one of her biggest passions: extended reality. Amy's experience has carried her all the way to the C-suite and she is an alumnus of companies like SYBO Games, Disney Interactive Studios, and Bad Robot Games. Sometimes life is stranger than fiction: hear from two veteran video game producers about the nuances of navigating design for AAA games and the world's biggest IP, even when things get weird. Amy worked with me as Lead Designer on Disney Friends DS at Griptonite Games and also contributed to The Sims series at the same time I worked on the series at Electronic Arts. We start with a brief journey into Radio Lab territory to recount one of the world’s weirdest pitch meetings before diving into deeper topics like effective game leadership, the varied role of video game producers, the art of effective creative collaboration video game labor rights, and how our shared experience at Electronic Arts during the EA_Spouse era influenced our perspective on what really matters when leading game development teams.
Enduring Play is a uniquely crafted, high production value podcast about the modern craft of video game development. The format is inspired by gaming itself, with a level structure and tutorials and asides that help listeners of all experience follow along. Season 1 of the Enduring Play podcast is drawn from interviews that informed Cheryl Platz's new book The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Modern Video Games That Thrive, which is available worldwide as of September 16, 2025 and received a "Get It" recommendation from Kirkus Reviews. Show notes, including a full bio, episode outline, and links are available on the Enduring Play website.
Use code ENDURINGPLAYS1 at RosenfeldMedia.com to get 15% off your order - and all physical orders at Rosenfeld Media receive a free ebook. Podcast Season 1 discount offer expires November 30, 2025. Love the podcast or the book? Please spread the word with shares and reviews so we can change the industry together!
For those looking to learn more or who are already reading The Game Development Strategy Guide, Amy's episode covers a broad range of topics and is a complement for Chapter 1: What Makes Us Play; Chapter 3, Putting the Dev in Game Development; Chapter 4, Game Designer's Toolkit; Chapter 13, The Good and Bad of Game Processes; and Chapter 14, Let the Right Ideas Win.