The Party Is Full: Inside the Games Industry

Gengis

The Party Is Full is a games industry podcast hosted by Gengis Ale Penno. Through thoughtful conversations with developers creators and industry leaders the show explores how games are made how careers are built and where the future of games and online worlds is heading.

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35 episodes
Avg 1 hr 33 min
English

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S1 · E62
September 10 · 1 hr 58 min
Why Nobody Leaves Their Forever Game | Anthony Westerfield Kondeati
Anthony Westerfield Kondeati is a brand strategist and gaming marketing leader focused on how ideas shape player behaviour. He is Vice President of Gaming Strategy at mindGAME Data, where he leads marketing strategy services built around mindSHARE, the company's share-of-attention metric connecting attention to sales, player numbers, and campaign outcomes. mindGAME's data can predict player behaviour roughly fifteen weeks in advance, and Anthony turns those predictions into strategies that change outcomes. He also writes Share of Mind, a weekly Substack on mindGAME data.Across his career, Anthony has worked with some of the biggest names in games and entertainment, including EA, Activision, Blizzard, Xbox Game Pass, Epic Games, 2K, Riot, CD Projekt Red, Square Enix, Larian, and Wizards of the Coast, most recently as Senior Brand Strategist at EA and Strategy Director at 72andSunny on Call of Duty, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch. With a background spanning brand strategy, behavioural science, creative planning, and audience research, he brings a rare mix of lifelong player instinct and strategic rigor to helping studios, publishers, and brands understand what players care about and how to move them.https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonykondeati/https://substack.com/@awkondeatihttps://akondeati.com/
S1 · E61
September 10 · 1 hr 2 min
Inside a WoW Server Where Everyone Else Is a Bot | Motleyorc
Motleyorc is a gaming creator whose YouTube channel combines rhythm game performances, Geometry Dash creations and experiments with World of Warcraft. His uploads include Cytus II and Cytoid runs, alongside Geometry Dash level showcases and videos explaining how he builds his projects. These include HEAVENSWARD and a breakdown of how he made a movement engine inside Geometry Dash, giving viewers both finished creations and a look at the work behind them. His recent video, Me, 1472 Bots, and the World of Warcraft, explores playing WoW on a locally hosted server populated by bots. He has continued the experiment through livestreams tackling Molten Core and Nefarian, discovering what happens when one person has to lead an entire raid of programmed characters. A lifelong WoW player, Motleyorc approaches the project as a way to experience content he missed and play at his own pace. His conversation with Ale covers the surprising moments, technical frustrations and human experiences that bots still cannot replace.https://www.youtube.com/@UCBk4xz5h06zP7fWdIUpR_iAhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEf-KFO8HkI
S1 · E60
September 10 · 32 min
The Games Industry Reset: Where the Jobs Are | Amir Satvat
Amir Satvat is the founder and leader of ASGC, Always Supporting the Games Community, a volunteer led initiative he began in November 2022 to help people navigate careers and layoffs in games. What started as a LinkedIn spreadsheet now provides free job listings, career coaching, CV and portfolio reviews, mentorship, community support, and access to industry events. GamesBeat reported in June 2026 that ASGC had helped more than 5,000 people find jobs.Alongside ASGC, Amir is a Business Development Director at Tencent Games in North America. He has spent two decades working across games, technology, and healthcare, including roles at Amazon, Veeam, VMware, Dell EMC, and Goldman Sachs. At Amazon, he led business development and strategy for Prime Gaming and later worked as a Principal Producer for Amazon Games. In 2024, The Game Awards presented him with its first Game Changer Award for his work supporting people across the industry.Chapters:00:00 Amir Satvat and ASGC01:09 Amir's unconventional path into games06:34 How games hiring has changed09:07 Why thousands of games roles go unseen10:39 The pressures reshaping the games industry13:09 How to improve your chances of getting hired16:52 What AI tools can and cannot change18:44 A games career beyond a full time job21:59 What more can the games industry do?25:22 How to build real industry relationships27:25 Inside ASGC's free career resourceshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/amirsatvat/https://asgc.gg/
S1 · E59
September 10 · 1 hr 2 min
Where Voice AI Goes Next: Games, Cars and NPCs | Ramit Pahwa
Ramit Pahwa is a Senior Research Engineer at Rivian and Volkswagen Group Technologies, where he works on speech, language and multimodal AI. He led Rivian’s wake word detection programme from research through production, training the model on 20,000 hours of audio. His profile reports a 50 per cent reduction in false negatives and a 90 per cent reduction in false positives. His current work includes speech language models, German speech synthesis and video understanding.Ramit also led the team behind Audio2Tool: Speak, Call, Act, a benchmark of around 30,000 spoken queries for testing how well AI assistants turn speech into actions. The work was accepted at Interspeech 2026. Before Rivian, he worked at Secta Labs and Adobe. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin and studied mathematics and computer science at IIT Kharagpur.Chapters:00:00:00 Ramit on the evolution of voice AI00:05:13 Building Rivian's voice assistant from scratch00:09:34 Why voice assistants still fail00:15:20 The LLM brain behind voice AI00:19:43 Emotion, memory and the privacy line00:22:53 Personal AI assistants that remember everything00:26:10 Security and the limits of AI agents00:31:24 Voice cloning, watermarks and human verification00:36:51 Designing voices people actually want00:41:09 Voice AI, NPCs and expressive avatars00:45:56 Why game NPCs need small local models00:49:32 Edge AI, GPUs and the shift from cloud00:54:36 Proactive agents, robots and multimodal AI00:57:31 How to start building AI for gameshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ramitpahwa/
S1 · E58
September 10 · 1 hr 55 min
Before World of Warcraft, There Was MUD | Richard Bartle
Richard A. Bartle is a British game designer, author, speaker, consultant, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Essex, where he previously served as Senior Lecturer and Honorary Professor of Computer Game Design. As an undergraduate in 1978, he created MUD with Roy Trubshaw. MUD allowed several people to inhabit the same continuing text world and is widely recognised as the first virtual world, establishing many of the foundations later developed by online games and MMORPGsBartle later helped give designers a language for understanding virtual worlds. His 1996 Player Types model introduced the familiar categories of achievers, explorers, socialisers, and killers, while his 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds became a standard text for designers and researchers. As a speaker and consultant, he connects the history of the medium to current questions about player behaviour, identity, governance, and the responsibilities of those who operate shared digital worlds.Chapters0:00 Preview1:28 How MUD began6:55 A world beyond reality15:54 The limits of player choice20:30 Permadeath and virtual worlds25:52 What avatars reveal30:34 Why MMOs stopped taking risks34:23 The Great Schism39:21 From MUDs to MMORPGs44:32 The rise of World of Warcraft50:53 Inside social worlds52:48 Making worlds believable58:34 Voice chat breaks immersion1:01:43 Why game worlds feel artificial1:08:41 How text MUDs work1:13:40 Text as the ultimate interface1:18:12 Six tests for a virtual world1:19:01 Why MMOs refuse to end1:28:41 Freedom through constraints1:34:32 Justice in online worlds1:39:13 When griefing becomes history1:45:20 The Finger of Death1:49:07 Must MMOs be massive?1:53:01 Advice for MMO designers```https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbartle/https://mud.co.uk/
S1 · E57
September 10 · 1 hr 4 min
The 3D Pipeline Is Being Rewritten | Stefan Vaskevich
Stefan Vaskevich is an AI 3D engineer, YouTuber and consultant with more than a decade of experience in 3D. Before focusing on AI, he spent seven years running 3D web studios and shipped hundreds of client projects. His work spans 3D production pipelines, interactive experiences and game development using tools including Blender, Unity and Unreal Engine.Through Stefan 3D AI, he tests emerging tools against real production workflows and shares both their strengths and failures with more than 150,000 subscribers. Stefan also founded Top3D.ai, a community ranking platform for 3D generators, and learn3d.ai, where he teaches AI assisted workflows from image generation through to game engine integration. His work examines what AI can automate, where professional craft remains essential, and how artists and developers can retain control over the final result.Chapters:0:00 How 3D game assets were made5:51 What AI can already automate9:17 Characters that animate themselves13:04 Why ideas matter most16:22 Will AI make games generic?20:20 Can algorithms solve game discovery?26:16 A TikTok for 3D worlds29:39 What happens to human craft?33:15 Why people want human creators40:33 When AI becomes indistinguishable43:45 The return of handmade games46:33 Ready Player One and human control49:30 Building games with AI54:54 How 3D artists can adapthttps://www.linkedin.com/in/stefan-3d-ai/https://www.youtube.com/@UCRW08KcTVjXEmBzBsVl7XjA
S1 · E56
September 10 · 56 min
What WoW, GTA & Rust Teach Us About Modding | Jonathan Yarbor
Jonathan Yarbor is the cofounder and CEO of Nodecraft, a game server platform founded in 2012 to make it easier for players to create and manage their own multiplayer servers. Through Nodecraft Studio, the company also helps developers add player created servers and user generated content to their games. Jonathan’s work covers the infrastructure, moderation, and business models behind those communities.A self taught software engineer and systems architect, Jonathan began by building communities and server tools for Garry’s Mod and Minecraft. He cofounded Nodecraft with James Ross after their own gaming community ran into the limits of existing hosting services. The company began with less than $600. Today, Jonathan works on how studios can give players greater ownership of multiplayer worlds while protecting players, intellectual property, and the business supporting the game.Chapters:00:00 Player ownership and community servers03:20 Modding as a path into games07:10 The IP problem studios must solve12:54 Guardrails, curation and human moderation17:07 Pokemon, Palworld and creative freedom22:58 Open mod ecosystems or selected creators?25:41 How modders can be paid and sustained29:05 When a game becomes a platform30:53 Private servers and preserving online worlds38:05 Why players are choosing smaller private spaces45:13 The warning from the games industry crash48:12 How AI changes game creation53:53 Building the Ready Player One futurehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/captainyarb/https://nodecraft.com/
S1 · E55
September 10 · 1 hr 7 min
The Five Rules of Live Service Comms | Bob Holtzman
Bob Holtzman is Director of Franchise Marketing at ArenaNet, where he leads content, community and brand marketing for the Guild Wars franchise. He manages work across social media, creators, influencers and player communications, with a focus on growing and retaining the Guild Wars community.Before ArenaNet, Bob led global brand, public relations and communications work for TiMi Studio Group and Tencent, and previously managed North American publishing communications for League of Legends at Riot Games. His earlier career includes communications roles at Nexon, directing marketing and public relations for Kerbal Space Program, and founding the consultancy Co-op Mode Communications. Bob also spent more than two decades as a sports journalist and college football analyst, experience that shapes how he helps studios tell clear stories to players, creators and the media.Chapters:00:00 Who Bob Holtzman is, and the sports crossover04:00 Storytelling and the framework behind a patch note08:05 When the CEO had to carry the bad news11:03 The five rules of live service comms13:26 Why trust decides whether players forgive you16:42 Working with devs who see the world differently19:33 Player trust behaves like a stock price22:27 What Riot understood before everyone else24:52 You own the game, but the community owns you27:45 Blue posts, red posts and real dev replies32:20 Why you never win a fight with your community35:57 What AI cannot replace in comms38:37 Speaking the community's language41:07 The layers of PR inside a game studio43:41 How creators became part of the comms mix47:51 An influencer strategy across three tiers51:36 Is the "all boats rising" era over?54:53 From WoW to Old School RuneScape57:29 Launching a Discord before announcing Guild Wars 31:02:17 The one habit that fixes most comms1:04:50 Advice if you are trying to break in right nowhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/bobholtzman/
S1 · E54
September 10 · 1 hr 24 min
Why MMOs Have to Take Your Power Away | Catalin Alexandru
Catalin Alexandru is a systemic game economist and designer with more than 22 years of experience across game design, platform innovation and business models. Through his independent consultancy, he creates game economies from first principles using business strategy, behavioural psychology and systems design. He also writes the Intrinsic Economies newsletter and is the author of the True Ownership Trilemma.Catalin has worked with more than 50 game companies and global brands, including EA, Sega, Gameloft, FunPlus, MIT and Pearson. His credits span properties such as Star Trek, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Medal of Honor, BioShock, Mafia, Thomas & Friends and Octonauts. He has also led game design and economy teams, lectured on game economy design in Milan and Bucharest, and appeared on BBC television and radio. His work has been cited by Bloomberg, VentureBeat and Pocket Gamer.Chapters:00:00 Introduction03:20 Why every game has an economy04:34 Designing economies for different players26:14 Power creep and why games reset progress35:15 Classic WoW, Retail WoW and time versus money42:35 Why gold farming cannot simply be banned45:04 Why the WoW Token was the right call51:33 Why Web3 gaming failed52:53 The True Ownership Trilemma01:01:16 Why games are planned economies01:03:10 Why the Ready Player One future is not coming01:16:19 The $10,000 a month MMO01:19:44 Breaking into game economy designhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/catalinmalexandru/https://intrinsiceconomies.substack.com/https://catalinalexandru.com/2023/03/true-ownership-the-game-economy-trilemma/
S1 · E53
September 10 · 1 hr 12 min
How Far Can Vibe Coded Games Actually Go? | Nate Pacyga
Nate Pacyga is an agentic engineer, product builder and the technical founder of Game Monument, where he is building products focused on funding, engagement and community building in the games industry. He has spent more than 20 years combining software engineering with product and technical leadership across games, web applications, developer tools and prototypes. He also documents the products he is building on his YouTube channel.Before Game Monument, Nate was a Technical Director at Scopely, where his work included WWE Champions and an unannounced title, and held Chief Technology Officer roles at Game Taco and Gank. His earlier career includes engineering roles at KIXEYE, Kabam and DeNA, as well as time as an owner, engineer and game designer at Super2Games, whose city building game Turbo Town reached more than one million plays. Nate has also taught programming as an adjunct professor, spoken at conferences and code camps, and mentored engineers throughout his career.Chapters:01:51 Nate's story04:20 The ChatGPT moment06:24 What you still need to learn09:23 Do you need college?11:05 How to get started15:44 Gravity Refinery demo18:35 When AI gets it wrong21:01 How to write better prompts24:53 Which tools to use28:00 Nate's multiplayer tool29:03 Why multiplayer was so hard30:45 Rebuilding a cancelled game in six hours31:39 Bringing old games back35:41 When AI took his job37:21 How we got here40:06 Why starting feels hard42:47 Building a game in a chat44:08 We build a game live48:01 Flash game nostalgia49:39 The Ready Player One dream51:46 The creator economy52:44 Make your own TV episode55:48 The next ten years58:24 Claude of Duty demo1:01:23 What this means for MMOs1:02:35 How dev teams are changing1:04:47 Nate's advice1:07:48 Where to find Natehttps://www.youtube.com/@UC_RElGW8kk1eMCQkWIPcmDw https://www.linkedin.com/in/natepacyga/
S1 · E52
September 10 · 1 hr 35 min
Why Making Games Is About to Change | Zac Beaudoin
Zac Beaudoin is the CEO and Executive Producer of T-Minus Zero Entertainment, an independent game production company. T-Minus Zero relaunched in 2026 after previously operating as a NetEase studio. In July 2026, the team launched DREGS on Steam in Early Access, a multiplayer cooperative horror comedy built around chaotic missions with friends. Zac also writes The Art of Making Great Games, where he explores production, leadership, player experience, and how creative teams work.Across more than 19 years in games, Zac has worked at BioWare, Blizzard, and Crystal Dynamics. He began in quality assurance at BioWare before moving into production and studio leadership, with experience across Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Blizzard’s Project Odyssey, and Tomb Raider. Today, he leads T-Minus Zero as it develops and supports individual game projects.Chapters:00:00:00 Zac's 19 years in game development00:04:52 From BioWare QA to production leadership00:12:38 What game producers should actually do00:17:31 Aligning a studio around one vision00:23:37 Reducing meetings without losing alignment00:32:53 How leaders shape game team culture00:40:04 Why younger players want social playgrounds00:54:47 How AI will democratise game development00:57:42 Solving discovery when anyone can make games01:07:44 Why game development is becoming more like film01:18:51 Why focused games beat bloated experiences01:23:11 How AI will reshape game studios and jobs01:30:38 Why game developers need stronger unions01:32:24 Zac's advice: stop waiting and buildhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-beaudoin-11515120/https://www.t-minuszero.com/
S1 · E51
September 10 · 1 hr 37 min
World Models: How Games Could Teach AI Reality | David Klindt
David Klindt is an Assistant Professor in Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, working at the intersection of brains and machine learning. His research asks how the brain makes sense of a constantly changing world so effortlessly — and how those principles can build AI that's as flexible and robust as human perception.Before starting his lab in 2024, David was a postdoc at Stanford, a Machine Learning Research Scientist at Meta, and a research intern at Google, after earning his PhD in machine learning and computational neuroscience at the University of Tübingen. He brings that rare brain-and-machine perspective to world models, the limits of today's AI, and why games might be one of our most valuable training grounds.https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-klindt-b03833189/
S1 · E50
September 10 · 1 hr 17 min
From Minecraft YouTuber to 700 Million Roblox Visits | Zach Letter
Zach Letter is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wonder Works Studio, one of the leading developers on Roblox. Before founding the studio, Zach built an audience of more than one billion YouTube views as a gaming creator, an experience that shaped his belief that great games are built not just through development, but through community, storytelling, and distribution. Today, Wonder Works specializes in creating large-scale Roblox experiences around major entertainment IP, combining rapid development with relentless live operations.Under Zach’s leadership, Wonder Works has partnered with Paramount to create SpongeBob Tower Defense, the highest-earning branded experience in Roblox history. The game has attracted more than 600 million visits, peaked at over 200,000 concurrent players, and won Best Use of IP at the Roblox Innovation Awards. Zach is a strong advocate for the idea that the future of games lies at the intersection of creators, live service, and community, where developers don’t just ship games, but become the storytellers, entertainers, and influencers who grow them alongside their players.https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachary-letter-0769b893/www.wonderworks.gg
S1 · E49
September 10 · 1 hr 44 min
Inside the Hidden World of Game Loops | Tadhg Kelly
Recorded June 30, 2026, one week before Microsoft confirmed major layoffs across Xbox, including around 3,200 roles and several studio closures. We discuss these cuts as rumors in this episode because that is what they were at the time. They are confirmed now, and our thoughts are with everyone affected.----Tadhg Kelly is a game design and product management consultant with more than 26 years of experience across the games industry. As CEO of TK Game Design, he works with studios around the world to solve challenges in game design, product strategy, systems and economy design, production, publishing strategy, analytics, and roadmap planning. He has advised more than 100 teams across hundreds of projects spanning mobile, PC, Web3, XR, gamified wellness, and other emerging interactive spaces, helping developers refine core loops, evaluate products, and build stronger design foundations.Alongside his consulting practice, Tadhg is the co-founder of Whenere Inc., where he leads product strategy and supports operations and partnerships. His career includes leadership and advisory roles at Mobile Game Doctor, Magic Leap, VREAL, OUYA, Jawfish Games, Simple Lifeforms, Sky, Climax, Lionhead, Asylum Entertainment, and Havok. He is also the creator of the influential game design blog What Games Are, a Google mentor, and an executive coach, bringing a rare combination of creative direction, product thinking, developer relations, and hands-on production experience to teams building the future of games.https://www.linkedin.com/in/tadhgk/simplelifeforms.comwhatgamesare.com
S1 · E48
September 1 · 1 hr 11 min
What Happens When AI Can Rebuild Any Game? | Omar Abdelwahed
Omar Abdelwahed is an engineering leader, game developer, and technology executive with more than 25 years of experience building games, AI systems, and cloud platforms. Throughout his career, he has led engineering teams at Ubisoft, 2K, Playable Worlds, East Side Games, SoftBank Robotics, PLAYSTUDIOS, and most recently as CTO at Iconic Arts. Alongside his leadership roles, Omar remains a hands-on engineer, building AI-powered development tools and exploring how agentic coding is transforming game creation.His work spans founding Ubisoft’s first San Francisco game development studio, leading online engineering for NBA 2K, helping East Side Games double in size through its public offering, and serving as VP of Engineering at Playable Worlds. He also led the launch of Pepper, the first humanoid social robot in the U.S., at SoftBank Robotics America and shipped his own indie game, The Null Society. Today, Omar is a leading voice on AI-assisted game development, engineering productivity, and the future of software development.https://www.linkedin.com/in/omargames/
S1 · E47
June 25 · 1 hr 39 min
Why Game Artists Still Matter in the Age of AI | Emer Tanciatco
Emer Tanciatco is a senior game art leader and consultant with nearly two decades of experience guiding art production across some of PlayStation’s most recognised titles. Over more than 16 years at Sony Interactive Entertainment, he worked as a Lead Artist and later Art Supervisor, helping teams establish pipelines, visual standards, documentation, and co-development workflows across internal studios and external partners. His credits include major releases such as Death Stranding, Death Stranding 2, Helldivers 2, The Last of Us, Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Days Gone, Killzone 3, Resistance 3, and many others.With a strong technical background in 3D art, asset production, art direction, and workflow management, Emer brings a practical understanding of how large-scale game art is actually built. His experience spans environment art, texture work, outsourcing, team leadership, mentoring, quality control, and the creation of style and technical guidelines that keep complex productions consistent. He now works as a game development art consultant, supporting teams and vendors with art pipelines, creative direction, visual design, and production structure.https://www.linkedin.com/in/emerdesign/
S1 · E46
June 19 · 1 hr 48 min
How to Fix World of Warcraft and Save the MMO | Shobek
Shobek is a Classic World of Warcraft streamer best known for his immersive, anime-influenced roleplay and his deep love of WoW. He grew up gaming from the Sega Dreamcast era into Vanilla WoW, and after years of dreaming about it, he went all in on streaming in 2016, committing his entire twenties to the craft. The breakthrough took time, roughly seven years of living lean and refining his voice, but his distinctive blend of in character storytelling, humour, and genuine warmth eventually found its audience. Today he is one of the most original roleplay voices in the Classic community, the kind of creator who can turn a quiet road between two zones into a piece of theatre.What sets Shobek apart is how seriously he takes MMOs as living worlds rather than games to be optimised. He champions roleplay as something anyone can do, as simple as stopping to say hello to another player, and he is a passionate advocate for Hardcore and self found play, where every achievement carries real weight. He thinks hard about the friction that makes online worlds feel meaningful, the creep of efficiency and add ons that can hollow them out, and where the genre goes next through user generated content and player made worlds. Equal parts performer and student of the medium, he brings both heart and a strong point of view to the conversation about the future of WoW and MMOs.https://www.youtube.com/shobekhttps://www.twitch.tv/shobek
S1 · E45
June 14 · 2 hr 19 min
Dead Space Creator Glenn Schofield on AI & the Future of AAA Games | TPIF Podcast
Dead Space creator Glenn Schofield on building unforgettable horror, surviving AAA development, and why he's betting on AI.Glenn Schofield is one of the most influential creative leaders in modern video games, with a career spanning art, production, studio leadership, and game direction. He's best known as the creator and executive producer of Dead Space, one of the most celebrated horror games of its generation, and for shaping major franchises through his work at EA, Visceral Games, Sledgehammer Games, and Striking Distance Studios.Across his career, Glenn has worked on some of the biggest titles in gaming, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: WWII, and The Callisto Protocol. His work blends a lifelong passion for art with a deep understanding of production, technology, and creative leadership.In this episode, Glenn reflects on the craft of building games, the pressure of AAA development, the making of unforgettable horror, and where creativity fits in an industry being reshaped by new tools, bigger budgets, and changing expectations.
S1 · E44
June 12 · 1 hr 30 min
The Future Of Games Is Player Made | Shahar Sorek & Sandi Montaño
Shahar Sorek and Francisco “Sandi” Montaño represent two complementary sides of the modern gaming creator economy: the platform-builder and the breakout creator. Sorek is the Chief Marketing Officer at Overwolf, the Tel Aviv-based “guild for in-game creators” that helps developers, modders, and UGC creators build, distribute, and monetize in-game apps, mods, and player-made experiences. In his role, he leads marketing and growth while working across investor relations, fund activity, and partnerships with game studios and developers. His public work is closely tied to the belief that gaming is becoming a creator-led ecosystem, where passionate players can extend the life, value, and cultural relevance of game IP beyond the original studio pipeline.Montaño, known online as Sandi_00, is one of the clearest examples of that shift in practice. A self-taught mod creator and former marketer, he began making mods as a personal project for his daughter before turning that work into a full-time creator business inside the ARK: Survival Ascended ecosystem. His CurseForge catalogue now spans dozens of projects and more than 110 million downloads, with popular releases including Modern Structure Skins, Modern Furniture Skins, Modern Furniture V2 Skins, and Arcadian Structure Skins Premium. His work focuses on cosmetics, furniture, structure skins, and creative tools that help players make survival spaces feel more expressive, personal, and home-like.Together, Sorek and Sandi reflect the growing importance of UGC, modding, and community-led creation in games. Sorek brings the strategic, platform, and go-to-market perspective, shaped by a career across games, startups, entertainment, and storytelling, while Sandi brings the hands-on creator perspective of someone who has built a serious business by listening to players and turning community demand into high-performing content. Their combined story captures where gaming is heading: worlds that are not only built by studios, but continuously expanded by creators, players, brands, and communities.https://www.linkedin.com/in/%F0%9F%90%B0-shahar-sorek-%F0%9F%94%9Ccannes-lions-83ab299/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandi-montano-a2444035a/
S1 · E43
June 5 · 1 hr 52 min
How AI & Streaming Will Change Game Development Forever | Matt Gordon
Matt Gordon is a veteran graphics and systems engineer whose career spans some of the most technically ambitious areas of modern gaming and interactive technology. Starting as a graphics programmer at PlayStation before joining Microsoft, Matt played a key role in graphics emulation, GPU optimization, and the foundational architecture behind xCloud game streaming. His work helped bridge Xbox hardware into hyperscale Azure data centers and contributed to the real-time streaming infrastructure that enabled cloud gaming at global scale. Across GPU emulation, media streaming, and systems architecture, Matt has consistently operated at the intersection of high-performance engineering and next-generation gaming technology.More recently at Meta, Matt has led large-scale technical initiatives across metaverse systems, AI-native engineering, real-time clients, cloud infrastructure, and avatar technology. Known for his “T-shaped” approach across graphics, cloud systems, and AI, he has become a respected technical leader capable of scaling complex projects from concept to organizations spanning hundreds of engineers. His work today focuses on AI agent systems, model deployment, and the future of interactive digital experiences, making him one of the few engineers to have worked deeply across gaming, cloud streaming, metaverse infrastructure, and modern AI systems.https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-gordon-14542847/

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