Dev to Dev – Details, episodes & analysis

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Dev to Dev

Alex Sulman

Business

Leisure

Frequency: 1 episode/34d. Total Eps: 17

Dev to Dev is the podcast about everyday Videogame Developers and why they do what they do every day - the many folks whose work shapes the games we play.

Hosted by Alex Sulman, a veteran of nearly three decades in the industry, the show highlights the passion, challenges, and personal journeys of those often overlooked in gaming’s spotlight.

Inspired by Greg Miller’s 2015 Game Awards speech recognizing a developer in the credits of a game he'd just finished, Dev to Dev continues that spirit of appreciation, giving voice to the people behind the craft.

Each week, the podcast aims to offer thoughtful, positive conversations about connection, creativity, and the human side of game development, providing insight into both the rewards and personal challenges of making video games a livelihood.

Find the Podcast at:

Patreon: DevToDevPodcast
Instagram: @devto.devpodcast
Bluesky: @devtodevpodcast.bsky.social‬
YouTube: @DevToDevPodcast

…and please drop me an email if you have any questions, thoughts, comments, guest suggestions, or ideas to:

DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.com

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https://api.riverside.fm/hosting/H8sKOdGf.rss
15 shares
https://alexsulman.wordpress.com/dev-to-dev/%E2%81%A0
14 shares
https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/
10 shares

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/
10 shares
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathankellman/
4 shares

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RSS feed quality

Good

Score global : 73%

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Dev to Dev S03 E08 - Max Pears

Season 3 · Episode 8

Monday, October 26, 2026 • Duration 01:01:13

This one’s a bit of a swap. Max had me on his show, the Level Design Lobby, first, so it was great to turn the mic around. I wasn’t expecting how personal it would get. Max lost his Mum when he was eight, and games were how he got through it. Everything he’s done since comes back to wanting to give that feeling to someone else.

He’s also a reminder that doors don’t always get opened for you. Sometimes you’re the only person in the room who walks up and knocks.

Highlights

Watching his Dad and Uncle fight Grey Fox in Metal Gear Solid, and the science teacher who said games weren’t a career
Being the only student to approach a guest speaker, and gaining a placement year because of it
The Grandfather at Dare to Be Digital who asked when his game was coming out
Building systems on The Division, and launching Cyberpunk 2077 alone in lockdown
Why contractors should demand a three-month notice period
What he promises every designer who joins his team

Grab a brew and give it a listen. It’s a good one.

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Find Max At:

Find our episode here:

Find my episode of The Retro Hour here:

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Dev to Dev S03 E07 - Harvard Bonin

Season 3 · Episode 7

Monday, October 19, 2026 • Duration 01:16:45

This one was a real pleasure. Harvard and I go back to our Sony Santa Monica days, which involved a lot of late nights and a lot of pizza. Even so, I learned things about him I never knew. The biggest was that underneath decades of production and project management, he’s still the kid who mailed game ideas to Atari.

We also got into the side of game-making we rarely cover on the show: frameworks, milestones and the operations work that gets a game out the door. Harvard explains all of it in a way that makes it clear why it matters to everyone on a team.

Highlights

A horse-track win, an Atari 5200, and the best investment his parents ever made
Getting hired over breakfast the day after a layoff, without realizing it had happened
Owning the friction he caused by stepping outside his lane as a young producer
“Rules of play,” and why teams should write them before they need them
Why milestones should feel like Christmas season, not Christmas Day
Turning a layoff into the best summer in years, building a Roblox game with his daughter

Grab a coffee and give this one a listen. It’s a different angle from what we usually cover, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

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Dev to Dev S03 E06 - Derin Halil

Season 3 · Episode 6

Monday, October 12, 2026 • Duration 01:06:21

This one made me smile. Derin Halil has a habit of asking the question most of us only think: why me? He even asked it out loud, swivelling round in his chair to put it to his head of design. Underneath the laugh is a real story about imposter syndrome, meditations on being lucky, and about finding the kind of work your brain was built for.

It also landed for me personally. Derin's moment of wondering whether he was any good, or just good at one studio, is exactly where I was after eleven years at Sony Cambridge.

Highlights

Growing up in a big gaming household, and why his mum saw games as the best bargain going
How a physics degree, not a games course, ended up shaping his systems design
A four-hour round trip commute for one week of QA work experience, at fifteen
The job interview where the interviewer told him to take the other offer
The website feature he pitched in an interview, didn't get the job for, and then saw go live six months later
Seven and a half years on Elite Dangerous, and why he still had to leave

Give it a listen. It's one of the most honest takes on "luck" we've had on the show.

Find the Podcast at:

Find Derin At:

Dev to Dev S03 E05 - Heather Chandler

Season 3 · Episode 5

Monday, October 5, 2026 • Duration 01:15:39

Hey folks — this week's conversation is one of the most unique yet. Heather Chandler has been in this industry for three decades, and what struck me most wasn't any single credit on her resume — it's how honest she is about the limits of her own expertise, and how she's built an entire career turning that honesty into trust.

We talk about her accidental start at Activision (she was gunning for a film career), the two books she wrote because nobody else had written them, what it was actually like inside Epic during Fortnite's pivot to Battle Royale, and the gutsy — and gut-punching — decision to open a physical escape room right before the pandemic hit.

Highlights:

How a stray résumé at Activision in the '90s rerouted her entire career path
Why she wrote the book on game production because the book didn't exist
What it was like inside Fortnite's live-service pivot, and the lesson about not going "110% forever"
Betting on herself twice — the escape room, and the freelance restart that followed
Why she's found more satisfaction backing small indie teams than she ever did at scale

Go give this one a listen — Heather's got a wonderful grounded, no-ego perspective and I think you'll walk away thinking differently about what makes a good producer.

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Find Heather At:

Dev to Dev S03 E04 - Jamie Smith

Season 3 · Episode 4

Monday, September 28, 2026 • Duration 01:04:37

Hey everyone, this week I got to sit down with Jamie Smith, and it's a conversation I really enjoyed. We'd never met before we hit record, but within minutes it felt like catching up with someone who'd walked a road very like mine.

Jamie grew up in Middlesbrough believing games were simply magic. Now he's the one making it. What struck me most was how little he's chasing. He isn't chasing the title, the hype, or the next big genre. He's just trying to add value every single day and to putting what’s important first. That's a mindset I only really landed on in the last ten years, and he's got there much sooner.

Highlights

Why he didn't know games were made by people, and what finally broke the spell
The pitch event where a hostile judge tore his idea apart, and how fixing it led to an internship at Reflections
Driver: San Francisco, and the spreadsheet lesson that changed how he designs
"It needs to feel good to miss": the Call of Duty rule, and his Mortal Kombat obsession
Handing over the lead role on The Crew, and why the title is just recognition
Why he now puts health first and works to live rather than lives to work

Go and have a listen. It's a great one.

Find the Podcast at:

Find Jamie At:

Dev to Dev S03 E03 - Lana Bachynski

Season 3 · Episode 3

Monday, September 21, 2026 • Duration 01:06:39

I love this conversation with Lana Bachynski (Associate Art Director, Riot Games) — because it's not really about animation, even though she's one of the best in the business at it. It's about what happens when you decide to be the person who shows up.

Lana grew up in a house that banned video games, which somehow made her more obsessed with them, not less. She talks about rotating on footstools with her siblings waiting for a turn at the family computer, about a teacher who connected her secret animation habit to an actual career, and about landing a Blizzard internship with a demo reel full of monsters instead of the walk cycles everyone else submitted.

But the part that stuck with me most was after Blizzard — when Lana got to Riot and found the studio's animator community was basically three people in an empty room. She didn't shrug and move on. She built it into something dozens of people show up for every week.

Highlights:

The banned Super Nintendo that started it all
The mentor who connected animation to a games career
Why she chose games over a Pixar-track path — it comes down to replayability
Rigging and animating a Blizzard test character in seven days, on a bicycle with no seat
Turning three people in an empty room into the Riot Animation Team

Go give this one a full listen — it's one of those episodes that's really about community dressed up as a career story.

Find the Podcast at:

Find Lana At:

Dev to Dev S03 E02 - Jay Powell

Season 3 · Episode 2

Monday, September 14, 2026 • Duration 01:05:51

This week's episode is one of my favorites so far, and it's not because Jay Powell has some big design philosophy to unpack — it's because he doesn't. He told me straight up: "I would never claim to be a world-class game designer." What he's spent thirty years building instead is something almost nobody talks about: the ability to sit between two people who don't understand each other and make a deal happen anyway.

Jay started as an English Literature major with zero interest in games as a career — the games industry basically didn't exist as a career when he was in college. He fell into it through a beer-money job testing games, and from there built one doing things nobody had a manual for: inventing contracts one country at a time before digital distribution existed, translating for movie studios and museums who had no idea how games worked, and eventually running scouting for publishers who couldn't articulate what they actually wanted.

He also told me one of the most honest burnout stories I've heard on this podcast — an ulcer, throwing up blood at 4am, and quitting on the spot the day a manager told him to just stay quiet behind a closed door during layoffs. If you've ever felt like this industry asks too much of the people who love it most, this one's going to hit.

Highlights:

The floating cube that sold an entire publishing deal — no playable demo required
How one careless word nearly got him in real trouble with the Smithsonian
Why Nickelodeon's character bible for Dora the Explorer remains the gold standard of licensing paperwork
The exact moment — mid-ulcer, told to hide during layoffs — he quit with no plan
Why every young developer needs to understand "the Hollow Knight problem" before picking a genre

Go give this one a listen — it's a masterclass in staying indispensable to an industry for thirty years without ever writing a line of code.

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Dev to Dev S03 E01 - Steven Dwyer

Season 3 · Episode 1

Monday, September 7, 2026 • Duration 01:37:13

Dev to Dev is back and this first episode of Season 03 is a bit special for me — Steven and I go back, and it was great getting to sit down and finally hear the whole story, not just the bits I already knew.

What gets me about Steven's career is how little of it he actually planned. He failed his way out of a computer science degree at Glasgow, and it was his Mum who pushed him toward Abertay's games course — one of only two in the world at the time. He burned out hard on his first industry job in Japan and quit on the spot the day it shipped. He recovered by playing World of Warcraft, and it was, once again, his Mum who pointed out that people actually make that game for a living. Twenty years later, he's still there.

Every "failure" in his story turned out to be a redirect. I don't think you can plan for that — you can only trust it when it happens.

Highlights:

Growing up on a proto-console called the Grandstand, and a Pac-Man handheld that started it all
Failing nearly every class at Glasgow University except geography
Landing at Abertay — one of only two game-specific computer science courses in the world
A year in Japan, fifty cold applications, and a job on Sonic Riders that ended in burnout
The unforgettable Blizzard interview: handwritten algorithms faxed into a grainy video call
Seventeen years on WoW's tools team, and what it's taught him about institutional knowledge

Go give this one a listen — Steven's honesty about the parts of his career that didn't go to plan is exactly why I wanted to have him on.

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Find Steven At:

Dev to Dev S01 Theme - Leap First

Season 2

Monday, August 31, 2026 • Duration 01:04:02

For this week Dev to Dev is exploring another themed episode, this time from Season 01 around the theme of “Leaping First” — it's three people who all did the same reckless, brave thing: they leapt into a role before it was fully formed, and figured out the rest by doing it.

Highlights:

Matthew Brunhofer went to LA to write for WWE, took a Square Enix QA contract to pay rent, and felt more at home there than he expected to.
Joel Morillo bet three years of his post-Navy life on being a creative, moved coast to coast for it, and talked his way into defining a role called "camera designer."
Nick Heindl got offered a job title he'd never heard of, felt insulted by it, and ended up spending years building an accessibility career nobody had asked him for.

These selections from each episode have some great insight into how to take a leap for a role and make it your own — you'll want to hear how differently each of them describes the exact same kind of jump.

The full conversations are available on Dev to Dev’s Patreon.

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Find My Guests At: Find Me At:

Dev to Dev S01 E13 - Zane Draper (REMASTERED)

Season 2

Monday, August 24, 2026 • Duration 01:00:02

Ahoy folks. This week I’m pulling another excellent episode from the Season 01 archive for a Dev to Dev revisit, because it's one I still think about a lot. Zane Draper and I worked together for a couple of years before our project at Zenimax Online Studios was shut down, and this conversation is a good reminder of why he was always so unbothered by whatever got thrown at him.

We get into how a traded set of toy cars turned into a genuine obsession with Pokémon Yellow, how he stumbled sideways out of a robotics degree into game design without ever meaning to, and what five brutal, brilliant years at a tiny studio called Workinman Interactive taught him about never being afraid of a problem.

Highlights:

The Game Boy trade that started it all (his friend's Mum was NOT happy)
Why an ASCII command-line demo convinced him to ditch robotics for games
What it's like sharing a niche with another senior designer on a big team — and the actual doc he and that teammate wrote to keep from stepping on each other's toes
Where his "there's always a solution" mindset really comes from (hint: it's his Dad!)

Give it a re-listen (or a first listen, if you missed it) — it's one of those conversations that explains a lot about how someone gets this unbothered about their job.

I hope you enjoy this revisit and remember if you haven’t previously had the chance you can catch the rest of the Season 01 content on Dev to Dev’s Patreon right here: https://www.patreon.com/DevToDevPodcast

Find the Podcast at:

Find Zane At:

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Dev to Dev – Details, episodes & analysis

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