Rise and Play Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

In this episode, we reconnect with gaming industry veteran Steve Cuss to discuss his journey from traditional to liberated leadership, starting The GamePlan Consultancy and publishing his first book, Liberated Leadership. Steve shares his insights on the challenges and rewards of fostering a more inclusive and authentic workplace, exploring the significance of authenticity, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence for creative leaders.

Steve emphasises the importance of self-awareness for leaders and the opportunities for self-transformation through retreats and personal inner work. We delve into the significance of creating psychological safety, balancing control with autonomy, and aligning personal and organisational values to find a deeper purpose in leadership.

01:46 Steve Cuss’s Journey Over the Past Year

04:05 Challenges and Insights in Leadership Training

09:34 The Evolution of Leadership in the Gaming Industry

10:51 The Concept of Liberated Leadership

15:12 Personal Growth and Authenticity in Leadership

26:45 The Power of Vulnerability in Leadership

27:40 The Importance of Deliberate Pauses

29:09 Creating Psychological Safety

30:10 The Need for Feedback in Leadership

31:39 Integrating Values and Purpose

38:22 Challenges in Leadership and Gender Differences

43:20 The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence

48:21 Practical Steps for Leaders

This conversation is a follow-up to a discussion we had with Steve a year ago, introducing the concept of Liberated Leadership, and its genesis. You can listen to that episode here:

You can buy the book “Liberated Leadership” here: https://amzn.eu/d/6lHxbAW

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In this episode, host Sophie Vo interviews Eric Tan, a highly experienced executive with 17 years in the entertainment and music industries. Eric shares his journey from being a business executive to embracing his role as a creative executive, his experiences and struggles in the gaming and music industries, and his insights on the importance of music partnerships in gaming. They discuss Eric's career highlights, including his roles at Riot Games, Sony Music, and his own company, Fifth Journey Limited. Eric also shares his vision for the future of music in games and offers advice for entrepreneurs navigating similar paths.

Interested in exploring a music partnership? Reach out to Eric here: https://calendly.com/erictanhk/call-with-eric

01:34 Introducing Eric Tan: A Music and Gaming Executive

03:55 Eric's Journey into Music and Gaming

05:38 The Evolution of Music in Games

07:41 Music Marketing Strategies in Gaming

10:38 Challenges and Opportunities in Music Partnerships

20:04 Reflecting on Fifth Journey Limited

24:21 Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

31:17 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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In this new episode, we interview Charlotte Lavergne, who shares her journey co-founding Supercosi Games in 2020, a mobile studio focused on evergreen games.

Charlotte shares the context of bootstrapping the company in 2020 until they raised 2M€ in 2022. She also discusses the challenges of raising seed/Series A funding through VCs in 2024, despite having healthy financial results. She explains her strategic process focusing on evergreen games and the multiple iterations that led their team to find their 'hit' title in 2023: Word Search Puzzle Challenge, and how they keep scaling the game in 2024.

This episode is an open-hearted testimonial about the ups and downs of being a game entrepreneur, reminding all founders that whatever you are going through this year, you are not alone. We do the best with what we have and can control, and try to survive the wave(s) 🌊

01:55 Meet Charlotte Lavergne: From Gameloft to Supercosi Games

03:58 Charlotte's Early Career and Transition to Gaming

09:55 Founding Supercosi: The Journey Begins

14:19 Building the Team and Early Prototypes

20:14 Fundraising and Scaling Up

29:14 Challenges and Learnings in 2024

34:43 Final Thoughts and Reflections

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⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ If you enjoyed today's episode make sure to rate it on Spotify, leave a review on Apple Podcasts, or simply share it with a friend.

In this episode, I am debunking with Steph all the misconceptions about narrative design, and why this field remains so misunderstood in the gaming industry.

- What is narrative design, and why it is not just "writing" for games?

- Why narrative design is essential from the concept phase to build long lasting IPs

- Why and how diversity enables to create impactful and meaningful stories for players

- What is the ROI of narrative design? (bring those insights to your stakeholders)

- Fun fact: Steph shares why Chess is a great example of what conceptual narrative design is

Steph is a Canadian working as the Global Narrative Director at Gameloft. Steph started her career in games at Stardoll, a metaverse style sandbox game with tens of millions players, mostly women and girls. Then she joined King in 2014 and worked as the first narrative designer there and eventually global narrative lead there, before she eventually joined Gameloft to lead the Narrative Design team.

I enjoyed so much Steph's passion on narrative design through our conversation. I hope you will learn as much as I did about narrative design.

Enjoy this new episode!

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In this episode, we are tackling with Kegan all the burning questions you could have about the history and development of the Diablo Franchise:

• What is the Product Management approach to Diablo IV, and why is this is a new approach in AAA development?


• The important differences in Product Management between F2P mobile and AAA development


• What can we learn from the advanced Player Research methods at Blizzard?


• The challenges of aligning between PM and Development teams on Diablo, and how Kegan is adding the PM mindset to the creative development process


• Learn how Kegan tackled with professionalism and wisdom the situations of "being the only woman in the room" at companies like Blizzard and Riot Games

I deeply enjoyed the authentic and genuine conversation with Kegan, sharing her passion working on Diablo franchise and her personal journey in gaming.

Kegan Clark is the current Director of Product on Diablo IV at Blizzard Entertainment, former head of Business Intelligence on League of Legends Franchise at Riot Games. 

Enjoy this new episode!

Anette Staloy is CMO at the Norwegian games studio Dirtybit. The studio focuses on social multiplayer games, and have grown organically to close to 140 million downloads for their games in the Fun Run series. Dirtybit was founded almost 11 years ago, and Anette has been part of the team for the last 7 years. Anette is also the co-founder and chair of Women in Games Norway.

In this episode, Anette shares her journey growing a small independent studio in Norway, building on top of their Fun Run series success:

• How Anette's role has evolved as the CMO of the company over the past 7 years


• The challenges of maintaining a big IP versus launching new successful games


• The perks and challenges of remaining as an independent studio: ownership vs growth?


• How Dirtybit managed to bring their leadership team to full parity and 40% of employees being women. It is possible!


• How the work-life balance is at the heart of the culture at Dirtybit, without compromising on execution and delivery

Enjoy this new episode!

1 - YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EPISODE

I often ask other leaders in my podcast interviews: “What keeps you up at night?”When I ask myself this question, I cannot think of anything but “How do I keep my team together on our mission to create something bigger than ourselves?”

This question keeps me busy all the time.

I previously wrote why if you’re looking to achieve in life and business, you first need a great team. Without a team, you’ve got no product — and without a product, no business. (Re-)building a great team takes time, lots of energy, and financial backing. Naturally, I often think about the threats that can endanger the most precious thing I have built over the years: a high-performing, well-functioning, and fun team to work with.

So, what can we do about it?

In this special episode, I reflect my key learnings from the past 3 years building a casual studio from scratch at Voodoo.

Enjoy this new episode!

You can read the full article here

Noemie has been working in international digital marketing and mobile gaming for the past 10 years.

She has led performance marketing teams for startups like PlayQ and also has experience with bigger companies like Jam City where she led the user acquisition strategy for the launch of the top mobile game Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery. 

She is now the CMO of Air Console, an online video game console for friends and family to play together from TV and their mobile devices.

Topics we discuss:

• Why Noémie joined Air Console, moving her marketing focus from the product to the player experience


• Noémie's vision of leading lean UA and creative teams in different organization sizes


• How Noémie innovated in the marketing launch of Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery, at Jam City

Enjoy this new episode!

More about Air Console here

The third season of the podcast is in the making!!!

I would love to get your feedback and suggestions (2-min survey): https://www.surveylegend.com/s/47al

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Simonetta joined GameHouse as their new CEO in October last year, to fulfill the mission of becoming the leading provider of casual mobile games for Women. In this episode, Simonetta shares her vision and execution plan to own the "me-time" of the female audience.

Prior to joining GameHouse, Simonetta spent the last several years as Head of Spin Master Studios in Los Angeles, and the President, CEO, and Chairwoman of the Board at Woozworld in Montreal. In her earlier career, she was SVP at Sulake, developers of Habbo, the biggest online virtual game for teens where among other roles she led global marketing, community, advertising, and user growth.

We are discussing in this new episode:

- The new vision and mission of GameHouse under Simonetta's leadership

- Why Simonetta, as a female CEO, has a competitive edge in executing the mission of owning the "me-time" of the female market

- Simonetta's vision of building a great company culture based on: ownership, flexibility, and data-informed decisions

- Why it is important to break the bias about female CEOs



Enjoy this new episode!

More about GameHouse openings: here

The third season of the podcast is in the making!!!

I would love to get your feedback and suggestions (2-min survey): https://www.surveylegend.com/s/47al

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Devon has always been drawn to building heartfelt experiences that captivate everyday people and result in long-term value. During her 15-year career including working at Big Fish Games and GSN games, she’s explored the capabilities of UX research and UX design methods within free-to-play mobile game development, resulting in engagement-boosting gameplay optimizations while supercharging her team’s efficiency by aligning the team around the needs of their target audience. 

Devon is committed to the well-being of players, which is what drew her to Solsten where she’s leading the design of services that empower companies to craft solutions that fully resonate with people.

In this episode, Devon debunks all the myths and misconceptions about UX:

- What is actually UX Design

- The limits of designing game experiences based on demographic and group generalizations

- Why having a deep understanding of human behavior and psychology is fundamental in UX design

- What is the difference between UX Design, UI art, and a UI designer, and why the overused acronym UX/UI is misleading.

- When do you need to think about UX? at the very start or at the very end of the design process?

- Can we calculate the ROI of UX?

I hope you'll have more light on what UX is and how to make better UX-related decisions, after listening to this episode.

Find more about Solsten

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