Today’s guest, Ben Carcich of Building Better Games, is a bit different than our normal.

He’s a production and leadership consultant in Games who got started on this path after leaving Riot Games in 2020. He shares what led to this journey, choosing to go into consulting rather than development, and what he’s learned along the way. We talk about how many of the challenges are similar to the other founding journeys we’ve talked about along the way.

It was a fascinating look about how things that can look very different, can share many things in common. Let’s jump in.

Today, we’re talking with Eamonn Glass, founder of Maggie’s Farm Studio. Eamonn has had a pretty diverse career both in and out of games, most recently an 11 year stint at Electronic Arts.

As he was considering what he wanted to do next, searching for his next purpose, wildfires in British Columbia claimed the town of Lytton, completely wiping it from the map. He had been a regular visitor of Lytton, with his family often going there to camp each summer.

This sparked a focus on building games to help educate and address the need for change in wildfire management, awareness, and prevention, and the start of his founding journey. From there, Eamonn has had his shares of ups and downs and dealing with the realities of founding, which he shares with us. Let’s jump in.

Today we’re talking with Dru Erridge, co-founder of Gamebreaking Studios.

Dru ended up walking down a path of a co-development studio, initially focused on multiplayer game tech, but the reasons he got there are quite unique. Co-founding with folks that he had built and shipped an indie game on the side of full-time jobs at larger studios, deciding to not take money and so doubling down on the skills at hand with a three engineer co-founding team, then viewing that as giving them a level of freedom to pursue their passion and diversify.

It’s been a journey full of lessons on mindset and motivation that I think can help many other folks think about what kind of founding journey they want to pursue — especially in the current market which limits where funds can come from. Let’s jump in.