Dev to Dev

Alex Sulman
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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: DevToDevPodcastInstagram: @devto.devpodcastBluesky: @devtodevpodcast.bsky.social‬YouTube: @DevToDevPodcast …and please drop me an email if you have any questions, thoughts, comments, guest suggestions, or ideas to: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.com

  1. 3h ago ·  Bonus

    Dev to Dev S01 E15 - Bill Mueller (REMASTERED)

    Here’s another excellent episode from the Season 01 archives of Dev to Dev. I've known Bill a long time, but this conversation still surprised me. I learned things about his path I never knew — like the fact that he almost became a music teacher, or that he got his ZeniMax job offer literally while his wife was in labor. Highlights: His origin story starts with a Commodore 64, a Nintendo obsession, and a moment at Disney on Ice that quietly rewired how he saw entertainmentWhy Bioshock made him walk away from a stable career in radio and TVThe producer job he took with zero games experience, just to get his foot in the doorThe "triangle" mixing principle from a college professor that still shapes his sound design todayLosing his job and health insurance at 38 Studios — and getting the ZeniMax offer while his wife was in laborWhat 13 years on Elder Scrolls Online has taught him about never hitting a ceiling again Go listen to the full episode — it's one of the most honest conversations about risk, timing, and the people who show up for you that we've had on the show. 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:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Bill At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williammueller/

    Dev to Dev S01 E15 - Bill Mueller (REMASTERED)

  2. Aug 2 ·  Bonus

    Dev to Dev S01 E11 - Landon Hood (REMASTERED)

    For this revisit of a Dev to Dev episode from S01, I’m going back to the wonderful discussion I had with Landon Hood. Landon and I go back, and getting to sit down with him for Dev to Dev felt like catching up with an old friend as much as recording an episode. Landon was a franchise producer at Blizzard at the time (he’s now Brand Marketing Manager on Heathstone), but his road there is anything but a straight line — GameStop, a community college art show that changed his life, a run at a scrappy production shop making everything from AR birthday cards to Kevin Bacon narrating a phone app, a hard move to Florida that didn't work out, and eventually ZeniMax Online Studios, where he ended up quietly running three creative teams with no director in sight. A few of the moments that stuck with me: How a community college teacher basically forced him into the meeting that started his entire careerThe four weeks it took at his first studio to go from "filling creative gaps" to accidental producerTreating his ADHD and hearing loss as tools instead of limitationsThe moment a new creative director looked at what he'd built and just said "it's yours" Landon's one of the most genuinely empathetic people I've had on this show, and it comes through in every story he tells about the teams he's led. 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:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Landon At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/landonhood/

    Dev to Dev S01 E11 - Landon Hood (REMASTERED)

  3. Jul 26 ·  Bonus

    Dev to Dev S02 Theme - Family

    In the interim between seasons I thought it would be fun to explore some of the themes that snuck up on me a bit while I was editing Season 2. For this week, I kept noticing how many conversations circled back to family — not as a footnote, but as the actual reason a lot of these folks are doing this job at all. So here's a short collection of some of my favorite moments on that theme, look out for more soon! Highlights:Leyla Lacombe on how her dad's love of tech became her love of games — and how the teaching has since reversedBrandon Van Haren on the brother who started it all, the arcade dad, and the levels he used to draw for his mumNathan Kellman on parents who said yes to everything, and the moment he finally showed them the Diablo IV creditsLuke Shingleton on a grandfather who never quite mastered a controller, and what living away from home in Ireland taught him about family Give it a listen and let me know whose story hit closest to home for you. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind My Guests At: Leyla Lacombehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/leyla-lacombe/Brandon Van Harenhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-van-haren-5ba62544/Nathan Kellmanhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nathankellman/Luke Shingletonwww.linkedin.com/in/luke-shingleton-542580225Find Me At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ https://www.instagram.com/pelicanpeculiar/https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/https://bsky.app/profile/peculiarpelican.bsky.social

    Dev to Dev S02 Theme - Family

  4. Jul 20 ·  Bonus

    Dev to Dev S02 Wrap Up

    Season Two's Done — Here's What Stuck With Me Twenty episodes down, and before season three kicks off I wanted to properly reflect on this one — not just recap it. Highlights from how the season came together: Leaned hard into talking with people I didn't know well — harder to prep for, even more alive to recordA clear pattern emerged: most guests didn't plan their way into games, they backed into it — a factory floor, a VFX career, a mistaken belief that you had to code to belong, etc.Empathy turned out to be the quiet thread through almost every conversation, whether it was about players, teammates, or the person a tool was built forProduction got fast — one episode went from record to published in about ninety minutes — though a scheduling hiccup with no backup plan was a real lessonSeason 3 starts soon, and I've already got a few episodes banked and ready! Season 2 will archive behind Patreon once Season 3 begins, so if you want the full run of conversations (audio and video), now's a good time to catch up. Go give it a listen — I think you'll hear the thread too. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Me At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexsulman/ https://www.instagram.com/pelicanpeculiar/https://www.alexsulmanportfolio.net/https://bsky.app/profile/peculiarpelican.bsky.social

    Dev to Dev S02 Wrap Up

  5. Jul 16

    Dev to Dev S02 E20 - Luke Shingleton

    APOLOGIES FOR THE DELAY!! Had some scheduling and technical snafu's!!! But we are back!! Some days, life just decides to throw two enormous things at you at once — and this episode is proof of that. Luke Shingleton is a Quest Designer at Double Eleven, and when we sat down together it turned out we had more in common than either of us expected: only children, small towns, and lives that kept nudging us toward this weird, wonderful industry. But the story that got me was this — Luke had a job interview lined up for the same afternoon he'd planned to propose to his now-wife. In the middle of Paris. He didn't push either back. He did both, on the same day, and came out the other side with a job and a fiancée. We also got into: Growing up an only child in a tiny Northern Ireland village where gaming was basically the entire social sceneThe marketing course — and six years as a casino host — that nearly pulled him away from game design altogetherWhat it actually felt like to be handed a quest design role with zero quest design experience, and the mentor who got him through itThe "symbiote" metaphor he uses for the impossible task of separating developer-Luke from just-a-person-Luke This is one of those conversations that reminds you how much of a career comes down to just... deciding, and then dealing with it. Go give it a listen — you'll want to hear how the proposal actually went. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Luke At: www.linkedin.com/in/luke-shingleton-542580225https://x.com/proxy_dev

    Dev to Dev S02 E20 - Luke Shingleton

  6. Jul 5

    Dev to Dev S02 E19 - Tyler Rotheram

    I love episodes like this one. Tyler Rotheram's story isn't about talent discovered — it's about someone who kept putting himself in rooms he wasn't initially invited to, and made his talent impossible to ignore once he was there. We talked about growing up surrounded by a gamer family, running an accidentally-massive Just Dance club at sixth form, and the sheer nerve of a 17-year-old walking up to Lucid Games and asking to come in and help. That same nerve got him a QA job at PlayStation on his 18th birthday, and later got Sumo Newcastle to invent a job that didn't exist just to keep him around one day a week while he studied. HighlightsLearning root motion under pressure while designing the final boss of Tales of Kenzera: ZauWhy technical design is the “safe harbor” between programming's brick walls and level design's blank canvasThe BAFTA Young Game Designer nomination that started as a scrolled-past Instagram adHis granddad's allotment, where PlayStation devs used to volunteer — and where a young Tyler learned his most important lesson without even realizing it There's a real thread here about making your own luck, and Tyler pulls it off without ever sounding like he's bragging about it. Go give it a listen — you'll come away wanting to send that cold email you've been sitting on. Find the Podcast at:Spotify Patreon ⁠RSS⁠ ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠Bluesky⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠Blog⁠ Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Tyler At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ty-rotheram/

    Dev to Dev S02 E19 - Tyler Rotheram

  7. Jun 28

    Dev to Dev S02 E18 - Scott Nisenfeld

    This one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered who actually makes the gears turn inside a game. Scott Nisenfeld has spent nearly twenty years as a gameplay engineer, and his story is one of my favourites precisely because it isn’t a highlight reel. He fell for games through King’s Quest, but it was the machinery under the hood that really got him — the kind of kid who’d read a board-game rulebook for fun just to figure out how it ticked. We talked about the side-door route into the industry (four years of applying the wrong way), the grad-school professor who nearly put him off for good, and the eight-month crunch on a Command & Conquer expansion that senior staff called the worst project of their lives. We also got into the harder stuff — cancelled projects, a layoff that took his whole team, and what it does to your sense of self when the thing you love is suddenly gone. Highlights:Why he believes the heart of a game is the part you can’t seeThe presence experiment that pulled him out of academiaBuilding tools so designers and players can do things he never couldThe multi-turret tank feature, and the designer who asked for “a turret on top of a turret”His honest, grounded take on AI in game developmentWhat “I had a hand in that” really means to him It’s a thoughtful, generous conversation about doing the invisible work and being okay with it. Give it a listen — I think you’ll come away seeing the credits sequence a little differently. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.com Find Scott At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottnisenfeld/

    Dev to Dev S02 E18 - Scott Nisenfeld

  8. Jun 22

    Dev to Dev S02 E17 - Sangita Nuli

    This one's a good reminder that there's no single road into games. Sangita Nuli came in through plays, film and TV scripts, and a talent agency video games desk — and for years Sangita was convinced making games was simply out of reach. The technology was scary. The interactivity was even scarier. Then Sangita stopped waiting and jumped. What I loved about this conversation is how clearly Sangita’s old life feeds the new one. Reading twenty scripts a week and learning to sell what's good in them turned into a knack for pitching ideas and shaping other people's. Writing plays — and watching audiences react in real time — turned into a genuine love of playtesting and feedback. And a cancelled MMO at ZeniMax taught what Sangita now builds everything around: every single person on a team is a storyteller. Highlights: Why a single choice in the game Infamous changed how Sangita saw the whole mediumThe "molecular level" story analysis learned via reading scripts at a talent agencyGoing from rule-bound film and TV to the no-rules world of narrative designThe cold application — a fantasy noir graphic novel — that landed a AAA gigWhat a cancellation AAA MMO taught about community, grief, and fearlessnessWhy a weapon or a level can tell more story than any line of dialogue Settle in for this one — it's a real masterclass in trusting your own voice and then handing the story to everyone around you. Find the Podcast at:SpotifyPatreon⁠RSS⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠Blog⁠Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.comFind Sangita At: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangitanuli

    Dev to Dev S02 E17 - Sangita Nuli
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About

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: DevToDevPodcastInstagram: @devto.devpodcastBluesky: @devtodevpodcast.bsky.social‬YouTube: @DevToDevPodcast …and please drop me an email if you have any questions, thoughts, comments, guest suggestions, or ideas to: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.com

Information

  • Creator
    Alex Sulman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    29
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Alex Sulman
  • Show Website
    Dev to Dev

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