If you're a leader in game dev who feels stuck, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6

You can't just test quality into a game at the end. You have to build it in from the start. Ignoring your Quality Assurance team's full value is a fast way to lose millions.

The state of game development is at a challenging inflection point, characterized by high-risk live service ambitions and a brain drain of senior talent. Host Ben Carcich sits down with Nathan Tiras, former Game Dev veteran (Riot Games, Singularity 6), to dissect this instability and dive deep into the discipline seen as an "entry-level" role: Quality Assurance (QA).

Nathan, who worked his way from a QA Analyst at Riot to the Director of QA and Live Service at Singularity 6 (makers of Palia), argues that QA is not just "testing" but a critical quality function that represents the voice of the player. This deep-dive explores how leaders must move beyond the "QA as tester" stereotype to unlock the massive subjective value and risk-prevention only highly skilled, respected QA professionals can provide.

What You'll Learn in this Episode:

• What "quality" really means in 2025, and why the best QA teams shape player experience
• How bringing QA in at pre-production saves time, money, and your launch day sanity
• Why bug counts don't define QA's worth
• The human edge of judgment, creativity, and tribal knowledge that no tool can replicate
• How great leaders build quality teams that protect business continuity and deliver real returns

Learn more about Nathan:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-tiras-he-him-8a45754/

Company: https://www.whatnot.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathantiras/?hl=en

Board Game Geek: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/95100/nathan-tiras

Check his other YouTube appearances:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2mmERgh19c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyt3bnBgNqk

Connect with us:

🔗Ben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/

🔗BBG's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/building-better-games/

🔗Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buildingbettergames/#

🔗Website: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg

🔗YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpMT-dUwQR-R4Mb4uub6Sw

#GameDev #GameQA #QualityAssurance #GameLeadership #GameProducer #LiveServiceGames #BuildingBetterGames

If you're a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6

Are you inadvertently forcing your team to serve a tool, instead of letting your tools serve your team and game?

In a recent conversation with Clinton Keith, Ben asked how Clint would help all of game development. Clint's response? "Delete Jira" - and Ben laughed to keep from crying.

Jira is a powerful tool, but in the hands of uninformed game development leadership, it often becomes a weapon against the very teams it's meant to help. Ben, who has used Jira and other tools as a producer within large studios, dissects the common, catastrophic misuses of Jira.

While you might be better off deleting the tool, the real work is about fixing the broken cultural and organizational patterns that turn a simple work management system into the "boss" of your game studio. Learn the four cascading failure patterns that are draining your team's effectiveness and how to correct them, making collaboration and player outcomes your true north.

What You'll Learn In This Episode:

• Why senior leaders keep breaking Jira without realizing it
• How Jira causes centralization and decision bottlenecks
• What Jira DOESN'T tell you, and why that makes it dangerous
• How perverse incentives emerge from overreliance on Jira and other tools like it
• The reason you end up feeling like a slave to the tool
• How to avoid the traps Jira leads you into

Connect with us:

🔗Ben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/

🔗BBG's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/building-better-games/

🔗Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buildingbettergames/#

🔗Website: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg

🔗YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpMT-dUwQR-R4Mb4uub6Sw

#gamedevleadership #jiraantipatterns #gamedevelopment #agilefailure #buildingbettergames

If you're a leader in game dev who feels stuck, able to spot problems but struggling to make a real difference, there is a path forward that levels up your leadership and accelerates your team, game, and career. Sign up here to learn more: https://forms.gle/nqRTUvgFrtdYuCbr6

How much is your bad code costing you, and how much is your team's suffering just a ritual of amateur theatre?

In this episode, Engineering and Agile expert Tim Ottinger and Ben challenge the core belief systems that plague software development, from the focus on individual productivity to the self-inflicted wounds of long release cycles. They break down the shocking truth about what slows software projects down, the high cost of errors in a complex system, and why doing work when it's easy is the only way to avoid the crushing complexity of doing it when it's hard.

What you'll learn in this episode:

● Why teams might refuse to change and improve the way they work

● The importance of finding problems now, rather than waiting till later

● Why "crunch time" is killing your output, not boosting it

● When to be throwing work away and when to be making things real

Bibliography:
https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/faster-and-more-predictable/

Paired Programming Illuminated by  Lori Williams and Robert Kessler:
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

More about our guest:

Tim Ottinger is a legendary figure in software development, having programmed since 1979 and been active in the early days of Extreme Programming and Agile. As a Senior Consultant at Industrial Logic, co-author of Agile In A Flash and a contributor to Clean Code, Tim brings decades of practical experience to dissect what goes wrong in most software development and how you can start doing better.

Accolades and Publications:

● Co-Author: Agile In A Flash (with Jeff Langr).

● Contributor: Clean Code.

● Writing Credits: C++ Report, Object Magazine Online, Pragmatic Bookshelf magazine, Software Quality Connection.

● Recognized for: Compassionate and patient approach to working with individuals, sincerely interested in helping people reach their goals.

Social Media and Websites:

● Website (Blog): https://agileotter.blogspot.com/

● Company Blog: https://www.industriallogic.com/blog/

● Twitter/X: @tottinge.

● LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agileotter/

● Email: tottinge@gmail.com

● Other: https://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/

Connect with us:

🔗Ben's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-carcich/

🔗BBG's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/building-better-games/

🔗Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buildingbettergames/#

🔗Website: https://www.buildingbettergames.gg

🔗YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZpMT-dUwQR-R4Mb4uub6Sw

#gamedev #SoftwareEngineering #Agile #GameIndustry #Leadership