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Exploring the Power of Educational Games and the Growing Midwest Game Development Scene with Jennifer Javornik
64 Plays1 month ago
Introduction: In this episode, Greg Posner welcomes Jennifer Javornik, the Chief Partnerships Officer at Filament Games, to discuss the impact of educational gaming and the thriving Midwest game development community. Jennifer shares insights into how Filament creates games that go beyond entertainment by transforming players and shaping the future of education through immersive, meaningful experiences. This conversation also highlights the Midwest as an emerging hub for game development, and the key role the Wisconsin Games Alliance plays in that growth.
Key Takeaways:
- The Mission of Filament Games
Jennifer emphasizes that Filament Games is a mission-driven, for-profit studio that focuses on creating playful experiences that improve people’s lives. Their goal is to make learning fun and engaging, with players emerging from their games transformed in some way—whether it’s learning new concepts, developing confidence, or making behavior changes. - Transformative Power of Games
Research backs the effectiveness of well-designed games in education. Games provide an interactive problem space where players can experiment, explore, and gain deeper, longer-lasting understanding compared to traditional learning methods. Jennifer explains how Filament Games integrates this approach into their educational products to encourage players to engage with and retain the material. - Impact of COVID on Game Design
The pandemic led to a shift in educational needs, as many students struggled with virtual learning. Jennifer shares how Filament Games adapted by exploring how their games could support students and teachers during this time. The focus has increasingly been on building multiplayer or collaborative experiences to enhance the learning environment. - Innovative Platforms for Learning Games
Filament Games develops across a variety of platforms, from standard tools like Unity and Unreal to HTML5 and mobile devices. Jennifer highlights their work on more unconventional platforms, such as Roblox, and even details their creation of a unique game for pediatric MRI machines to help children remain calm during scans. - Building the Midwest Game Development Community
Jennifer discusses her work with the Wisconsin Games Alliance and how the Midwest is becoming a hub for game development. She notes the growing number of indie and AAA studios in the region and the importance of initiatives like MDev to unite the game development community and showcase the talent and innovation coming out of the Midwest.
Timestamps:
- [01:10] – Introduction to Filament Games and its mission-driven approach to game development
- [03:33] – How games can provide better learning experiences through interactive problem-solving
- [05:23] – The impact of COVID on education and game design at Filament Games
- [07:32] – Filament's work on multiple platforms, including Unity, Unreal, Roblox, and even MRI machines
- [13:18] – Jennifer discusses the growing game development scene in the Midwest and the role of the Wisconsin Games Alliance
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Focus on Midwest Gaming
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, Greg here from the Player Engaged Podcast. Today we're launching a special series of podcasts that will lead us into MDev, which is the Midwest Development Gaming Conference. It's in about a month, which is the first week of November.
Interview with Jennifer Givornik: Role and Mission at Filament Games
00:00:14
Speaker
And we're going to be talking with four different studios, different sizes from the Midwest to understand why they're doing what they're doing, how they're building it out.
00:00:20
Speaker
We're going to start off today by talking with Jennifer Givornik. She's the chief partnership officer at Filament Games. We talk about the mission of Filament Games, the transformative power of games. We talk about innovative platforms. And most importantly, we talk about building the Midwest gaming development community. It's going to be a great series. This is a great episode. It's educational, which I love. And it's great. And she's a great person to talk to, Jennifer. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode in this entire series. And we'll see you at MDev.
00:00:55
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the p Player Engage podcast. Greg here. Today I'm really excited to kind of kick off a session what's going to lead us into MDev, which is in the beginning of November. And I think it's going to be this really great conference for the Midwest. And we're going to start talking with some different studios that are out of the Midwest to get an understanding of the community there, how it's growing, what changes you've seen. So today I'm very excited to be joined by Jennifer Javornik. She's the Chief Partnership Officer at Filament Games.
Filament Games' Educational Mission and COVID Adaptations
00:01:23
Speaker
We're going to have a really cool conversation because she's been on the Wisconsin Gaming Alliance and a lot of other types of things out there. So Jennifer, first off, thank you so much for jumping on today.
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, Greg, thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. I think you've got it right. I work for Filming Games. I'm the Chief Partnerships Officer. I'm also one of the founding board members for the Wisconsin Games Alliance, which is the professional association in Wisconsin for people in the game industry. um I'm also on the Unity Education Board, which is kind of fun. And ah yeah, spend a lot of time thinking about how games can change the world.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's speaking our language here. and I truly think games are a driver to help change things for either the better, or the worst, depending on how you want to create your games. And what I love about filament is that you are an ed tech gaming company. And I think ed tech.
00:02:15
Speaker
as a father of two kids is such a fantastic way to connect with children. You are on more devices and I think anyone listening actually understands where you can game and I think it's super cool. So can you kind of give us a high level of what is filament games kind of?
00:02:32
Speaker
but Yeah, so Filament Games is a really cool organization. We are a for-profit studio, who but it's mission-based and our mission is to create playful experiences that improve people's lives. So we think of ourselves as we hold ourselves to all the same qualities as uh, commercial entertainment video game quality. We want, you know, awesome game loops and, uh, strong incentive reward systems. We want the games to be like engaging and fun. But the additional challenge that we give ourselves is at the end of the game, we want players to be transformed. And a lot of times, you know, our goal is the player didn't know something before and now they know something or understand a concept more deeply. But we do all kinds of games. We make games to build
00:03:21
Speaker
um Let's see, we've made games to build confidence. We've made games to promote behavior shifts, mindset shifts. um We've made games to activate people to go make change in the real world. um You know, when I think of filament, that's really the key of what we're good at is like not only thinking about the gameplay experience, but like pushing on how do you take that awesome experience and make it relevant to the real world.
00:03:48
Speaker
And I think that's the best part of it. I think, you know, if you can learn something at the end of the day, even if you don't realize that you're learning right at the end of the day, you realize, hey, and I know you have some robot games, which are really cool, kind of build robots, what work like.
00:04:01
Speaker
You can mess around and you can play around. It is a game, but at the end of the day, you are learning something about maybe physics or how things work or how to go about that. And I think it's such a great mindset because I think something almost every
Games in Education: Engaging Learning Experiences
00:04:12
Speaker
kid does love is video games, right? So if you can put education in there, it's going to be a better kind of way to get them in that mindset of thinking maybe outside the box of how to get there. so what it yeah i do What's so cool is that there's so much research, like we understand why games are such a powerful tool for transformation. And you know the research over the years has really shown it's that
00:04:38
Speaker
it's you know the The one way to learn is someone gives you the information, you memorize it, and you you you know recite it back. But when you're given a problem space that's open-ended, that encourages you to experiment with the the content, um push at the edges of it, try it from different perspectives, and then it's really that grappling with the subject matter that helps promote a deeper understanding of the concept and then also promotes longer-term retention. So there's no question that gain a well-designed game is super effective and actually outperforms other learning more modalities. And we know it's because of that being able to like experiment and play with the ideas and concepts that promotes all those great outcomes.
00:05:33
Speaker
yeah you You were mentioning some of the issues as or some of the games that you're creating to help people learn about these different types of issues that exist. Four years ago, we entered COVID, right? And I think people's minds since then, especially I have a niece in middle school, right? And it's become kind of this hard place. And there's a lot of mental health things out there right now. Did you see the concept of your games kind of shifting once all these, I'm not gonna say they're social media problems, but they tend to stem from there, right? like Did the style of game adapt? Do you see new genres from within the genre because of these issues that have arise ah arisen since COVID? Oh, that's so interesting.
00:06:15
Speaker
I mean, yeah, to a certain extent. i mean I think a lot of people, especially post-COVID and when so many of our kids were learning in a virtual environment, I think the whole education sector has taken a step back and have asked themselves, what is the value of school? What is the value of coming to school?
00:06:37
Speaker
Um, because so many kids struggled in school during COVID. So I think that applies, you know, we're having this meta conversation about how is, what is the value of school and how do we want it to change? I think we've been thinking the same about games is like, well, school is a place where you know the community aspect of school was very clear that that's like an important part of learning so then we think as game designers well you know if you if all these kids you know get up early in the morning and make the effort to go to a physical place to school
00:07:11
Speaker
um If we want to have games being played at school, how can we build them so that it's taking advantage of the fact that all these kids are in the same space learning together? so I think you know whether it's a single-player game or a multiplayer game, thinking about like really thinking through how the game is going to be implemented and into a classroom and how the teachers you know teachers we figured out during COVID are super important,
00:07:40
Speaker
And how can we empower them to use games in the classroom in a really meaningful way? Yeah. I mean, I remember growing up in high school and all we had was a PC and kind of we played games, right? And it wasn't necessarily educational games, but every once in a while you would play one and they were fun. I remember growing up with games like problem solving games and walking around. I think it was called like Midnight Mysteries and like they were learning games, but you have a lot of fun with them. And I agree with you that kind of any tools you can give teachers to help empower them to teach kids in maybe different ways that other kids can absorb that information, I think is fantastic.
Platforms and Creative Projects at Filament Games
00:08:11
Speaker
I was hoping you could tell our audience some of the platforms that you build games on, because I think it's fantastic and kind of outside of what I would even imagine, right? I mean, I'll leave it to you to answer. Yeah, we've done some really standard ones. And we've done some way far out ones there. And so i'll I'll go through them. um Well, we, we basically develop on I'd say four different platforms. We do a lot of work in Unity, and then we also work in Unreal. We've built a bunch of educational games on Roblox, and then sometimes our clients want us to develop something where the output is just pure HTML5. Because when you are making something for the benefit of humanity, and you know scale and access is so important, and a lot of times our games are meant to be you know, not only reaching the kids with ever the latest high-tech devices in the most wealthy schools, we're often trying to reach kids who um have less access to high-end devices, who are working on device devices for six years old, who have spotty internet, in some cases, no internet, and all they can do is, you know, download NUPS dolls. So, yes, anyone thinking out there and making games for education, just make sure that you're spending a lot of time optimizing for different platforms. um
00:09:30
Speaker
and and a lot of iterations back so that they can work in a lot of different environments. So of course we make games for PC. um Making games especially for positive impact games for browsers so they can be easily deploy deployed is really important in a lot of the games engines we ah work with support browser-based play. um You know, the still the most popular devices in schools is Chromebook. So obviously we're developing and and optimizing specifically for the Chromebook. We make games for mobile tablets, mobile mobile phones. We've then had to the chance to work in all types of XR technologies. So we've made games for VR all the way back in today and like the Google Cardboard all the way to now the highest end devices like the Quest Pro and the
00:10:16
Speaker
ah Quest 3. And then it gets weird from there. We've made games for a lot of like custom toys. So a few years back, we made a bunch of games for a learning device called SquarePanda. We've done some work for Osmo, which is like a tablet-based learning system. um Probably the most way out there game that we've ever built was for an MRI machine.
00:10:41
Speaker
um So basically, we were approached front by this really cool startup based in the Midwest um called Turing Medical, and they were exploring ways to improve the pediatric and MRI experience. And I didn't know much about you know the specific concerns about that, but um you know a lot of these kids, especially if they're really sick, are going frequently for MRIs.
00:11:08
Speaker
And you know as you know, to get a good image for an MRI, you need to lay perfectly stilled still in the machine. And being a kid, if you're going to get an MRI, like first of all, it's really you know daunting to be in a very sterile medical environment. you know the Usually the technician is up in a window somewhere that you know it sounds like the voice from God.
00:11:32
Speaker
um you know And you know you're also sick, so or you have some kind of so you're not feeling in your best. And one of the problems, I guess, traditionally with MRIs for kids is that for all those reasons, you know they can't lay still, and then it just prolongs the MRI experience even longer. So you take these kids and their families, they're already stressed because they're undergoing like heartbreaking you know medical conditions and now we're further they're further attitude to their stress because of this MRI experience. So Turing's idea was like, well, can we um you know add a device to the MRI machine that actually connects to the sensors that detect movement so that um the more that they the kid lays still, the more
00:12:24
Speaker
um feedback and reward we could give them. And when we met them, they had already done it with video. Like, the more you lay still, the more the video will continue. And you could see the rest of the story, but they really wanted to experience with a game. So we developed two different games for them for the MRI machine that the more you lay still, like the control palette for the video game is your body. And the more you lay still in the um MRI machine, the more you advance in the game.
00:12:53
Speaker
This is such cool thinking outside the box or inside the box, depending on how you want to look at it. And like, this is why I love EdTech. You're tackling these problems that like, maybe normally can't afford building a game or doing something. and and that' Maybe not the right way to put it, but it's empowering a greater good, right? Getting a kid to sit still, who's going into an MRI, it's got to be scary as anything to go in there when you're a kid, right? Even as an adult, it's scary to go in there and like,
00:13:19
Speaker
I don't know. I just think it's so cool how you how you have the ability to be able to think outside the box, work with your customers who you're working with to kind of build what they're doing. it And all that being said, I think you're building something for the greater good. And I think that is fantastic. So thank you for that. Yeah, I wish we take no credit for the idea that was altering medical, but we're really happy that they entrusted us with their vision to really build something great.
00:13:43
Speaker
I want to keep on this topic a little bit, but I want to shift for a moment because you mentioned the Midwest.
Midwest as a Growing Hub for Game Development
00:13:48
Speaker
You're in the Midwest. so Obviously, MDev is coming up in about a month here, and it's going to be really exciting. You've been a part of the Wisconsin Gaming Alliance for a number of years. Now you're the co-chair for a while, a founding board member. Let's start high level. Why the Midwest? We already have San Francisco and the West Coast. That's pretty much all we have here, huh?
00:14:09
Speaker
I think that's exactly it. I mean, I think that the, especially now, especially we were talking about COVID, post COVID, you know, I think the reality is that a lot of people during COVID hired people from outside of the West Coast. And I think that, you know, we were already growing as a region before COVID, but COVID just helped us grow even further. I think there's really talented, I mean, there's really a lot of great talent in the Midwest and a lot of great higher ed institutions with strong game programs that are graduating seniors that are really talented and kind of, you know, 10 years ago, if you wanted to make it in the game business, you had to graduate from where you were and pick up your bags and move to the coast if you wanted to have any kind of successful career in video games.
00:15:02
Speaker
ah But now it's it's it's it's converging that like, you know, the Midwest is a veritable hub for video game development. So not only do we have students graduating from some really great programs all over the Midwest, but now we're seeing companies, either indie companies or kind of niche companies like Filament Games, but also big AAA studios that are establishing or acquiring offices in the Midwest to kind of further expand their talent pool. You know, there's a lot of great things about the game industry on the West Coast. I mean, given that it's all concentrated, obviously it will always be the behemoth.
00:15:43
Speaker
But um there's also you know they it's also a very competitive environment for companies to find talent. And you know a lot of times that talent with the high cost of living on the West Coast, it's hard to find the right level of talent.
00:15:58
Speaker
and you know kind of provide them salaries that are livable for where they're actually located. So, um you know, having offices in the Midwest helps them broaden their talent pool, actually creates a system of, you know, checks and balances, you know, a different place in the country, so not everything is concentrated on the West, and like allows them to have further growth as companies.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've always heard from people from who are from kind of the Midwest, they like met a lot of them in Jersey, where I am, and they all end up moving back to the Midwest, they they love the area. And it's got a very big following, obviously, and to your point, it's expensive to be on the West Coast. With COVID, you can work anywhere. And I've seen in in Madison, a lot of big studios opening up some some AAA level studios, they're bringing talent there.
00:16:47
Speaker
How do you continue to promote this as a ah gaming hub? I guess ah part of my question I want to ask, and I don't know how to ask it, is what's what's missing there, right? like There's clearly an appeal to the West Coast, maybe not San Francisco, right about gaming. It's there now in the Midwest. But how do you continue to grow that? And what do you need as help, I guess? Yeah, that's a great question. so You know, I, for as much as I talk about game development in the Midwest and talk about the amazing things happening in Wisconsin, I am still constantly shocked by people have no idea there's any game development here. So part of it is, thank you for having us all on our podcast, because part of it is just getting the word out that great games and games that people love, like Call of Duty originated here and is being worked on every year here, right here, like 20 minutes from my house.
00:17:40
Speaker
um You know, Respawn opened a studio in the last 12, 18 months and the team here is working on Apex Legends. Like these are not, you know, little known titles. These are global hits that are being developed here. So yeah, I think part of it is getting the word out. And this is exactly why we established MDev as a conference to provide at least once a year a place for every, all of the talent in the Midwest to I come together to learn from each other but also then to provide an opportunity for all of the game industry stakeholders whether that's from like canada europe or the west coast or even the east coast to come visit us in the midwest and kind of meet the studios and meet the talent here in an effort to grow their own businesses.
00:18:30
Speaker
So I think really the idea for MDev was not only bringing everyone together, but becoming like a beacon to like a lighthouse for the rest of the world to like draw them in to come see what we're about.
00:18:44
Speaker
I think you're kind of going through the concept of obviously getting that exposure, but I've seen through through Ben Coelho's post, right? You're truly building also a community. It's community something we like to talk a lot about on the podcast, because we're all about communities. um But I see the Midwest as becoming ah a very strong
The Importance of Community and MDev's Role
00:19:00
Speaker
community. And I'm wondering, the life then if you take a look at the past couple of years, have you seen that community grow? Is there interaction between these other studios, you guys?
00:19:09
Speaker
I want to say do stuff, but that's such a vague. Yeah. But the funny thing is that before the Wisconsin Games Alliance was established, we didn't do stuff. yeah Like we kind of knew people at other studios, maybe people had worked together at one of the studios or kind of knew them, but there was actually very little conversation and collaboration between studios. Not because anyone had a, you know, like a chip on their shoulder or didn't have time. I think it's just, you know, as an industry, maybe, especially for the people, not on the kind of partnerships business side, but the people actually doing the work
00:19:48
Speaker
aren't, you know, maybe generally inclined, you know, kind of naturally inclined to go seek out those connections. So I think, you know, establishing the Wisconsin Games alliance Alliance provided kind of that invitation to everyone to come together to actually meet and foster collaboration. So we do do we, I mean, our big event every year is MDev.
00:20:11
Speaker
which is meant for the whole Midwest, not just Wisconsin. But then as the Wisconsin Games Alliance, we also have quarterly events to bring people together. um And we have you know a professional development series to try to grow um people's knowledge and competencies. We have relationships with all of the universities and higher ed programs in Wisconsin.
00:20:33
Speaker
A lot of our board members serve on the board of those programs to help direct the programs to be relevant to the skills that we are looking for in our studios to create that talent pipeline. um And honestly, just like knowing who's there, you know like the nature of the game industry is people build up and then come down. like There's just natural like growth and attrition in studios generally, depending on um you know, what projects are being pitched and funded. um So now like the big difference is like, okay, if someone knows that they're going to be doing a reduction, they can call everyone on the board and be like, who are you looking for? I've got some great talent. And we can help like very organically, like rehome people um when, you know, it's an unfortunate scenario where someone has to reduce their staff.
00:21:22
Speaker
You keep mentioning the Wisconsin Gaming Alliance, and I think that's important because it's a very big alliance. It's helping kind of unite everything around the area. And I'm curious, as someone that was the kind of founding member, a co-chair, how does that begin, especially as we just talked about kind of studios didn't did' not want to talk to each other, just weren't motivated to talk to each other. So how does that whole idea become a go from ah a light bulb to an actual physical idea?
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, the way it started in Wisconsin, which is not necessarily how it has to start in other places, is really was a conversation. There was some really ah prominent researchers in video games at the University of Wisconsin, um na notably Constance Steinkuller.
00:22:07
Speaker
ah Kurt Squire, and they got connected to economic development in ah Madison. And kind of through their conversations, you know, I don't think the Madison economic development realized there was so much video game activity in Madison.
00:22:25
Speaker
um So they held a convening where they just called who they knew and asked us to get together and kind of had this idea of establishing it. For years, we ran as a loose affiliation of studios trying to advance the mission without any real formal um formal corporate identity. like we um The first few conferences, um economic development was our fiscal agent and they kind of managed the money for us.
00:22:53
Speaker
um And then eventually we did establish a nonprofit. But kind you know as soon as they pulled everyone together, like the concept made sense. um it you know It was to all of our benefit. um There were only positives because it was like, well, we knew if the region grew, we would all benefit. And it would help us attract talent here. It would help us you know create more confidence when we were talking to publishers that like you know games out of this region are viable.
00:23:22
Speaker
um We then started like reaching out to all the different higher ed institutions to get them on board. We went from working you know primarily with the Madison Economic Development to the Wisconsin Economic Development, who really helped us through our process while we became a nonprofit and then really helped establish the Wisconsin brand. So it was just kind of a win, win, win, win. Notably, we were all still volunteers for the organization. We're a nonprofit. and all volunteers, and really our only source of revenue is through the conference. um And, you know, I think as an organization, you know, we hope to one day to be self-sustaining, to be able to employ some level of staff to really grow it. um And we have our eyes set on that. From your, in your words, MDev is a ah full Midwest conference that's focused on all all states in the Midwest. What does MDev mean to you?
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, well, i um I think it's the convening of a very special and important cohort in the video game industry.
00:24:31
Speaker
like i think I think there's something unique about working with games in the Midwest. And I think specifically it's what you stereotypically think of Midwesterners. We are really nice. We like honor our deadlines. like We help talent grow and support them. um you know The other nice things is you know if you are living in the Midwest, it's probably not necessarily a temporary move. We're not a transient population. So we you know that means a lot of our teams are really senior because people have you know families and mortgages and their roots are here. So they want to stay here. So that means they're super invested in doing good work and seeing their studios grow because they have a vested interest for themselves and their families.
00:25:26
Speaker
That's awesome. And I love that. I mean, the whole meme has been going around LinkedIn recently where the Nike CEO has been there for 25 years and went from kind of the bottom of the bottom to the top. And all of a sudden it's like, those are what these cities do. Like if you stay at a company long enough, especially in a non-transient city where you're going to settle down, you're going to put roots and you want to be able to go to a company and not have to worry about moving in the next couple of years. And I think that's an important mindset that people need to, especially when they grow
Jennifer Givornik's Career Journey and Skills
00:25:52
Speaker
up, right? They they want to settle down. It's a great place to be able to settle down.
00:25:55
Speaker
Yeah. We have like good public schools, fresh air. um you know you It's still a place in the country that you can afford ah you know to buy a home. sell For now, don't take it. There's a lot of positives. I know, seriously. If I were to go to Jennifer in elementary school when she's thinking about what she wants to do when she's growing up, is she thinking about video games at all and is it up?
00:26:20
Speaker
Clearly nothing about a partnership role, but are you thinking about are you a talkative person where you're going to go into some sort of networking type of role? That's the funniest questions. First of all, I don't think I played a video. I don't think the Atari came out until, you know, I was older. So, no, at three-year-old, I'd never seen a video game yet. But, no, Jennifer was found for Broadway. I was an actor-singer-dancer. um And my dream was to make it big under the lights, the shining lights of Broadway. And of be an actor-singer-dancer. And...
00:26:54
Speaker
I went to, when I went to college, I didn't know what I was going to major in and people were like, well, major in what you love. So I majored in theater and, you know, out my whole elementary school and high school and college, I was in a lot of plays and a lot of dance recitals. And I did a lot of singing, but I wasn't, it actually, when I was in college, you know, when some of my theater friends were making their sites for New York, um I did corporate recruiting. I don't know. I think something happened to me where it's like, I love doing it, but I love doing it as a hobby.
00:27:24
Speaker
Um, I also didn't, I mean, at the time I know things have changed, but I was graduating in 95 and I, I felt really nervous about like tying myself to a career that was so based on my looks. Uh, you know, especially cause you know, I considered myself intelligent and smart and that seemed like a big gamble.
00:27:45
Speaker
So um yeah, you know I ended up, I kind of didn't know what I wanted to do in college. I had this theater degree right after college. I ended up working for a couple of entrepreneurs and then I got hired into a big global IT t consulting firm um right before Y2K when they had established there weren't enough COBOL programmers in the world to fix Y2K and they had hired all of the computer science majors that there were, and there was none left to hire. So my company had decided that they were going to take people from non-technical majors and send them to a 16-week boot camp to learn how to code, and then we would be put on Y2K projects. so
00:28:28
Speaker
um Yeah. So I remember my interview, like all my classes were in theater and they asked me what I scored on my math portion of my SAT and I i did really well. I think I got like a 1600. So I was like, yeah, I like math. It's not that I don't like math. And they were like, well, okay. So then I went to this training And um turns out I love coding. It was such actually a nice break from talking so much about my feelings in theater to just having like black and white answers, you know, that it was there was no gray in coding. It was just black and white and was like solving puzzles. I totally loved it.
00:29:06
Speaker
um And it turns out I was good at it. And then because I was a drama major that was now a coder, I ended up being in all their recruiting materials. I remember they sent a photographer to do a photo shoot in Chicago and I was like in the brochure of like, you can code too. But what they didn't realize, it's like, well, I was always inclined towards math. I just had never pursued it.
00:29:26
Speaker
ah But when Y2K happened, and essentially nothing happened, you know you can thank me for that. um you know they definitely My company was thinking about where to put people, and they took me off. They were like, you're a really great engineer, but the fact is, is you understand technology. But more importantly, you can talk about technology. You can explain it to people who don't understand technology.
00:29:50
Speaker
And that's when I shifted from being an engineer to go more into project management. And then eventually, they were like, well, you can talk about technology and you're really good at executing projects. But you also have a personality that people seem to like. So maybe we should have you sell technology. And that's how I ended up there. Wow, that is one of the most unique stories that I've heard. Yeah, I loved every second of it. I think ah Broadway, fat what's your favorite musical? What did you want to star in?
00:30:20
Speaker
You know, I don't even think I knew what musicals there were when I was growing up. I just knew that Broadway was where you went to make it big in showbiz. There you go. But I love, I mean, who would think you go to eventually being a coder, even though you they sent you to the boot camp, which is great. I'm curious, do you think your theater skills, and I don't know much about theater. I have a lot of friends that do it, but I don't know if anything about it. Does that make you more social? Does it help?
00:30:46
Speaker
Obviously, what you said is you were you had a personality, you could talk through people. So that's why you went into recruiting and they moved you to the sales side of things, right? Like, did the theater background kind of give you that confidence to go talk to people about what you know?
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean in a couple ways, right? Like I think doing theater gets you comfortable in front of people and in front of a crowd for public speaking and doing presentations. So that was good. um But I think actually theater people are often really overlooked in the recruiting process ah when they really shouldn't be because you know what? Theater people are really good at following direction, taking direction,
00:31:26
Speaker
um you always work for the good of the play. So you're you're like, it is like bonkers. You learn so many team skills and not letting other people down and coordinating your effort. um There's so much rigor and practice that goes into theater that it's like, you think of theater of being people like super exciting, but the actual work of theater is really repetitive. I mean, it's not ditching, you know, digging ditches, but it's very technical and repetitive. So I think theater people develop the um the ability to like do hard things and do repetitive things and like rehearse until you get it perfectly right, take direction. um So I think we're really good team players. And I think definitely when I moved, I'm not sure how much theater helped my engineering skills.
00:32:12
Speaker
But definitely when I moved into project management, it was like kind of like directing a play you know when I was doing IT project management. And then business development is like putting on the play because now you're kind of like not only you know presenting you know your best pitch or your best idea, but you're also kind of um you know like eliciting like ah thoughts, feelings, and emotions about that idea.
00:32:37
Speaker
so i My big takeaway is if you're a recruiter, don't ah overlook the theater kids because they're very special people. I have two questions that are are based off that, if I can remember them. um you' You've been in many different roles. When you look back at it, um is there something that you missed? Do you miss the coding? Do you miss the acting and directing? Do you miss kind of like, you've been everywhere. So is there something that you missed? And then the second part of the question is going to be in your current role as head of partnerships, what skill set do you think you use the most throughout that day, whether it be project management or something else?
00:33:13
Speaker
Okay, those are two good questions. um Actually, so I did, while I was working in IT t consulting, I ended up getting hired by a professional improv company, which was kind of perfect for my schedule because you didn't have to reverse anything. You just kind of showed up and did it. So I did do that for 15 years. And then I retired when I was kind of just done. I felt like I'd fully explored that. So I don't miss anything in performing.
00:33:41
Speaker
Um, cause I felt like I did it for so many years. And you know, I kind of got to the point where I was spending so much time, you know, being in plays or being in an improv comedy where I was like making up characters in fictitious worlds that I kind of developed this really craving to stop living in like play land and actually be an exciting person in the real world. Like something split in me where I was like, I don't want to be in fantasy land. I want to be in the real world. So I don't miss that.
00:34:13
Speaker
But I do sometimes wonder, like when I say I loved coding, I loved coding. I would get in the zone and just be there for 12, 14 hours. I was really good at it. Within three months, I was promoted to a development lead a team lead. And I think within my first year of coding, I was managing an entire development team. I really liked the problem solving. I really liked doing it.
00:34:37
Speaker
and You know, it was probably a good idea for me to go into management and do more people oriented stuff, because that is also a very hard skill. And it comes naturally to me, so I don't feel like it's hard, but I know it is hard. um But I always wonder, like, I loved... I don't know coding also felt like i can make something like i always was i loved k craft projects you know like i loved a project and coding felt like a virtual craft like i could actually make something that works the way i want it to work and
00:35:11
Speaker
um So sometimes I do miss that. And I do miss that you know working on the people side, the big gray area is people. You don't know how every person is unique and you don't know how they're going to respond. And they might say one thing, but they might really mean another. and There's a lot of gray area with people and encode it like it either compiles or it doesn't compile. It either does what you want it to do or you don't. like like It's so black and white that it you don't spend any time double guessing it. Like if it doesn't work, it's your fault. Go fix it. it ah we I used to always joke around my first job out of school was customer support rep. And like it was the best days because you can look at how many tickets you close that day and you know how
00:35:58
Speaker
good that day was, right? You know how fulfilling that day was. And then you kind of grow out of the binary metrics of, hey, I closed X amount of things today to, I worked towards a project. And at the end of the day, you're just like, what did I do today? I think to your point, when you're coding, right, you make, you hit these milestones and you know, you hit these milestones. You're like, I did this today. That's awesome. Then you get to play with it at the end of the day, if you really want to. And I think that's something people often overlook is that it's quantitative versus qualitative kind of how you take a look at this and how you, how you,
00:36:27
Speaker
measure success but sometimes it's rewarding sometimes it's not just kind of got it right. I think in my current job in my I think that the kind of the.
00:36:39
Speaker
The profession of sales, business development, partnership you know has evolved in such a rapid pace. um you know I think today, I think the the most skills I use now, or I think what makes me stand out in my profession is really executive function.
00:37:02
Speaker
like I am keeping, I am in the middle of on average, 100 conversations with partners at any given time. And, um you know, keeping track of those conversations, making sure that we're delivering what we promised for those conversations, like making sure we're getting to the next step. And, you know, like, I'm managing 100 conversations, you know, my potential clients or my clients, they might be managing 1000 conversations, you know, in their job. So it's always like,
00:37:33
Speaker
I think the ability to, like yeah, the executive functioning of getting moving ships, getting all the conversations moving at the right time in the right direction, getting everything is probably the highest skill that I use every day. I think the second highest school skill is just is communication and understanding people. I mean, it comes down to it. there's so much you know Sales has changed so much that um you know most companies, you can go just to their website and find out their services and find out their rates. like it's not
00:38:05
Speaker
It's not like a salesperson in the 80s that you like took them to Coney Island. and I don't know. Did they take them to Coney Island? But try to like like create deep bonds so that you just sell them anything. We're just in an age of transparency and and a gloat we're globally competitive. so So how is, can you really differentiate yourself? And I think in the end, it's like sales has become more of a ah Partnerships is more now of a like helping profession than like a like a real sales skill. It's like getting you the information on time that you need to make it a good decision for you, your company.
00:38:45
Speaker
um so I think a lot of it just comes down to networking, right? And kind of keeping those contacts, staying in touch with people, having that conversation, right? If you're a sales rep and you go from one CRM company to another CRM company, and you reach out to the contact you've been talking to for the last 15 years, right? Like, yeah, we're not taking you to Coney Island, but I know you, you know me, it's a trust game. I think sales isn't sales as much as where it's partnerships. So I made a partner, right? I think you look at kind of the joint effort. I agree with you a change and I love everything you said. I think with 100 conversations going on, right? I always think about organization. and I'm a terrible at organization. I try one node, I try another tool, I try another tool. I'm just like, how do people stay on top of all these conversations? There's so many moving parts all around. And it's a skill within itself to just stay on top of it and organize it and and have those appropriate conversations with people, right? Like, not everyone likes to talk, but sometimes you guys just have a conversation with someone and it just, it's a skill within itself.
00:39:42
Speaker
I agree. And I'm lucky. I don't think, you know, some people are like, i could smell I could sell snow to an Eskimo. I'm not that kind of partnerships person. I could literally not sell snow to an Eskimo. Like i um I think it helped, you know, for me personally, um I really feel confident in our team that we produce really good work. And I'm really passionate about our mission. Like it's not just, you know, a nice thing to put on our website. It's really like,
00:40:11
Speaker
are, we are a mission centered organization that is really trying to impact the world in positive ways. And, you know, that's something I could talk about all day. I'm going to have one more question but before that. I have another different question, which is a simple one is you didn't grow up a gamer, but do you game now?
Casual Gaming Preferences and Midwest Talent Advocacy
00:40:29
Speaker
And if so, what is the last game you played?
00:40:32
Speaker
Oh, that's so good. I think I just, so I tend to pay games on my phone hu and I play casual games. And of course I play them until I feel like I've gone as far that I've gone with the effort I want to put in and then I delete them. I like casual puzzle games that I can pick up and put down easily on my phone. and And then I also am a point in my life where yeah, I want it to be engaging and fun. And I want to go to like my natural limits, but then like I'm not going to push beyond my limits really hard like I used to do and really invest just for the sake of time. All right. I love it. Yeah. I have one last question for you. First of all, I really enjoyed our conversations and everything. You have such a cool background on how you got from wanting to be in theater at some point to coding to save us from Y2K. Thank you. No problem. But um before we end today, I'd love for people to know kind of
00:41:27
Speaker
This is your sales pitch here. What do you want people to know about the Midwest? And more importantly, what should people who are listening know about filament games? Yeah, well, just I guess coming back to what I said before, I think like video game, people in the video game industry in the Midwest, um,
00:41:47
Speaker
You know, really want to make amazing games to be enjoyed by the rest of the world. um We, you know, we work hard at our craft. I think we have worldwide talent right here. And I think it's just, we're really comfortable that we are producing, you know, world-class games. i think It's now time for the rest of the world to accept and believe and see that the amazing talent that's here. So I think like not only will you get world-class talent, you know, we can usually help you on your rates compared to the West Coast.
00:42:26
Speaker
um and other expensive parts to develop, we try to keep our costs down. I think we have continuity in our staff that makes, you know, that means like we have really great staff that stay so that we can have really deep connections within the staff to, you know, further collaborate and make good products.
00:42:46
Speaker
um Yeah, and then you know I think because people are invested in their studios, you know we're not we tend to not be fly-by-night organizations. where you know Filament's been around for 19 years. like we and because The only way we can stay around for that long is doing good quality work and making sure that our customers are happy with our work or we wouldn't be able to have that longevity. So I think when you think specifically about Filament Games,
00:43:16
Speaker
you know we are a really focused player in the video game industry, but we're one of the top in the world in terms of making games that transform players. And we feel so you know proud and blessed that we could do this work out of Madison, Wisconsin. It's awesome. I think, again, you're building games for the greater good. You're building games to help empower the future of video games, right? We wanna continue this and you're building both the community as well as the future of games with with people playing film and games. And despite what you say, I think you are an excellent salesperson. I think you're gonna get a lot of ah people interviewing theater majors now to- Yeah. um Thank you so much for for participating in this. I'm really excited to meet Film and Games at MDev.
00:44:07
Speaker
This has been a great experience and and' just been just hearing and sharing your story. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Is there anything you just want to say to anyone ah before we sign off today? Thank you for sharing your platform with like studios in the Midwest. like This is a great opportunity for us and we really you know appreciate being on your platform and getting the word out ah because that's what we need. We need more people like kind of raising our profile and getting the word out that great games are made right here in the Midwest.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And we support the community. We support that mission. MDev is on that Friday, November 8th. We will be doing podcasts leading up to all different studios ah to learn all about the Midwest and everything going on there. And it's going to be great. So again, Jennifer and Filament Games, thank you so much for coming out today. I hope you have a great rest of the day and we'll see everyone in a month. Sounds good. Thank you.