Game Development: A Production Point of View

Alissa Brodsky is a video game Production Director. She has produced digital content for over 25 years, with a focus on games for the last 15 years. Her published titles include Where's My Water? 2 for Disney, Oddworld: Soulstorm with Oddworld Inhabitants, and Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria plus an unannounced multiplayer AAA game with Free Range Games. Alissa's diverse background includes a Master of Music degree from Manhattan School of Music in opera and a performing career in musical theater, as well as an endorsed ukulele artist, professional puppeteer, and children's musician.

Alissa believes in a people-first leadership style, fostering a supportive, compassionate team culture as well as delivering a successful game. Her career spans online, mobile, PC, console, and VR games through every phase of the development life cycle. She has led teams as small as 7 and as large as 130 people. Alissa currently works for Dark Arts Software developing an AR/VR fully-immersive dance game called Trip the Light that brings the connection of partner dancing to life with a virtual partner. The game is currently in pre-production with an early access publishing goal of this calendar year on the Meta Quest store.

Her talk will focus on the role of production in game development and what it takes to be a successful game producer. She'll cover the path to a career in gaming, best production practices and methodologies, leadership skills, mentorship, diversity in games, the impact of team dynamics in delivering a successful product, and a look at the progress of Dark Arts Software's game Trip the Light.

The Voices of XR speaker series is made possible by Kathy McMorran Murray and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) program as part of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Training in the Science, Technology, and Applications of Augmented and Virtual Reality at the University of Rochester (#1922591).