Fun fact: Mark Subotnick, aka "Bot," began as an SF club promoter in the '80s-'90s before starting his game industry career in 1993 as a QA tester at SEGA of America, earning $9/hr.

A longtime gaming and technology executive, Mark is renowned for his key roles at Intel, Microsoft, and SEGA, spanning multiple generations of technological innovation. He has worked in nearly every category of gaming—from production and business development to QA and marketing—and has credits in over 31 games with experience across 10 platforms and 8 platform launches.

Today, he’s the SVP of Partnerships at ProbablyMonsters, where his roles encompass partnerships, operations, business development, developer relations, live services, and more.

Mark emphasizes that recognizing the value of fostering connections has been crucial to his career growth. Tune in to hear about his unconventional journey, the evolution and challenges of the gaming industry, and the importance of nurturing relationships on the Here's Waldo Podcast.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Mark's early career and breakthrough moments
• The importance of building relationships
• The significance of adaptability in a changing industry
• The impact of inclusive leadership

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Here’s Waldo Recruiting
• Lizzie Mintus on LinkedIn
• Mark Subotnick on LinkedIn
• ProbablyMonsters

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show. 

Lizzie Mintus: Hi, I'm Lizzie Mintus, founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting. We are a boutique recruitment firm that focuses on the game industry. This is the Here's Waldo Podcast. In every episode, we dive deep into conversations with creatives, founders, and execs about what it has taken them to be successful. You can expect to hear valuable lessons from their journey and get a glimpse into the future of the industry.

This episode is brought to you by Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruiting firm for the game industry. We value quality over quantity, transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and programmers to understand the why behind their needs. Before introducing today's guest, I want to give a thank you to Wallace Poulter for introducing us. Wallace knows everybody. You know everyone too, so thank you. You're wonderful. 

Today we have Mark or Bot Subotnick with us. Mark is a longtime gaming and technology executive. He is known for holding key roles at Intel, 15 years, we'll get into that, Microsoft, and SEGA across multiple generations of technological innovation. He has worked in nearly every category of gaming from production to business development, QA and marketing. He's currently at ProbablyMonsters. Let's get started. I'm glad we could make this happen. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, me too. It's great to be here. And thank you, Wallace, for connecting us and giving me this opportunity to chat with Lizzie and get to know you. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm always amazed when I hear people talk about my background. It almost sounds like someone's talking about with somebody else because each of those slices were chunks of my life that feel distant yet really close, depending on how and what I'm talking about. 

Lizzie Mintus: Well, you've done so much. Yeah, I'm excited to get into it. I was looking at your background. You've done everything in games. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah... Legal, no. Finance, no. NHR, no. But now with my new job, I think it is everything else, which is scary. 

Yeah, it's exciting. I recognized that opportunity in QA that I could move out of that. I was still an entry level person and that there was all these other jobs I could move into. And I had the luck of getting a bit of a rotation at SEGA of being able to work in different roles during my time there and move around into unique positions that gave me insight into PR and a chunk of being a spokesperson, doing marketing and, doing the back of the box homes for things like Christmas nights and doing video and screenshots for those and got a lot of exposure. And also in QA, got to work with producers and see that pivoted job of what it's like to go make a game and run a team, and all the different steps that it takes to get there. 

Lizzie Mintus: You, would you advise that people start in QA? Do you think that's a good entry point? 

Mark Subotnick: It used to be the answer, right? That was the answer of, either customer service or QA. I was a temporary employee getting nine bucks an hour, with chance to make overtime in 1993, which was decent money then. And I have a friend who is, super big. I won't name drop, but big shot that started at that same time that was in customer service. And that person made it all the way to running one of some of the most successful games and some of the most successful entertainment in history. 

From that starting point, I got to do this a job I'm in now as senior vice president of partnerships at ProbablyMonsters coming out of QA. Our CEO came out of QA, but I also feel like our stories are a bit unicorn-ish in that there's hundreds of people that also went through QA that didn't get the opportunities that I got. And some of that was just timing, luck, skill set to do the course, the hard work, but also a lot of it is timing and luck. 

And so it's hard to say, Oh yeah, you could get where I am by that same path. But when I meet with my QA team internally, I do say, you have two great examples of this company of career paths of QA. It's fair for you to say, hey, my career path is to be CEO. Harold did it. Why can't I? And we should be able to have that conversation. 

Lizzie Mintus: So I want to hear a little bit about what you're up to and what you can say about what you're doing at ProbablyMonsters.

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, we're an independent video game company with the goal of changing the way games are made. And that sounds fluffy to some people, it really is. The way I break that down is, folks like myself and some of the other senior leaderships at the company, we've been around a while. And at some point we have to think about what's the future for the next generation of creators look like. 

And do we want them to go through... I'll be honest, it used to be kind of a badge of honor of how you paid your dues in the industry, especially coming out of QA of what now is looked upon as crunch with a frown that back then was honestly, people would brag about the amount of hours they worked and how hard it was because it was a sense of paying dues.

And now we're finding that healthy balance of, well, isn't there a different way to do that? We don't have to do it just because that was the way it was before. We definitely want to take the lessons from all those times and find out the best things to pull forward, but also create a place where humans can thrive. And what does that look like? 

And our industry has gotten a bit of a tarnished from the way that people have been treated and from the way people feel about the way they've been treated, and that has gotten all the way down to the consumer level. I gravitated towards working at ProbablyMonsters because so much of the focus was, what's that Tom pass off look like and how do we create a place where that next generation can thrive? You still have people like me live around for 30 years and have some gray hair, but creating an infrastructure in a home for all the next generation to thrive, to change the way we create games- can we build a model that, that, that does that? 

So our mission is to unite, guide, and empower our teams and finding the best path to market for them, which is hopefully redefining the way that we create, deliver exceptional games that people love to play. You know, same end goal. Put a smile on people's face when they play our game and delight our customers, but hopefully do that in a way that also gives our employees a long career path and a home to thrive in as employees.

Lizzie Mintus: How many studios does ProbablyMonsters have right now? 

Mark Subotnick: I'm glad you asked that. So we don't use the word studios. We use the word, teams. I can't answer the total question, but first thing we just recently announced is Adam Reimer coming on as our chief product officer. Thrilled to have Adam join. I'll happily introduce you to him and he can come on here someday. Adam has an incredible background and he's heading up that side of the world. He's an awesome partner to have. And he helps our teams find the way to create original, interactive experiences and build their IP and worlds , and manage a group of leaders of teams. 

BattleBards we've announced. They're a team working on a next gen co-op game. Super excited to have them. That team is led by folks that created games that people know, Torchlight, and some of them work on Borderlands. But a lot of leadership, coming directly from that team that brought Torchlight to the table. Super excited about them. You can Google that name and see videos and more about their announcement. 

Also Hidden Grove was announced. And just recently, that's founded by Chris Opdahl. He's known for his work on Halo and Destiny. No surprise given the DNA of our company. We brought some of those people along with other great talent from other teams, and we're super excited to see what they're working on. And then the rest we have not announced, but we have other teams that are working on projects that we'll announce later.

Lizzie Mintus: Top secret stuff, okay. 

Mark Subotnick: Yes. 

Lizzie Mintus: Follow along for more. I want to hear about your first job at SEGA. So you started in QA. Tell me some stories from your times there. 

Mark Subotnick: I've told the story a little bit, so I'll try and tell the somewhat shorter version, because I can embellish it a bit. I was a young guy and had just come off tour of an acting company, had started throwing what now are called Raves, but we just called them underground dance parties or clubs. And that was my life. I had made enough money doing that. I would go out every night and promote my event that was happening and I would luckily make enough money doing that. So really throwing these, couple thousand person festivals- lots of DJs, sometimes live bands. It was awesome. Love it. Love that work. 

The amount of money and people that were coming to that , there was a clear decay curve. It's probably my first experience of recognizing a decay curve without knowing what I was recognizing. And I had to make a choice of what was I going to do. I had a roommate and friend named Aaron, thank you Aaron, who had a newspaper saying SEGA hiring testers. And there was a wide call for people to come be video game testers. I had no idea what that job was, but I was a gamer. And that was when I wasn't from running clubs, I was gaming. I was coding to some degree, although I wouldn't really call it coding. I was self taught and hacking around. That was a passion of mine. So that was why I was shown that article.

I went and applied, got a job as a temp tester on the 3 - 11 night shifts at SEGA. So I was a SEGA employee, you know, temporary employees contracted out at SEGA of America. And that happened, timing wise, to collide with when there was, I believe IBM, Apple, I think Microsoft had a landmark suit, settled that is around contingent employees. You're probably way more familiar than I am about this and the ruling. So that case got settled and we had a ton of people that no longer could be employed because they were over the 18 month time limit and they would now have to be hired as full time employees and given full benefits. And we were temporary employees for a business reason. And I was right in that bubble. I had two weeks left. So there was a horrible day. Everybody went to Great America as a company. We had a great time. It's an amusement park near SEGA. And then that day we came back to work, layoffs, just ton of people gone, not by anybody's choice, but as a legal response to settlement.

I had a small window of whether I was going to get a job or not. That was a moment of also deciding, do I really want to be in video games or I want to go be an entertainment person doing nightclubs or whatever other thing could have been a career path for me. And I really loved the game I was working on. I had this deep respect for the producers. We had an amazing group of producers at SEGA that are all legends in the industry, Wallace being one of them. And I got to learn from a lot of them. And so I saw this path of, yeah, that job looks amazing. And I think that's something that I want to do. So I made a run for it and I got one of the last permanent positions. I was super, super lucky to get that.

And then that led to, okay, I'm going to turn this into a career and really focus on not just being a way to pay the bills while I go do my clubs, but this is the thing that I'm now focused on doing. And it's been over 30 years, which is amazing. I'm so lucky. 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh, I want to know more about your club days.

Mark Subotnick: Yeah. We'll talk about that in a different podcast. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. So tell me about working for a Japanese company at that time. There might've been some translation struggles and communication issues.

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, there are famous memes, stories that hit the internet of the way translations of that time went. That's actually, sometimes QA took that on. There's some very famous giant RPGs that I have friends that sat there with a Bible and would redline the translation from a QA's perspective and write bugs about like, this is offensive. This doesn't make sense. We had a lot of those.

We had games come over that were, at that time, culturally maybe acceptable in Japan, very much not acceptable in Northern America. Plenty of that. The biggest thing that I think a lot of people talk about, which I think is changed. I haven't worked at a Japanese company for a very long time was very much the feeling that we were at a subsidiary and decisions were made elsewhere, not understanding the decisions and not feeling like we had a voice.

I would say Tom Kalinske did an amazing job of giving us a feeling like we had a leader in SEGA of America that was a voice and that would that hear us and represent us in Japan, but there was always known conflict. Bernard Stoller, rest in peace, did a very similar thing during his era of being a very long, loud voice of saying, Hey, we have to do North America the right way.

So I did get the taste of the typical, Hey, this is what it's like to work in a Japanese company. But I also got to experience what it's like to see leaders that refused to live in that environment and wanted to fight to do the right thing for the company, for the consumer, for the product. So a taste of both.

Enough that I was super thrilled when a North American company said, Hey, do you want to come interview to work on our console? And while I did look at it with a big degree of skepticism of they make office and windows, like, what are they going to know about video games and entertainment? And yeah, they had your Microsoft game studios, but not enough in my opinion, credibility of like, yeah, they're going to fully embrace this. And then I went and interviewed there. And I was thoroughly convinced I wanted a job there. They had an amazing roadmap and plan of how they were going to enter the business. And that was my next journey. 

Lizzie Mintus: What was Muse communications? LinkedIn says that was in between. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, that was in between. And that was an amazing time to get familiar with startup life. I left SEGA. Bernie gave me an amazing severance and a gift on the way out. And so it was young person, single, I took off to Europe. I backpacked around Europe. I cleared my head. Came back, not knowing if I was going to get into games. And that time was tough. The job market was really rough. There wasn't just a clear path to another period where getting games, jobs was not super easy. 

And Gretchen Eichinger... I guess this is the lesson where, as you build networks, you stay in touch with people. You keep those relationships well oiled and in contact with those people and keep regular communication going. The lessons I got as a young person was never take credit for anything that you didn't do. Don't burn bridges. You don't know who you're going to report it to. The person that you think is beneath you by a hierarchical structure, which I don't even like using those terms, but people do look at the world that way, could be your boss tomorrow. Right? 

And that happened a lot. A lot of people had a QA, got different positions. And somebody that was a temp tester and you were a lead tester is now offering you a job because you are no longer a tester anymore. I've done it all the time. Lots of people's careers move at different paces. And I'm often hit up by people that I've looked at as mentors now for opportunity, just given the way my career has gone and those roles change all the time.

It's a huge lesson to learn that. Don't burn bridges. Don't take credit for anything and show up and do your job. And those three things helped me move my career greatly. So Gretchen Eichinger had run a third party at Sony and at SEGA. And I got to know her at SEGA. Went to go work with another person named, Mark Lewis, who , was on the board member of MUSE. Mark , I think it's fair to say, stood up the EA Europe business and was an executive there. They had an idea of working with a founder to take what we would look at as VRML and take that to like the next level. 

A lot of that tech and ideas, I'd say the closest thing that people might be able to recognize would be like a ps3 home. So it was a social platform on the web with avatars and using 3d on the web. So a lot of really cool tech, but I think maybe too early for the world that at the time didn't really recognize what we were trying to build.

Now, I think would be a pretty interesting platform for people to play with. And we had a lot of game people building an SDK, building a platform so that people can create whatever content they want on that. Similar to what you might be seeing happen in people's approach to the metaverse now, but just web based and way, way, way too early.

It was a lot of fun. Really, really cool people, but that ended. And right around that time I interviewed another interesting chunk for, definitely fits for this topic of the podcast was, at that joke, I left MUSE. I didn't know what I was going to do. I went on a series of interviews. Some of them were horrible. One specifically was, they threw me and another producer in a room, and I basically were trying to get free work out of us. 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh. What were they asking you to do?

Mark Subotnick: Whiteboard solutions to their current software platform, whiteboard out distribution plans, like basically free work. And we were both like, I don't know if I want the job that much that I'm willing to do the job before I'm getting paid. And he handed me, the recruiter, number for Microsoft in that meeting. He said, I interviewed, I don't want to move to Seattle, but you would be amazing at this. And so I got my job at Xbox because I was in a bad interview and just happened to be nice enough to the other person in the bad interview.

Lizzie Mintus: Well, that's key. If you had been rude or maybe if you hadn't been so friendly, like I know that you are, you wouldn't even work there. So that's a great lesson too. 

Mark Subotnick: Super lucky. And then that led to definitely the career I have now. It was like, I met my current boss at Xbox. I got to grow my network and do developer relations there, which really took the previous skillset and applied it to how do you get people to like this platform and how do you get them to ship the best games possible on this platform and give them the support they need. But that opened a wide network of developers that I know as we went from launch of Xbox to launch of live, to launch of Xbox 360, which was really cool. Crazy ride. 

Lizzie Mintus: I want to hear about the launch, but I also want to hear about SEGA because you did marketing and you did PR from testing. So I want to understand how that transition really occurred. Because like I said, you've done so many things. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah. That one was, so I'm, I went from tester to what they call a supervisor. It was basically you were managing. You weren't the QA manager, but you were in between the test group. And there was two shift leads. It was two day shift supervisors, two night shift supervisors. So I was one of those night shift supervisors. I started getting some management experience and more exposure as a result of that.

And I had two paths that I'd opened up one, go to the producer group, work from assistant to associate and there were lots of us applying for those jobs when I was in the Rhine. And then the other was Bernie Stoller and a gentleman named Mike Latham, both rest in peace. They had said, Hey, we want you over here doing this interesting job. And they basically created a job for me that was called the senior software specialist.

And I sat on the executive floor and a corner office all of a sudden, but I did all the video for TV, all the video for ads, all the video for our B roll. So I played the game. I captured it. I edited it. I did all the time code of where each thing was. I worked with the game teams to get the right bill to do that. I did at the back of the box shots. And yes, sometimes I used Photoshop and cause it wasn't a good thing to get the right camera angle, or I would go into a different mode than traditional gameplay to get the right picture of what games looked up. We'd do some of that. 

And because I started doing third party analysis to the executives, they learned I could talk about games. And I think they also just threw me in front of people, like when Victor came through the office with Electric Playground, Bernie knew Tommy and Victor, he's like sabbatnick's my guy that does this weird job down the hall. He's the one who can talk about all the product. And they just threw me into that.

So I became a PR spokesperson. I did get trained. That was an interesting story because, similar to you, I don't take direction incredibly well. 

Lizzie Mintus: Me?

Mark Subotnick: I do what I'm gonna do. 

Lizzie Mintus: Someone just told me that yesterday in a really nice way, 

Mark Subotnick: Oh, in a good way, right? There was things I was like, I'm not gonna say that. There's no way.

Lizzie Mintus: Totally. 

Mark Subotnick: I don't care what your PR line is. I'm gonna say the truth. And that led to me actually really getting that role because I could. I could translate and I could balance. And translating is an interesting thing that opened up jobs for me is because I did each of those different roles. I learned the language. So I knew the language of QA. Through QA, I learned the language of product development. Then I learned the language of marketing. I learned the language of PR. 

And they stopped becoming these evil entities, which sometimes they are. QA, you're like, ah, marketing in the suits, don't ever know what they're doing. And product development, they, often there's conflict between the two. Legal's always trying to stop me from doing something I want to do. And I started getting the perspective of, no, legal's actually really here to protect me and help me. I know what it's like to try and do marketing. It's really hard, which is something I love about what we do at ProbablyMonsters. Just a tip to our group is we're embedded and embraced and part of the same team from concept on instead of comes in and, Hey, you're halfway done with your product. I'm going to tell you what to do. Change it, fix it, aand talk about your product in a way that shows I don't really know what your product is. That's where that conflict came from. But I learned how to speak all those languages, which definitely helped me in my career. It helps me a ton in the job I have now. 

Lizzie Mintus: In life. It's like the best skill to have. 

Mark Subotnick: You get empathy, you understand how to wear that person's hat and see their perspective. It definitely helps a ton. I wish I could say I planned that. I was just lucky enough that these jobs happen. But yeah, I did a lot of different things in that bizarre role. And then that role led to Bernie saying, Hey, we're launching Dreamcast and we're going to do an internal development at SEGA. Do you want to run at it? And there was NFL 2K or a couple titles that were going to go fight for being green lit that we're all going to come up with a concept, go through a competition basically, and then someone gets to go make a game out of that.

The NFL one was a clear path of like, we'll, we'll give you that job. But there was, I've told this in other podcasts, there was a group of sports testers that I would have been a jerk to take that job from. There was like a line of people that their whole career at SEGA had been specialty in sports games. I was not one of them. I jumped in and out of their pool every once in a while. I tested world series baseball in some of those games, but wasn't a lead on those games that they wanted that career path. I would have felt horrible if I just leapfrogged into that because of a relationship with an executive. So I passed on that. I went off into the Game of Thrones, the competition. He won.

I was heading up a team, making an internal game for SEGA Dreamcast launch. Our game was the E3 shooter content that was shown when Bernie was on stage launching Dreamcast for E3. There's a long story of why that game didn't ship, that's sad and probably not the best content for your podcast. And I've already done that story on a, on the Retro Hour Podcast, something like that, where I went into detail about what happened there. 

The TLDR version is, had a team going, we were making decent milestones for Dreamcast, and there was a Sonic US team being built. That leader of that team came through, looked at our tech, assumed a lot of people that weren't Japanese, didn't speak Japanese, spoke bluntly about taking our tech and firing us all once we went gold, other than a couple of people to transfer our tech over to them. And so then a couple key engineers preemptively found another job. And that at that time, take my team, it just, it was impossible. It would have cost too much for us to take that title to the end. So sad story, great lessons learned. 

That led to the end of my time at SEGA because when we sunset that, I got to go into Bernie's office and say, all right. We've decided to shut this down. Do I have a job here still? And I was like, yeah, you have a job. I don't think you're going to like it. You should probably go spread your wings. And I was like, yeah, I should probably go spend my wings.

Lizzie Mintus: I can imagine you saying that with your directness, but that's good. It took you to where you are today. So then you went to Microsoft. I want to know your Microsoft story. Tell me about launching Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox 360. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah. The interview process was brutal and I didn't think I even was going to get the job. 

Lizzie Mintus: Why? 

Mark Subotnick: And this is documented, they had a pretty hardcore, go to the whiteboard, try to break you down interview process. But to be honest, I really respect it. I don't like what it does, necessarily the feeling that the humans may get going through it. But it really did, it did make me feel challenged and valued when I got the job. And made me feel like they really, they made sure they knew who they were hiring, and they knew what potential weaknesses I may have, or strengths, well before I walked in the door.

I'm a very harsh critic to myself. So it's a combination of not nailing every answer in the timeframe I thought I should, and how challenging it was that I came out going, Oh, wow, they're going to think I'm an idiot. And there's no way they're going to offer me a job.

Later, I had one of the admins pull me aside and said, do you know how high your scores were? Like they loved you. I wish I could be nicer to myself. I do that. And I wish I had that perspective, but I am a harsh critic and maybe that's part of the success. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's part of the success. Yeah.

You just have to wrestle with it a little bit, but it drives you for sure. Yeah. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah. So I got to Microsoft they did kind of validate that feeling in a sense of you probably felt like you were top of class your whole life. Now you're in a room with everyone who's been top of class. Welcome to the major leagues. And while that is horribly cocky sounding, I look at the people I was in a room with, and there's a lot of truth to that. There was just brilliant people everywhere, top of craft people, all with a very serious mission. And my fear of joining Microsoft, the evil empire of this giant corporate company was completely thrown out. 

We're off as this rogue group, not at the campus, in our own building with a 10 year runway to go make this happen. And that was like, whoa, we've got this big company behind us and they know it's going to take a long time to pull this off. And what a great job to be told like, here's your corporate credit card. Your job is to go make developers like us and want to make content on this platform. Go. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's perfect for you. 

Mark Subotnick: Holy moly. I was like, yeah, this is amazing. That was the job of solving problems, getting people to make the best game possible on our platform. I got to meet Harold and a lot of the people I work with now, cause they were making Halo. And our groups were definitely intertwined.

I was in the advanced technology group. He was over in the first party group, but we deeply supported them. And so that built a relationship that led to other career opportunities many, many, many years later. What a treat. Years later, they just came out with the cheat code that shows are the credits for who was involved in launching X Box. And it's pretty amazing to see my name in there and like to think back, wow. What a cool opportunity to be a part of launching a new brand and new platform. Live , that was on the original Xbox and that was an amazing thing for us to be a part of. And I look at my ship it, which is this thing they give you at Microsoft, the little plaques. And I'm like, I was on every version of live until I left. 

That was what a cool thing to be a part of also building up, cause we had visions at Dreamcast that were similar of an online machine and connectivity. And we put a modem in this thing in 1999 that made very little sense to try and drive real connectivity. But the vision was there. Of that's the future where gaming is going. And Xbox really just delivered, really amazing platform for connectivity and raise the bar for everybody in console. Thrilled

to be a part of that and then to pull developers into that and have the conversation of, it makes sense to still do live to some degree, even if you're a single player game. Why? Well, you'll get free advertising. I don't get it. Well, people see people playing your game and that may make them want to play your game. And then you see the light bulbs go off. It's like, yeah, we're driving free exposure here. And then the story I would pitch was, Look, think about why you buy blu rays. And at the time that was a thing people said, I know most of the people watching are going to be like, what's a blu ray. But it was the way we consume movies at a time. And DVDs or blu rays had this added benefit of extra content. 

And we know in making games, there's lots of extra content. There's content. We don't get to find the ship. That people, artists, designers, producers still have a ton of affinity to. I just, I wish I could have gotten that piece out. DLC was my version of that. I was like, look, here's a place for us to allow you to extend your universe. And make those tough decisions of what to ship to get that product out the door. But you don't have to leave that on the floor. Now you can come back to revisit that content, those assets and get it out. 

That was amazing to be a part of watching that launch and then seeing the evolution of where it's gone now and the amazing, my, my children live in a world where they expect to be able to play pretty much any game cross platform, pick it up and play with the same progress, wherever they go. Have their friends follow them, and what a world they live in compared to the world I struggled through but helped build for them. It's amazing. 

Lizzie Mintus: I bet you tell them about Blitter and they're like, Dad, what? 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, dial up or any of that. They're like, yeah, whatever. I don't even understand. 

Lizzie Mintus: Whatever, Dad, I'm streaming on Twitch right now. Don't bother me. I don't know if they're Twitch streamers or not. 

So I read your LinkedIn. 

Mark Subotnick: Not yet. 

Lizzie Mintus: Not yet, yeah. But hopefully in the future. Okay, you have so many recommendations. Everyone says you work hard. You're so great to work with. And obviously you have this innate people skill ability.

But I want to know more about building successful relationships when you are the liaison between the dev team, like the product and your devs and the consumer, what advice do you have or lessons did you learn for how to be successful in that role? 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, that translation piece is part, of really, really key. Empathy... I have some mentors that are really, really good at, better than I am by far, at listening and reading the room and before they even speak, thinking about how the words they're going to say are going to be heard by each person and how they're going to be interpreted by each person. I look at that and go, wow, I speak off. I go with gut a lot. 

A lot of my skills are just inherently like who I am and how I became a human luckily, but I do watch that and go, yeah, that's like, when you think of the, like him or not, politically, Bill Clinton was talking about how everybody felt like he genuinely knew them when they met him. He'd remember everybody's name. He could make a connection with people, he had this high charisma rating, if you want to use our RPG sheets, right? And that was something that I recognized that I had a bit of and I could hone that. 

And the biggest thing that I think people want is, they want to feel like they're listened to, Like someone has their back and supports them and someone understands them. And I saw in development early on these silos and these hierarchies and really weird behavior of engineers, just you're an artist. Get out of my room. I don't want to listen to you. And when I had a team, my first thing was like, I created a position where there was an artist that was basically what now is the technical artist who, your job was to talk to the engineers and translate the art needs to the engineers in a way they can understand and then manage the expectations of the artist and translate back and forth because there was just all of this conflict. 

So early on recognizing that and coming from QA, I think you really see it because we in QA always felt like, we have the best ideas and they don't listen to us. We play their game more than they do. We know it's broken. We know what's fun. We play everything. But also getting a mirror of, yeah, but you're an eighth of the market and there's business decisions that need to be made. 

Those were great lessons because I took all of that into consideration. I have to be able to understand why this person is having conflict and how to drive a result with this person. And the way of just, I'm a producer. Do it. We're going to force everybody to live in a world that's understood a lot of ambiguity and unclarity just because this is the way to get it done- that approach can get your results, but it's brutal. And it turns a lot of humans through it versus an approach of, how do I get everybody on the same page and running in the same direction so that we can we can achieve success.

And I saw different leaders throughout my career with those different approaches. And the person that could get everybody to march up that same hill... Bernie was really good at that. He wasn't the best public speaker, but he could get in front of a company and be like, this is why we're all going to do this. Everyone in this room, let's go. Peter Moore, I know I'm name dropping, but Peter's amazing at that. Both of them would talk about the tyranny of the idea. I don't care if the idea comes from the janitor. If it's the right idea, we're going to do it. 

That kind of statement makes everybody in the room feel they're heard, empowered. Yeah. I'll follow that person, cause they've got my back. That's incredibly important. I've been shocked by how many times I've taken over a team and I get amazing quick results and turning around when it was just as simple as. Hey, I'm here. I understand your problem and I'm going to support you and fix things to make your life better. And then the change in productivity from that human is easily measurable and quickly noticed. So yeah, a lot of it is the simple. Treat people well, listen to people well, have empathy for someone trying to understand why they're in the position that they are in.

The dev and business, there's going to be conflict. We're making software, which is really, really hard to make. It's expensive. It's difficult to predict just unto itself. And entertainment, which is a hit driven business, requires a ton of guessing, risk, and a lot of investment before you get potentially the high reward. Those are really, really hard things. It's tough to get balance. I think, I call it healthy tension. I say that a lot. And I'm sure people look at me like what a masochist, but it is required. 

I want creatives to be pushing on us to make the best product possible. And I want business to put constraints on the creatives, cause I honestly believe that's when they make the best product possible, but also it ensures that they still have a job and we still have a business we can run. When we can get everybody to see that and that we're all working together, it's awesome. There's far too often the Spider Man meme of. I'm waiting on you. You're not doing it. It's because of you. That happens everywhere. But my solution to that is great. Let's all get in a room and talk about it. We probably shouldn't leave the room until everybody feels heard. And that can sometimes be really long and brutal. I learned some of that coming from Microsoft and the way they address conflict and program and plan their software and entertainment products.

Intel is heavy on process. Microsoft And that's how they make 10 year roadmaps for Silicon and have remained at their degree of success. And taking bits and pieces of each of those companies as I moved into now a role where I have to do a ton of that, right? At, at some points in my time in PM, I had GMs of game teams reporting to me until Adam came on board. So I did have to, okay, I'm BD, I'm Partnerships, and XDAB and Codev, but I also need to represent a GM. 

There's already conflict in just the roles that I'm representing. Making sure that I give each side plenty of room to be heard. And then part of it is making transparent decisions. And they're not, everybody's going to always be happy with them, but if they can hopefully understand, that's a big piece I took from Intel. They had coined the term, disagree and commit that comes, I think, from Andy Grove. I don't give proper credit, but, at least that's where I learned it. And Intel created OKRs and all these other things that process, process, process.

But the disagreeing command is part of their culture. I know many of other companies take it, but that's a it's a platform to say, look, this is the direction we're going. You can disagree, but if you're part of this is what you're committing to doing will give you plenty of room to be heard. And we're going to hear to the degree, but eventually decisions made.

And the people in this company need to be committed to the business decisions. Those are difficult. I've done it. I've gotten to the point where I've almost been like, I'm going to put my badge down on this one. But it allows really the sense of being heard being noted, but also saying, Hey, there's a reason we're going to go forward and make a decision as a company, as a department. And this is where we're going. We need people moving in the right direction. 

Lizzie Mintus: The key thing is, though, just explaining the why. Here's the why. Here's the business decision and the creative decision, the backstory. And then once you have the why. 

Mark Subotnick: And not force everyone to agree to it. Know that people are going to be like, yeah, that's fine. That's fine. But plenty of the times, I've heard that before. Bring it to me. Ah, you're every leader before you said the same thing. Proof is in the action, and that's great. I hear that, move forward. If there's a disagree and commit, where it's, I strongly don't agree with this path forward. I want it noted. Cool. It is documented. And I want you to know, if you're telling me that you're right, we're going to come back and shine a spotlight on why we shouldn't know. We should have listened to you in that case. And maybe we need to get you in the driver's seat. But yeah, it's acknowledging and transparency around.

The decision, hopefully give us some comfort to the group of why. And hopefully there's enough transparency on the business strategy and direction that everyone else can also say, okay, now I don't agree. I would do it this way, but I can get why we need to do this. And I can get on board. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. It's like parenting, too. You're just managing people and managing relationships, but everyone does want to know why. Why is this happening, and what is going to probably happen next. It's just human nature. 

Mark Subotnick: Yeah, and how is this going to impact me? 

Lizzie Mintus: Totally. 

Mark Subotnick: That's a big question a lot of people ask. I'm guilty of the same thing. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, for sure. So you were credited in 31 games. What would you say, out of all of those is the most memorable to you? 

Mark Subotnick: I talk about this one a lot when I get answered this. I'm gonna just keep it consistent so people don't feel like I'm giving the random answer. Batman and Robin, animated Genesis has a lot of the great stories. So does Star Wars 32 X, Star Wars Arcade 32 X, which I have the one arcade version of that down in my basement. Cabinet of that game is near and dear to my heart. 

The Batman game was really hard to get out the door. The co lead I had, she and I worked more hours than I can ever recall. I think the only other game I worked more hours on was Star Wars 32X. I got sent to the developer. So in QA, we were mostly black box testers at SEGA. So rare that we would get a chance to change the game beyond just how we caught bugs or occasionally they would listen to a recommendation. We could do these bugs called comments. Hey, I think you should do this. Most producers did that, like close, close. Yeah, that's nice QA person. I know what I'm doing. 

Every once in a while we would get one in and that felt amazing. But Batman, the difficulty was really, really high. QA was having a hard time getting enough people to get through the platform. The feedback was consistently, it was too difficult. So they actually gave us builds that allowed us to tune difficulty levels. And so we could go in and actually impact the game. And that was pretty amazing. 

I have a ton of affinity to that game. I later got to meet the people that made Cuphead and we had this bonding over how much they were inspired by that game and making Cuphead. I had never made the connection until I talked to them and was like, Oh, wow. Oh yeah, that boss is similar. And we had this incredible conversation about it. And so that made me feel like, oh, wow, that game is still touching people in a really unique way now and inspiring cool new content.

Star Wars was a, Hey, you're one of the only two humans that can finish this game. It's also very difficult. So we're flying you down there and you're staying there until the game shows. And me and another tester went down. We didn't sleep a lot. We thought it would be cool. I would get in a hotel. And it was like a couple hours a night where I had within a pillow. And the rest of the time I was testing another bill, see if it broke, waiting for the next build. But that gave me relationships I have to this day that are near and dear to me, but also I got to see what it's like to really be there while the game was being made and see the different roles and impact that. And that definitely solidified where I wanted to be go with my career. 

Lizzie Mintus: Walk uphill both ways. 

Mark Subotnick: I worked on a ton there. We didn't ask for, nor were we allowed to get credits for the games that we helped on. So tons that I would call out, those all would have been special things, credits. Anyway, that's the most it would have given me I was ever a member of a team. But St. Throne was near and dear to my heart and watching them go from us greenlighting them and giving them a deaf kid to giving such a big title from GTA, run for the money. It was just amazing to watch that. And I'm thrilled to be a part of that process too.

 Hello to all my friends from Volition in the past. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I used to hire for Volition, relocate people to Champaign, Illinois. And I remember telling them on the phone that a house only costs $100,000 at the time here. Can you believe it? You're in San Francisco. Let's do this math. 

Mark Subotnick: Oh, I Champaign was awesome. I love visiting it there too. It's a cool little town. I was pretty jealous of the lifestyle they had. They're making a game, a super cheap area, college town, had plenty of culture still. They're making this really cool like gangster open world. Yeah, it was awesome. 

Lizzie Mintus: Look, you're a recruiter saying all the things. No, it is fun. And you just have to find people. For some, that's just the hard stuff. No, but for some, the lifestyle makes sense. You just have to present it in the right way. That's the fun puzzle about recruiting. But I mean, recruiting is kind of like your job a little bit. You just have to figure people out what you like, what's important to you, what's really important to you, and then make that match.

Mark Subotnick: I think a lot of people need help in that. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yes, both. People need help. Like, what do you really want? Okay, I hear that you're making this money. I hear that you have this current job, but is that really what you want to do? What's up with your life? Do you have a lot of family members you're supporting? Have you had your career? Now you really want something that's affiliate. What are the things you care about? 

But for companies, too, you would be shocked how many companies are like, okay, here's the job description. Go ahead. And then you have to back it up. Okay, you just copied this job description from Riot. You're not Riot, so let's get a real job description. Let's think about the things that you want. And let's think about what's realistic, too. If you're this little startup, you just combine two completely separate roles into one. This is unicorn. You could start there, right? Maybe this is the job you're going to have, but you might need to make some compromises along the way if it is not realistic with the next time. So just a handful, but I think it's fun. I like to have those conversations. And then it works and it's gratifying. It's the best. 

Okay, you talked about some amazing mentors you've had and my final question is, I'd love to hear who, I'm sure you've had many, but who stands out to you as someone that's been your biggest mentor and what lasting advice have they given you?

Mark Subotnick: Is it okay to go with faces? Because there's different chunks of career for different mentors. 

Lizzie Mintus: So this is your answer. Answer however you want. 

Mark Subotnick: SEGA early on, I mentioned Mike Latham, Ed Ananziato, who's still in the industry. He's a legend. And Bernie were people that had heavy influence on me at the time. Some good and bad, right? I see what that reputation is like, but also, wow, that's pretty savvy way to close a deal or get something accomplished. And then, Kurt Busch, just how to be an awesome producer in this industry. They were legends, some of them not with us anymore. Some of them still in the industry and heavy, heavy influence on me from the SEGA days.

At Microsoft. There's so many who really stands out to me. Angeloff and the way he approached the company, Laura Friar, watching Harold from the other side, which is part of the reason I work with him. Just amazing. I got to work with Rod in the early days. I wouldn't say that he was a mentor, but he and I got to work watching him grow up as a producer. Was amazing in his approach and he's such a good human and he's so good at what he does. And you can see that reflected through the games and his career. It's amazing. 

Everybody in the Xbox advanced technology group don't fall necessarily into the mentorship category, but it was a rare group of humans that I got to work with that all inspired me to be better.

And then Intel. I got to work with Pat before he became CEO, and he left and he came back on Larrabee. He's an incredibly inspiring human. I wouldn't call him a mentor. I don't like it to text Pat or call him, email occasionally, but as a leader, got to watch his style of leadership. My time at Intel, I also got to work with Jeffrey Katzenberg, a very intense and inspiring leader, Rene James, and they all have good and bad that I got to take from the way they approach the company and the way they approach leadership. And Paolo Delini, rest in peace, CEO of Intel. Got lucky enough to get time with him. 

And then I'll drop two more names, John Bonini and Marcus Kennedy were folks I got to work with at Intel that are just, incredibly inspiring humans and their approach to culture, approach to leadership, approach to team building. I take a ton of that with me into the job that I have now. And I'm lucky enough to say that Harold's a friend, he's a boss, but he's a pretty inspiring human and leader as well. And has some aspect of that 'cause I don't like working for somebody who can't teach me something. Either gimme a reason to report to you is hopefully a lot of money or ideally, you're helping me grow as a human and helping me learn. And Harold hits the growth and learn spot. He sees an inspiring human. And so that's one of us come to the company and work there. And hopefully, he's built with me another group of leadership that offers that to other people as well. 

Lizzie Mintus: Look at all the people. 

Mark Subotnick: I can't say no to helping people. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Well, you have so many people that have helped you and I know you've helped so many people. It's fun to hear everyone's career stories about all the people that helped them along the way, because everybody who has any level of success has so many supporters from so many different places.

Mark Subotnick: Yeah. More than mentorship, not to say any of them don't help me, They've helped me a ton. It honestly the core group of friends that I've had. I'm lucky enough to have three. I won't name drop them, keep their privacy for them. But we started to test together, and we are all still in the industry. We're all doing well. But in like 93, we were all $9 an hour testers. And we are now 30 something years later, still in the industry, lots of people from tests, but that core group are people I talk to on a daily basis. 

So when there are tough times, they're there. If one of us needs a job, we rally around that person and open up our network. One of us is going through a tough time at work. We have other experts we can lean on and get advice and trusted, a safe place to go and share what's going on and get real solid feedback.

I guess that'd be the core theme of this podcast is that, that don't burning bridges and really recognizing the relationships and fostering the growth of those relationships has grown my career. The value I offer companies is my network and my relationships. So focusing on that created an asset that people now pay me for. And I had to continue to put energy into those relationships, when I meet new people, approach them the way I would want to be approached so I can continue to grow that. 

That's people say, Oh, my superpower is getting people like me and then people like to do deals with people they like. There's some truth to that and, it's not always conscious with me. I'm lucky that way, but it is something that does require focus and awareness and effort and energy to put into the relationships to get them to the state they need to be. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I always joke that I keep track of so many people. I talk to hundreds of people per week, but it's incredible and it's my superpower. And my parents are super introverted. They leave public events, like they hate it. 

Mark Subotnick: How did you learn? 

Lizzie Mintus: No, it's honestly just my innate nature. My dad would take me to trade shows with him and people would give me stuff and they'd get to know my name. And I'd bring them over there and it's like, ah, but I think that's my social talent, you know? And when I heard about recruiting, this is perfect. 

Mark Subotnick: It's such a great fit for you.

Lizzie Mintus: I'm glad you are where you are. 

We've been talking to Mark, AKA Bot Sabotnick, VP of Partner Alliances, and more, at ProbablyMonsters. Mark, where can people go to learn more about you or work for ProbablyMonsters? 

Mark Subotnick: More about me. I don't have a ton. I mean, I'm on social, so I guess botnik is my Twitter handle. I don't do a ton of social stuff. This is my way of interacting with the community, but ProbablyMonsters, ProbablyMonsters. com. We have a ton of information about what's going on at the company. Just put some new videos out about the teams and new hires and the culture. That's the best way to reach out. And then career wise, LinkedIn is if you want to reach out to me there, I'm accessible there and happy to talk. 

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you so much. 

Mark Subotnick: Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. To catch all the latest from Here's Waldo, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. We'll see you next time.