Laura Taranto is the Senior Director of Product Management at Big Fish Games, a developer and distributor of casual games for computers and mobile devices. With 14 years of experience, Laura has traversed various phases of game development, with a particular emphasis on nurturing and growing live titles. In June of 2021, she joined Big Fish Games, where she spearheads new game development and oversees the popular game EverMerge. Before that, Laura held positions at esteemed companies, including Scopely, King, and Wooga, where she contributed to the success of titles such as Tuscany Villa, Farm Heroes Saga, Pearl's Peril, and Diamond Dash. Beyond her work in product management, Laura also contributes actively as a writer and podcast host at Deconstructor of Fun, a leading source of insights into the game industry.

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

• How Laura Taranto began her career in the gaming industry
• Laura discusses her role at Big Fish Games
• Analyzing player feedback for game development
• Laura shares recent shifts in game development and emerging industry trends
• The evolution of user acquisition 
• What are some of Laura’s most rewarding game developments?
• Laura's tenure at King and what she found fulfilling about her time there 
• How Laura overcomes imposter syndrome and adversity in the workplace
• Deconstructor of Fun: how Laura became involved in the podcast
• Transitioning into a product management role

In this episode…

Puzzle games have long captivated players with their addictive gameplay and brain-teasing challenges. Behind the scenes, game developers continuously strive to innovate and refine their creations to meet the evolving preferences of players. How can aspiring gaming professionals break into the intricate world of puzzle game development?

Seasoned game developer Laura Taranto highlights one key aspect: the importance of analyzing player feedback in shaping puzzle game development. By closely examining player comments, reviews, and suggestions, developers gain valuable insights into what aspects of the game resonate with players and identify areas for improvement. This feedback-driven approach allows developers to tailor puzzle games better to meet the expectations and preferences of their audience.

Join Lizzie Mintus on today’s episode of the Here’s Waldo Podcast as she interviews Laura Taranto, Senior Director of Product Management at Big Fish Games. Laura discusses her pivotal role at Big Fish, offering insights into the process of analyzing player feedback for game development. Additionally, she shares recent shifts in the gaming industry, providing listeners with valuable perspectives on emerging trends and innovations.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Here’s Waldo Recruiting
• Lizzie Mintus on LinkedIn
• Laura Taranto on LinkedIn
• Big Fish Games | Deconstructor of Fun | Slack
• Patrick Ascolese on LinkedIn
• Deconstructor of Fun podcast on Spotify and Apple
• Michail Katkoff on LinkedIn
• Adam Telfer on LinkedIn
• Eric Kress on LinkedIn
• Kenny Rosenblatt on LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Here’s Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm specializing in the video game industry that prioritizes quality over quantity and values transparency, communication, and diversity. We partner with companies, creatives, and programmers to understand the why behind their needs and provide a white-glove experience that ensures a win-win outcome.

The industry evolves. The market changes. But at Here’s Waldo Recruiting, our commitment to happy candidates and clients does not. 

We understand that searching for the best and brightest talent can be overwhelming, so let our customer-first staff of professionals do the leg work for you by heading over to hereswaldorecruiting.com.

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: I'm Lizzie Mintus, founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique video game recruitment firm. This is the Here's Waldo Podcast. In every episode, we dive deep into conversations with creatives, founders, and executives about what it takes 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 recruitment 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 big thank you to Patrick Ascolese for introducing us and also the deconstructor of a fun podcast where I like to hear Laura.

Today we have Laura Taranto with us. She has 14 years of experience in the game industry, primarily centered around casual mobile games. Her journey has covered a spectrum of game development phases with an emphasis on growing live titles. She joined Big Fish in June of 2021 and she took the helm of the hit game Evermerge and now leads their new game development.

Prior to her role at Big Fish, Laura worked at Scopely, King, and Wooga, where she had the privilege of working on titles like Tuscany Villa, Farm Hero Saga, Pearl's Peril and Diamond Dash. Laura also contributes as a writer and podcast host at Deconstructor of Fun, a source of game industry insights and sometimes rants from crush.

Let's get started. Thanks for being on the show.

Laura Taranto: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited.

Lizzie Mintus: I want to start by talking about your own career path and your journey even to get into games.

Laura Taranto: Sure. It was a while back. I'm from New York city and I always wanted to work in games. I didn't know it was actually a career path until much later. When I went to school, there was really no game development jobs, I think as we understand them today. It was mostly console mobile, casual mobile gaming. Hadn't really become a thing yet. I knew I'd love to find a way to make games. For example, I really want to make like Final Fantasy games or a Nintendo game, but that just wasn't possible. Those studios were not in New York City.

So I ended up applying to an associate producer job at a company called Arcadium. The founder and CEO is Kenny Rosenblatt, he's awesome. And they took a chance on me. I had previously done a little bit in marketing. My degree was in foreign languages and literature. So they took a chance on me and I ended up joining Arcadium. I started as a producer making some of their smaller web games, so Flash was still the engine du jour. And we built out basically games for large companies that wanted either a website of games that they would host, or little flash games that had their brand in these types of smaller games.

Lizzie Mintus: And can you share more about the in between? Where did you go next? And how did your role evolve? I listened to this great panel on how careers are not a straight line and I think that's always really important to highlight.

Laura Taranto: So it evolves. So I started as a producer and I was project managing a whole bunch of different projects. And it stuck. I was like, Oh, this is what I've been looking to do. This is the right thing for me. I was there for two years. I knew I loved working on the games themselves. Building kind of web arenas was fun, but I actually loved the game design. And we ended up working on some games for Warner Brothers.

We built a game for Vampire Diaries. It was a television show on WB. And then I knew I wanted to stay in it. I ended up on a whim, taking a holiday to Europe. Oh, I love Europe. This place is great. I'd love to live and work here. And at the time I didn't realize, but looking back, that was when mobile wasn't quite kicking off yet, but there was a huge developer community in Europe for flash based games. This was the time, if you think back, we were playing Bubble Witch Saga on Facebook games. This was at the height of when Farmville was big. It was that time. So had really wanted to move to Europe. I ended up making a list of the top gaming companies at the time. Put together how big they were by impact, what games they had, and then ended up applying to Wooga because they were huge at the time. They were one of the best companies out there.

Applied, got the job, and next thing I know I had a one way plane ticket to Berlin, Germany to work on Pearl's Peril. And then from there it was just, I was in it. I couldn't possibly dream of doing anything else. From there, I worked briefly at a company called Mind Candy in London after that, then went to King London, also worked at their Scopely London studio, and then I ended up joining Big Fish. Was working at Big Fish from London, even though they were based in Seattle. And then at one point I want to stay overseas, but I was working basically with a remote team. I was London based. My team was Seattle and California based. I ended up moving to Seattle, moving back to the US. So that's very high level of my journey.

Lizzie Mintus: I like that you made a list of where you wanted to work and then categorized. That's such an organized producer thing to do.

Laura Taranto: I recommend it. There's a couple of people that have asked me, where should I work? I really don't break into games or they're like, I want to make a change in my career. And I'm like, have a really clear idea of where you want to go and understand what that company is working on. And I think it's much easier to look at. Just to put it down and to basically prioritize it. Interviewing takes quite a bit of time. You have to understand what games they're making. You need to play them, you need to study them, figure out what roadmap you'd wanna building around that game. And so basically go through a checklist and figure out, okay, this company's in the right location. They have the right type of games. They're the right size. They have the right over like the culture. Yeah, I find it. I find it easier that way.

Lizzie Mintus: I would think so too, but you would be shocked. I think I talked to most people and I asked them where they want to work and they say, gee, I don't know. And then I asked them what's important to them. And sometimes they know that, but most people really don't have a clear list.

I always like to send people to game dev map. com.

Laura Taranto: That's very useful tool for finding studios.

Lizzie Mintus: If anyone doesn't know some saint, do you know who maintains it?

Laura Taranto: Actually I don't.

Lizzie Mintus: Okay, some saint maintains a website called GameDevMap where you can go and you can filter by anywhere in the world and it will show you by country, by state, what all the game companies are and what genre of games that they make. It's a really good way to discover.

Laura Taranto: And it's been around for a long time because I remember it from way back when.

Lizzie Mintus: I remember the day in recruiting, I started getting recruiting and my co workers like, hey, I just found this website called game dev map. And we're like, this is the best thing ever. So thank you. I should find out who maintains it and then have them on the podcast.

Laura Taranto: Yes. Great idea.

Lizzie Mintus: Can you share a little bit more about your role at Big Fish? I'm not sure if you can say much about what you're working on. Right now, but maybe working on Evermerge.

Laura Taranto: Yep. I joined us the initially as a product director and to look after the Evermerge roadmap. So to figure out what features to make we. Usually do everything KPI based. So if you're going into any type of game, you're figuring out, what features we're going to build in this game to hit business objectives. And then there were some changes. I ended up taking over the project. So I had a co leader, her name was Kristen Overton. She handled the kind of the production side. I filled more of the GM title where then I was determining what we were building, why we were building it, and then trying to get the KPIs where we wanted them to go.

A lot of it was looking at Evermerge. If you played, it's a merge game. The most popular merge games are like Merge Dragons. Right now you have the grid merge games like Merge Mansion. And it's not dissimilar, you're merging things together. You're uncovering a linear story. There's a lot of pieces and there's a big economy behind it.

So there was a lot to do. A lot of it was trying to uncover, what makes this game tick and how do we make it, how do we bring, What do we have? We lean into the things that players like and make it even better. So a lot of writing documentation and specifications and then putting it into roadmaps and presenting roadmaps.

Lizzie Mintus: Can you walk me through the process? of really figuring out what the players want, getting player feedback, figuring out what makes sense to do next, studying the market. Tell me more.

Laura Taranto: So every company does it a little bit differently. Where I think Big Fish is very strong is, they have their parent company, Pixel United has an amazing insights team.

Some studios use insights teams. Some studios don't. What our insights team does is they do a lot of surveys and a lot of speaking to players and player groups to be able to basically to put together a report or some sort of insights to understand what motivates players from the qualitative side.

What are they saying they like about the game? What are they saying they don't like about the game? Part of what I do is taking that data, we had tons of it, and then looking at the actual quantitative side and figuring out where are the players are saying this now, what are players actually doing? And then combining the two and figuring out, okay. So for example, they might. say they hate this feature, but it's actually performing really well. So there's something that in that feature that we built that they really like. Or vice versa, where they say they, they love a feature, but it's not doing well and then figuring out is there a way we can change it so that players still love it, but then it also makes sense from a business perspective. So I feel like a lot of what I do is listening, observing, and then formulating a hypothesis based on all this information about what we can deliver to players that we think they would enjoy.

Lizzie Mintus: What percent do you think of your data, like players say, I love this feature or I hate this feature, is really real? How much of the time do you have to unpack that it's something slightly different?

Laura Taranto: Oh, it's a lot of time. I think it's tough, right? If you're a game maker, and I'm making an assumption here, but when I play games, I deconstruct them as I play them. I'm like, oh, I know this feature, this is like a daily retention bonus feature, or this is blah blah blah. But players don't have that language, right? They'll say they like something and it will need some sort of layer of translation. And there's certain things like, in my experience, if you want to understand how players respond to something in terms of spend, a lot of that is self reported and most people don't remember how much they spent. They're not going to know how much they've spent on certain features or certain games. They can give you a ballpark. And then sometimes they say they don't spend and then they do spend. So I'd say, you can use it to determine what they like and dislike. That's easy. Not good for having them dig into the why of that. Sometimes they can explain it. Sometimes they can't. Whatever they say, that needs an element of translation.

So and then 100 percent for spend that I think personally, my least favorite questions that are asked are like, would you spend on this feature? Because a lot of times they may say one thing and then it's just not accurate. In theory they may say they want to do something or they would play this or the hypothetical but that stuff never translates well. That you have to use the quantitative side for.

Lizzie Mintus: Your job's like being a psychologist, like human psychology. What do you say you want versus what do you really?

Laura Taranto: Yes, it's uncovering motivations. And I honestly, I think we've debated this even on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast before that you really need both. I think that companies that do are really good at one and not the other are missing just a huge side of the equation. It's just important to really have both of those. So you want your business performance, you want to be looking at definitely patterns in the data that you're seeing, but then you also want to be able to marry that to what players are verbalizing.

Lizzie Mintus: Is there a way that you could train your players to give you better feedback? Is that a big consideration?

Laura Taranto: That's a super interesting question. I think that there's like services like Playtest Cloud, a great company, great CEO. I think players that sign up for those services where they're testing games, they probably get a little bit better at using specific vocabulary or explaining what they want because they do it more regularly.

But there's actually something that is really helpful about seeing the raw reaction from someone who actually is not familiar or not from games. I was thinking back to a time we did play testing focus group or something like this and it was so interesting. We spent so much time putting, into the art, into the title of whatever the feature is. And it's fascinating when you actually watch someone play it. The title can be right there in front of them, and they're calling it something completely different. So they would be like, this feature is called Lava climb. I'm just making this up. And they're like, yeah the red map feature, this red blob feature. It's interesting. That was their takeaway. I think that in itself is, it is a very interesting learning. So I almost wouldn't want them to have better language cause I want to see what their natural reaction is.

Lizzie Mintus: That makes sense. I will not name names, but I know there are certain really large companies that really don't do a lot of outside play testing, which I think is so interesting, and they don't gather the data. We'll see what evolves over the next few years. You have some predictions for just different tools that will take off? Or do you think most companies will get an analytics group or they'll learn the hard way? Some of it must be luck to at first. If you're a scrappy startup. You don't have the analytics group. You don't have a lot of data or maybe going by intuition.

Laura Taranto: Yeah, a lot of it is intuition. The only way it gets better, though, is you have to you make a hypothesis, you test that hypothesis, and then you need a way to measure it. Otherwise, I believe that you can't get better without that. It's too hard. You need to learn to train it in terms of tools. Playtesting is great. Again, it needs the elements of translation, for sure. In terms of general industry trend tools, I think AI and a whole different number of applications, in terms of how you could use it for personalization, in terms of having the game automate more of for the player, what they're seeing and what they're playing based on what how they're responding in real time. So there's that application. We talk a lot about in the actual production phases where it could save time by helping produce assets for games, helping produce writing for games, a lot of content applications. For tools that I see, I think playtesting is always going to be important. Those tools are not going away anytime soon. And then anything that starts to make things easier so that you get more done in less amount of time.

Lizzie Mintus: Can you talk a bit about shifts in mobile game development since you've been in it and what trends

Laura Taranto: oh, shifts. Okay, so like high level, my favorite genre is puzzle. I love match threes. If you actually look at the history of match threes, it started with Bejeweled and then goes all the way through and then to the match threes we see today and the most popular one, Royal match and your behemoths Candy Crush. If you actually were to map it out from shifts, from a design perspective, you can see how the engines evolved. The match tree engines evolved over time to something very simple that fluid, buttery, smooth feel that you have today that you see in Royal Match.

And then other shifts in mobile game development. There is the shifts that I would hope to see next. This is just my personal read and it ties a little bit into what I'm doing now. There's a couple of things at play. For certain genres and certain companies, cross platform play is going to be incredibly important.

We see that with MiHoYo, how they're available on console, they're available on mobile. More ways to play. I think that's going to be a shift that is going to be continuing. I'd say that I think. There was a wave of risk taking in games, like early on in the 2012s, the 2016s, where they really started combining different metas with different engines.

We saw the rise of Blast get really popular at that point, with Toon and Toy Blast, and we saw a lot of interesting new games come alive. Some of them worked, some of them didn't, but there was a lot of new, fun, fresh things.

This is my own perspective. What I've noticed more recently is I think there's been a lot less risk taking from the developer side because games are much more expensive to make. So we've been seeing a trend where there's not as many risks being taken. People want a guaranteed success or they want to keep it, play it safe. That vocabulary should be scrapped from everyone's use because no game is ever safe or not risky to make, even if you make something that's a fast follow of another game, there's still no, there's still no way you can guarantee that it's going to be a success.

So what I'm hoping to see the next shift to be is we've seen this kind of low risk, a lot of safe, quote unquote, safer bats coming into the puzzle and casual genre now. What I want to see and what I hope to see is the shift towards innovation. If we want to hit game, we got to think big. We can't just be a small incremental step change. It's going to have to be a big swing. One of my favorite phrases now has been fortune favors the bulls. And I think those that are going to be trying new things and pushing the boundaries, that's going to be a really interesting space to play. That's secretly where I want things to go. I also think there's going to be a shift there as well.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. I think it's a hard balance. People always talk about being too early. We were just too early for this. So I think same, but different. Maybe.

Laura Taranto: There's an elements of reading tea leaves there. One thing I tell people when I, if they ask me for advice. What I try to do is I try to play everything because you want to see what players are playing try to figure out what they would want next.

There's this quote, I think it was from Wayne Gretzky about you want to go to where the hockey puck will be not where the hockey puck is. That's a piece of advice for anyone that I think is incredibly important for if you wanna make a hit game, is figuring out what players will want to do next. Not what they're doing now. Play a lot of games.

Lizzie Mintus: Market research. Can you talk a little bit about user acquisition and the different ways people are thinking about it today versus the last five, 10 years?

Laura Taranto: We all know the changes that Apple made in the name of privacy, and that has made it more difficult to do specific targeting for certain players with certain ads, and then be able to track and measure how those players are performing, and then how those ads are performing and linking it basically all together. User acquisition for a lot of genres, I can speak more to the puzzle ones, is very expensive. So how are different companies tackling that? There's a couple of things. One, the rise of mini games. So a lot of ad creative that does well is those mini games are, save the king or save the person, figuring out ways to actually put those mini game ads into the game itself.

So some of the newer games, I think Tactile has a new game where they have a whole bunch of, what's it called like a 3d match engine in it. They're trying to figure out, how do we make ads that work? Be representative of the product. So linking that back in and finding different ways to basically create ad creative.

And then also, leading into new ways of payment. Integrating ads like in app ads is going to be more important as is exploring things like off platform payments. So finding other ways to expand and increase your overall revenue. So I think those are, and then the third way would be looking at. What things work in your game and finding and experimenting with different ways of monetization in general. So we know that the puzzle pass, the battle pass works well, what would be the next stage iteration of that be?

There's a couple things, but it has gotten very expensive to bring a game to market.

Lizzie Mintus: I feel like people get sick of the same monetization feature at a certain point, though, wouldn't you say? It works for X amount of time and then something new is needed?

Laura Taranto: Yeah, I'd say so. I think it depends on the feature and how well it's integrated into the core loop of the game. If it's like a side bits, yeah. I can see there be some sort of novelty effect where it would be really interesting initially. And then it would decline. New features, like if a battle pass or a puzzle pass is properly integrated into the core loop, I think that could be a sustained revenue change for sure. It depends entirely on the execution and how it's done.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, I'm sure there's so many nuances. What is the most successful game that you've ever worked on? And you can define success yourself. Do you have any stories about the journey in making it?

Laura Taranto: The most successful game was probably Farm Heroes Saga, it's had, it's earned more than a billion in its lifetime revenue. I also loved working on that game. The team was wonderful, I loved working at King. It was a great company with a great culture and that came through in the products. They hired really smart, nice people. I just remember him going to work every day, excited and looking forward to working with those people and making features. We had so much opportunity. There were so many ways to learn. King is great at knowledge sharing.

One of the, one of the things that motivates me in general is when I was living in London at the time, I'd be on the tube or on a plane ride and you see someone playing your game. Like I would see someone playing Farm Heroes Saga. I found it in the wild. This is great. I can't remember where I was flying to, but I sitting at the front of the plane. Not in first class. I went to the bathroom and as I came back, you can see everyone, people are watching on their tablets, and I remember seeing every five rows, someone was playing a King game. And I was just like, wow, this is amazing. What we put down on paper of what we think is gonna be fun to play and then you actually see it in real life. More than one person playing these games that you've had some sort of impact on. You said most successful that was probably the most meaningful experience. So that's a good measure of success.

Most games, you want a team that's worked together before that has good synergy, has good energy together. And I just have very fond memories of working with wonderful teams at King and when I was there. For me I would say, it always gets lumped into most successful because it was also the most rewarding. Yeah,

Lizzie Mintus: I think personal fulfillment goes hand in hand. What do you think King did that made it such a great place to work? For any of our listeners that want to make their companies a great place to work or want to suggest things to their company in an appropriate way, how can they repeat what King does?

Laura Taranto: Oh my goodness. That's the million dollar question, right? Everyone wants to repeat that. So there's actually there was one guy I worked with at King named Kim Nordstrom and he just wrote a book about this. Oh. Yeah, he, so he went around and interviewed tons of CEOs, founders, and was trying to put in words and writing to uncover the recipes to creating a successful company.

The book comes out in January. I haven't gotten a pre-read yet, but I did read the 1st draft chapter. I feel like that is what he is trying to suss out. When I spoke to him, for me, I think what I've noticed is, there's a couple of things. One, who your leadership and co founding team is incredibly important. Two of the people that were the co founders and leaders at King when I was there, I had so much respect for them. Their hearts were in it. They were all really smart and they were all really focused on their area of the business and making it the best it could be. Keeping focus, making sure people are doing the right things and leading by example, I think part of the recipe to having a successful company.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. And I feel like when you have that internal workings that just bleeds out into a successful product and you can't really have one without the other.

Laura Taranto: I agree. I've dabbled a little bit of contract work here and there for other companies and I've seen where the leader doesn't practice what they preach. There's all these bad patterns of behavior. It has a negative impact on your studio and your game. And I think that you really want good values and you want to be living those values. The King leadership at the time I was there, a hundred percent, they had a lot of integrity and were very bright. That makes a really big impact on how your company or studio performs. Yeah.

Lizzie Mintus: Even figuring out your values at the beginning is so important and then measuring everything against them.

 On a more negative note, I would love to hear about a time things went terribly wrong in a game. Things were getting off track and how you were able to navigate it. Games are always so life or death.

Laura Taranto: This feels like an interview question. So from the production side, for any producers listening. So when games tend to get off track, it's either usually a schedule or it's the creative vision isn't finding its audience. It depends on which one it is for. I've definitely had games schedule slip and you just got to go in there with scissors or a knife and just start cutting things apart. Reprioritizing, figure out, okay, do we need this feature or how important is the deadline? Is it an arbitrary date? Is it a date that's tied to marketing?

Is it a date that's tied to something else? So figuring out what your key components are, and then reacting appropriately to it. So in cases where we've had a big marketing spend push that couldn't be moved, we just had to de scope and reprioritize some of the features. And really figure out, what do we need right now to make sure that this feature of this game has the right things to hit its objective. What can we cut that is something we can remove and we don't think it's going to have an impact on major KPIs we're trying to hit or the overall experience from creative standpoint, I think that's actually tougher because when it comes to iteration and innovation, it's very hard to put a timeframe on it.

You don't know when you're going to strike gold or hit lightning or whatever it is. I think when there's a creative vision that goes terribly wrong, that is much harder to schedule around and understand what a timeline to fix would be.

So I think in the past I've worked in a game where. We knew what we wanted to make, and we were working. We started playing the build and realizing we are not hitting on the core motivations of what this audience wants. There's just no way. And then going back and figure out, okay, what needs to be changed? What parts of the game, what parts of the game would need to change? Is it the art? Is it the look and feel? Is the combination of all of these things? Do we have the right features set in? How we're trying to teach behaviors and actions in the game coming across clearly enough? It's really going back and sitting with, the creative team and being like, where do we want to go? And what is the delta between where we are now and where we want to be? And then what do we need to do? What do we need to change? How much we change to get there?

Lizzie Mintus: That's a very easy explanation. It sounds easy in the way that you explained it, but obviously it's not. No, it's the hardest thing. This is where we want to go. What's the gap? No, that sounds terribly complex. And games are hard. You're dealing with so many people, and they're art, and they're creative. There's some characters.

Laura Taranto: Yeah. With kind of that creative, I think this goes back to the importance of understanding who your audience is. And this is where play testing can come in handy or getting your key segment you're going for is. Understanding what they want, because that needs to tie into what you're trying to achieve. Some people call them game pillars. Some people use them. Some people don't use them. But you do want some sort of stake in the ground to understand who you're building for and why. And you always need to go back to that and make sure that it's still relevant. None of this stuff is in stone, right? Every document I work with usually is a living document.

You might have a one key aspect of the game might be social in the beginning, and then you realize this game should not be social. And it's fine to change it, but you at least need to know where your stake is, even if you need to go back and move it later.

Lizzie Mintus: That makes sense. I think that could translate for a lot of businesses too, though. Who are you selling to? What are the things that they want? Do they want the thing that you're selling?

Laura Taranto: And it ties back into everything. So a friend of mine is trying to start his own business, not gaming related. I think he was getting very frustrated with me because he wants to build a content strategy to build up his social media presence.

And I said, okay, who's your primary target market? And he's it's this group and this group. I said, all those three groups. They are different people with different needs, different challenges, different motivations. You're going to have to speak to them differently.

What's your main 1? Start with your main 1 and then you can have secondary and tertiary as well. But start with exactly who you want to go after 1st. It's still rings true also with games.

Lizzie Mintus: Businesses are all the same in fundamentals. Games are just a lot more complex than you feel like.

Can you talk about a time that you felt imposter syndrome? I'm going to explain why I'm asking this. I always like to ask this on my podcast if I can, because I think it's important for people to understand that most people feel this. Maybe everybody feels this. And I think people put successful people on a pedestal and don't understand how they got there. And it's so powerful to hear that everybody feels this way.

Laura Taranto: The older I've gotten and the longer I've been in the industry, the less I felt this, but I still feel it today. I just feel it to a different intensity and a different frequencies. Yeah. In the beginning, I felt it all the time. Especially with games, you don't always know there's no necessarily right answer. You have to lean heavily on your experience. And then if you're early and new into your career, you just don't have that much experience. I used to read everything and it's helpful in theory, but in practice, it also doesn't sometimes always work out as you think it would. So then you start to doubt what the way I've approached it is, someone said this to me once. I think it was one of the guys I worked with at Arcadium. They had some really wonderful people. He liked to approach everything as to understanding why. If something goes well it should never be, oh, that's terrible. I did such a bad job. It should be, that's interesting. I wonder why.

Going with curiosity is your forefront instead of fear. I make it sound like I picked that up in a day. No, it took me years to get to that place where curiosity was at the forefront instead of nervousness. But I still get bouts of imposter syndrome, especially when I'm surrounded by really smart people. And I'm like, wow, I maybe I don't deserve to be here. Who am I? I'm not as good as these people.

What I try to remember is everyone has different journeys and different perspectives. So when you come to the table, it's also about bringing those a very diverse set of ways of thinking and ways of acting and ways of working, that's really what you want. It's not the right thing to always be right. That's not that doesn't you don't want. It's nice being right, but that's and I think having that imposter syndrome is having the need to feel like the expert at all times and never be wrong. And there are times for that, but a lot of times that's not what you want. You really want to go in with the right attitude, with the right values and just being a, I want to say like an easy person to work with, but that's not exactly what I mean. But you want to go in and be like, okay, how am I raising the bar for everyone I work with? And how am I bringing all these good values and all of that to my every day?

I actually think leaning into that and making it more about how can I bring my best self and bring out the best in people versus feeling like I need to be the expert on pedestal and remembering that it's not just about feeling like you're entitled or you're in the right place at the right time. It's a lot more than that. That's what I lean into when I feel like I'm in the wrong place.

Lizzie Mintus: That's good. I always just think about sharing my authentic experience and being myself and I learn all kinds of little tidbits from people in the places which I wouldn't necessarily expect to. So I think people always have learnings from you. Like you said, if you're genuine and if you're trying your best and you're not a jerk. People like that.

Laura Taranto: Yeah. A lot of times kindness and authenticity can be better than someone who's incredibly intelligent, except not very nice. No one wants to work with those people. People remember how you make them feel more than anything else.

Lizzie Mintus: And if you're trying hard and if you say, you don't know something, but you'd love to learn. Someone taught me that early in my career. You can say, I don't know, and I will find that out for you.

I want to know more about your podcast journey, and give it a quick plug, Deconstructor of Fun, can you share more about how you connected with them and what the podcast is, if anybody doesn't listen to it, but I hope you they all do.

Laura Taranto: Deconstor of Fun started as a blog. It was Mishka Kakov literally deconstructing fun. When I worked at Wooga, that's how I met someone named Adam Telfer. We're both product managers. I might be butchering the story a little bit. Either he had a blog or he wanted to start a blog and ended up connecting with Mishka. I think they started doing some sort of work together.

I had stayed friends with Adam throughout my time at Wooga. We're actually still friends today. And this was like, over 10 years ago. Adam started working with Mishka, the blog got bigger and bigger. And then at one point I was actually at a very low point in my career. I had just left this company. I was hired to do one thing and then they came in and they were like, nope, you're doing this instead. And I was like, absolutely not. I'm contracted for this thing. I'm not going to do this other random thing you want me to do. So I was feeling pretty deflated and I messaged Adam. I said, I have a bit of time. Maybe I could just write. A blog post for Deconstructor Fun to do a deconstruction of the game. I did it for Hay Day Pop, and then I did it for a couple more games after that. I started getting more and more involved, taking over the casual mobile segment, because Adam used to cover a lot of it, and then he moved into console.

 I just really loved it, so I just started doing more and more of that. I went to their first Deconstructor of Fun event conference in Istanbul. I wasn't part of the speakers panel, but I knew all of them. Mishka was kind enough to be like, why don't you just come crash this dinner? And I was like, are you sure? I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't crash the dinner. And he's yeah, I'll be fine. So I crashed the dinner. I ended up sitting at one table with a bunch of guys I knew and they actually had to move me. I was like, Oh, no. Okay. And I ended up being sat next to Eric Cress and we just started chatting and I was running my mouth as I'm running my mouth now.

And he was like, you should be on the podcast. And I was like, I don't know. And then I started as a guest. It took me a while to find my feet. And if I want to say I had imposter syndrome, it was hard. It was really hard. Then I ended up being a recurring host and I tend to cover a lot of the mobile casual market. A lot of games, which Eric would call mice nuts, but I actually think they're in the journey. What I explained before about all the incremental changes that make up a larger shift in the mobile landscape. I love trying to pinpoint which ones I think are going to be setting off the new branching path to yield, to do something else. He calls it, too small fries. These games don't make enough money. I'm like, they're important too. They usually become a stepping stone for someone else to come in and do something, a way of taking it that is going to be a commercial success. So that's how I got involved. It was a bit random and crashing a dinner in Turkey.

Lizzie Mintus: That's how it goes sometimes. So you're on Twig.

Laura Taranto: I'm on Twig this week in games. Yep.

Lizzie Mintus: And then Mishka, is it always Mishka? Who does the other one?

Laura Taranto: They do other interviews and I think it's Jen Donahoe Mishka and Ethan. I don't know if Ethan's still doing it and Eric does too actually. Almost all of them do one-on-one interviews as well. I'm the only one who doesn't, and it's just a time restraint thing.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, I can understand. Deconstructor is always so informative for me to learn about what's going on in the game industry and all the trends and hear experts come in and share their two cents. You have so much info on the current state of the industry, and I know you research every single week.

We're recording it in December, and this is gonna come out in March ish, but can you talk about the future of the game industry maybe after March?

Laura Taranto: I covered a little bit earlier when I was talking about where I think the shifts are gonna be. At least in casual mobile, my read, if I was going to take the temperature of what those players want and what they don't want is yes, it's a red ocean. I actually like to call it like a purple ocean because while it's very saturated, there's always opportunity if you find the right opportunity. And I think that take temperature taking for players right now is. They have their slate of games that they like and they enjoy.

They're always open for new games if you're bringing them a unique experience. Eventually, hopefully people catch on that those incremental changes that you just you either do a slightly different mashup or you make one small change here, that used to cut it like five years ago, eight years ago. That's not going to cut it anymore. And I don't think that's what players want. They're not going to cycle your game into their playing suite of games unless you're really taking a bigger swing and giving them this new novel experience.

Lizzie Mintus: That makes sense. There are also so many games. The most games ever to pick from, right?

Laura Taranto: Yep. This is why I call it Purple Ocean, because there is an opportunity to define what they want. Looking at, there was that the Mahjong tile match mechanic that's really popular, that Spike Games has done a great job making tile busters. That is scratching an itch, it's something new, feels novel, it's polished. That is incredibly different from a match three. They're different categories, but I think those are the bigger swings you want to be taking if you're going to be making games.

Lizzie Mintus: And if somebody was going to listen to one Deconstructor or a few Deconstructors, what would you say the top episodes are?

Laura Taranto: Okay, so I'll give you the most popular one.

There was when we were covering Unity and Eric went on a rant, one of his many famous grouchy rants. Those tend to do very well and tend to be very entertaining. And the ones where we argue. Those are the fun ones. We just, we did a recording recently for looking at the top games in the various Game Award categories. I thought that one was fun to do. I like the ones where I actually am taking apart a game.

I was talking about Match Factory. It's a new game by Zynga and, Eric was like, why are we talking about this game? And then we got into an argument about why I think it's important to look at not only really successful games, but these smaller games that represent a change in strategy for the company or represent some other change that we're going to be seeing a shift in how mobile casual puzzle is going to be. And when we argued about that, I thought that was quite fun. So any of those episodes, they're probably the last within the last 15 episodes would be my recommendation.

Lizzie Mintus: I think the Arcane ones are entertaining, too. I like to listen to them on my drives. You've worked in game roles and non game roles, and you worked for Chelsea Football Club.

Can you talk about the difference in your role from games to non games and product in and out of games?

Laura Taranto: In my experience, and it was brief. I only was outside of games, I can't remember if it was a year or 18 months. It is so different. I worked on an app, I don't know if I can talk about it. Technically it's live, but just in case. I worked on a non gaming app, and there is so much more about function and actual utility that is that you need to that for me, I had to bring to the forefront as opposed to entertainment.

So games, there is nothing you have to do about a game. It's not like it's a banking app you need to be able to find this thing or it needs to have this soul purpose. You're about creating fun. It's a little bit more escapism. You want someone to feel they pick up your game and they play it and they get some sort of emotional, positive reaction you're rewarding them and making them feel good. There's a degree to that. My banking app is Chase. There's a degree that I want Chase, but I don't need like kudos every time I make a deposit. So it's more about, it's both cases, like you want very low levels of confusion. Players need to understand what to do when they see what you have, or it has to be very easy to teach and remember for. And I think that's almost exponentially true for any type of non gaming app, like the function becomes incredibly important. It needs to work and it needs to be very specific about what they will and won't do with it.

In this case, we were doing a little bit of product research and we were looking at market insights and trends. We were trying to discern where there was an, I think there was also a larger element of trust needed. So for things like if you're going to do something in health care or banking, you need to know, especially with adoption, you need to figure out how people are going to be finding and using your app. I know I'm being very vague. I still want to reveal something I'm not supposed to reveal, but for the app in particular I worked on, there was a very specific use case where if we served them and said, Hey, here's this app. We want you to, we want you to download and use it. That was never going to work because the only way they would actually use it is if a trusted person and there were just like sets of specific people they trusted would recommend it to them. Again, not a game. You'd have to go through them and find those channels and work with those sources to have adoption there and then have it roll down afterwards. It's a completely different way of thinking in both in the elements of design themselves, and then how you want people to actually find and use your app.

Lizzie Mintus: I was curious if they would help each other in the end. If having both experiences would make you think about games differently or make you think about making a non game product when you've worked in games differently. I know Elon Musk, not to tout him or anything, but he thinks that hiring people in games is a great idea for all of his companies.

Question mark on how he's doing in general or people's opinions about him, but he's very successful.

Laura Taranto: I'm biased, completely admitting, I'm biased. I actually think gaming is harder. I think the gaming experience is more beneficial to non gaming apps than vice versa.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, that makes sense.

Laura Taranto: Because it's just, it is a, when you go into games, it is a completely different way of thinking. It is much more. You need a lot more creativity. The art matters, the characters matter, how you tell those stories matter. It's much more emotional.

Lizzie Mintus: That makes sense. You could take some of that if it's not so serious, like banking or healthcare into your not game product and make it more of an emotional experience. I guess it would depend.

Laura Taranto: It depends. I think Duolingo was trying to take gaming elements and then they like copied them directly and none of them worked. You can't do that. That never worked. You have to figure out what you're trying to change and what your current users are doing, then figure out what the game feature you want to take over is, and then it's going to have to be adapted. There's no way around it.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, it's true in life too. You can't just blatantly copy something. You have to make it your own.

For people that might want to break into the game industry, could you talk about Any advice you might have?

Laura Taranto: I think this is true breaking into a lot of industries, but gaming in particular, you need to be persistent and you're going to get a lot of no's before you get a yes.

I I'm very grateful to Arcadium that they gave me a chance because I had no gaming experience and it's really hard to get gaming experience unless you're in university sitting, making your own games in your dorm room. I didn't do that. I'm not a coder. I didn't and not an artist either. So I just that was not something I could have done. I applied a ton of places and I got a lot of no's before I got a yes. So if it's something you really want to do, and you're passionate about, don't give up.

I still once in a while when I'm feeling particularly nostalgic, I will apply to Square Enix, even though I know they're never going to take me because I don't live in Japan. They're doing most of their development studios are in Japan. My personal mantra is do lots of research, learn as much as you can, learn, and then you need to keep networking, keep talking, keep trying.

Lizzie Mintus: That's very true. And maybe find a mentor. I know you are a mentor. What makes you decide to mentor somebody? What do they do that makes you say yes? Because I'm sure you have a lot of requests.

Laura Taranto: Funny, I actually don't. I've mentored three people. One has been more successful than the other two, because what he wants to do is similar is to some of what I do. So I can actually help and weigh in. Where it hasn't worked out well is. It's a completely different discipline. So there was one girl I mentored where she was an artist. And this was through like a side program. I was able to help work on her CV, do cover letters. That I could do, but I couldn't help her become a better artist. You need the right level of compatibility in terms of what you can offer versus what they need.

Where it also hasn't worked well, I think I talked about this in the women of games panel, but I offered my time. I offered to look over anything she wanted to send me and she just never took advantage of any of it. She should go to an interview or apply, wouldn't get a call back or wouldn't get a job. I said, okay, write down all the questions they're asking you. Send me everything. If it's written, send it to me. I'll proofread it. Based on what they're saying or the feedback, then we'll walk through it after. Let me at least help you. Didn't take advantage of any of that. But then didn't understand why she wasn't getting what she wanted. And I'm just like banging my head against the wall. I was like, I don't know what else to do.

Lizzie Mintus: Was it you that said that you write down all the interview questions that you're asked? That is so smart.

Laura Taranto: Yes, because it's dual sided, right? So if you are interviewing people, one, it's really good to have a list of questions always ready to go. Two, if you're going to be looking for work, the questions are all very similar. And then if you get a really odd, different question, you just get better and better at answering them.

Lizzie Mintus: That's great. It is a lot of practice. And I think it's so fun to be on both sides when you're an interviewer, you're a better interviewee.

I have one last question. Before I ask it, I want to point people to your company's website, Big Fish Games, and also the podcast, Deconstructor of Fun. They have a Slack channel that is delightful. They have a podcast, follow along. The last question is from WIGI. They have a whole program built around, I wish I knew X at Y stage of my career. They call them cheat codes for the next generation, so they don't have to learn the hard way. What cheat codes do you have that you could share?

Laura Taranto: Okay. There were certain elements, points in my career where I really struggled and I could not figure out why I wasn't getting to the next level, either in promotion or responsibility. I felt that I was, I kept being overlooked or not appreciated and one of the guys I worked for who I absolutely adore, he said to me, perception is as important as actual skill and what you're actually doing. You need to make sure that the perception that people have of you, is the one you want them to have. If people think you're anxious, and this time that's probably what they thought. I was anxious and worried all the time and nervous. And to be fair, I was those things. It was early on. I had to sort that out first. I wish I had known that sooner. Because had I known that I would have gone in with a very different approach in a different way. I was carrying myself and acting and behaving. That was actually just as important as me having the skills I had.

 I know it sounds a little bit negative. It's not meant to be scary. It's more meant as, there's reality and then there's a way you see you. There's the way others see you and how others see you, I hate to say it. It's very important. There's roles we all play. I think it's a lot about understanding the person I want people to see me as. If I want someone to describe me, how do I model that behavior? So I get that description.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. How do I bridge the gap between where I am now and where I want to go? Just like product.

We've been talking to Laura Taranto, senior director of product head of new games at Big Fish. Laura, where can people go to contact you or learn more about you?

Laura Taranto: You can find me on LinkedIn or if you're part of the Deconstructor of Fun Slack, I'm there. Those are the two places.

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you so much.

Laura Taranto: Thank you so much. This was great.

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.