Johnny Wu | QA Director @ Riot Games | Ep 23 - Out of Play Area

Episode Transcript
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John (00:02):
On episode 23 of the game developers podcast Out of Play Area.
We welcome Johnny Wu, a QAdirector for Riot Games down
in Santa Monica in Los Angeles.
He's got me beat for miles, travelacross this amazing industry.
Where he's honed his craft since earlyelectronic arts, Canada from Vancouver

(00:23):
to motel, where then he went to Zyngaand Toronto, then onto king in the
London and UK then came back over intoSeattle where he transitioned down to
LA to work on apex legends for respond.
He's got some wild storiesand even deeper insight on how
he's navigated these industry.

(00:44):
The streets.
Please welcome.
Repping our great neighbors to the north.
Johnny Wu wa.
Let's fall out.

Catherine (00:55):
Bienvenido Bienvenue Welcome to the Out of Play Area Podcast, a
show by video game devs for game devs,where the guests open up one-on-one
about their journey, their experiences,their views, and their ideas.
No ads, no bullshit.
Join us as we venture far outof the play area with your host
seasoned game designer, John Diaz

John (01:19):
What part of California are you in?

Johnny (01:21):
so I'm in Los Angeles, in an area called, the valley, which is, just
like as north of, downtown LA and northof really like the center is where
a lot of, families go out to live.
Then obviously the real estate is soexpensive in LA that people have sort
of moved outwards from the city.
LA is a really interesting city, Ithink, compared to some of the other

(01:42):
areas I've lived, there's no like,Montreal, there's like a downtown area
and then people, but in LA there's likevarious pockets of different things.
And, lot of his car driven.
getting around, isn't like aEuropean city or is in like
Seattle or London or Montreal.
Vancouver is like, you reallyneed a car to get around the city.
So, The traffic's one of the main gripesand complaints that people have here.

John (02:06):
you need a car to get around LA, but the traffic meets us so
that you don't want to be in a car

Johnny (02:11):
Yeah.
And it's one of those things that peoplealways say, like the friends or people
you see, or the people who live inthe same part of LA as you do, because
you would just never drive an hour, anhour and a half to go see someone, it's
just not worth it to make that drive.
And it's just a bit too stressful, but

John (02:27):
And it's an hour just to cover like a handful of miles.

Johnny (02:30):
Yeah, for sure.

John (02:31):
The hack is a motorcycle.
That's the way.

Johnny (02:34):
so there are like more central areas in LA, like Santa
Monica, more kind of walkable areas.
But I would say like a lot of citiesthat can get away without owning a
car is definitely not one of those.
a lot of the times where you workreally dictates where you live.
obviously during the pandemic, mostof us are in our living rooms, in

(02:54):
our bedrooms that commuting to work.
Hasn't been like something thatan activity that people had to do.
But, it's an interesting, diversekind of city that's I think compared
to like Seattle or San Francisco,The other cities up the west coast,
It's more really tech heavy, right?
Like you walk around Seattle, yougo like Belltown or all those areas.
It's like Amazon employees, yousee the badges flying around when

(03:18):
you walk in the backpacks, thehoodie, all those things are like
characteristics of like tech employees,

John (03:24):
Yeah.

Johnny (03:24):
LA is like a blend of, the Huge.
entertainment industry.
So people who come here with dreamsto make it big and acting, singing
all these different kind of industriesthat melt together and like a very
vibrant games industry as well.
So we have Sony here.
we have blizzard in Irvine,
which made a lot of the great gamesthat we grew up with, riot, where I

(03:46):
currently work is in Santa Monica and,respond before that was in the valley.
So a lot of collection of, high-endgame talent on game studios,
but, it's a really, interestingcity to, I've only been here
for two and a half years.
A lot of that was colored byCOVID for a really long time,
because you were just staying inside.

John (04:05):
More than half of it.

Johnny (04:06):
Yeah, Within the half of this.
So that colors, your experience aboutrace and not being able to do a lot
of those things that you wanted todo when you moved to a new city.
Right.
but now sort of getting better, butsort of getting worse again with like
the Delta area and then just tryingto live life alongside this pandemic,

John (04:24):
Yeah, trying to figure it out.

Johnny (04:25):
and trying to enjoy a new city, can be challenging as well,

John (04:29):
I'm always surprised that LA actually has public transportation.
Right?

Johnny (04:33):
right?

John (04:33):
it has a railroad that covers kind of the hotspots you care about,
but I never hear people talk about it.

Johnny (04:38):
Yeah.
it's one of those things where, you kindof need a mass following for the city
to invest in it properly, or like, tohave some serious kind of, legs behind
a good public transportation system.
If you look at like, I think Montrealhas a good underground subway system.
And a bus system that,
most people take and like mostEuropean cities have that.

(05:00):
Even if you look out like San Francisco,Seattle, I think those cities have
better public transportation than LA,because LA, everyone sort of owns a car,
public transportation hasn't reallycaught on, but I feel like living in the
United States, public transportation is
not as good as a lot of parts of, therest of the world where, it's just like a
natural mode of transport to go to work.

(05:22):
whereas the subway system cantake you almost everywhere.
LA is definitely not one of those cities.

John (05:29):
I see you got a bike back there.
You've ride

Johnny (05:31):
I used to write a lot, I think lately I haven't been, it's, it's a bit
hard, when it's this hot out and it's just
that you get tired quite easily, but,yeah, I think you'll be great to live
in a city like Amsterdam or a citylike that, where you can use your
bicycle as the main mode of transport.
That's like more efficient.

(05:51):
You get some exercise outof a, which is, great.
And like, you kind of stay active as well.
So, it's a great way to get around.
I would say LA compared to like bicyclecommuting cities, lap will mostly do
it for sport as an activity rather thanour new to go to work or go meet up.

John (06:09):
Yeah, the infrastructure is not that friendly.
Like sharing roads outthere is, dangerous.

Johnny (06:13):
Yeah.
And generally, like if you live in a citywhere people are not used to sharing the
road with bicyclists, cyclists, that,they don't know how to interact with
you, you get bit too close to each other.
when they say LA has theworst drivers in the world is
actually like pretty accurate.
So it's like, it's got some of theworst driving habits practices.

(06:35):
at least in most of the citiesthat I've been in, where people
run red lights, people don't signal

John (06:39):
There's a lot of rage, man.
People, people are in a rush.
They're always in a rush andthey're always in traffic
and they're like, begrudged

Johnny (06:47):
LA is like one of those cities where people always have
somewhere, they need to be friends.
They need to see a gig they needto go to, or like, it's like
a very gig economy city too.
So because the nature of theentertainment industry is so unpredictable
that
it's like side jobs.
I'm an Uber driver.
Uh, I deliver food.

(07:07):
I also do voice acting, all thesedifferent things, sort of have to
go together and spoke them worseduring the pandemic when, those
jobs or those industries began toslow or stop altogether because
people couldn't meet in studio.
there's some huge studios here,like CBS and Warner brothers,
all those studios are here, hadto close down during the pandemic.

(07:30):
so a lot of people had to get alot of these gig economy, jobs,

John (07:34):
what are you drinking?

Johnny (07:35):
uh, and drinking a Jamison.
So, I would say on the lower endof kind of whiskeys, I think, um, I
generally like, Japanese scotches, uh,

John (07:44):
Oh, yes,
man.
We should crack some of that out.

Johnny (07:48):
Yeah, Japanese whiskeys and like nice scotches, but, yeah, decided
to go with a Jameson today, which is

John (07:54):
That's like a guilty pleasure.
It's like nostalgic

Johnny (07:57):
histologic from my time in university where you're maximizing the
amount of money you spend to get drunk.
And like, you don't want that ratio tobe too high because you had no money,

John (08:07):
you're on a college budget.
Jamison gets the job done.
Yeah, man, I was going to have some tea.
It's been a long day, a lot of talking,a lot of meetings, GDCs happening.
And so you convinced me.
So I brought down some also accessibleChristian brothers, Brandy poured that
into my tea and we were ready to go, man.

(08:27):
So cheers,

Johnny (08:28):
cheers,
man.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me on it'sa pleasure to be on podcast.

John (08:33):
I was connected to you through Steve Beauchamp.
He was like, yo, you got to hit up Johnny.
And it turns out we know one otherperson in common turns out we both know
or have worked with Jerome per home.

Johnny (08:46):
actually me and Jerome were together briefly in Quebec and Montreal.
So I think that's where.
he is still,

John (08:52):
Yeah.
He's at one of others
working on
that Gotham nights

Johnny (08:55):
we worked at, the EA studio in Montreal and that was

John (08:58):
was that misrule back then.

Johnny (09:00):
I think it was just called yeah, mobile, the studio was in, uh, I
don't know if your listeners will knowthis in Placerville Marie, which is, a
girl Metro Metro station, and it was,EA mobile occupied one floor visceral.
And I think another studio,

John (09:14):
BioWare.

Johnny (09:15):
BioWare occupied the floor below.
And, um, I was on the mobileteam, upstairs working on a
very early stage mobile games.
So that was, where me andJerome kind of interacted.
I don't think he was on the mobile side.
I think he was more on the console.
what they used to calltraditional box products.
So, sports and, some of those franchises,

John (09:34):
I love how, as I do this podcast and interact with people
that I haven't met before, there'salways some cross-pollination and
we've we've walked similar roles.
Right.
So it's awesome to hear that youwere all the EA slash new EA and
then now you're at riot yeah, we gota bunch of listeners from Montreal.
so shout out to theQuebecois, to the homeys
Como Sava.

Johnny (09:56):
Yeah.
Montreal is one of those cities where Imoved there as a, obviously I only spoke
English, but it's one of those cities youcan get away with Ellis speaking French,
like in Montreal.
And I think, because of that, Ithink humans need to be forced into
kind of situations where they'reforced to learn, but more travel.
Wasn't one of those cities whereI think you had to learn French

(10:17):
to kind of get by the day-to-day I think.
but yeah, it was, uh, itwas like a European city in
Canada.
it's a lot of traditionalFrench architecture, sort of
like the bars and nightlife.
There was very sort of European focus.
So when I moved there, I thinkI was in my early twenties and,

John (10:34):
That's a good place to be in your early

Johnny (10:36):
That's a great place to be in early twenties, Well, one of the
things that was interesting was thatpeople don't go out till like 11 or 12.

John (10:43):
Yeah.
That's the east coast man.
New York's the
same way.

Johnny (10:46):
that's the east coast.
I was like, oh man, likejust get home from work.
You're tired.
I've also lived in London for a long time.
People went out right after workin London, whereas in Montreal
people, I think they went home.
I
took
a nap, ate their dinner, they came out.
later and maybe stayed out until likethe early hours of the morning as well.

John (11:04):
I liked that London vibe, It was something else when I first saw
it, because you're seeing these peopledressed up in their business attire
and they're falling out the bars, man.
So as soon as you get out of work, thebars are packed and it's like 11:00
PM and they're still at the bar, man.
And then they like rinserepeat at it the next day.
They're right back at work,super sharp the next day.
I'm like, how do you do that?

Johnny (11:26):
Yeah.
I mean, some of us are not as super sharp,but the next day, depending on how many
pints of beer you've had, but again,this is also like how cities are set up
being important race because London wasgenerally a public transportation city.
you took the underground or like a busto get home, whereas LA you couldn't
really do that because you have to drive.

(11:46):
Home after

John (11:47):
far, man cabs are
expensive.

Johnny (11:49):
yeah.
You have to drive So far, oryou have a cab where you have
to leave your car at work.
And it just didn't make a lot of sense,but, London has like a very special, like
Montreal has a very special energy tothe city when you're there, it's hard
to describe, but you feel the energycoming from the people around you you kind
of feed off that, but it's like, yeah.
It's, one of those cities, uh, I think,it's great to live in a, any point in

(12:10):
your life and just have a experience.

John (12:13):
I'm with He-Man London, Morrell.
have an energy is contagious.
It's infectious, right?
You want to be all reclusive andintrovert and it's going to pull you out.
It's going to lower youcome hang out, come have a
drink, meet the team, airout your frustrations, things

Johnny (12:30):
Yeah, for sure.
And like English, people love moaning, andlike, just like having that kind of moment
afterwards to kind of just complain,
just unwind from the day andjust like have a few beers.
And I think that's a great kind ofway to kind of finish out the day.

John (12:45):
Call it a decompressing.
You know what I'm saying?
It's weird working from home, right?
Like everything's here.
So I know a lot of alcoholconsumption went up through the
pandemic and, it's funny, man.
Like, I, I never really feltlike I got that decompression.
Right.
Like I'd be at my desk working andI was like, all right, I'm done.
Let me log off.
Okay.
Let me pour myself.

(13:07):
And it would still feel like my mind'sat work or I'm not really disconnected.
I'm not really recharging, man.
It's weird

Johnny (13:15):
it's one of those things where I think we all went through this work
from home period for the last 18 months.
And we'll say we, I think generallyjust a lot of tech people, like

John (13:25):
knowledge workers.

Johnny (13:26):
Yeah.
Some people, didn't have theoption of working from home.
And, it's sort of like, there's no kindof beginning or end to your Workday where
you, you start your Workday by gettingto work, whether that's commuting,
driving, that's when your day startsand you end the day by driving home.
So it's like a weird blend of lifeand work happening all at once where,

(13:47):
basically I wake up and there's my office.
Right.
and then the days kind of knowing whento kind of disconnect from work and,
that being really important as well.
But yeah, it's, interesting experience,I think at the beginning it took a bit of
adjustment, but I think now for most part,like companies like EA, Activision riot or
these baking paries have figured out howto be effective from working from home.

(14:09):
And who knows how that willinform the future guidance around
companies, his stance, and kindof approach to working with home.
We saw that Facebook just said,people can work from home permanently.
Right.
and other options like hybrid modelsthat other companies are going for.
So it'd be interesting to see how theoffice space and the workplace sort

(14:30):
of changes, into the future as well.

John (14:32):
Yeah, it's a really exciting time, man.
I never thought that thegame industry would get here.
And now that it is, I can'tpicture it ever going back.
Right.
Like there has to be some type ofhybrid or, on and off we're in the
office these days, or, you know,set your schedules a certain way.
I hope anyway.

Johnny (14:50):
a lot of people have also like moved out of the big city
as well.
Like as part of the.
pandemic where people wanted more space,they wanted a garden, they wanted a yard.
because when we moved here, we moved intoa two bedroom apartment, which was fine.
But, because we are home almost the entireday, the space can get a bit smaller.

(15:11):
if you have an office, you need to setthat up And your whole kind of space
changes because, all of a sudden,you're not the office, 10 to
12 hours a day, you're at home.
So you have to kind ofadjust your working space,
uh, to make it work.
Like a lot of times you're on zoomcalls and you see people with like, with
all sorts of shit around their house,they have to work in the living room
because their husband or wife is workingin the office and stuff like that.

John (15:33):
And kids are at home and pets, demanding your attention,
it's handy to have separation ifyou can get it So that's why people
tend to want a little bit more space
you're a riot, you're a QA director.
what does a QA director do?
What's your day-to-day look like.

Johnny (15:49):
it could vary a lot depending on company size or where you work.
Um, but, my role right now ismostly to set the direction
of where I see the team going.
So, uh, why are they importantpriorities that we should work on where
they're important initiatives, thatthe team should go after in the short
medium or long-term, and it's reallyjust kind of setting that direction,

(16:13):
strategically for the team, but alsomaking sure that, we have a good approach
to delivering our current products.
Right?
So, for example, I respond and wewere working on apex legends, live
service, and that was a game that wasa 60 player, about a Royal, we did
a release every two to four weeks.
it's a very seasonal content based game.

(16:33):
so making sure that on one hand you'resupporting the live service life project,
but also making good decisions aroundlike, where your team needs to be
strategically long-term should you invest.
Areas like better tests, automation,better tooling, better approaches
towards work, as being like how theQA team works with the rest of the,

(16:54):
development team, all these differentthings you want to have a hand in.
I think, I'm in the point of mycareer where I'm not doing a lot of
indigent visual contributions like.
a tester or engineer or data analystsor those roles, but there's Mosul.
A lot of my day is people management,working with different stakeholders across
all the different functions and roleswithin the studio and making sure that

(17:17):
whatever the QA team is working on isaligned with what the company prioritizes
and what the company feels, is important.
So, I'm making gooddecisions, around that.

John (17:27):
that's impactful, man.
That's a great positionto be in these days.
Right?
Like it sounds like leading strategy,handling personnel and figuring out
what's the biggest bang for your book,for the resources you're going to have.
How often does thatchange out of curiosity?
Like, do you plan for six monthsa year, then things change.

Johnny (17:46):
Yeah.
I think, your goals And do changeas sort of like, the company maybe
shifts its focus orpriorities around the project.
there are a lot of differences workingon a game that's in hypergrowth, right?
So what do you need to support a gamelike candy crush saga, which was in
hyper-growth for a very long timeversus a game that is a mature product

(18:07):
or a game that you're about to sunset.
Right?
So, all those kinds of situations,can change your approach and
how you, look at your mediumand sort of a longer-term goals.
in general, I think, you want to, thinkin a way where you can anticipate what
the future needs of the project or thestudio or the office are and how to make

(18:29):
the best decisions to anticipate that.
And that could mean like, youneed to increase, technical
abilities within your QA team.
You need to invest in, bettertooling around, automation, staging
environments, all these differentthings, to kind of better me.
maybe not necessarily just thecurrent demands of the project,
but future, needs and demands ofthe project and also using that.

(18:50):
So let's just say that's thedirection you want to go.
Also understanding, like, do we have theright team, to be able to support goals?
Right.
So a lot of times, you may need to hirefor those skills or you need to develop
those skills within your team internally,and really focusing on what the studio
and the project needs first, ratherthan what your current team can deliver.

(19:12):
So if your current team can't deliveron some of the longer term priorities
and goals, you can look at ways tokind of, build some of the expertise,
through hiring through internal kind ofskills, professional development, through
kind of transfers within the company.
All these things are sort ofat your disposal when you're
thinking about, long-term strategic

John (19:32):
That's cool, man.
That's something that actuallyhasn't come up a lot on this show is
long-term strategic planning, right?
Like what are all the cardsavailable to you in this game?
Right?
Like we've actually talkedabout developing a team
and we talk about hiring, but I'dbe curious to know what have you
used in your experience for, okay.
My team needs to learn a new consolegeneration or console cycle or new

(19:57):
product coming out versus, Hey,we just don't have this expertise.
We need to look externally orinternally for transfers, right?
How do you approach that?

Johnny (20:05):
Yeah.
So I think really focusing on likewhat the problem you're trying to solve
is, and, understanding what skills,are needed to meet those problems.
Right.
So, let's just take a verycommon problem within QA.
Uh, a lot of our testing is very manual.
It's pretty Blackbox is very,non-technically driven and it's
how do we move from there to, moretests, automation, more builds,

(20:31):
kind of verification, all thesedifferent things require someone
or team with different skills.
Sometimes it's not like a transformativething you need to do with your
team, but maybe you just need to doslight sort of augmentations within
your team, to kind of get there.
But it's really like understandingwhat, the problem is you're trying
to solve and what kind of skills arerequired to kind of solve those problems.

(20:53):
When you're working for any business.
So it's not a perfect situationwhere you can build out the perfect
team, then make the product wherethe product is already going.
Right.
So the car is already on the road is
driving.
It's really, how do you makeimprovements to the car and keeping
the car moving at the same time?
And that could be like a bit of ajuggling act sometimes, but, it's

(21:13):
something that, we need to think about.
a lot of times you go into,companies or, teams with varying
levels of maturity, right?
Like it's like a verysliding scale, right.
sometimes you join a team where they'rejust starting out, building a new
project building a new product and,they have very immature processes.
They're not working in sort of agilesort of way, or, and as how do you

(21:36):
kind of, inject solutions there.
a lot of like, how you think aboutthese things is really depending on
where the team is currently at and like,what realistically you can accomplish
within like, the short and medium term,

John (21:48):
you brought up something super interesting is to say, you're
taking a immature team, right.
A team to just kind of take andwork as it comes we call it like
a chicken without their head.
So what you said,processes aren't in place.
And one step in that direction is maybe.
Dropping in agile methodologies.
is that something you'veseen to be successful?

(22:09):
Right.
We, okay.
Boom.
Agile is going to work for XYZ reasons.
And how long does that take to implement?

Johnny (22:16):
I think really depends.
Right.
I think if you're working like at anearly stage startup, maybe like sub 20, 30
people, I think, it might not makesense to adopt agile right away.
I think if your goal then is to kindof quickly, deliver products, MVPs
and early iterations of why you want,

(22:39):
agile might not be thebest solution for that.

John (22:41):
In lieu of agile, what would work for a team of that size
with that goal?

Johnny (22:44):
you could, use a waterfall approach to kind
of delivering the product.
all these different thingsare at your disposal.
I think.
In the last 10, maybe 10, 12 years,agile has become a very big philosophy
and practice in software development.

John (22:59):
Oh yeah, it seems like everybody throws it out there, man.
It's like, oh, first thing Iwant to do agile, Kanban, JIRA.

Johnny (23:06):
and it's definitely, made its way into the games world.
and really depending on where you work.
But I think in most modern daygame development studios, agile
is the Bible for developing
and making games.
And agile does a lot of greatthings in terms of it gives the
team some predictability and,what you need to do, how, how fast

(23:27):
you're going to accomplish work.
What are your goals at the end of each,two week sprint, four week sprint,
however you want to structure it.
And I think, as a project managerproducer, it gives the team
a lot of, empowerment to knowwhat to work on and know what,
why are they important things thatthey should care about as part of each
sprint and what they need to deliver.
And I think, it also gives teamsthe ability to, have really early

(23:50):
iterations of the product totest, to see and play as well,
which is goes into that failingfast mentality is like, we don't
want to be working for years and notreally knowing what the product is
or, where the product needs to be.
So agile has offered a lot of flexibilitythere, and I think it's really good
that, modern game development has reallyadopted this as an important practice.

John (24:13):
I'm a big fan, right?
Fail fast, get something on screen.
Something that you can control naileddown the feeling the experience, right.
As opposed to living in the theoreticalspace or paper design and just
talking a hypothetical, especiallywhen it comes to creatives, right?
Like we can be in meetings til the end oftime talking about how things should work.

(24:36):
Or even if they're feasible,

Johnny (24:38):
I think failing fast is a really, really important aspect.
You just like, you want to know assoon as possible to validate whether
your product, or your feature orthat decision was the right one.
And I think the earlier you can do it thebetter, I think, think about it this way.
Like if you're building a featureor game, think about what you
don't need to validate this productand you can cut everything else.

(24:59):
anything that's like, time-consuminglike Polish or anything like that.
And just get to the core of the gameplaythat you want to deliver to players
and validate that first before divingdeep in, a lot of those other areas.

John (25:12):
that's the way, right?
Like a scope early scope,often toss out what doesn't
work and figure out what those

Johnny (25:19):
Yeah.

John (25:20):
I'm curious, Johnny, what led you into games?
Where did this love this fascination?
Where did it all start?

Johnny (25:28):
Like most people are, so I'm 36.
yeah,
I grew up in the eighties, butwithin the internet generation.
Right.
I think the internet wasprolific in the late nineties.
and, that's opened up all sorts ofdoors for people to have access to
information, to communicate with eachother, like, email, video conferencing,

(25:49):
but also like gaming as well.
So, I grew up like a lot of kidsplaying, the really early stage sort
of blizzard games that came out.
So games like Warcraft three Diablo,all those games are like very classic,
games that people started with,
back then who wereinterested in this space.
And back then it was mostly singleplayer experiences at a star

(26:12):
because, when I got internet withthe 56 K sort of modems, so dial up.
So quite a lot of limitations onlike, connections to servers, how
you interact with different people.
But, I think that's wherereally my love of games came.
back then my parents had boughtthis computer, uh, It was a place
where, like me and my brotherjust spent so much time on.

(26:33):
It's just like, exploring theinternet, playing games, like
Counterstrike, which we played a lot.
all those games kind of
like led me into the games industry.
And it's one of those funny stories,because I think I started my first
testing job in 2005, 2006, at EAthey call it year Vancouver now, but
it was back then it's called EFC,in Burnaby, in British Columbia.

(26:55):
So there was like a bigCanadian office they had there.

John (26:58):
It's like one of the biggest, so I guess what is it EAC just for EA Canada?

Johnny (27:02):
Yeah.
it was a period of time where, they'redeveloping a lot of sports titles there.
So I got a chance to work on, earlytwo thousands, mid two thousands NBA
titles, some of the hockey franchises.
how I fell into that rolewas kind of interesting.
This is, I guess, how old I am bylike jobs recruitment worked very
differently now than it did thenI think you had published an ad in

(27:24):
a local newspaper and I actually.
Emailed EA, I guess it was like arecruiting, email on that newsletter.
And that's how I got my job there.
And it was, back then year hadlike very rudimentary kind of
tests to get into QA roles.
It was like
looking at a video.
I think the game was needfor speed, like hot pursuit.

(27:44):
One of those need for speeds,huddles enters really identifying
what the bugs were, making sure thatyou're you have good written skills,
writing bugs, writing bug reports.
that Was sort of like a lot of thevalidation for me to get that job.

John (27:58):
Was this like a take-home test or were you brought on site?
And we're like, all right, watchthis game and fill out a bug
report or how was it structure?

Johnny (28:06):
it was on-site I think, so it was onsite and because
EA had needed, so many testers
back then they needed bodies?
and seats, to be ableto test these back then.
Box product, right?
So you worked on products for a verylong time and they, they deliver, and
then you never saw that product again.
And you work on thenext iteration of that.
So they were really looking for testingbodies, to obviously test the game file

(28:29):
bugs, but, to have this mass resourceto kind of help them with the outcome
of delivering a quality game, obviously.
Right.
So, uh, we were onsite, itwas like group interviews.
It was like, various kind oftests and like, one-on-one
interviews to kind of get that job.

John (28:45):
How many rounds was it?
Like

Johnny (28:46):
yeah,

John (28:47):
days.

Johnny (28:50):
it started with a recruiter calling you

John (28:53):
Yeah, the phone screen.

Johnny (28:55):
the phone screen.
talked a little bit about, whyyou were interested in the job.
What, what did you know about EA EA atthat point was already a massive company,
right?
So mid two thousands year was reallyhitting stride as sort of like a
leader in the console and PC spaceand just, uh, making like very
recognizable kind of titles, like

John (29:16):
Yeah,

Johnny (29:17):
Those are like,

John (29:18):
On the ground was big at the time.
Obviously everybody can reciteEA sports it's in the game.
Right.
And I think STEM's wascoming or like SIM city,

Johnny (29:30):
yeah.

John (29:31):
and conquer things like this.

Johnny (29:34):
Yeah.
And like, Yeah.
I actually had a lot more franchisesback then than it does now, but
like SSX all these skateboardinggame, a target with golf came,
all these, uh, Madden, which was obviouslymade in, uh, Tiburon, uh, in Florida.
Uh,

John (29:51):
think was their shooter

Johnny (29:52):
yeah.
And, it was this really like largegaming company on one hand, I think.

John (29:57):
godfather.
I think they had

Johnny (29:58):
yeah, yeah.
Golf and all these, andlike someone licensed games.
like Harry Potter and stuff like that,
that they

John (30:05):
the Potter license

Johnny (30:06):
yeah.
They have the Potter license for a bit.
And I think, for me at that time, itwas just a lot of excitement to get
work experience working for such alarge, video game publisher company.
And I think,

John (30:17):
I'm sure they're big in Vancouver.
Like everybody knows them.

Johnny (30:20):
Vancouver they're, probably like overwhelmingly the largest employer of
tech games, talent in British Columbia.
And there's a lot of smaller game studios
there.
but by far I think I wouldn't besurprised if they employed thousands
of people in Vancouver as partof that, studio on campus there.
So, I think for most ofus, our first job, right?
Like you didn't knowreally what to expect.

(30:42):
I mean, I had jobs before them.
but this was like the first sort ofprofessional experience that you got
was like working in a company, beingaccountable for certain things and
working in an office environment, withother folks, I think, that was, really
interesting experience early days interms of, QA approaches to testing.
I learned a lot from very talentedpeople there and also like, a lot of

(31:05):
people who I used to work with in thatstudio, are still there in Vancouver.
So, it's good to see that a lot ofpeople have stuck around and had a
lot of longevity their careers at EA.

John (31:15):
Yeah, man.
I'm always surprised that Italk to people who have been
at EA for over 10 plus years.
So it's something good hasgot to be happening there.

Johnny (31:24):
yeah.
And like you get to work on IP.
That's globally recognized, which is Greg.
it's like, everyone's heard of FIFA,
everyone's heard ofMadden Internationally.
Like you can go anywhere in the worldand people will know what you're
talking about with EA games, whichwas not the case for, uh, smaller
studios or lesser known IPS as well.
So, yeah, you gave you a chanceto kind of work on project with,

(31:46):
huge impact and huge reach.
So that was a really exciting time.

John (31:50):
When you came on, come on as like a full-time employee and all that?

Johnny (31:54):
No, I came on as a, what they call the contract tester,
Where, back then, QA was viewedvery differently than it is now.
So in the sense that,testing was seen, uh, surly.
Like we need to get this project out,we're close to kind of shipping and
we just need to power bodies on bodiesto kind of test and get the bugs out.
So, it was a contract rolethat was paid, hourly.

(32:16):
it was a very small kind of hourlywage, but I think that wasn't the most
important part at that point in my career.
it was more so just to reallyget experience in the industry.
And, in the sense that that experiencethat you got was, way more important
for later on your career, then,the $10 an hour that you made
as part of work there.

John (32:35):
100%.
I'm curious if you put yourself back inthose shoes, like Johnny circa mid two
thousands, you were AB gamer, right?
You played a bunch of PC games now you'recoming into EA and now you're testing.
Was there any big surprisesabout how games are made?

Johnny (32:52):
Yeah.
I think, a lot of times people viewedthose, sports titles that you makes
us like very small iterative changes,because you're going from one season of
FIFA to the next, and it's like mayberoster updates or anything like that.
But, I hadn't no professionalworking experience and just seeing
like all the artists that you need,all those software engineers or the

(33:13):
management layers that you need tomake a game was really eye-opening and
interesting for me because you go into.
These games and like, you see likehow big the studio is and like how big
the investment into those franchises
were.
And, you just kind of really understandlike the sheer monumental undertaking
making a game really requires.

(33:34):
And just like how hard it is to geta build from the early stages to
a very polished, finished productwas not an easy undertaking.
so it was just like alot of iterative stuff.
A lot of working with QA tokind of make sure that where our
approach to testing was correct.
We're testing the right areas of thegame, all these different things.
what's interesting, obviously, likeyou could make a game to people in

(33:56):
the garage, but the production qualitywon't be nearly as good as like what's
some of these big companies like EAor Activision are pumping out today.

John (34:06):
For sure.
It's a, it's a resources, numbersgame, you would have told me how
many people it takes to make a game.
I'd be like, yeah, like 10, 20 peopleand coming to find that it's several
hundreds, you know, that's alwaysa big shock to a lot of people.
Like I can make a game, right?
Like, well, you could, it's goingto take you a while and it's
not going to look that good.

Johnny (34:24):
Yeah.

John (34:24):
but today is different right today.
It's a whole different world, right?
Like a bunch of assets for freeonline, a bunch of engines and tools
and open source code and scripts that

Johnny (34:34):
Okay.

John (34:35):
hit the ground running, which is mind blowing to me.

Johnny (34:37):
Yeah.
for sure.
And like, making a game
is far more accessible nowthan it was 20 years ago.
Uh, yeah, like you said,you have, game engines, like
unity with a unity storefront.
I may not have the money to hire artistsor UI designers, but I can certainly buy
some of those assets for like a reallysmall fraction of the cost and make a
game, myself with like you can self teach.

(35:00):
A lot of programmers are self-taughtor game developers are self-taught.
So, it's become more democraticpeople's ability to kind of make a game.
And I think, that's great.
And like also the platforms to kind ofsubmit, have your games we publish on.
I've become a lot more democratic as well.
So we can publish a game on the appleapp store Android store quite easily,

John (35:21):
And steam.

Johnny (35:22):
yeah.
Esteem, whereas before, making a game wasreally a multi-million dollar production
because you have a physical productthat you shipped to stores Get your
product to that stage, to have abox product was really expensive.
And I think just learning about thatprocess was really influential and
like interesting part of my career.

(35:42):
And I think a lot of it was alsotrial by fire first job, lots of
over time, lots of, grinding it outwithin like the QA ranks a year.
But, a lot of people go into QA withthe idea that they're going to be
in other parts of the game industry,
other functions in the game.
so world, and certainly I've manageda lot of people who've gone on
to become developers, artists,producers, and, into those roles.

(36:06):
But, it's nice to be able stay inthis kind of discipline and also
see how that's evolved over time.

John (36:12):
Yeah.
I definitely want to pick your brainon the evolution of the craft of the
field in particular for yourself, right?
Like when you broke in and what yourinterview process was like, and then
what your day to day was like earlyon compared to what it is now, what
do you look for when you're tryingto bring people in onto your team?

Johnny (36:30):
that's a great question.
I think there's a lot of combination of,of experience and attitude and approach,
so let's just say this, if I couldbring in someone with less experience,
but a great attitude or someone witha lot of experience, but not really
like the best attitude towards work.
I would always choose someone who was onthe less experienced side, but who can
grow within the team and be really kind ofproud of their work and be really kind of,

(36:55):
integral team member, not as, just as a
IC individual contributor,but also someone who can like
work well within the team?
A lot of QA is also likeyou need someone with,
good people skills, good kindof verbal communication skills.
I see we're working with not just the QAteam, but you're working with production.
You're working with art, you're workingwith a ton of developers and being

(37:16):
able to communicate well, whetherthat's written or verbal, I think
as a really important part of this.
a lot of things, concepts, guidingprinciples, we kind of are talking
QA can be learned, and can bekind of, educated on over time.
But I think the attitude part is hard tochange if someone you hire us, if they
have a batter batter to do a poorapproach to work, that is a much

(37:40):
tougher kind of problem or not to crack.
So in short, that's what I look for.
obviously like, experience bringslike all the requisite skills that
you might need or on test planning,good test case management, good bug
writing, good eye for quality as well.
So what makes a quality productis important for though, so we're
not there just to find bugs, butwe're also there to, help deliver

(38:03):
a good player experience as well.
So, people who care aboutthat part of the game as well.
So, if you feel like a new feature iscoming out as really has sort of adverse
effects on the player experiences,they're able to point that out and
they'd be able to contribute that designfeedback back to the team as well.

John (38:20):
Totally, totally.
I liked that.
I liked that a lot, man.
That's super encouraging.
Like someone comes and applies andthey have a ton of experience, right?
They've QA for many years on lots ofdifferent, huge console and PC titles.
They even got mobile experiences.
what are some of the flags thatyou spot maybe, or that you

(38:41):
check for to be like, Hmm, I see
something here.
I want you to kind ofprobe deeper kind of thing.
What are some of the flagsthat's that you tend to find,
or you tend to like check for

Johnny (38:51):
some of the flags or indicators.
I think I like to hire peoplewith a very open mind towards
solving problems or issues.
So, they come into those problems with acollaborative mindset and how to kind of
solve those problems rather than with amindset like, oh, I've done this before.
This is how we're going to doit because, it's worked for

(39:12):
me, uh, necessarily the past.
I think while that is somewhat important,I think, uh, having someone with a
open mind and collaborative mindsetwill help build good relationships
within the development team, I think.
that's a really important part ofthis is I not to hire people who
are like too dogmatic in theirbeliefs or into kind of like,

(39:33):
there's one way to solve the problem.
this is the one way we're going to do it.
But like having someone with likesome flexibility in how they're
thinking, and their problem solving,I think, is really important.
And obviously, like, I think thatthese align to how someone critically
thinks about a product too.
So like sorta like thatstrategic mindset as well.
So like, For example, like whenwe were working on candy crush,

(39:55):
which is a match three game, uh,people, hopefully I've heard of it.
I'm

John (39:59):
this is WIC for king,
right?

Johnny (40:01):
Yeah.
With king.
Is that,

John (40:02):
King

Johnny (40:03):
king was a Scandinavian company.
it started in Sweden, but it had officesof various sizes all over Europe and
in the United States and their, theirclaim to fame was obviously candy crush.
it was kind of crazy justworking on a product with that
much reach and that much kind

John (40:19):
millions millions per day, man.
Like

Johnny (40:21):
yeah.

John (40:22):
if not hundreds of millions per day.
What, where was the officethat you worked out of?

Johnny (40:26):
Yeah.
So I worked out of theLondon, the UK, UK office.
Yeah.
So That's when I was in the UK.
and we worked on like a variety ofkind of like new products and like
existing king products as well.
But, it was just crazy to seethe sheer reach and magnitude of
the gains that we're working on.
I had worked at a lot of companies beforewhere how did huge followings, like a

(40:48):
lot of users by king basically addedanother zero on the end of the user base.
And it was just like, I thinkI, as speaking, highlight.
400 million monthly activeusers or something just
insane.

John (40:59):
million
active

Johnny (41:01):
400 million people have played that game at least once that month.
So, that was really interesting place tobe where like, you had super passionate
people about the product and like,interesting to be part of a company
that's also in this hyper growth as well.
So,

John (41:17):
When you talk about hypergrowth, that's interesting.
We haven't really discussedit a lot on the show.
I'm curious that changes about theenvironment or the goals like, Hey, we're
in hypergrowth, could you explain that?
Cause I would assume that thatmeans we're just trying to get
as people playing this game in.
We're trying to grow.
We're trying to hire and grow and expand.

Johnny (41:36):
I think when I joined king in 2014, it was like
around maybe 600 employees.
By the time I left, hewas in the thousands.

John (41:44):
Almost doubled.
Yeah.

Johnny (41:45):
Yeah.
the company had grown sort oforders of magnitude during my time
there, I think, Because candy crushwas such a monumental success.
They really wanted to replicatethat success in other mobile games.
So, in the London studio, we releasea really big, match three farm
game that was called farm heroes.
And, that was a game that probablygenerated $150 million per year.

(42:08):
so I think two to $300,000, per day.
So, I think they wanted to replicatesuccess as fast as they can, but
also to diversify their productsoutside of the candy crush space.
So, even though candy crushwas a massive success, they
also wanted to have success in
the Zandra's, other games as well.
So hypergrowth
is a really interestingtime to be within a company.

(42:32):
There's a lot of people being hired,a lot of change in the strategy.
A lot of teams being spun up and itcan be a bit distracting sometimes
because, you're constantly onboardingpeople, which is taxing on your current
team to be able to train, integratethese new people in your team.
And you can also be hardto preserve a culture
when you're growing, so quicklyas well, because, we have this

(42:55):
one core culture with your team.
but.
That culture can quickly erode orget lost, in the ways over kind of
like the space of a few years whenyou inject, thousands of people into
your company who may not necessarilykind of like share the same beliefs or
share the same principles.
So, it's a very different from themature company where, in a mature
company you have a few stable franchises.

(43:17):
That's what you're working on.
You're working on the FIFA, you'reworking on the Maddens of the well, and
you're taking less speculative puntson like new IP and stuff like that.
Whereas king generally had a veryopen mind in taking really big risks
and really big blue ocean playsinto what the next hits are going
to be and really willing to fail.
I think, we failed a lot interms of like what genre we

(43:40):
selected, what IP we selected.
But the one thing that is kindof like commendable is that the
leadership team really had ambitiousgoals for like where they see the
company, what they wanted to do.
So, Yeah.
it was, a super interestingtime got to work with some
really amazing group of people.
people were quite talented.
And I think the interestingthing about mobile games is that

(44:02):
it's also reached hundreds ofmillions of new gamers as well.
So if you think about our parentsgeneration, your mom, your
dad, they weren't necessarily
gamers before mobile proliferators.
So
mobile games sorta brought accessto these games onto people's phones.
if you can walk around, uh, kindof like on the subway or the tube
is like people are playing on theirphones, playing games all the time.

(44:25):
People who you didn't necessarilythink were gamers are gamers.
Now a lot of people like to scoff atmobile games because there's sort of like
less immersive experience and consolewhen you're sitting in front of your TV.
but it's really brought a lot ofnew gamers into this ecosystem that
otherwise weren't going to be gamers.
Like my mom is not going to buy asouped up PC and start, start playing

(44:49):
apex, but maybe she will play like
super casual game on her phone.
And I think
that's super awesome for ourgame industry and, the world of,

John (44:59):
Absolutely.
Man, the more gamerswe have the better and
to be fair, the AAA space orthe big console developer.
I have definitely learneda ton from mobile.
There's a lot of practices that didn'texist until mobile came along that
were like, Hey, this is a good idea.
Mandy's like free to play and sellingad-ons, and maintain your game.

(45:23):
Right.
Versus like the old model waslike box product one or two
DLCs, and then we're moving on.
now I really think on the string formobile is why we ended up with games like
apex, legends, Fortnite, things like this.

Johnny (45:37):
if you can picture, like when we bought games 20 years ago, you pay
$60, sometimes more accesses, sometimescheaper to buy the box product.
You loaded the CD and, you play the game.
And the target game was basicallyafter the initial purchase, didn't
come at any cost to you, right?
Whereas now, I gained like apexlegends, which is free to download.

(45:59):
You can enjoy the game thoroughly.
Like how about thoroughly immersiveexperience without paying a single dollar?
So what that means is that you canintroduce new players to the game who are
otherwise hesitant to spend $60 on a game.
$60 is a lot of money, right.
To kind of spread out a gamethat you may or may not like.
Right.
So, and if you choose, like youcan buy in game purchases, in our

(46:22):
purchases that, gives you like acosmetic boost or anything like that.
And I think that's really where theindustry has headed over the last
five to seven years is if you thinkabout the app store back, like 10, 12
years ago, it was like you had a lotof games that cost 3 99, 5 99, dollar.
Nadina.
Yeah.
A dollar like angry burrs.
when it came out, they had a paidversion that was, I think 2 99.

(46:45):
now you rarely see that outsideof maybe like fairly niche,
utility apps, utility products.
So, you can download thosegames to play for free.
I enjoy that experience and whether theycame monetized via, advertisements or in
game purchases, you can choose whetherto interact with those items or not.
But, I can play thousandsof games for free right now.

(47:06):
And I think,

John (47:07):
Yeah,

Johnny (47:07):
that's cool.
That's really interesting.
And like it helps spring, new gamersinto this wall or they're new, right?

John (47:14):
we're in a great space, like you said, right.
We're opening it up to a whole differentgeneration of people that weren't really
quote unquote gamers who now have thisdevice that could play a game that.
worked with their life, right.
That they can pick up, play acouple minutes and then be done
with it or continue to play.
when you were at king, whatwere you doing at king?

(47:35):
And curious

Johnny (47:36):
yeah.

John (47:37):
things changed as went through that period of like hypergrowth

Johnny (47:41):
when I arrived at king in London, it was still relatively
new studio at that time.
The really established studiowas the studio in Stockholm,
Yeah.
w which was the headquarterswhere the founders originally
kind of initiated the company.
They found it in Stockholm and that'swhere the candy crush franchise
lives, and still, lives there.

(48:02):
So, when I got to London, thestudio is still quite new.
I was one of the, really the first,QA, people brought onto the team.
and so I looked over the QAteam over in London, uh, sort of
like the QA manager our studio.
the interesting changes that you kindof go through is that when a team is in
hyper-growth, they don't necessarily seeus testing as important part of delivering

(48:26):
products because through their goal wasto deliver products as soon as possible,
as fast as well, to validate that.
But, with a company like king,we've developed, different standards
towards quality, what can bereleased, why shouldn't be released.
when we started, wedidn't have a lot of QA.
Working directly with game teams.
But when I left, QA working within gameteams from concept to deployment was

(48:49):
like a very, common practice already.
So, uh, it's really shifting what peoplethink about as traditional QA, where
you finish a product, the test, theytest it, you find the bugs, they fix it.
Then you release the productto QA being injected, in pre
production at the concept stages,
to validate design, to explore kindof early testing, needs early testing

(49:11):
practices and all the way through,when that product was deployed.
So it was really like a mindset,culture shift that needed to
happen at our studio for QA to besuccessful within, that studio.
But that was one of the biggest changes

John (49:24):
I love that actually.
Like I've always found that tobe the best use of QA, right.
As embedding them into the team, sittingwith the developers that they're in
those early pre production meetings.
So they can see the vision and grow withthat and know what to look for ahead of
time and be able to contribute to that.
Right.
Like, I've seen nothingbut good things happen.
And it's always surprisingto me when teams,

(49:46):
are resistant or hesitant to that
they build those walls.

Johnny (49:50):
yeah, they build those walls.
sometimes physical rise.
So Devon floor even.
so it was great to see that cultureshift and it was really rewarding, I
think, as a studio, we were reallytasked to deliver new mobile products
to augment the, games portfolio.
I king people know king for candy crunch,but they don't know some of the other

(50:12):
kind of titles that come out from it.
And it's really kind of interestingto work on a lot of new games.
I came out, as part of the studio,some successful, some not, but, one of
the nice things about mobile comparedto a box product or console products
that you can have very early validationof your product through AB testing
through kind of what we call itsoft launches, where I just wanted

(50:34):
to test how my product works in.
Let's say the Philippinesget some early metrics on
retention or monetizationon gameplay, changes.
And, that was really kindof, Interesting space to be.
And just to kind of be in that sortof data kind of minded, company,
where they use data to informed, a lotof good decisions, and when to kind

(50:54):
of keep working on a game and whento kind of stop working on a game.
And I think those decisions are reallycritical for your studio's success.
And, was great to be inthat mindset in that world.
And obviously like getting tolive on a different continent
was also interesting as well.

John (51:10):
Was there any major, like culture shocks when you made the transition Where
did you leave when you got to London

Johnny (51:16):
Toronto, I
had moved from Toronto?
to London.
I don't think, there was anymassive culture shocks, because
London is English speaking.
Most people when they move to anothercountry, there's like some language
barriers that they have to overcome.
there were massive,culture shocks, I think.
it was nice to be part of like A veryvibrant kind of city where, there was

(51:37):
like a huge diverse population as well.
So like you have people from allparts of Europe, but all parts
of like other parts of the world,like Africa, India, north America.
And this word gets used a lot, but it'ssort of like this melting pot of different
cultures and different languages.
and that was, really interestingpart of my life as well.

(51:58):
So

John (51:58):
Oh, yeah.
And you were there at the good timewhen they were still part of the EU.

Johnny (52:02):
yeah,

John (52:02):
So you can probably jump in a train and get to another country.
No problem.

Johnny (52:06):
well now no, one's really traveling, but I was there for the
Brexit vote and all those things, so,

John (52:11):
Oh snap.
Were you

Johnny (52:12):
yeah.

John (52:13):
vote or not?
Cause you were like,

Johnny (52:14):
So I'm Canadian.
So, I think as part of some
UK Commonwealth,

John (52:19):
yeah, you both
honor the
same
queen.

Johnny (52:21):
We both under the same queen.
some Commonwealth agreement met the,I could vote in British elections.
So that was, really interesting.

John (52:27):
Yeah, my wife is Canadian and apparently I could file for all that.
And I've just been lazy about it, man.
that gives me more impetus to actually gofollow through of my Canadian residency
I'm like, what am Igoing to gain right now?
But
it gives me more value.
I see it now.

Johnny (52:41):
I think in people's career, I really encourage.
if you have the opportunity to workin different countries and different
cities, there is so much to begained from that experience, right?
Like you're putting into maybe more ofan uncomfortable situation where you
don't have a friend space, you don'thave kind of like your network, but
you're challenged on those things.
But you get to make new friends build yournetwork, but also just explore different

(53:05):
parts of the world and cultures as well.
Like in Montreal, therewas like very vibrant
Quebecois culture.
And, um, and that was just like, Ithink for personal growth as well
as professional growth, it means alot for people's careers to be able
to kind of, have that experiencein like different parts of the wall

John (53:23):
Yeah,
100%.
Like what you said about you lookfor people who are naturally more
open-minded and like you said, it's,it's tough to change someone who is
so set in their ways and regimented,but all hope is not lost, right?
Because typically if you domove and get out of your comfort
zone, leave your hometown.
And are forced to learn how tosurvive with different people,

(53:45):
different languages, differentculture, having to look right to
cross the street instead of left,

Johnny (53:50):
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
the really small things like that.
I think.
Are interesting.
I like, if I had to tell my younger selfor other people who are just starting the
careers, that if you work for like a bigmultinational company, like, yay, like you
couldn't go work at a different office.
Right.
and you can just transferinternally to get that

John (54:09):
Right.

Johnny (54:10):
but like, you would have been disappointing to just, I think
work in one city, my entire life,

John (54:14):
For sure.

Johnny (54:15):
working in different cities, different countries really kind
of gives you some perspective.
And like you said, itopens up your world a bit.
And I think, having that internationalexperience is definitely, a
really nice thing to have.

John (54:25):
I'm gonna, corroborate times a million, right?
Like it makes you more employable by thesheer nature of you're more open minded.
You have more, perspectives onthings and also personal growth.
Right?
Like you just become someone whonaturally is easier to get along with.
Right.
Or have interesting conversations with.
Right.
Which is.
An unwritten thing of what we tendto look for when we're looking

(54:48):
to bring people onto the team.
For sure.

Johnny (54:50):
Yeah.

John (54:51):
what moved you to the UK?
Right?
Like did king bring you out thereand then what brought you back
over the Atlantic over here?

Johnny (54:58):
I rewind a bit, so in 2009, I did, uh, after university
thing where you go travelingacross lots of different countries,
uh, I don't know if that's as popularas other parts of the world where you
graduate, you have no job experience.
You go, go travel for a bit.

John (55:16):
backpacking.

Johnny (55:17):
Yeah.
So I went backpacking, in SoutheastAsia, it was one of the more
affordable destinations to go, to.
So I went
to Thailand, Malaysiaand like all these other

John (55:26):
okay.
I got to go, man.
There's still on my bucket listto travel as soon as I can.
I want to get out there.

Johnny (55:32):
Yeah.
It's one of those pent up feelingsthat people have right now during
the pandemic, the inability totravel, see people see family.
But so I had done this Southeast Asiatrip and had met tons of people from
the UK as part of that and friendsthat I'm still in touch with today.
And, I always thought to myself,like you would be a really cool

(55:52):
experience to go live in London, fora few years, to have that as part
of my life, as part of my journey.
And I think, that was always in theback of my mind to kind of make my way.
Over there.
So, I moved to the UK for the king job.
I had interviewed, remotely, theygot me a visa to go work in the UK,
me and my girlfriend at that time.

(56:12):
It was now my wife is
a, a we moved over there.
I think really just like, notreally sure what to expect.
like I said, it's like, you're, you'resort of challenged in, like, you don't
have any friends immediately, likeall these different things, put you in
positions that discomfort, but I thinkthat's really good for your personal

John (56:30):
That's how you grow.

Johnny (56:31):
yeah.
Personal growth is to be able todo that, to kind of step out of
your shell and be able to do that.
So that's a big reason why I went there.
I think, also London has
such close proximity within twohours to so much of Europe as well.
So having the ability to travel todifferent destinations, Portugal, Spain,

(56:53):
France, Scandinavia, differentfoods, different cultures.
Yeah.
Spain.
has great Everything.
basically rice.
So like weather, food drinks,vibrant life, like Seaside kind of,
if you're in Barcelona, So I reallylike having that opportunity to,
travel out to different destinations.
So is appealing.
Like if you think about Canada, right?

(57:13):
There's only so much you can doif you fly two hours away from
even in the United States, right.
It's
like, it's just like the differencefrom me flying from Los Angeles to
Texas to the Midwest, isn't as differentas fine from the UK to let's just say
Romania, Italy, all these countries

(57:35):
offer a different flavor.
Like Greece, all these differentthings offer like, different people's
different cultures, different foods.
And I think that was a really big appealof living in London as a travel hub.
Is that your ability to go to these,all these different countries it's
just magnified and like, yeah.
In your twenties or early thirties,it's definitely like if you have the

(57:57):
opportunity even later to do that, Ithink that's, a really, uh, amazing kind
of incentive for why we went out there
and like why we came back.

John (58:05):
How long were you out there and then
what brought you back?

Johnny (58:08):
so I was in London for close to four years.

John (58:11):
That's a good run.

Johnny (58:13):
yeah, That's a good run.
and move back with king actuallyking had opened a studio in Seattle.
yeah.
I think fifth and pine or
like,

John (58:22):
damn.
That's right in downtown.

Johnny (58:24):
so right in downtown.
they had acquired astudio a few years ago.
they were looking for some leadershipon the QA side, over in our studio.
So that's why I moved out here.
Other kind of personal reasonsmy parents live in Vancouver.

John (58:36):
Yeah.
He like a two hour drive.

Johnny (58:39):
and it was nice to be closer to my parents.
unfortunately the Seattle studio didn'twork out because in the end they decided
to close that studio for a lot ofdifferent strategic business reasons.
But, that's really why I came backand like, from Seattle, I came down
to LA where we're currently at.
So
it's gone like a full circle a bit.

John (58:59):
So from king then to back to EA for respond.

Johnny (59:04):
So I went from king in London to king in Seattle to, respond,
which is part of VA in Los Angeles.
Yeah.

John (59:12):
Nice man.
So, king shuts down Seattle,
and then you're looking for work.
And you found LA
what led you to LA?
Was it the city?
Was it the company?
Was it the, the IP?
What was it?

Johnny (59:28):
Yeah, it?
was a combination ofeverything that you just said.
I think everyone, has thisvery idealized view of Las
the beaches.
It's the,

John (59:37):
We

Johnny (59:38):
it's a, it's a party life and all.
these sort of things one respondwas a very, talented studio.

John (59:44):
Absolutely 100%,

Johnny (59:46):
just, they delivered 10 fall, one type fall to, when I got there,
it was, season one of apex legends.
And, I think it was a combination of, thestudio, uh, the IP that they had, also
the opportunity to kind of make an impacton the QA team, uh, respond as well.
So, there aren't too many free to playconsole games, but compared to mobile.

(01:00:07):
Right.
So, and the battle Royal space is also.
Pretty hot right now in terms of likepunchy fortnight, apex or call of duty.
was on all these differentgames are make this a very, uh,
interesting space right now.
So I've done tons of mobile.
So it was nice for me to kind of stepout of that comfort, uh, mobile into

(01:00:28):
like console development working on,apex was on Nintendo's national switch.
X-Box PS4, and PC, obviously.
So it was on like fourdifferent platforms.
So getting to work on, I gainedthat was very immersive, right?
Like, uh, if you can think about playingfree to play or not free to play,
but like playing shooters in general

(01:00:49):
is like, you're very in the zone, right.
When you're playing those games
versus like a more casual setting, likeswiping on your phone and stuff like that.
So, Yeah.
it was a combination of, Yeah.
All those reasons that you kindof brought up is like, I get to
experience a new city, warmer weatherand just like being able to cut up

(01:01:09):
on some pretty, like amazing IP waslike a nice part of that journey.

John (01:01:14):
Fantastic.
And then, so when you came overto respond, what was your role?
what about the opportunity?
Was it that enticed you kindof like, what was the challenge
that you were coming in to solve?

Johnny (01:01:24):
respond her delivered
apex quietly as well.
So
EA wasn't expecting, uh, apex tobe any sort of commercial success.

John (01:01:33):
it was a surprise.

Johnny (01:01:34):
they made the game, was a huge, I think it was February
of 2018 that the game launched.
And it was a huge, massive hair.
Like you hit like a hundredmillion users, like right away.
And I think, if you look at the S thetalent of the studio, so Vincent Pella,
who founded that studio was the personwho, started the call of duty franchise.

John (01:01:55):
Yeah.
Like infinity war, blood.
Right.

Johnny (01:01:57):
Yeah.
Infinity war.
So it was like, you're working withsome pretty, like heavy hitters in
the games industry, like people with,

John (01:02:05):
You can learn a lot from,

Johnny (01:02:06):
yeah.
That You can learn a lot from,
and people who were quitepassionate about the shooting space.
I was the shooter genre and, uh,having grown up playing in a lot of
those games, that was a really bigincentive for me to come here just to
be surrounded by that type of talent.
you get to work with, people who made areally big impact on the games industry.
They had just the lower season,one of apex, he was a huge success.

(01:02:30):
really need some QA leadershiphow to support on the team.

John (01:02:34):
as you're talking about the, the monster kind of, you could almost
say overnight success of respon.
I mean, I'm sorry.
Apex
is I kid you not, I'm pretty surethe way I judge kind of game.
And their trajectory is frommy like Twitch dashboard.
And so, you know, the first roleat the time was probably dominated

(01:02:55):
by like Fortnite and pub G.
And then I pretty sure APEC startedcropping up in those first two slots.
And I was like, hold on,let me check this out.
And I started watching it.
I was like, oh my gosh, I loveyour mobility in that game.
And I liked the classes and thethree V3, like me in a zip lining.

(01:03:15):
I was like, all right, letme go check this out, man.
And that's what hookedme just from watching.

Johnny (01:03:19):
it's really difficult to make game in this genre to be successful.
The map, the character is the legend,the balance of the weapons and the
legends, all of these different thingshave to come together for it to work.
It's also a super competitive game, right?
Like this is like a game withthe e-sports kind of presence,
like a, with a huge Twitch.

(01:03:40):
streamer, following as well.
So, it's really going from likecandy crush to a game like this.

John (01:03:48):
That's a huge jump, man.
I'm curious, like the sell, right?
Like how do you sell yourself to acompany who's like super hardcore, right?
Like

Johnny (01:03:57):
Yeah.

John (01:03:58):
right quadrant versus if casual and accessible is kind of the bottom line.

Johnny (01:04:04):
what sold them was that they didn't have someone who had
sort of live games as a service typeexperience on running the QA team there.
So
what I mean by games as a service, as agame that frequently updates to four weeks
on this very aggressive, very predictablecadence to deliver content, new legends,

(01:04:25):
new weapons, new store, MTX items, allthese new things I need to be kind of in
the game to keep your audience, satiatedso they can keep playing the game.
Right.
So if
they don't have this, youtend to kind of lose users.
So, the studio was very, veryfamiliar with delivering games.
as a box product.
So they had just delivered, uh, whenit was, when I was there to deal with

(01:04:47):
we'll do a star wars fall in order,
which was a box.
Yeah.
Which was a box Pardot,critically acclaimed as well.
Uh, so they were looking for someoneto structure a QA team that was
going to be capable of working withdevelopment team to deliver content
at a pace that they were not used to.
So,

John (01:05:05):
That makes sense.
So then
enter Johnny from
candy crush, you know, experiencedpipeline, all that, right.
Like come right over,

Johnny (01:05:14):
so they were looking for someone kind of this space and luckily I was that
person, my time there from season one toseason eight was sort of like structuring
the teams to be able to, Test earlyand deliver this content in a reliable,
predictable way, for us to keep ourplayers interested, in our game, like you
said, right at this game is free to play.

(01:05:35):
Right.
We don't make a penny off players if wedon't deliver new content or store items.
Right.
So stuff like, in game cosmetics,legend, skins, weapon, skins,
charms, all these different things.
Lou boxes, right?
So like people spend money on a low boxes.
We're a important part of kind oftesting and poor and part of like

(01:05:58):
making sure that the game whilekind of a successful from a player's
perspective, a volume perspective, butalso successful commercially, right?
Like we all worked for EA right.
As a commercially kindof a successful company.
And they wanted to make sure.
that, a game like apex had the properkind of game mechanics, to be able
to also monetize users properly.

John (01:06:19):
Sure.
when you talking about a gamethat blows up like that, the
team was not ready for it.
And then they got to kind of react,

Johnny (01:06:27):
It was actually, Yeah.
it was pretty painful.
The first few seasons of deliveringthat product because, Making a game that
releases once a year, every two years isvery different than making small subsets
of features and content that needs tobe delivered every two to four weeks.
also like you had a very,so a lot of times seasonal

(01:06:48):
launches were in coordination.
We worked in coordination withmarketing, so they needed to be out
on a certain time, like EA play toYouTube two years ago, announced
that apex was going to be on thosethree month seasonal release cadence.
And each season included a new map,
a new town takeover, all thesedifferent things, new legend, new

(01:07:11):
weapons, and both states were fixed.
So it wasn't something that youcan just easily move without.
Like, we had a very vocal playerbase as a game like this word.

John (01:07:22):
Yeah, totally.

Johnny (01:07:23):
so it's all about like keeping, our player base engaged and
happy on, on the backend of that.
do we kind of deliver content, andfeatures out to players in a way
that they were going to be happy,uh, keep them, involved in the game.

John (01:07:36):
And what was your title?

Johnny (01:07:37):
I was a development director too, So the QA job family fits in
with the DD family, uh, at Yale.
it's the equivalent of asenior sort of QA manager.
I was solely on apex.
So what year calls likethe QA product owner
of that project as well.
So,

John (01:07:56):
Okay.
So I imagine that you had to kindof build out your team a certain
way to account for the beast.
That is apex.
I'm curious how you went about structuringthat man, and then finding the sauce
and the culture you, you built.

Johnny (01:08:12):
like most managers who come into situations, you do inherit a team.
So you don't build any team fromscratch typically in most businesses.
So we, we, had inherited a team thatwas, mostly, the team from Titanfall two.
So that team had largely,supported that launch.

(01:08:32):
I had moved over to apex, so,

John (01:08:34):
how big

Johnny (01:08:35):
uh, it's more like 15 to 20,
let's just say let's just callthem, embedded testers basically.
So

John (01:08:42):
So those that's the good ones.
The, the, the, well, that's theway, that's the ideal way to be.
I find

Johnny (01:08:48):
yeah.

John (01:08:48):
they rolled up to you 15, 20 people.

Johnny (01:08:50):
they didn't all roll up to me.
I had a other sort of DMS project managers

John (01:08:56):
Nice.

Johnny (01:08:56):
had part of the line management responsibility
as part of that, but a lot of them did.

John (01:09:02):
That's a lot, bro.

Johnny (01:09:03):
yeah, so it's a lot, I think like always like when you're a manager the
perfect balance of think, um, managersto directs is always, I think like seven
or eight people, because youwant to appropriate them right
amount of time for professionaldevelopment, performance improvements,
making time for your employees,which is like such a big part of all
being a managers have been there.

(01:09:23):
I'm not doing a lot of the work sometimes,but I'm there to kind of enable and
support, them in their careers andin their professional life and work.
so it was a legacy team from time fallto, um, they had moved over to apex.
but as we grew the team, we sort of,looked at, skills that the team was
missing, that we were looking to add.
So people with more leadership,talented people with more technical

(01:09:45):
chops, all these different things,uh, we looked to kind of augment the
current team to make it, more successfulor basically more well-rounded.
I

John (01:09:54):
Yeah.

Johnny (01:09:54):
this is a good way to characterize that.

John (01:09:56):
Were there any processes or mechanisms that you had to add or
kind of everything was already set up

Johnny (01:10:02):
we constantly wanted to move QA to the left, which is a terminology
that people say and suffered from.
It's like moving them earlyin software development.
So like, when I had gotten there,they were mostly, Blackbox has
service that tested the end product,
but throughout my whole time, there it'smostly moving QA to the left in order for
them to be like, involved from conceptpre production design to all the way

(01:10:27):
through to deployment and post deployment.
so that was really like a bigeffort that we placed there.
and making sure that, the teamsincorporated a QA and integrate a QA into
how they thought about making the game

John (01:10:39):
well, let's talk about that, right?
Cause I, I really standfirm in the belief that.
And I like this terminology, right?
Like I've never heard itbefore moving them to the left.
I really believe in thisbeing the ideal set up for any
team and you right in there.
Right.
You had to, it sounds like twice, right?
Like at king you had to do the same
thing and even here, at respond.

(01:11:01):
how would you guide someoneto do this on their team?
Right?
Like what, what does that entail?
Just at a high level?

Johnny (01:11:07):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I think, just approach thatproblem slowly and start small.
So like, let's just say, a, you'reworking in a studio where the
QA and the production do on theteams are all separate silos.
don't try to have changed too quickly.
that's been really important becauseyou sort of is jarring for the team.

(01:11:30):
they're not sure how to workwith you at the beginning.
These are developers who probably arenot used to working in QA in this way.
They've obviously worked with QAbefore, but, start small, right?
So like, let's just say, onapex, how we approach this.
So it's like, they had verydifferent parts of the team.
So we have the team that worked onmaps, the team that worked on weapons.
you start with us really small podas a use case and be like, Hey, these

(01:11:53):
two kind of QA professionals or QApeople are gonna work on your team,
uh, to kind of do early design feedbackor the test case kind of writing.
They just said, defect prevention.
They're able to catch the bugs earlier,before they get into kind of like the
main project, all these different thingsand test it out over a period of time.
Let's just call it a pilot.
in
embedding QA.

(01:12:15):
And once you have the proof of concept,not only is a studio more on board,
people see kind of like the benefits
more readily.
So then you're able to kind of slowlymassage that process of embedding,
moving left into the studios a lot easierbecause you have more buy-in at working

(01:12:35):
and they want that on their teams.
So
just start small, right.
Don't try to make monumentaltransformative changes
over a weekend, right.
that typically never works.
Right.
So just start small and approachit with a collaborative open mind
mindset that you're doing this forX reason to solve X problem and kind

(01:12:55):
of selling that back to the team.

John (01:12:57):
Hell.
Yeah, I like it, man.
Everything builds on itself on astrong foundation of going back to this
key trait that you look for, right.
Is people who are open-minded thatare willing to adapt, that are willing
to evolve, to try different things.
I really liked that, right?
Pilot, it starts small send topeople, let other teams kind
of be infected with the gains

(01:13:19):
and, you know, cause I'vedefinitely been on feature pods
and I'll look over andI'll be like, hold on.
Ma'am they got
two QA people.
We got zero.
Why can't we get some, can we borrow one?
You know, things like that, for

Johnny (01:13:33):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's like a very natural
way to do change managementor incorporate things.
and like slowly it becomeslike success over time rather
than like an overnight success.
Yeah.

John (01:13:46):
you eventually made the tough decision to leave, respond to go to riot.

Johnny (01:13:52):
Yeah.

John (01:13:52):
What was one of your fondest memories at respond?

Johnny (01:13:55):
Yeah,
That's a great question.
I think like I've left respond fora better time now, um, and had some
time to reflect as well as to kind ofmarinate on the question that you just
asked that I think like being part of agame team is really, really rewarding.
The best way to kind of keratosis thatyou're constantly in release mode.

(01:14:18):
so you're releasing new content, newfeatures out to your players, And that has
a very, kind of rewarding aspects of itbecause you'd see players, they're happy.
They're, they're enjoying the game.
Apex was the game with huge region.
you, see people talking about itand, all these different things.
And I think that was a reallyrewarding part of being on apex was
the seasonal where we had done seasonone to season eight before I left.

(01:14:42):
And just, uh, uh, seasonal to seasonalkind of cadence of releasing was
really, rewarding because like, yousee how players, how engaged they
were with the game and all that.
And I think that was a really awesomepart of that job and, being part of
all these like super passionate folks
that were from, the infinity war days.

(01:15:03):
And like, that was areally good experience.
And I definitely learned a lotabout the hardcore game space
that I didn't learn about before.
It's like, people are very passionateabout the product and, small changes
to like whole weapon worked orweapons sounded, people kind of
resonated sometimes negatively or
positively to that.

(01:15:23):
I think.
It was just a very passionate space.

John (01:15:26):
was it that you knew it was time for a change?

Johnny (01:15:29):
We had just delivered, eight seasons of apex at that point.

John (01:15:33):
you, you were there from season two to season eight.

Johnny (01:15:36):
Season two to seize the day.
being on a live service projectis also a bit draining as well.
So, unlike like traditional box products,like you release, then you get this like
downward, moment where like there's moreflexibility for the team, to kind of
take a breather on some of these things.
I think with apex, apex in itsown was like in hyper-growth mode.

(01:15:58):
So it was like they wereadding developers, production,
staff, QA, to kind of meet.

John (01:16:02):
I think they've since like built up a respawn office in BC,
right?

Johnny (01:16:08):
So, uh, for seasons seven and a, and onwards is,
it was a co-developed game,
uh, with, uh, old motive team in, uh, UI.
So they had, they have moved from themotive projects, more motive portfolio to,
apex, not all of them, but some of them.
so after kind of delivering a season'sapex, I felt like it was time to,

(01:16:29):
really take a step back and move on.
So, my wife was pregnant at that time.
We just, we had our first child in may.

John (01:16:36):
COVID baby man.
Congrats

Johnny (01:16:39):
it was really the perfect time to kind of, take a few months
off, to kind of, spend time, home.
wasn't, as parenthood, so it's not likeI was in Hawaii on a beach somewhere,
but it was like a 2:00 AM, wakeups and all these different things.

John (01:16:55):
it, man.
Like an work

Johnny (01:16:57):
yeah.
So it was, it was a good time totake off and like reset before,
coming to riot, which is like anothergigantic kind of games company.
Right.
So
with

John (01:17:07):
vocal community to put it lightly.

Johnny (01:17:10):
sometimes too vocal, but vocal, vocal community Reddit or
otherwise, but, yeah, I thoughtlike, uh, we had accomplished, yeah.
Over the six, seven seasons.
I, uh, respond lots for me andeveryone else to be proud of.
but, it was time to kind ofmove on to my next challenge.
And, luckily right.

(01:17:31):
It came calling.
So

John (01:17:32):
nice.
Okay.
Then they came and recruitedyou, you didn't go to them.

Johnny (01:17:35):
I actually liked we had taught for a long time.

John (01:17:38):
You had friends over there.

Johnny (01:17:39):
I had friends over there.
last I respond, came from riot,you know, how the games world is.
It's just like, it's a verysmall, tight-knit, it's a very
big industry, but so a verysmall world, if that makes sense,
right?
Like

John (01:17:52):
Especially in that way.

Johnny (01:17:53):
especially in LA, but like, if you've been in this industry, if
someone like you for a long time, right.
You sorta know people areacross the industry, right.
Like when you were in Montreal, youmeet people, all these different things.
So, in a lot of times people get,new, new jobs and new points in
their career through just network
and connections.
Then that's a really important part howthey get introduced to their next job.

(01:18:15):
And, that's no different from, myjourney to RIAA as I, I knew, Seaburn
green who's, uh, head of QA here.
Uh, he has some interesting kind ofprojects and opportunities for me.
come to RIAA and, uh,that's how I landed here.
So I'm still very new here, but, tryingto get the ropes and, uh, learn a
lot, but like legends, another huge

John (01:18:37):
goodness,

Johnny (01:18:39):
probably with the largest e-sports following, Right.

John (01:18:42):
That was the first championships I've watched.
Like I'm a big fightinggame person, right?
Like evil and Washingtonstreet fighter championships.
that was what I thought wasgoing to hit ESPN first.
And when I was in E three, Ithink it was, I forgot what year.
And I saw the legal legends championshipand it was just like, oh, wow.

(01:19:05):
This is what pro gamingis all about, right?
Like this is the stage that nowit's a thing and it's going to be
on television and it's going to bemoneymaker and and all that stuff.
So

Johnny (01:19:18):
yeah,

John (01:19:18):
that league is not a game and

Johnny (01:19:21):
Yeah.
when you were younger, like, couldyou imagine the staple center, the
huge stadium thing, fill the gamers,

John (01:19:28):
oh my God.
not,

Johnny (01:19:29):
gamers pads

John (01:19:30):
Not at all.

Johnny (01:19:31):
a five V five tower defense game,

John (01:19:34):
Not at all.

Johnny (01:19:36):
Not at all.
Right.

John (01:19:37):
Not at all.

Johnny (01:19:37):
in your wildest dreams.

John (01:19:39):
exactly.
I remember being a kid manand being ridiculed, right.
For being a geek nerd.
Right.
Like, stop playing games,you know, that's, you should

Johnny (01:19:49):
Yeah.

John (01:19:50):
playing sports or hanging out things like this.
Right.

Johnny (01:19:54):
Yeah.
and I think li league of legends and riotjust proved that they could take gaming
into the stratosphere this next levelthat No, one ever dreamed of being there.
Right.
So it's, and the industry hasalso changed along with that.
Like you probably couldn't imaginethat you'd be watching someone
else on a Twitch stream a game.

John (01:20:14):
No, no.
Hey, watch this person play a game.
I'm like, no, fuck that.
I'm going to go play the game.
I don't want to watch someone elseplaying the game and easily when I
really enjoy a lot of streams, likeI don't have time to play a bunch
of these games that want to play.
They're coming out so fast.
So I enjoy watching other
people play them right.
To kind of let me know,should I buy the game or,

Johnny (01:20:37):
Yeah.

John (01:20:37):
design reference, right.
Like just see other people to see and,and seeing high level versions of right.
Like that's, what's really awesome.

Johnny (01:20:46):
Yeah.
And obviously like thecompetitive landscape of games,
like apex and league is huge.
Right?
Like
you have

John (01:20:51):
watch.
And then, and the commentary man, thecommentary is what makes it for me.

Johnny (01:20:56):
Yeah.
The shell CAS and like you havethese teams like, uh, in Korea, in
Japan or in north America, Theirlife is just league of legends,
just apex they're paid to wintournaments and huge prize pools
and huge followings on, on Twitch.
I think like when we launched one of theseasons, we had ninja playing, uh, one of

(01:21:19):
our, whenever our seasons for a long time.
And like people making this a lotmore money in the space and a lot more
notoriety and, audiences just huge.
So who knows in 5, 10, 20 years, thisindustry will make the next leap and
that is, will be super exciting as well.

John (01:21:37):
I can imagine.
Right.
There's maybe some type of hybrid, likephysical athlete with each athlete, right?
Like with VR AR happening,

Johnny (01:21:47):
Yeah.
And you just never know.
Right.
So from those days when we were gamingwith our Nintendo 64 super Nintendo was
like blowing on that cartridge.

John (01:21:56):
blowing on the cartridge.
Yes.

Johnny (01:21:57):
Yeah.

John (01:21:58):
not working.
Let me take it out.
Throw a bunch of saliva inthere and then throw it back in

Johnny (01:22:02):
Yeah.
From that, like, I rememberone of my first games flying
was like more of a combat,
straight fighter.
Like I said, those

John (01:22:10):
good times.

Johnny (01:22:11):
fighter games and like to see where the industry is now,
it's like, such a rewarding, funjourney that we've all been on.
And it's like, that experience islike, So things that's hard to change.
Right?
Like you wouldn't change that.
Yeah.

John (01:22:23):
Not at all, man.
It's been a hell of a ride.
I love this industry.
I love the people in it and I reallywelcome people like yourself, Who
make this podcast worthwhile, right?
Like, um, I built this as a platformfor developers to get their voice
and their experience out there forthe benefit of the next generation
or even fellow veterans in here.
Right.
They just want to see howit's done at other places.

(01:22:47):
See other people's struggles and insightand share knowledge and, you know,
get a little bit kind of reinvigoratedto realize like, oh man, we're in a
pretty special privilege position.
Right?
Like, let's keep this thing growing.
Let's keep it going,

Johnny (01:23:02):
Yeah, for sure.
yeah, it's great to be part of it,this industry and like, as a player
of some of the games as well, so

John (01:23:08):
Johnny man.
. I want to put you through what Ilike to call the lightning round.
So these are short questions,answer them, however you like.
If you had one game to take with youto a deserted island, would that be?
And you know, full internet,whatever, what would that be?

Johnny (01:23:26):
if I would be?
a world of Warcraft, just like thestory, uh, The deep immersive gameplay.
If I'm on an island, I need kind of like agame where I can play thousands of hours.
And that's definitely a game whereyou can play thousands of hours.
Yeah,

John (01:23:41):
pick good pig.
My wife would, uh, agree with that one.

Johnny (01:23:45):
Yeah.

John (01:23:46):
Sweet.
What's the last game you finished?

Johnny (01:23:49):
probably sours falling in order, like a few weeks ago.
Yeah.

John (01:23:53):
Oh, that's so good.
That was my like accessible souls.
Like

Johnny (01:24:00):
Um,

John (01:24:01):
was the last book you read?

Johnny (01:24:03):
I've read a book called such a long journey and, um, let
me just find the author's name.
Um, so yeah, it's, it's a book by Indianauthor called, real Hinton mystery.
And it was like, about, thisperiod, in India and like, uh,
people's lives throughout that time.
And it was, uh, if you're interested inIndian culture, Indian kind of, religion,

(01:24:28):
was like in the last say like a hundredyears, that's a great book to read?
And it was a, I think a book thatcame out in the late nineties,

John (01:24:35):
Okay.
Got some, got some mileage on it.
So such a long journey by

Johnny (01:24:40):
RO Hinton.
mystery.

John (01:24:42):
road Hinton.

Johnny (01:24:43):
H I N T O N.

John (01:24:45):
Dope.
I liked that.
I liked that Rick, I need to, I need to
get more well versed with that country.
Love their food.
Awesome.
People

Johnny (01:24:53):
yeah, yeah,

John (01:24:56):
The thing that you enjoyed the most about job

Johnny (01:24:59):
get this question a lot.
I think as a manager, the mostrewarding thing is seeing your team
members direct self success andseeing where their careers have gone.
And I'd probably have managed likehundreds of people over the last
10 years and just like, um, seeingpeople do well in their careers, and
gone on to do very different things.

(01:25:21):
Um, not necessarily in QA hasbeen the most rewarding part
of this, uh, this life so far.

John (01:25:26):
spoken like a true people manager.
I like it sounds of a good manager.
right.
Um, is your favorite partabout working from home

Johnny (01:25:35):
no commute.
You save time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
and just like the ability to run errandsthroughout the day, work a little
bit later in the day to accommodatefor that or early in the morning.
so your life has a bit moreflexibility, so you don't have to kind
of stack everything on the weekends

John (01:25:54):
Hmm.

Johnny (01:25:54):
the end of the day.
Uh, which has been really nice.
Yeah.

John (01:25:57):
I agree.
I like that one a lot too.
This is moves closer to the model thatI've always dreamed of, which is kind
of like the siesta vibe, like, youknow, four hours in the day, couple
hours break in four hours again, then
lunch
yet.

Johnny (01:26:13):
you have more flexibility.
We have a newborn now spend more time withmy son and my wife had all these different
things and it's been a really nice,

John (01:26:21):
Awesome.
What is the thing that you missthe most about being in the office?

Johnny (01:26:27):
it's nice to have like a water cooler conversation with someone
grabbing lunch with a colleague,grabbing a beer after work, all
those things, uh, that covert and thepandemic has unfortunately changed.
building team culture and comradery doesrequire element of in-person interaction.
And I think, that elementhas sort of been lost, right?

(01:26:52):
Like, so while it is okay, we canget the same amount of work done,
but like six hours of zoom callswith people all throughout the day.
Isn't the same site.
The physical energy, you feedoff each other in the office.
And like during one to ones talkingabout sports, talking about all

(01:27:12):
these other things, just likegrabbing, grabbing lunch with my
manager, all these different things.
I think all those things you miss.
so yeah, that's the thing Imiss about being in the office.

John (01:27:23):
100%.
I like that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of organicdiscovery and conversations.
When you pass someone by, Hey, come orjust walking around someone's desk, right.
To be like, oh, snap.
What's that?
I didn't even know.
That was a thing, you know, show me whatthis is about or let me get on the sticks.

Johnny (01:27:39):
Yeah.

John (01:27:40):
Totally.
If you weren't doing this,what would you be doing?

Johnny (01:27:47):
Yeah.
Um, I'm not really sure.
I think the, um, when I was in, when Iwas a student, I was always a bit lost.
I was one of those like
C
plus C plus B students like didthe minimum to get by type thing.
My life, I wasn't a great student or likereally formalized learning type person.

(01:28:10):
So, um, I always thought like, um, you'dbe nice to do something in writing.
So like like journalism writingabout kind of current events,

John (01:28:21):
Yeah.

Johnny (01:28:22):
all these things that would be, if I had a second life, that's probably
what I like to kind of pursue and do.

John (01:28:28):
That's kind of cool.
I can see how your natural talents inlike people management, soft skills.
Pulling information out ofsomeone helping them grow.
I could see how that would lend itselfwell to like journalism for sure.

Johnny (01:28:42):
Yeah.

John (01:28:44):
Cool.
All right, buddy.
We're in the closeout phasehere, you're almost done.
Um, want to ask you, you know, withyour experience, with all the things
you've seen, the growth you've seen,the different countries and studios
that you've worked with and forwhat do you see as something that

(01:29:04):
we can do better as an industry?

, Johnny (01:29:08):
we need to do better at, being a more gender equitable workplace between
all the different roles in our industry.
We still suffer from a lack offemales in tech roles, game roles.
and I like to see our industry move,further into kind of how do we, connect
more women into this games industry?

(01:29:29):
Uh, how do we encourage morewomen to pursue CS degrees?
all
these different thingsin engineering functions.
When I was in school in my program,we probably had two or three women.

John (01:29:42):
Same here.

Johnny (01:29:42):
Female females in our kind of CS classes.
So if there's any way we cando to encourage more to gender
diversity, I think that's great.
And like, I think our industrytraditionally, hasn't done very well here.
It's not unlike companies like Googleor anything like that, but, uh, and
the treatment of kind of, uh, femaleshasn't been historically been good.

(01:30:06):
And I think, we need to do better there.
And I think the industry needs to kindof take a more aggressive sounds too,
like gender equity, equality, diversityin the workplace, and like take that.
heart and like, just make sure thatalways in the direction there as well.

John (01:30:27):
I like that.
That's a great call out.
It is a tough conversation to getinto, but I love that you call it out.
Right.
We have to bring awareness to it.
The more people that talk about it,the more that it's out there, the more
that it will become something that bethat demands to be solved the redress.
Right.
So I really appreciate you bringingthat out to light as a director.

(01:30:50):
I know that you have a handin helping who you hire.
I know a problem that, that I fallinto, right, is that we just don't
get the applicants, Like I wouldlove to see diverse applicants.
We're not getting them.
Right.
So what can we do to get see thoseresumes, to get those resumes,
to get these people in the door?

Johnny (01:31:11):
Yeah, I think like, Yeah.
it was one of those things where like, youjust don't get as many applicants compared
to men in most traditional tech roles.
I think like where we can help solvesome of that is like investment in
women, in engineering roles, engineeringeducation from a really early age, like

(01:31:34):
K to 12 kind of education is like, how
do we make computer science programsmore friendly, for women and females to
be in it can be intimidating if you goto a class where like 90%, 97% are male,

John (01:31:50):
Yep.

Johnny (01:31:51):
that's not the most
welcoming space think space.
Right?

John (01:31:55):
basically in the locker room.

Johnny (01:31:57):
so how do we start at the education level to kind of support
that the yay and other companieshave, invested a lot in early
education to kind of make sure that,there's more equity there as well.

John (01:32:08):
Yeah, it does tend to fall on the shoulders of the big companies
that have these resources to partnerwith universities, colleges, high
schools, grade schools, right.
To install.
Programs to have kids visit or havedevelopers go in and do presentations and
pass down tool sets, things like this.

(01:32:30):
For sure.

Johnny (01:32:30):
Yeah, all of that outreach helps.
Right.
it.
is trending better.
but I mean, you still kind of hearabout like the recent Activision
blizzard news and all that
stuff.
It's
like

John (01:32:41):
just hit me yesterday.
I'm just like, oh, I
read

Johnny (01:32:44):
Yeah.
And like hearing that is definitelya bit sad, but like a very reality
check for like where our industryis and like where we need to go.
So, definitely a ton of work thatneeds is still less to be done here.
So

John (01:32:59):
All right, Johnny, what would you tell 95, Johnny?
Like, if you can go back andhave a conversation with him,

Johnny (01:33:07):
yeah.

John (01:33:07):
what would you tell him?
What was something you wish he knew?

Johnny (01:33:11):
I would say like 1995 was 10 years old, so I don't even know
what grade that is, but it's just

John (01:33:17):
Let's say 2000 Johnny.

Johnny (01:33:19):
2015.
Partly was just like, step outof side of the house a bit more.

John (01:33:24):
Oh,

Johnny (01:33:25):
So I was like really like into the, I was like the gaming kind of space,
but I was stepping outside more and,Applying myself, myself more at school.
I think that's the two things Ireally wish I had done differently.
So like, I kind of had like a verynonchalant attitude towards life

John (01:33:42):
yeah.

Johnny (01:33:43):
Uh, so I didn't really apply myself a school very much and all
these different things and that'ssomething I wish I could do better.
yeah.

John (01:33:51):
Interesting.
I mean, it seems like everythingworked out pretty nicely.

Johnny (01:33:55):
Yeah.
Everything's worked out pretty nicely.
a lot of luck along the way.
I think, uh, a lot of hardwork, but luck, definitely plays
a role in people's careers.
Like the timing of when roles open,uh, when you, when you get recruited
for people like of us, we probably alsohad a lot of tailwind in our industry.
Like the industry just grew a lotin the last 10, 15 yards, and that

(01:34:18):
meant a lot of new jobs, new rolesand like all these different things.
So, no regrets, but like, yeah,maybe be a better student.

John (01:34:28):
Okay.
All right.
I'll respect it.
We have a tradition on the show, as you'reaware, maybe, maybe you aren't, if you
had a good time falling out of the playarea, is there someone that you would
nominate to fall out of play behind you?

Johnny (01:34:44):
Yeah.
So I'm going to nominate someoneI worked and managed in Montreal.
His name is Graham bar and he's currentlya senior product manager at jam city.
definitely be reaching out tohim to get him in the picture.
But, he's someone I worked withreally early on in my career.

(01:35:05):
We had a great working together, andstayed in touch afterwards as well.
So, definitely someone I wouldnominate to be on this podcast.

John (01:35:14):
Sweet man.
Thanks for the nomination.
I look forward to connecting withGraham CMP accepts the invitation.
We've had a few jam citydevs on the show from, SoCo.
So it'd be interesting tosee how it is in Montreal.
That'd be pretty sweet.

Johnny (01:35:28):
Yeah.

John (01:35:29):
Awesome.
Awesome.
All right, Johnny, you've made it.
The hard work is done.
This

Johnny (01:35:34):
It's this,

John (01:35:35):
about you.
Where do people connect a
few?
See what you're up to, or is riot hiring

Johnny (01:35:43):
yeah.
Uh, you connect with me,the best way is on LinkedIn.
So just look up JohnnyWu, find me quite easily.
and we can go from there.
But yeah, I'm somewhat active on there,but, um, I'll definitely be checking my
messages if people want to connect orpeople wants to learn more about riot,
the gaming industry, or just kind ofcareer paths in the world just, uh, me up

(01:36:06):
and I'll be happy to make time and help.

John (01:36:09):
Sounds great, Johnny, thank you for extending that.
I'll make sure to link yourLinkedIn in the show notes for
people to follow up with that.
And is there any closing words forthe autoplay area listeners out there?

Johnny (01:36:24):
Uh, no, but it was just a pleasure to do this.
it's nice to kind of reflect on, career.
I'm also connecting with you, John,to kind of be able to do this.
it's my first time doing this.
So it's, find experience and, look forwardto your next group of guests and what they
have to offer to your audience as well.

John (01:36:41):
Awesome, Johnny.
Thank you, man.
Yeah, you've had a heck of ajourney, a heck of a career, so
it's awesome to be able to stepthrough that with you and yeah.
Thank you for coming on Major major,shout out to Steve Beauchamp, who
I worked with at WB games, motel onSabbath and what is now got them nights.

(01:37:01):
We've got deep bonds.
Having had survived the Spartanseven seal fit weekend together.
Steve, I appreciate you for connecting mewith this intriguing individual in Johnny.
There was so much totake away in this one.
And if I had to emphasize just one.
I would latch on the benefit and growththat he benefited from by traveling

(01:37:22):
all over the world as a game developerand team building facilitator.
He hit all the industry hotspots inCanada from Vancouver, Toronto morale.
Then even made it acrossthe pond in the UK.
And now he's back chillingon the west coast.
Y'all know me.
As much as I love me Martelland I have my condo out there.

(01:37:45):
I got a couple places out here in Seattleand thus I'm digging some deep roots.
I mean.
I do have moving to London on myvision board and Catherine's fully
pushing on that agenda down the line.
So we'll see.
But I see nothing but upsidein leaving your hometown.
I've experienced it and I've seen it inso many of my colleagues and friends.

(01:38:06):
It forces you to focus on whatyou want to do with your life.
Quick fast, rather than beingin the comfort surrounded by
family and friends to survive.
I'm curious, where is it thatyou stand on that spectrum?
Much love to riot.
I'm a huge fan of arcaneon Netflix and I'm looking
forward to their fighting game.
I think it's project L and the majormarket line then seems to have a claim

(01:38:29):
in everything these days, intense scent.
So if there's any 10 centemployees out there, Hit me up.
I'd love to hear howyou like it out there.
On episode 24 in two weeks.
The last Monday of this year,we'll sit down with someone.
Many of you have told me,you want to hear from.
MI.
I'm thinking for the closeoutepisode before we end the year.

(01:38:51):
It'll be a shorter episode where I justsit down, kick it with y'all with some
drink and look back on the first year,doing this podcast, how it's grown, thanks
to your patronage and listening ears.
And.
Where I'm thinking, I'll take it in20, 22 and beyond, and even probably
talk about some of the guests we'vegot lined up and whatever else comes

(01:39:12):
out of my mouth under the influence.
make sure to follow us so that youdon't miss out on that episode.
Thank you for listening, Deb.
If you found this episode informative,I ask that you pay a link forward to
a developer to help grow our listener.
If you're a game developer with astory you think could help a fellow dev
out, please go to out of play area.comand click on the Calendly link at

(01:39:33):
the top to meet up, please make sureyou get approval from your manager
or studios, PR HR team beforehand.
Out of play area, the game developers,podcasts releases, new episodes every
other Monday on all the major players,including Spotify, apple, and Google.
Please make sure to follow us, to seewhat developer falls out of the play area.
Next time.
I'm your host John Diaz untilnext time devs stay strong.

(01:39:57):
Stay true.
Stay dangerous.
Mega ran.
Bring them home.

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Johnny Wu | QA Director @ Riot Games | Ep 23

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Johnny Wu | QA Director @ Riot Games | Ep 23