Building Better Teams in Game Development | Leah Hoyer

In this episode of Made Together, Carla Rylance and Sam Carlisle are joined by Leah Hoyer, Founder & CEO of Level Headed Games, whose career spans Magic: The Gathering, Destiny, Guild Wars 2, Xbox, Bungie, Telltale, and Wizards of the Coast. Leah shares what it takes to build a game studio from the ground up, lead distributed teams, and work successfully with external development partners. The discussion explores co-development, studio growth, risk, entrepreneurship, and what makes long-term partnerships successful. The conversation also examines how game development may be entering its own “YouTube era”—where AAA and indie games alike can thrive by finding the right audience, and smaller, agile teams have new opportunities to succeed. 0:00 Intro & Industry Updates 2:51 XDev Hiring Trends 8:42 What Does Co-Development Mean? 18:26 Leah Hoyer Interview 20:16 Building Level Headed Games 26:29 Working With Global Teams 31:25 Risk, Agility & Studio Leadership 40:24 Choosing External Development Partners 50:48 Trust, Flexibility & Scaling Teams 57:53 Bringing Partners Into New IP 1:04:01 The Future of Game Development 1:18:46 Quickfire Questions 1:27:20 Whimside & Closing Thoughts 🎙️ Featuring: Leah Hoyer, Founder & CEO, Level Headed Games   / leah-hoyer   https://levelheadedgames.com/ Learn more about Whimside: https://whimside.com/ About the series Supported by XDS Spark, Made Together looks at how games are made across studios, with a focus on external development. Hosted by: Carla Rylance, Head of XDS Spark Business Solutions   / carlarylance   Sam Carlisle, Co-Founder of XDS Spark   / samcarlisle   Follow along for future episodes exploring the people, partnerships, and realities shaping external development in games. Learn more: XDS Spark → https://www.xds-spark.com/ XDS Spark Business Solutions → https://www.xds-spark.com/business-so... External Development Summit → ​​https://xdsummit.com/