Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The GGJ Podcast brings the spirit of Global Game Jam to your headphones, with people from around the world sharing how they found their way into game development. Each week, Susan Gold talks with developers, studio founders, and festival organizers about the twists, risks, and side doors that shaped their paths and communities. You will hear honest stories about creativity, collaboration, failure, and the messy, beautiful reality of making games.
Culture of Care | AmandaAsofsky
===
Intro
---
Intro
---
[00:00:00] Susan Gold: This is the GGJ Podcast, a show about the games industry, the people who make them, and the communities that grow up around them. I'm Susan Gold, game education trailblazer, and one of the founders of the Global Game Jam. Each week, we will be sitting down with a new guest, highlighting their own path and journey.
[00:00:26] This is a space for honest conversation from makers about creativity, collaboration, failure, and the messy, the beautiful reality of making games. So whether you're a young dev or seasoned, an educator, a student, or someone who just loves games and the people behind them, welcome to the GGJ Podcast. Take a breath, settle in, and let's hear directly from the makers themselves.
[00:00:49] Shirley McPhaul: This episode is made possible in partnership with the Global Game Jam, the world's largest game creation event, bringing together creators from around the globe. A big thank you as well to the Global Game Jam's headline [00:01:00] sponsors, Epic Games, Games for Change, and Xsolla, for helping make this creative community a reality.
[00:01:06] To learn more and to get involved in the upcoming jams, visit globalgamejam.org.
[00:01:13]
Meet Amanda Asofsky
---
[00:01:20] Susan Gold: Hello, and welcome to the GGJ Podcast. Today on the show, it is a joy to welcome Amanda Asowski. Amanda is a senior digital project manager at Wizards of the Coast, where she works on Magic: The Gathering Arena, the flagship digital home of one of the most beloved card games in the world. She lives right at the intersection of product, design, and player experience.
[00:01:48] She helps steer a live game that never really sleeps. She was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in Games, and Amanda represents a rising generation of leaders who can [00:02:00] talk just as comfortably about economy tuning and roadmaps as they can about narrative, tabletop homebrews, and scrappy indie projects that first taught them how to ship a game.
[00:02:12] Outside of Wizards, Amanda creates her own games, mods, and comics, and she brings a maker's perspective into everything she does. Amanda, thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:02:25] Amanda Asofsky: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:02:27] I'm very excited to be here
[00:02:28] Susan Gold: oh, I'm just delighted. I want to know,
What it means to be a Leader in Games
---
[00:02:32] Susan Gold: What do you think that really means to you being a rising leader in games now?
[00:02:40] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah. to me, it really means a lot of responsibility towards the players and the other makers of games, because we as creators oftentimes have a vision and we just wanna bring it into the world. And I think as a [00:03:00] leader of other people in that media space, it's a really careful balance between encouraging those creatives on your team to make whatever they think is best, and also making a game and product that's sustainable and equally enjoyable for as many players as possible.
[00:03:23] so to me, it's really about trying to balance both of those things, and then also being really communicative to both the players and the makers about why you're making the choices that you are, because oftentimes people are very understanding, but you have to be able to explain why for them to understand in the first place.
An Early Love for Games
---
[00:03:48] Susan Gold: Transparency is really what I think you're saying, and I think makes for a very trustworthy community. And I think that gets to your origins as well. So you grew up in [00:04:00] DC and that you were, a gamer from start. D&D is, like, your thing. Tell me a little bit about what games first made you feel like.
[00:04:12] Amanda Asofsky: Oh, yeah. Games, they were all about possibility when I was younger. I always wanted to just live in a fantasy world completely, and D&D really allowed that. It felt like the more mature way to play pretend, 'cause, when you're, like, five or six, playing pretend and pretending you're a fairy or a wizard is completely acceptable, and then you get to be 10 or 12, and now people are like, "Okay, you should be focusing more on school, you should understand what's going on in the world around you a little bit more." games and D&D and stuff like that is still a way that you can very acceptably immerse yourself in fantasy and can find understanding in the world through these [00:05:00] other stories.
[00:05:01] Susan Gold: So, you grew up in a household full of gamers as well. Your dad was a gamer, right? And so you had a, an absolute, open door to this world where most kids, th- that's the nerdy thing to do, and, it wasn't the welcome part of the house
[00:05:18] Amanda Asofsky: No, I'm very grateful that my dad was such a gamer himself, and he really encouraged that sense of play and discovery through play. And my mom also, as I got older, she's a English teacher, and so she would get me to talk about these things that I was playing through a very academic perspective of "Okay, why did you find the narrative of this game so compelling?"
[00:05:45] And, "What about this game made it fun to play, over other games?" so really both of them fostered this love of play, but also diving deep into why it was so fun and [00:06:00] enjoyable.
[00:06:00] Susan Gold: Did it give you a sense of belonging that you weren't finding other places?
[00:06:04] Amanda Asofsky: I think so, definitely. It, even just a belonging in myself, 'cause I love playing games and I love playing games with my friends, but I never really got into online gaming and, meeting strangers online through the internet. I grew up in a time when stranger danger was very impressed upon me, and I took that to heart and I was like, "I'm never talking to anyone on the internet that I don't already know."
[00:06:30] but playing games still in person or even just by myself still gave me this sense of community, 'cause I could still find fan fiction or fan art online. And even if I wasn't engaging actively in that conversation with other people, I was able to see that I was still a part of this community, even if I was just enjoying it on my own terms.
From D&D to Making Games
---
[00:06:52] Susan Gold: So how did you get from, exploring games to becoming someone who's teaching classes and [00:07:00] making your own small games on your own? How did D&D evolve into this?
[00:07:06] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah. It-- A lot of luck of circumstance. I think certainly my high school did offer a game design course, and when I was a student there, it was just the one elective course, and I signed up for it, and admittedly, a lot of students took it as this junk elective where they could sign up and try and goof off the whole time.
[00:07:30] but I took it very serious, and I was like, "I'm gonna learn the Game Maker engine. I'm gonna make my own little sprites. I'm gonna figure out how to do all the animations." and my teacher was very encouraging. And then when I got to college, we had the ExCo experimental college classes where students could teach their own, and other students were already running a D&D ExCo, and after I took it, I told them how much I loved it and how I would love to be involved with it.
[00:07:59] [00:08:00] And so they were like, "Yeah, you can come be one of the teachers for it." and so then I helped design that course. So I think it was a lot of just seeing small opportunities along the way and deciding to just try it. and also in high school, one of my very close friends also loved games, and she was the one who discovered modding for the Dragon Age Origins engine.
[00:08:28] And I'd go over to her house, and we'd play around with the mods together. she really encouraged it too, because I wasn't a big programmer, and she was very interested in computer science, so she was like, "You can write the story and do the art, and I'll program it for you."
[00:08:47] Susan Gold: That's amazing that you could find somebody, that you could work with so early and learning that it was a collaborative enterprise to make games. Like it's hard to do everything by yourself
[00:08:59] Amanda Asofsky: Oh yeah, [00:09:00] just from the beginning, games have always been super collaborative for me. As, as I talked about, I was encouraged by the teachers and the other, students at college and my friend and, even just playing Dungeons & Dragons with my friends in middle school, it was always, you know, I had to have my friends to play with to build that story.
[00:09:18] I couldn't just come up with D&D games on my own. then it would just be a short story or a novel which is very different.
First Internship in Games
---
[00:09:26] Susan Gold: you are one of those people who I think you see a situation and you identify it and you look for a plan of attack. And like college for you was you needed certain skill sets and then, you hobbled together a major that was art, it was storytelling, it was a lot of different things. How did you go from school to thinking, "Okay, I can get a job"?
[00:09:55] Did you have the good fortune of doing an internship?
[00:09:59] Amanda Asofsky: I [00:10:00] did. it's actually a funny story of how I got my first internship in games. It was a quality assurance internship, and it was at the end of my junior year. all the college students were looking for different internships that they could do and trying to figure out their future career path, and I was like, "Okay, I know that I'm gonna be probably in the DC area again."
[00:10:25] And so I just searched for every single game studio in the DMV and started cold emailing any contact information I could find. And as I was doing that, m- my uncle was like, "Oh, there's this one studio up in Baltimore. It's called Big Huge Games. I know one of the guys that works there.
[00:10:50] Here's, here's how you can find him on LinkedIn. You should just reach out to him directly." And I was like, "Sure." And I emailed him my portfolio, and [00:11:00] I wrote him a message that was just like, "Hey, I'm really interested in game design. I would love to do an internship if you have them open for the summer.
[00:11:07] here's everything I've done so far." And he was very kind. He got back to me and he said, "Look, your portfolio's not very good. We won't hire you for a design internship, but we could do a quality assurance internship." And I was just like, "Anything. Whatever gets me in the door and gets me any amount of ex- experience is good for me."
[00:11:31] it was just kind of a lot of shooting in the dark and hoping that it landed to actually getting into the industry
[00:11:39] Susan Gold: It takes a lot to just cold call people, It really does. It's not something for the faint of heart. And very often you don't feel like, "Why would I qualify?" all those things. And then, yeah, confidence at that age is not usually at its highest, Even if you [00:12:00] do graduate, there are people looking for jobs that have 10 years experience,
[00:12:04] Amanda Asofsky: I think it must have just been such anxious desperation to find anything, because I think back to how I just cold emailed, like, every studio in the area, and I'm just how did I ever do that? Because the thought of doing that now is kind of crazy to me.
[00:12:22] Susan Gold: Scary
[00:12:23] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah
Growing into the Job
---
[00:12:24] Susan Gold: While you were inside Big Huge, you learned product management and you stepped into that role. How did you convince yourself that you knew the right questions to ask, that you were able to grow into this job?
[00:12:40] Amanda Asofsky: It... I wasn't too scared, but I think it was a lot of just being willing to know that I didn't know the right questions to ask at first. and again, all the people I worked with were really kind. And so when I started showing an interest and [00:13:00] going up to various designers and various product managers and just saying like: "Look, I think what you're doing is really interesting.
[00:13:06] I wanna be doing what you're doing. What advice do you have for me? what are things that I can read up on? What are things that you recommend I do to get the experience to know the right questions to ask, and to be able to maybe interview for some associate position sometime and not make a complete fool of myself?"
[00:13:27] And I think one of the questions I asked people was literally: "What... what should I avoid? And what are things that you see people say or do for these roles that just count them out and show you that they're not the right candidate, and how can I avoid that?" so yeah, really just knowing that I didn't know enough at the time, but being willing to admit that and also express an interest in growing, I think really [00:14:00] helped, people see that I was serious about wanting to do it and coming at it from a place of genuinely wanting to learn and not just trying to fake it till you make it.
[00:14:10] Yeah.
From Big Huge Games to Wizards of the Coast
---
[00:14:12] Susan Gold: you went from internships for them taking you for a full-time position, correct? And how long did you get to work at Big Huge?
[00:14:21] Amanda Asofsky: Ooh. to- let's see. So I was an intern for a summer, and then I had a year-long quality assurance contract. And then at the end of that, was very lucky, they had an associate product manager position open up, and I was able to get that. And then I worked there for I think another two, two and a half years as a product manager before moving over to Wizards of the Coast
Survivor's Guilt
---
[00:14:47] Susan Gold: So let's talk about that time towards the end because you and your team were hit by layoffs and what happened? You had what [00:15:00] I thought was a really interesting response, survivor's re- remorse
[00:15:05] Amanda Asofsky: Yes. Yeah, I think, that's really what it was. After the layoffs, I just had such survivor's guilt over it because, we had one game and it was very successful, and so we tried spinning up this other game, and I still think it was a great game that we made. I had a ton of fun with it. I had a ton of fun playing it, and it's just so hard to make a game that stands out in the mobile market.
[00:15:36] And so through really no fault of the team, the game had to shut down, and, because the game didn't make any money, we couldn't afford to keep on a bunch of people on the team that had worked on it. And I just remember thinking after the layoffs happened, like, why did I get to stay, right?
[00:15:58] And of [00:16:00] course, the answer is, they had more product management needs on the first title, and since that was my job, they were able to move me over. but they didn't have those same needs for other disciplines. but a lot of the people that got let go had been there longer than me or had been working on that second project longer than I had been, and I was just very close to them, and so it You know, I don't blame anyone for the layoffs, of course, but it was just so hard to watch all those people and feel like I haven't worked on this as long, but I'm the person that's still getting a paycheck and everyone else has to find something else.
[00:16:40] Uh, it, it was incredibly difficult
Tea Time Chats
---
[00:16:43] Susan Gold: That's a lot of emotional stress, and I kinda like what you created after that, which was Tea Time Chats. It was an opportunity to start to reconnect with the people on your team. Why don't you tell me a little bit about that and [00:17:00] how that has helped you gain leadership insight?
[00:17:04] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah. so the timeline of that was, uh, you know, the project went through layoffs and then COVID hit, so on top of losing a bunch of team members, I was now even more isolated. Everyone on the team was a lot more isolated and just working from home. and when we were in the office, me and some of my other coworkers would sometimes go and get tea or go and get coffee at the same time, and we'd just end up sitting and chatting in the break room.
[00:17:29] and so to try and recapture that feeling, I started a chat in our Slack channels that was the Tea Time chat, and people could go and chat whenever they wanted. And every day, every few days, I'd throw a meeting up, and it was just 15 to 20 minutes, and anyone in the company could feel welcome to come by and hang out.
[00:17:53] At some point, I joked that you had to have some beverage, and any beverage could count as tea. and it was just a time [00:18:00] to chat and take a small break from work, kinda reset your brain, and just say hi and see how everyone was doing. And it really allowed me to get a lot closer to some coworkers that I wouldn't have interacted with just daily, remotely with my job.
[00:18:20] And I think one of the big things it taught me about leading a team and working on a team was that a lot of the time people want to connect and have good relationships with their teammates, and they really just need a space to be allowed to do that. Uh, and I think that's the same with a lot of aspects, right?
[00:18:44] People in the games industry are very creative. They're very self-motivated a lot of the time, and so often they just need a space where they can feel allowed to explore and create and try new things and [00:19:00] experiment and iterate until they get something that kinda strikes gold.
Leadership and Joy
---
[00:19:06] Amanda Asofsky: That's why we have game jams.
[00:19:07] Yes. That's, I love when a company has like a quarterly like internal game jam where they're just like, "Yeah, you know what? This week just work on whatever you want so long as it in some way works back around to something good for the company. Just do whatever." I think a lot of great stuff comes out of that.
[00:19:27] Susan Gold: The one thing that I get from your style is that you have joy in what you do, and I think it's a little contagious. But tell me why that's so important to you and feel that leadership style you benefit from.
[00:19:46] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah, I mean, I think I just get so much joy from games, and it's the thing that's really my internal motivator and compass is no matter what I'm [00:20:00] doing, I want to be entertaining people, and I want to be providing experiences that people can walk away from and feel like, they felt something deeply.
[00:20:10] And I don't know. I think that is a driver of a lot of people in the games industry, right? We get into it because we love it, and there's some connection we feel with the games that we played growing up or the games that we played later in life, and we want to be able to recreate that connection with other people, and we wanna be able to just share in that joy and meaning that we've found in these different stories
[00:20:38] Susan Gold: I also think that joy gives you a confidence that we don't find in other people at your age. I feel that they are still trying to find their voice, and I think you've been practicing your voice for some time.
Forbes 30 under 30
---
[00:20:55] Amanda Asofsky: Tell me the story about the Forbes 30 Under 30 and how [00:21:00] that came about, because I find it perfect.
[00:21:05] Susan Gold: honestly, it really says to me what it means to take on this idea of being a leader
[00:21:13] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah. So the Forbes 30 Under 30, I again had another friend in the industry, and she reached out to me and she was like, "Hey, did you know that anyone can submit anybody to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list?" And I was like, "Oh, that's cool." And she was like, "Yeah, you should submit yourself 'cause you're 29 and this is the last year that you can do it."
[00:21:39] And I sort of laughed it off at first, but then I thought about it some more and I realized she was right, and you can't get on the 30 Under 30 list after you turn 30. so I just pulled up the application and I submitted myself for the list. and they have a little questionnaire [00:22:00] about why you're nominating the person that you're nominating, and so I filled it out to the best of my ability and then just kinda sent it off and got an email back, that was like, "Thank you.
[00:22:11] We'll contact you if we have further questions." and then I got on Forbes 30 Under 30 and I truly was not expecting it. I just did it on a whim because, you know, if I didn't submit, that was the worst case scenario. Like trying and failing to get on Forbes 30 Under 30 was the exact same outcome as if I just didn't try at all, so there was no reason not to.
[00:22:36] Susan Gold: I think that it takes a certain kind of person to acknowledge that calling yourself one of those top 30 under 30 really means that you're prepared to take responsibility for it
[00:22:52] Amanda Asofsky: Thank
[00:22:52] Susan Gold: right.
Wizards of the Coast & Leaning on your Network
---
[00:22:53] Susan Gold: So let's, uh, go to real life now and owning your seat at [00:23:00] the table and being at Wizards. And when the recruiter reached out to you, what did you think?
[00:23:08] What was going through your head? How did you get an insight? What did you do?
[00:23:14] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah. when the recruiter reached out, I remember just thinking, "Oh, that'd be so cool." and just, obviously I'd been playing D&D since I was very small, and so the thought of working at Wizards of the Coast was like, "Oh, wow, that would be a dream job." And, I enjoy Magic: The Gathering a lot.
[00:23:31] It wasn't my favorite game at the time that I applied, but I was familiar with it, and I was like, "Yeah, people love this. I would love to work on a game this big. I would love to work at the game company that shaped my childhood. That would be incredible." Uh, so I told the recruiter, "Yeah, I'd love to apply."
[00:23:49] and then, you know, luckily resume got seen. and, when I got my interview panel and the list of people that'd be interviewing [00:24:00] me, looked all of them up to see what their history was, see if there was anything interesting. I noticed that one of them was a mutual connection with someone else that I had worked with, on LinkedIn, and so I reached out to our mutual connection and I was like, "Hey, what can you tell me about this person that I'm gonna be interviewing with?
[00:24:17] I'd love to just know a little bit more so I can be more prepared." and I think he, he must have contacted the person that was interviewing me because, during the interview, the interviewer was like, "Oh, I've heard really good things about you." And I was like, "Oh, thank you. No pressure."
[00:24:35] No, but I think you did your homework and you did what you were supposed to do, use your network
[00:24:40] Very important
[00:24:42] Yeah, but I was very self-conscious about leaning on my network when I was applying to other jobs, but I've come to realize that's really important and that's just how a lot of the industry works, and it's not as weirdly intimidating as I first thought. It really can be thought [00:25:00] as, thought of as simply as, I enjoyed working with this person and I admire them and think that they're good at their job, and so I would be happy to tell other people that they're good at their job.
The Boldest Version
---
[00:25:12] Susan Gold: I think that it's really important to share that, and that feedback is really a good thing. So
[00:25:19] you talked about wanting to give GBC talks and explore what your 30s looks like without a single fixed dream, like starting your studio, which is something a lot of people like, "Oh, I've gotta go do that," you know? What do you imagine is the boldest version of you in the next 10 years?
[00:25:39] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah. I honestly, I think the boldest version of myself is just one that puts myself out there more. I'm actually very reserved in the public eye. I'm not really on social media a whole lot. I, [00:26:00] don't engage very publicly right now with a lot of what I do, and I think pr- no matter what I end up picking as another future goal, I think being more publicly visible is something that I'm gonna wanna pursue just to try it and put myself out there more, because I can't share the things that I love if I'm not telling people about them.
[00:26:30] Susan Gold: No, I understand that. And it's hard because you feel you have a target on your back when you do.
[00:26:36] Or at But I have to tell you, we are our own worst critics. and I know that you have valuable things to share with people, so I hope that you will find yourself, get out of your own way and allow yourself to be that bold person, because I think you have something that's brave and that you've created habits that keep you sharp on these things.
Advise for Students
---
[00:26:59] Susan Gold: [00:27:00] So really, if you were a student listening right now, what would be some of the things you would say besides nominating yourself for something? Are there things that you could do to prepare yourself for a world in front?
[00:27:19] Amanda Asofsky: Yeah, I think... Oh, this is hard. It's hard to give myself advice for what I'm trying to do now, but I think I'd just try and remind myself that the world is full of a lot more kinder people that are interested in really anything than there are people that are explicitly negative. I don't think people really seek out spaces that they want to hate.
[00:27:51] and so if I put myself out there more in creative spaces, I really don't think I'm going to run into people that are [00:28:00] actively there to dismantle or discredit anyone in those spaces. It's really just gonna be more creatives that want to share in that joy and that wanna build each other up. and I think if I'm able to get that through my head and get out of my own way, I think believing in that will help push me forward.
Choosing Fun over Safe
---
[00:28:21] Susan Gold: You light up when you talk about games as play, not just as products, but you're a product manager. So can you share a time when you chose a fun option over a safe option that led to something completely unexpected in your own career?
[00:28:39] Amanda Asofsky: Ooh. Yes. Uh, so the-- I think there's probably two that I can share. The first one is, bringing phrases back to Arena. I had been digging around and looking for okay, what's something new that we can [00:29:00] offer that can help increase our revenue, et cetera. and I found phrases which are, you know, emotes.
[00:29:07] They're just like, "Hello," "Good game," "Thank you," et cetera. and I found a small batch of them from, two years before I started, and I asked around and I was like: Why don't we do these? Why don't we do set-themed ones if we have the tech set up for it already? and people were like: Oh, they didn't really do a lot.
[00:29:27] we don't really have time to implement them. And I was like: Well, I think it'd be really cool if we did them. and I kept lightly pressing on it until we got to, the set Outlaws of Thunder Junction, which was a Western cowboy-themed set. And I went to our game director and I was like: Look, I understand it might not be the biggest moneymaker in the world, but I really want players to be able to say howdy to one another, [00:30:00] and I am going to put this in the game.
[00:30:02] I've talked to engineers, I've talked to the artists. It's very plausible. I'm gonna make tickets to get that work done, and it's happening unless you explicitly tell me that I can't do it. and he was like: You know what? Fair enough. and I've been doing phrases ever since. and you know, I obviously actually looked into okay, what sort of revenue would we be making from these?
[00:30:28] Making sure that we did everything we could responsibly to not just have them be this throwaway thing that was wasting people's time, but That was probably one of the silliest things, and I think the first time at my job at Wizards that I was kind of like, "I'm gonna do it, and you're gonna have to put more effort into stopping me than if you just let me, and we're gonna see how it plays out."
[00:30:52] and then the second time was probably when I was at Big Huge Games working on the Arcane Showdown [00:31:00] game. we did do a little mini game jam at the office, and two of my other coworkers wrote fan fiction over two of the characters that were in the game. And at the end of the game jam, we were like, this is effectively canon now because it was written by employees."
[00:31:18] and it just became such a running joke, the two characters that we'd paired together, that, when Valentine's Day came around, we actually put a fun little nod to it in the game itself. so we canonized a romantic relationship between two of the characters
[00:31:35] Susan Gold: that's what LiveOps allows you to do. You know, you could have some fun.
[00:31:41] Amanda Asofsky: one of my favorite things about LiveOps is being able to respond very organically to whatever fun things are happening either internally or that you see in the community and trying to give nods to that
[00:31:53] Susan Gold: And because it has so much lore and history, I am sure they are [00:32:00] very, feedback-oriented.
[00:32:02] Amanda Asofsky: Yes.
Keeping the Love of Games
---
[00:32:03] Susan Gold: So you make your own games and you do things on the side, and you say you really like tabletop. Tell me a little bit about how you keep your design jobs, how you keep yourself Amanda and enjoying what you're doing.
[00:32:22] Amanda Asofsky: Absolutely. so it's... I do try to analyze different games that I play. I feel like there's some amount that you can't avoid that when you're doing design is as soon as you start to learn how things work, any game you play, you can't help but realize how they built it. so there's definitely an element of that, whether consciously or not, that I try to, stay brushed up on.
[00:32:46] But in terms of just keeping the other elements of, creativity with design going, I try to carve out time every day or, every week, sometimes [00:33:00] every month, depending on how busy I am, to sit down and just try to ideate new games. I also try and see what's going on in the local indie, space where I live now, just because I find there's so much extra creativity that you see in indie or student spaces where you're just focused on what can you make, and you're not even really aware of the constraints of the industry yet, and so you're not self-censoring.
[00:33:38] Um, and so I really love seeing people's projects where they're not self-censoring already, because it just helps keep that spark of what's possible and how games are just such an expansive medium that can do so much and can make you think of things in new ways. it-- That [00:34:00] really helps keep the love of games alive for me.
Where to find Amanda
---
[00:34:05] Amanda Asofsky: I love that. And as we start to wrap this up, where will people find more information about you and how would they get in touch?
[00:34:14] Yeah. So the best way to keep in touch or learn about me is probably through my LinkedIn. it's just Amanda Asofsky. I also have a website that's amandaasofsky.com, but I don't update it very frequently. so LinkedIn would still probably be the best way to reach out. and as I mentioned, all my other social media is pretty locked down, so I would not try and go through those avenues.
[00:34:40] Susan Gold: I think we should explain that because of your position, it's not a matter of not wanting to share, but there's just too much at risk. like you have to find your own way of being online, and I hope that people learn [00:35:00] about your true joy of making games and are able to share that in their lives and to understand one thing is that you just have to stand up for yourself.
[00:35:12] You've done that magically
[00:35:14] Amanda Asofsky: Thank you
[00:35:15] Susan Gold: This has been a pleasure, and thank you so much for your time
[00:35:19] Amanda Asofsky: Thank you, Susan. This has been fantastic
[00:35:21] Susan Gold: I really enjoyed myself. Thank you, Amanda
Outro
---
[00:35:24] Amanda Asofsky: Want to get involved with the GGJ Podcast? We'd love to hear from you. Please send your ideas, suggestions, and questions to ggjpod@globalgamejam.org, and tell us who you think we should be talking to next, what stories or issues matter most to you about the future of games, and help us highlight the people and practices that make a sustainable creative life in games possible.
[00:35:49] Speaker: Thank you for spending time with us on the GGJ Podcast. If this conversation sparked something for you, please share it with someone who might find it useful. And don't forget to follow along [00:36:00] so you never miss new stories from makers around the world. You can find more episodes, resources, and information about the Global Game Jam at globalgamejam.org.
[00:36:10] Catch us on Substack and on YouTube and anywhere else you find podcasts. This has been the GGJ Podcast. Thanks for listening, and keep making games.