Listen to this episode on your phone!

If you’re struggling to keep people engaged and loyal in your product or business, check out my FREE gamification course to learn how to do just that: bit.ly/freegamificationcourse-web

We discuss the significance of fostering high-performing teams and nurturing a positive studio culture. With over three decades of experience, Mark Sample shares his insights on what it takes to lead successful game development projects. Gain valuable perspectives from Mark’s extensive experience in launching award-winning games across multiple platforms. Listen as he shares his approach to building strong, innovative teams and his philosophy on strategic leadership that drives creativity and excellence in game development.

Mark Sample is a highly accomplished Game Development Executive with over 30 years of experience in the gaming industry. Throughout his career, he has launched multiple award-winning AAA and casual games, establishing himself as a leader in creative strategy, production, and studio management. With expertise spanning across console and mobile platforms, Mark has been instrumental in delivering over 30 credited titles, guiding teams to push the boundaries of what’s possible in gaming.

As a visionary in the industry, Mark has cultivated high-performing teams by fostering a positive, innovative studio culture. His strong communication skills, combined with his strategic leadership, have enabled him to build lasting relationships with stakeholders and strategic partners. Mark’s passion for developing great games and mentoring future leaders makes him a driving force in the evolving gaming landscape.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

Guest Links and Info

• Website: sumo-digital.com
• LinkedIn: Mark Sample
• X/Twitter: @marksample

 

Links to episode mentions:

• Proposed guest: Will Wright
• Recommended book:
  • Old Role-Playing Books! Call of Cthulu, etc.
  • You don’t have to read game development books only! Read different things
• Favorite game: Souls games
  • Marvel Snap
  • Punch-Out

 

Lets’s do stuff together!

• Get started in Gamification for FREE!
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube
• Ask a question

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is professor game where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez, a consultant and the founder of Professor Game and a professor of gamification and games based solutions at IE business School, EFMD, EBS University and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you’re struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make sure your users stay with you, perhaps you will find our free gamification course useful. Find it for free in the links in the description. Hey engagers, and welcome to another episode of the Professor Game podcast. And we have mark with us today. So Mark, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Mark Sample:
I’m ready to engage. I’m lock and loaded. Ready to go. Let’s do it.

Rob:
Let’s do this. We have Mark sample today. He is a highly accomplished game development executive with overdose. 30 years of experience in the gaming industry and throughout his career he has launched multiple award winning AAA and casual games. He’s established himself as a leader in the creative industry, production and studio management and he has expertise that spans across console mobile platforms and he has been instrumental in delivering over 30 credited titles, guiding teams to push the boundaries of what’s possible in gaming. As a visionary, he has cultivated high performing teams by fostering positive, innovative studio culture with communication skills, strategic leadership he has enabled to build lasting relationship with stakeholders and strategic partners. And his passion is for developing great games and mentoring future leaders. That makes him a driving force in the evolving gaming landscape. So Mark, many awesome things going on in your life. Is there anything we need to know before we get dive into the questions?

Mark Sample:
Wow, I’ve got to live up to all of that. That sounds pretty cool. I’m just really happy to be here and just to have. Just to chat about games and be on the podcast and I’m sure we’ll have a good chat and learn a lot.

Rob:
Brilliant. So when, you know, if we were to be on your shoes, so to speak, we were to be hanging out with you for a day or for a week, whatever you want to go for, what would that look like? What would that feel like being a day or a week or whatever you want to go for with you, how would we feel, what would we be doing?

Mark Sample:
Well, feeling very happy and privileged and thankful to still be in the games industry and still making a difference. And it’s so varied what I do every day, what I do in a week and a month. It’s always changing, challenging, but always fun. And I would say some of the things that I get up to, I’m working with other discipline directors. So it’s Sumo Sheffield. We have the art director and we have tech directors and audio directors, all of these disciplines. And we’re collaborating and communicating to make sure that we work as a unit and share our experiences and make sure the teams function well and have everything that they need. So a lot of what we do is making sure that informed and making sure that everybody’s got what they need to make great games, you know, then moving on. It’s reading pictures, external, internal pictures of game ideas that are coming up. What’s the, where’s the next hit? How are we going to make that happen? It could be working with prototype teams, looking at prototypes, playing little builds, giving feedback, reviewing. It’s then working with the studio creative directors to mentor and coach, listen to some of their challenges, maybe giving some insights on where they could improve and just generally, generally working with all of the characters that we meet with in the studio to try and make the best games possible. But honestly, it’s forever changing. And sometimes, you know, sometimes it’s cruise through the weeks and it’s all plain sailing and sometimes it’s like things are on fire, things need fixing. So, you know, it’s a, it’s all good and it’s a challenge.

Rob:
That sounds brilliant. Thank you very much for sharing that. And it sounds like a very exciting, you know, moment and life to be leading at this point. So let’s actually bring it down. Let’s sort of bring it down to earth in that sense, as I’m sure you know better than most other people, especially in the games industry, it’s not about you take a shot, and every time you hit exactly in the target that you’re looking for, right, there’s hit and miss. There’s failure. So we want to dive into one of those failures. When you’ve been working in a game or a first attempt at learning, as we like to call them, as well, we want to be there in that story with you. We want to live it and maybe take a few of the lessons that you learned through that experience.

Mark Sample:
Wow. Failures. I actually really like talking about failures. A lot of times. What taught you, like, failure is bad, but failure is an opportunity to learn. And, yes, it might sound corny, but as you get older and more experienced, you realize you’ve got to take shots, you’ve got to take failures, and that’s how you get better. I mean, one that comes to mind. I’ll give a couple of quick fire ones, you know. So I always wanted to make a boxing game, being a huge boxing game fan, this was 20 years ago. Plus I had a pitch document. I had everything lined up. I would go around and speak to all of the companies. Everywhere I went. I’d say, I’ve got this boxing game, do you want to make it? And they’d be like, yeah, boxing’s boring, isn’t it? Boring game, you know, and I’d be like, no, we can do this, we can, we can do this. I know how to make it fun and, you know, anyway, I did this for three or four years. Various companies, various publishers, always the same. And I joined Rage Games and I did the presentation to them and they were like, yeah, you know, they were nice, but maybe not a few months later they came back and said, and said, hey, you still got that boxing idea? Yeah. And would you like to make a boxing game? Yeah. And would you like to do with the rocky license? You know, and I’m like the Vince McMahon meme. I’m just getting more and more hyper excited, like, wow. So, you know, the point I’m trying to make there is with, with a failure, which was, you know, trying to convince people to make a game, the persistence and belief of getting through. Eventually I got a shot. So, you know, it just goes to show, I want to let people know that, you know, failure, sometimes you have to fail many times. You don’t always win through convincing or having a great pitch or a great idea. You’ve got to have the right time in the right moment. But that paid off. But there’s been, there’s been so many times. So, you know, I’ve, I’ve made games where game modes just didn’t work. I’ve made mechanics where you push and push and push to try and make. This is going to coolest mechanics ever. It just doesn’t work. And I think the biggest thing that I can talk about failure is don’t get too upset with it and also know when you’re beat. You know, I’ve worked on many projects where you keep pushing and pushing and pushing to improve the mechanic. Look for that essence that’s going to give it this great surefire hit. Sometimes it’s just never going to happen. And being able to move on is just the key part of learning and finding the next best thing. It’s not always a win, unfortunately, but that’s okay.

Rob:
That’s okay. You know, part of the pivot sometimes is dropping some things and it could be a mechanic, it could be a full idea or driving that idea entirely different, you know, talk about the people in slack, right? They were game developers. They had this game thing and they used slack to communicate. And now a huge company called Slack came out. You know exactly of that, right?

Mark Sample:
And, you know, just as we spoke there, I’m coming back to the king days. I was working on pet Rescue saga and we were making this wonderful little game based on the pet rescue IP, a different type of game, small team, 13 people on fire, great vision. We were all knew what we needed to do. We couldn’t wait to finish stand ups and meetings because we just wanted to go and make this game, you know, and that’s a good sign. Everybody knew what they were locked, loaded and ready. But for whatever reason, higher up above chose that we had to, you know, kill the project. And yeah, maybe it was a failure. We were on fire for whatever reason, it wasn’t going to work. And then, you know, letting the team know that we’re not going any further and licking our wounds and sort of still keeping together and not, you know, not taking it out on each other and looking after each other. So you could say that that was a failure, not because of our doing, but we just didn’t quite make it. And the good thing coming out of that is I still stay in touch with most of the people that worked on that team. So even though it was a failure, even though the game didn’t make it, the bonds that we made whilst making that game, because, you know, we worked well and enjoyed it. So, you know, years later, this is maybe six years later, I still in touch with the guys, even though we’re in different companies and different countries.

Rob:
Huh. So, you know, as we’ve said before, failure usually is not final, it’s not fatal. Right. So there’s things to take out of these failed experiences and to use them to move forward in the same direction, in a slightly different direction or in a completely different direction. And that’s all definitely good. And it’s experience, it’s stuff that you learn so that you can get to that next big thing nearly every single.

Mark Sample:
Time as well, is that things that feel often, not always, but often, it’s because they’re too complicated. You know, you add more and more, it’s got to have more depth, more mechanics, more fun, more, you know, monetization, more, more, more. And before you know it, you had this really simple idea that was on fire. And then it’s just this becomes this Frankenstein monster. So you know, failure can often happen because you’re trying too hard to make it great and you’ve got too much stuff in and that simplicity is a good way to overcome the failures or steer away from it.

Rob:
Amazing. Amazing. And Mark, we talked about failure. How about we take a spin and go in the opposite direction? How about a time where things actually did work out? Maybe the boxing game that you mentioned or something. You’ve got plenty of years in this industry, lots of stuff to talk about. One of those times where things went well, the first or the nth time, it doesn’t matter. And again, with some of the success factors, we want to again be there with you in that story.

Mark Sample:
Sure. I mean, the rocky game. Yeah, that is a. I’ll not spend too long on that. But that. That idea, there was so much passion in there. The game turned out great. It proved that boxing games didn’t have to be boring. It had that tug of war feel that Rocky had in the movies. We got that into the game and that was just to be able to have the idea, execute with a great team, deliver the game. It did well and it turned out Howard hope. That’s just. That’s what most game devs are looking for, that opportunity to do that. So I’m so happy that that happened. But coming more recently, you know, introducing liveops, one of the first liveops into pet rescue, was absolutely fantastic. A little bit of a challenge there to put this new feature into the.

Rob:
Game for the people in the audience who don’t know what liveops. Can you give us a gist of what do you mean by that? Yeah.

Mark Sample:
So with this, it was essentially a scheduled event that we could control. So we could say over the weekend there is going to be an event where you can play this small mini section of the game and we’ll get bonuses and that. So the live op is controlled, controlled events. You’ll see it in Fortnite. And various other games use this where it’s time based events, where you can turn events on and off and you can have fun with that time. So quite complicated back then because it was one of the first small experience, kept it small. The thing that made it a success, I would say, isn’t just the actual idea or innovation. It was the psychology behind it. So with this, I was working with the team and I wanted to make sure that when they went to this live ops, instead of it being challenging levels, all the levels in this event would be easy. So it was easy to clear. There was just ten levels and you get some boosters which you could use to overcome levels. I wanted it so that when you went in an event and finished it, you didn’t feel exhausted, you felt invigorated. So when you went back into the game you wanted to play more. And sure enough, that’s exactly what what happened. And people enjoyed that because, you know, with games, if the intensity, like anything, games, movies, music, if the intensity is too high for too long, the brain just gets used to it and either exhausts or turns off. So you’ve got to kind of play with the sine wave of intensity and emotion as well. And I think that did it well. So I could talk all day about successes, you know, but there’s been, there’s been a few, but that, that’s a great one. And just actually rolling all the way back, getting into the games industry, just actually being able to get into the games industry all that time, that’s a success. I mean, so, you know, there you go.

Rob:
To either of the two, is there anything you were talking about the ups and downs of excitement and of most things, maybe is that or something else? But is there something that you would say, well, I think part of our success is due to this thing that we did and it actually really worked out. Again, it doesn’t have to be a mechanic or anything specific. What comes to your mind when I.

Mark Sample:
Ask this, are you talking about the rocky or pet rescue or something else?

Rob:
Whichever you want to go for.

Mark Sample:
I mean, you know, I would say.

Rob:
Maybe the last one, the pet rescue one that you were talking about having.

Mark Sample:
A vision, being able to work with the team and seeing it come alive and overcome the challenges together and then getting that outcome, that’s a great success and that’s one of the best feelings that we’ve had or I’ve had. And I think the challenge there, what made it sweeter with it doing well is that there was quite a challenge from up above to release it more quickly. You know, with mobile games, it’s a lot about get it out there, make sure it’s just get the roughest version of MVP and gun. But we took the time to do the back end to make sure the graphics was nice, to make sure that it was all done to a quality level. So when it hit, it was good. There was a lot of challenge and pushback, like, no, don’t do this. But we did it and it turned out really, really well. So that’s what was sweet. Part of the success, I suppose.

Rob:
Awesome. Awesome. And I’m guessing a lot of that, a lot of that time as well, was involved in doing some playtesting, making sure you were building the right thing.

Mark Sample:
For the people that you had all the time. So playtesting was really important. It’s something that I push all the time. So we would play as a team, we would play the game and have a look, but then we get fresh eyes and we’d get external testing and we’d get various companies so we could see where people were touching the screen. We’d be able to listen to their commentary and we’d be able to dissect that and see where there might be some blocks. So that ultimately, it’s to just make that experience as smooth as possible from the feedback. But here’s the thing with playtesting, which maybe not everybody talks about, is it’s an art and a skill to choose to listen to the right feedback. Because if you listen to all the feedback, you’re going to end up with something quite gray and flat and probably boring or worse. You’ve got to be listen to your gut, listen to the data and find what are we going to from this feedback we get from of our players? What are we going to choose to act on and what are we going to choose not to? Because if you choose to act on everything, it just erodes the essence of what you’ve got.

Rob:
Totally, totally. And I brought this up because sometimes people hear what you said initially and they say, what I have to do is go down to the basement and stick there and spend six months or a year all by myself, make sure everything is perfect. And only then I’ll show it my product now that it’s perfect. And then you have crickets. Right. That’s part of the issue.

Mark Sample:
And when I say, you know, holding on, we’re talking like, weeks, so not even months or years. We’re just holding on just that little bit more. But you’re so right. And that’s a great point that you made, Rob, is that, you know, working with the teams as well, to get comfortable with showing progress as it is, you know, because creatives, we’re proud. We have a lot of pride, and it’s like, it’s not ready yet, so we don’t show it. It really breaks down the boundaries of people feeling precious. And once you know, you’re psychologically safe with a team that everybody just wants to make things better, then you just. I’ve got this idea. Try this, try that. People riff and build on it, and that’s a great place to be, but you have to work at that it doesn’t come easy.

Rob:
Yeah. And work is one of the core principles always in this industry, and I would guess that almost in any other. So, Mark, when you’re developing one of your games, you know, of course it’s always going to depend, you know, on the size of the game, aaa or more, you know, sort of casual games or what’s it, what? Nothing. But is there maybe a sort of process? What are the things, how do you go about it? Somebody comes in with an idea for the first time and you’re going to start working on that. How does that go? I don’t know. Give us some insights into what that looks like in your case.

Mark Sample:
Sure. Well, I do this a lot, as I was saying, with my role. So, say often it turns up with a pitch. Somebody’s got a pitch or an idea, maybe six to ten pages of what they’d like to do. So imagine we’ve seen the pitch, we refined it, everybody’s sort of like, yeah, this is worth a go, then get a really small prototype team. So even if it’s triple a or whatever, I’m a huge fan of how far can we go with taking something from paper and get something on screen quickly with the least amount of resources? Not to make it difficult, but what I’ve found is when you’re prototyping or working out, there’s a tendency for, let’s throw 20 or 30 people on and we can really make something fantastic, but you really got to build slowly with the right team and the right people and grow it naturally, but not too quickly. So the process there would be from pitch. Is the pitch good? We’re all aligned. Yes. Now let’s get a little prototype team there. Small team, you know, could be like eight people, ten or whatever, but small. And let’s, what is the essence? Also be focused, don’t just prototype everything. Are we going to focus on the mechanic? Are we going to focus on how the camera or the feel or the experience, you know, drill down on what is the essence of the game and only move forward once you’ve proven it out. So it’s a real battle between refining till it’s good, but also moving on so you don’t get stuck with, you know, a prototype that’s been working, worked on for twelve months and hasn’t really moved forward. So do you see what I mean? So we’re always checking in with each other. What are we doing next? What’s it going to give to the playout? Is it going to be fun? How are we going to move this forward. So there’s a lot of collaboration. And I also think when I’m working with prototype teams, I will say that the prototype is the boss. So if you want to know the answers, go ask your prototype. As in the screen, the frame rate, is the frame rate good? Is it crashing? Does it load quickly? Can you make the jump? Is the level design good? All of your answers, does it sound good? Go play a game. Go have a look at it. It’ll tell you everything you need to do next. And when people, when I say this to people, people go like, is this kind of hippie voodoo magic? It’s not. It’s just the essence of play a game, play it with your team, choose where you want to go, choose what you want to fix and let’s get it made. But also, the last thing I’d say as well is put time boxes on things. You know, it’s very easy. You’ve seen, I’m sure you’ve heard people on podcasts talk, but it’s very easy to spend a lot of time and resources. If you don’t time box, how long you’re going to spend on things and just time gets away.

Rob:
So, yeah, time boxing, very, very good recommendation. So keeping up with that kind of recommendation, mark, is there, again, not a silver bullet or anything of the kind, but maybe a best practice, like time boxing, maybe that’s the one that you would say, well, do this and your projects are going to benefit from doing that thing.

Mark Sample:
Have a really crystal clear pitch and experience of what you want to achieve from your game. If you are going to go to prototyping, make sure you’ve got the smallest team with a clear vision before you start. Make sure you know what you want to achieve. You can find the fun along the way, but if you just, you know, if you have no constraints, really, constraints are wonderful. They’re the best thing in the world. Most artistic and creative people hate the idea of constraints, but I promise you, it will save you. You know, if you, if you’re making a car game and you say, we’re going to make a car game, but we’re not going to get out, the cardinal calling out what you’re not going to do is as important as what you are going to do. In fact, probably more important. So I’d say being comfortable with, we’re not going to do this, we’re not going to do that, but we are going to do this. That’s great. And time boxing, how long are we going to spend on this before and what is the vision of success when we get there. And the last thing I would say is get comfortable with killing your ideas. If you know it’s no good, if you know it’s not going to work, that’s okay. Doesn’t mean you’re bad. Doesn’t mean you’re a poor designer, developer, programmer. Some things work and some things or person or whatever, that’s okay. Get used to killing things quickly when you know it’s time.

Rob:
There’s a few things, quite a few great recommendations, Mark, and keeping up with that, you know, after seeing a little bit of the vibe of the podcast, what are the questions that we make? Does somebody come to your mind to say, oh, I like to listen to this other person as well, answering these questions. A future guest for the podcast.

Mark Sample:
Wow, there’s so, so many. There’s so many that come to mind. You know, I don’t even know if he’s still working right now, but I watched a master class with Will Wright of Sim City. Now if you could get this guy on, you know, he’s one of the godfathers of games development. So will Wright, Simcity and spore and all the rest of it. You know, what’s interesting about him as well is that he is a designer who takes a lot of his own interests and made games out of it, and I think that makes a huge difference. And he would research, you know, so much before he even started so that he had a true understanding of whether, you know, how cities work and how the road systems work and so on. So will Wright comes to mind, an old school guy, but yeah, he would be fun.

Rob:
Awesome, awesome. Thank you for that recommendation. And Mark, for an audience like this one, the engagers, people who are looking at thinking of game design and thinking of games in general to get inspired and do things that are literally a game or are inspired by games to help people create loyalty, engagement, do their stuff in class or whatever that’s going to look like. Is there anything that you recommend in the sense of a book to say, well, read this and get inspired, or these are some interesting techniques? I don’t know.

Mark Sample:
You know what? I wouldn’t say one book in particular. What I would say for inspiration is don’t feel that if you want to be a games developer, don’t feel like you have to read game developer books. Read all sorts of books. You know, if you study architecture, it could be cookery books, it could be fiction, it could be, you name it, any type of book, you’ll find far more inspiration outside of what you read in games development then. And that’s one of my takeaways. And the other thing I would say which I posted about if there’s one book that I would say is go buy an old role playing book, you know, call of Cthulhu, Middle earth, air D and D paranoia, something like that. The beauty of these books is that it’s the closest you get to seeing how systems work on paper without being a programmer. It also helps you write better documents, it helps you articulate, articulate your ideas, helps quantify, helps show progressive systems. So that I’ve preached this for quite a few years, but any role playing book doesn’t have to be the latest edition either. It can be a cheap one off eBay. But honestly, you’ll learn so much on how to put a game together if you just take a look through that. And that’s from past experience, because when I was a kid, there wasn’t game design books or anything. So that was my little Bible. That’s what I would look. How do you do this? How do you make a chart or a progression system or whatever? It’s all in there and I still think it’s relevant to this day.

Rob:
Certainly is. I would definitely say that. And in this world of game design, right, there’s many people doing amazing things, but in your case, what would you say is your superpower, that thing that you do at least better than most other people?

Mark Sample:
I would say I bring great teams together. That’s what I like to do.

Rob:
Super important.

Mark Sample:
I wouldn’t, you know, I might be doing myself a job. I wouldn’t say like, hey, I’m the most creative person or the blah blah blah, but getting great teams and helping them get to the goal of what? Something great in a collaborative way and feeling good about it and having passion and belief, that’s what I like to do. And I think, well, hopefully if I’ve managed to last 30 years, maybe it’s working. It might be working. Let’s see.

Rob:
Definitely is. Definitely is. Now we come to what some people say is the most difficult questions for the guests. And you’ve worked on many games. I’m sure you’ve played many other games as well. So what would you say is your favorite game? And you can say of all time recently of the games you created? I don’t know. Wherever you want to lead that question too, that is up to you. But what would that answer be?

Mark Sample:
Wow. You know, that it sounds like the fun and most easiest question for everybody to answer, but I reckon this has got to be like, the toughest one, because right now I’ve got a roller dex, I’ve got a filing system of games, and I go, oh, but not this one. Oh, but that’s good. And I like, you know, wow. Well, in modern games, you know, I’m a huge Souls fan. So any of the souls games, you know, and maybe that’s because of the role playing books that I used to play in the. The inspiration of architecture. You know, there’s. They’re great games. Elden ring, Dark Souls three. You know, that. That’s a modern game that I like to play. However, if I can mention a couple, please, if I’m allowed, I play a lot of Marvel snap. So that’s, you know, that is just a brilliant mobile game. I love Marvel snap. I love the depth and complexity. I love the way that you can set up your card system. You can playing a style that suits you. You can be aggressive, you can be counter, you can wait it out. You know, you can choose when to risk or not. There’s so much in there. It’s very simple. It’s fast to play great little game, and the monetization is not aggressive. Get a lot out of it. So, you know, this is. I’m not endorsed by.

Rob:
It’s funny that that has to be. I agree. Right. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s funny that that is something that we need to talk about. Right. The monetization is nothing super aggressive. So it’s a cool game, right?

Mark Sample:
It is. And that’s why I think, you know, if it was, the gaming audiences are waking up. People are waking up. And if you don’t look after your audience, if you don’t look after your players and you don’t treat them well, do not expect them to hang around, because it’s just, quite frankly, it’s not fair. We got to treat our gamers fairly, and they will look after us. So I’ll get off my high horse there. It’s really important one to me. But, yeah, but marvel snap. Elden ring. And if I go way back. Let’s. Let’s pick an old one. When I went to the arcades, I used to play punch out, and that was just, you know, that’s where the boxing thing started. Punch out by Nintendo and the arcades. There you go.

Rob:
Awesome. Awesome. Good stuff. Good stuff. So, Mark, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you here, having all that experience all these years, all the stuff that you’ve been doing, getting a little, you know, a small, itty bitty piece of all the stuff that you’ve been doing, it’s been amazing. Is there anything else you want to, you know, any final words? Anything like that? Of course. Let us know if there’s anything that we can look at. You know, the work you’re doing or the work you’ve done. A webpage, I don’t know, whatever you want to lead us to before we or where we can contact you on social media, if that’s something you want.

Mark Sample:
Yeah, well, you know, I’m on LinkedIn. If you want to find me, just look for my name. I’m sure I’ll pop up. And I’m on Twitter with the same thing. So I’m around there. Check out sumo digital to see what we’re up to. You can see what the company’s up to and what games we’re making. It’s exciting times. I’m just super happy to be on the podcast, to be able to chat and talk to you and hopefully, I hope that folk who listen and watch hopefully get some nuggets out of there. And also, if people want to get in touch, as long as I’ve got time, I’m more than happy to help folk. I think it’s time to share the knowledge and share and look after each other in the games industry because it’s a difficult time. So we need to reach out and be kind to each other because it’s tough at the moment.

Rob:
Always, always. That’s always a good thing. Tough and not tough. It’s always a good time to be as much as you can open and helping other people. Mark, again, absolute pleasure having you. It’s been great. I’m sure the engagers will get not one, but many nuggets and things that they can apply immediately to whatever they are working on or will work on. However, Mark and engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over. Hey engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you are into gamification and game inspired solutions, how about you go into the free gamification course that we have for you? Just go to professorgame.com freegamification work course. All one word, professorgame.com freegamificationcourse and get started today day for free. After that, we will also be in contact and you will be the first to know of any opportunities that professor game might have for you. And remember, before you go onto your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

End of transcription