For this revisit of a Dev to Dev episode from S01, I’m going back to the wonderful discussion I had with Landon Hood.

Landon and I go back, and getting to sit down with him for Dev to Dev felt like catching up with an old friend as much as recording an episode.

Landon was a franchise producer at Blizzard at the time (he’s now Brand Marketing Manager on Heathstone), but his road there is anything but a straight line — GameStop, a community college art show that changed his life, a run at a scrappy production shop making everything from AR birthday cards to Kevin Bacon narrating a phone app, a hard move to Florida that didn't work out, and eventually ZeniMax Online Studios, where he ended up quietly running three creative teams with no director in sight.

A few of the moments that stuck with me:

• How a community college teacher basically forced him into the meeting that started his entire career
• The four weeks it took at his first studio to go from "filling creative gaps" to accidental producer
• Treating his ADHD and hearing loss as tools instead of limitations
• The moment a new creative director looked at what he'd built and just said "it's yours"

Landon's one of the most genuinely empathetic people I've had on this show, and it comes through in every story he tells about the teams he's led.

I hope you enjoy this revisit and remember if you haven’t previously had the chance, you can catch the rest of the Season 01 content on Dev to Dev’s Patreon right here: https://www.patreon.com/DevToDevPodcast

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