This one's a good reminder that there's no single road into games. Sangita Nuli came in through plays, film and TV scripts, and a talent agency video games desk — and for years Sangita was convinced making games was simply out of reach. The technology was scary. The interactivity was even scarier. Then Sangita stopped waiting and jumped.

What I loved about this conversation is how clearly Sangita’s old life feeds the new one. Reading twenty scripts a week and learning to sell what's good in them turned into a knack for pitching ideas and shaping other people's. Writing plays — and watching audiences react in real time — turned into a genuine love of playtesting and feedback. And a cancelled MMO at ZeniMax taught what Sangita now builds everything around: every single person on a team is a storyteller.

Highlights:

• Why a single choice in the game Infamous changed how Sangita saw the whole medium
• The "molecular level" story analysis learned via reading scripts at a talent agency
• Going from rule-bound film and TV to the no-rules world of narrative design
• The cold application — a fantasy noir graphic novel — that landed a AAA gig
• What a cancellation AAA MMO taught about community, grief, and fearlessness
• Why a weapon or a level can tell more story than any line of dialogue

Settle in for this one — it's a real masterclass in trusting your own voice and then handing the story to everyone around you.

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WE'RE BACK!!! Thank you for your patience over the last couple of weeks. I'm excited to get things rolling again and this week I sat down with Louis Bayard, and honestly it turned into one of those conversations that made me rethink how I approach my own career.

Louis is a level designer — Codemasters first, on Grid Legends and WRC, and now at Third Kind Games on their open-world mountain bike game Maverix. But the thing that stuck with me wasn't the games. It was his complete refusal to overthink. He moved from France to England on a single yes, with no friends and no furniture, and just figured it out. He calls that instinct a flaw. I spent some of the episode trying to convince him it's a superpower!

What I loved is how honest he is about the cost of it — the worry, the “have I done a good job?” — and how he's grown into a calmer version of the same thing: letting the path show itself instead of forcing it.

Highlights:

• Why his design school banned game engines for the entire first year
• Building real WRC rally stages by eye from Google Earth and GoPro footage
• Going from a 15-person team to being the only level designer on a whole game
• Why he'd be a therapist if he wasn't making games
• The horror racing game living rent-free in his head

Go give it a listen — I think Louis's "jump first" philosophy might be exactly what some of you needed to hear this week.

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• https://www.linkedin.com/in/louis-bayard16/

Ahoy friends. Again apologies but no new episode of Dev to Dev this week due to work and travel commitments.

Thank you for your patience and we'll be back next Monday 15th with Season 02 Episode 16!!

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• ⁠RSS⁠
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• ⁠Bluesky⁠
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• Email: DevToDevPodcast@Gmail.com