Devoted Studios Blog

“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much”  – Helen Keller

Devoted Studios have always been a part of a beautiful and powerful community, and we see one of our goals in supporting the industry by bringing everyone together. Sometimes we collaborate and create some great projects together, sometimes we network to exchange opinions and experience, but also we celebrate and have fun together.

Recently we gathered together at the Devoted Speakeasy: Thanksgiving Edition to celebrate the holiday and give thanks to each other for creating the environment of support and encouragement. It was the first event after two years’ brake caused by pandemics, and this fact made the party so special for us.

We chose “Roaring 20th” as a main theme of the event in order to dive into the rebellious yet elegant atmosphere of speakeasy bars during the Prohibition. And The Obscure, unique distillery in LA became a perfect location for our setting.

Hosted by the CEO of Devoted Studios, Ninel (Gryuner) Anderson the event was visited by about 50 game industry professionals who reside in Los Angeles. That was a great joy to meet old friends, make new ones , and share this great experience together.

We are looking forward to meeting you soon at our upcoming events!

Devoted Studios at External Development Summit 2022

Building a strong community is an essential goal for Devoted Studios, that is why we do our best to keep in touch with industry-main events and take every opportunity to network, share our experience and collaborate with game art leaders and trendsetters. For this reason, being a part of XDS Summit 2022 was important and honorable to us, especially because this is the annual event with a primary focus on external development. Ninel (Gryuner) Anderson, the CEO of Devoted Studios attended the Summit as the speaker for the panel “Right Person, Right Place: The Golden Age of Global Mobility”. Read further to know more about this amazing event.

What Is XDS?

For 10 years already External Development Summit has gathered professionals from over 45 countries who specialize in external game development producing art, animation, software engineering, QA, audio, and localization. This year the conference took place in Vancouver, Canada, and lasted for 4 days full of unique events, panels, and discussions. The Summit aims at building the community with a focus on sharing knowledge, B2B networking, collaboration, and industry stewardship.

It is a professional event attended by game developers, service providers, and middleware providers, as well as influencers and decision-makers in the sphere of external development. The XDS community includes more than 14K contacts worldwide and is considered one of the industry’s best events and award-winner as the Most Outstanding Virtual Event in 2021.

Devoted Studios at XDS 2022

Ninel Anderson, the CEO of Devoted Studios, who represented the company at XDS 2022, has shared that she had a nightmare the night before the conference that she was late for all of the appointments she had for the Summit. But at the end of the day, the event turned out to be very successful for Devoted Studios.

The team of Business Development Managers that arrived at the summit together with Ninel carried out more than 50 productive meetings, secured some thrilling collaborations, met old and new friends, and got a bunch of precious insights.

Right Person, Right Place: The Golden Age of Global Mobility

On Thursday, September 8th, there was a panel “Right Person, Right Place: The Golden Age of Global Mobility” with Ninel Anderson as one of the speakers. Together with Eric Nofsinger (CCO, High Voltage Software), Jeaneane Falkler (President, Technicolor Games), Marc Henry de Frahan (Director, EA Operations & Strategy, Electronic Arts), and Dan Prigg (Executive Vice President, Head of Studio, Skydance Interactive) they discussed the nowadays abilities of multinational companies.

Global Mobility has a golden moment to align more closely with top AAA talent. Now companies are capable of sharing resources all over the globe and leveraging talent for success and strategic development advantages. They can now enhance attraction for top talent, deployment of capable employees, knowledge sharing, and talent retention. The speakers discussed the current tendencies in the full-time remote schedule, exchanged their companies’ best practices, and shared their insights on this topic.

After the event, Ninel wrote on her LinkedIn account that the event was bright and insightful and thanked her colleagues for the beautiful discussion.