In this episode we speak with Mitchell Wolfe, a video game designer out of San Diego, California. While I was growing up playing video games, and even now watching my kids play them, I always wondered, “Who are the people that have the cool job of actually creating these games?”

Well, Mitchell is one of those cool people! He is a video game designer, specifically an encounter designer which means he designs the way the game feels and what you do with the character within an encounter, such as combat or a social or environmental encounters. Mitchell has worked on some amazing games, including Star Wars: Jedi Survivor.

During the discussion, he not only talks about the incredibly fascinating process of designing video games but also about his career path. Mitchell knew from an early age that he wanted to design video games but as he was entering college, he believed (incorrectly as he himself says) that if he had the words “video game” in his degree, he wouldn’t be taken seriously. So, during undergrad, he focused on a degree in cognitive science. For the next several years after college Mitchell took a variety of small jobs, from working on a movie set to writing for a video game magazine. He then realized that if he wanted to go after his dream, he needed to take a more direct path. With that, he went to graduate school for games and playable media and began to leverage his experience and his newly found network to find opportunities within the world of video game design. Mitchell worked hard, performed at every opportunity that presented itself, and eventually landed at Respawn Entertainment where he is living out his dream of designing video games.

This is a fascinating interview, even if you aren’t a gamer, as we get to take a sneak peak into the fascinating world of video game design. Check out Mitchell and his Dream Vocation story.