I’m Mike Sanders, a
Studio Operator. Producer. Product Director. BizDev Manager. Build Engineer. QA Manager.

Featured - Design App Design Development.

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Featured Role Studio Manager

In 2007, I formed Puny Human, on the heels of a successful first title. From its creation and until 2013, I laid the groundwork for a studio with a clear mission, vision and purpose. My team worked on games we believed in by learning quickly, staying humble, and pouring ourselves into experiences we wanted to share.

Puny Human launched its second title in 2013 to rapid success. Using the foundation that I had built, I relocated our staff and opened an office, and began focusing the team on building highly-polished, long-lasting games. Puny Human grew to its biggest size of 31 employees and contractors, and I took on all Human Resources, Financial, and Legal responsibilities.

By late 2015, I pivoted Puny Human into a co-development and work-for-hire studio on game and game-adjacent projects. Over the following 8 years, Puny Human worked on or helped ship 22 projects including AAA, large-budget titles, and small-scale technology projects.

During my time with Puny Human, I managed all employee and company-level processes, and multiple projects. Onboarding and offboarding, training, partner relations, project pitches, and more. Puny Human grew 10 internal projects, pitching numerous to core gaming investors and publishers. I helmed all efforts to create, grow, fund, market, and publish Puny Human's internal titles.

Featured Role Game Producer

Over more than 10 years, I have acted as an Executive Producer, Lead Producer, Technical Producer, Vendor Project Manager, or Product Director on 12 separately released projects. Team sizes for each project ranged from 4 to 26 developers in multiple roles, and at times, other Producers assisting with coordination. For client projects, Production always remained in lock-step with the needs of the client or the account manager.

Typically, I heralded a strict use of the Agile Scrum methodology on most of these projects. When clients or budgets allowed for leniency, my teams ran on a 3 or 4 week Sprint schedule, with Sprint Planning taking place on the first day of the Sprint, the previous Sprint's retrospective on the second, and Product and Sprint Backlog Refinements (with Story Points and Poker) held twice per week. On other projects, especially those in a service or post-release state, I ensured the use of the Kanban methodology by teams.

In addition to acting as a Project Manager, a good Producer must serve as a champions of the team and the project. This work is 100% human interaction to know every developer's idiosyncrasies, needs, and desires, and to fit them together in a larger team. Constant reinforcement of the project's vision, backlog and roadmap are necessary for the team to see change that has manifested. In this role, I took the time to meet with each developer personally throughout a sprint, to understand if they felt like everything was on track; themselves and their own work, their teammates, and the product at hand.