S2 E5: Helping Local Game Devs Reach Global Impact with Tim Cullings

Seattle's indie gaming scene boasts the largest thriving indie game community in North America - Seattle Indies - headed currently by Executive Director Tim Cullings. Tim's background started in traditional information technology, but a deep growth mindset helped him learn from Portal co-creator Kim Swift at his first game industry gig, transforming opportunity into a lifelong journey. From his initial days doing IT for gaming, Tim went on cover a variety of roles from production to social media and eventually found himself working on the launch team for the Oculus platform at Meta. As he explored the Seattle scene, Tim realized how unique the energy was in this region, and became a fierce advocate for local game developers - creating events and programs that help them supplement great ideas with the great execution required to thrive. Today's episode should provide inspiration for folks looking to learn more about how game development communities themselves evolve, will provide more insight about the nuances within the indie developer community, will highlight a few games like Slay the Spire that got their start in the Seattle Indies community, and will also provide a peek at some of the ways gaming and education collide in the Seattle indie scene. Seattle Indies welcomes everyone regardless of region at SLICE and SIX, their annual events around PAX, and in their Discord - so no matter where you're based, join us to learn how this community and others like it can continue to grow and thrive. Enduring Play is a unique, human crafted, high production value podcast about the modern craft of video game development. The format is inspired by gaming itself, with a level structure and tutorials and asides that help listeners of all experience follow along. Season 1 of the Enduring Play podcast is drawn from interviews that informed Cheryl Platz's new book The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Modern Video Games That Thrive, and Season 2 explores the communities, systems, and research methods that help us lead curiously and sustainably to thriving games.  #gamedev #videogames #indies #indiegames #conventions #conferences #communitymanagement #seattle Use code ENDURINGPLAYS2 at RosenfeldMedia.com to get 15% off your order - and all physical orders at Rosenfeld Media receive a free ebook. Podcast Season 2 discount offer expires July 30, 2026. Love the podcast or the book? Please spread the word with shares and reviews so we can change the industry together! This episode has BONUS CONTENT at the show notes page, including a photo from Tim's time at Airtight games and several other stories from his gaming past: https://www.gamedevelopmentstrategyguide.com/enduring-play/enduring-play-season-2/enduring-play-a-game-dev-podcast-season-2-episode-5-tim-cullings-show-notes/