Mass Effect creator Casey Hudson left the University of Alberta with a bachelor’s degree in 1998 and soon found himself creating 3D art for a game called MDK2. He stayed at Edmonton-based developer BioWare for the next sixteen years, serving as project director on the licensed RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the beloved sci-fi trilogy that followed it. Today, Hudson’s working on an all-new game at Humanoid Origin, the studio he founded in 2021. We spoke via Zoom last spring. Edited by Elijah Beahm. Music by Christy Carew. Art by Audrey Estok.

When Xalavier Nelson Jr. made his first game, he meant for it to be his farewell to the industry after years as a young, enthusiastic video-game journalist. Instead, he caught the gamedev bug, founded his own studio, and has been on more or less the same path ever since. He’s worked on projects like We Are the Caretakers, Hypnospace Outlaw, Skatebird, An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs, Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, Sunshine Shuffle, and a Stranger Things VR title. His latest, El Paso, Elsewhere, launches Tuesday, September 26th, on Steam and Xbox.

At the turn of the millennium, Jon Warner worked as a UI/UX designer at Perot Systems—till the day he arrived at work and found out he was no longer a designer there. Laid off for the first time, he took a friend’s advice and applied at Microsoft, where he became a test lead for Xbox. After that, he went on to work as a producer at the Walt Disney Company and Electronic Arts. He served as a senior producer on Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer component, then Mass Effect 3: The Citadel, and other BioWare releases before winding up in the role of game director on the short-lived Anthem. Music by Christy Carew. Art by Audrey Estok.