ABOUT Miranda:
Miranda Sajdak is a Product Manager at PeopleFun, where she combines storytelling, product strategy, audience engagement, and her MBA background to help build mobile experiences people want to keep using.
Before moving into mobile games, Miranda spent more than a decade working in Hollywood. Her entertainment career included writing multiple award-winning screenplays, consulting with studios on storytelling and audience engagement, and eventually founding her own company focused on analyzing narrative structure and what makes stories resonate.
Her transition from Hollywood into technology and mobile games gave her a unique perspective on the common thread between movies, games, and products: people need a reason to care.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Why emotional connection sits at the center of both storytelling and game design
What Hollywood's "promise of the premise" can teach creators about audience expectations
Why execution matters more than having the most original idea
How your personal experience and creative voice make familiar ideas feel unique
Why creators shouldn't be afraid to share ideas and collaborate
How to find useful feedback without listening to every opinion
Why learning to accept criticism is essential for professional creatives
What Tetris, Minecraft, and Candy Crush teach us about strong creative fundamentals
Why simplicity, consistency, and reliability can keep audiences coming back for years
How mobile games build habits through progression and repeatable engagement loops
Why creators should fix the core experience before adding more features
How game developers can think responsibly about engagement and player behavior
In This Episode…
Carl sits down with Miranda Sajdak, Product Manager at PeopleFun, to explore what Hollywood storytelling and mobile game design have in common: understanding what makes people actually care.
Miranda spent more than a decade in Hollywood, writing multiple award-winning screenplays and consulting on story development before moving into mobile games and product management. Together, she and Carl break down emotional connection, the importance of execution over ideas, why creators need honest feedback, what makes stories satisfying, and how successful mobile games use simple, repeatable systems to keep players engaged.
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
🌐 PeopleFun
https://peoplefun.com
💼 LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandasajdak/
Sponsor for this episode...
This episode is brought to you by Epic Made.
Epic Made creates entertainment-quality animation, digital art, and graphic design to elevate brands and build fandom.
We are a collective of senior-level artists across multiple disciplines, producing trailers, key art, social campaigns, branded storytelling, and motion systems for entertainment, gaming, and pop culture brands. Our work has supported major networks and studios, including SYFY and Nickelodeon.
To learn more, visit www.epicmade.net or email hey@getepicmade.com.
If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who would find value in the conversation