How to Pitch a Game, Build a Team & Start a Studio | Kevin Brunt & Bruno Gruber from Dogfish Games
ABOUT Kevin:
Kevin Brunt is an artist, game developer, and co-founder of Dogfish Games who has worked in the games industry since 2008. His experience includes contributing to projects across franchises including Valorant, Star Wars, and Plants vs. Zombies.
Kevin's work spans game art, visual development, team leadership, and studio building. He is especially passionate about creating memorable worlds, building teams around people who genuinely care about the work, and helping other artists and developers grow throughout their careers.
ABOUT Bruno:
Bruno Gruber is a Senior Technical Artist, Game Developer, Creative Director, and co-founder of Dogfish Games. Alongside helping lead the creative direction of the studio, Bruno works across the business and technical sides of development, building the systems and technology that help bring game worlds to life.
His approach emphasizes experimentation, rapid testing, multidisciplinary development, and making sure creative ideas are validated by real players rather than developed entirely inside a studio bubble.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
How Kevin and Bruno went from building something together to forming Dogfish Games
Why starting a studio was not originally part of their plan
What they learned from pitching their project to multiple publishers
Why every publisher looks for something different in a game pitch
How to adapt your pitch without losing the core vision of your game
Why having a playable build can be more powerful than pages of documentation
Why developers should always have something ready to show
How to tell if your game idea actually has potential
Why feedback from strangers can be more useful than praise from friends
Why players matter more than other developers when validating a game
Why an idea alone has very little value without execution
Why you should playtest as early as possible
The dangers of spending five or seven years building a game nobody has tested
Why growing a studio too quickly can create more problems than it solves
How one bad cultural fit can damage an entire creative team
Why hiring talented people is not enough
Why Kevin prefers to "hire a heart" and look for genuine passion
How friendships can complicate hiring decisions
Why founders spend far less time making games than they expect
The hidden workload behind contracts, lawyers, banking, and studio operations
Why professional legal help matters when building a real company
How Kevin and Bruno think AI should fit into creative workflows
Why bringing a skilled concept artist onto the team dramatically changed their project
The difference between generating a polished image and actually solving a design problem
How layoffs can destroy years of culture and institutional knowledge
Why smaller development teams may become increasingly important
Why future game developers may need to become more multidisciplinary
Why chasing market trends is usually the wrong creative strategy
The importance of building something you genuinely care about
Why adaptability may be one of the most important skills in a long game development career
What aspiring developers need to understand about practice, failure, and getting good enough to compete
In This Episode…
Carl sits down with Kevin Brunt and Bruno Gruber, co-founders of Dogfish Games, to talk about what it actually takes to start an independent game studio in one of the most challenging periods the industry has faced. Kevin has worked in games since 2008 across projects and franchises including Valorant, Star Wars, and Plants vs. Zombies, while Bruno is a senior technical artist, developer, and Creative Director helping lead both the creative and business sides of their new studio.
Together they break down the realities of pitching publishers, validating a game before spending years building it, assembling the right team, protecting studio culture, and learning all the business responsibilities that suddenly appear when developers become founders. They also discuss why execution matters more than ideas, how layoffs damage creative teams, why smaller multidisciplinary teams may play a bigger role in the future of games, and why human artists remain essential even as AI becomes part of more creative workflows.
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
🎮 Dogfish Games
💼 LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbrunt/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruno-de-araujo/
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.
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