Making a Change!
Leaving SciPlay, joining Unbroken Studios!
After 5.5 years of working in-house with the amazing teams at SciPlay, I’m making a big change and joining the talented folks over at Unbroken Studios. My time at SciPlay has been incredibly fruitful, creating great friendships and learning so much about slots, production as well as investing a ton of focus and energy on the various products SciPlay makes! I will always view my time at SciPlay as overwhelmingly positive. My SciPlay co-workers know I love Kit Kat and would make a habit of putting some on my desk as a surprise. 🙂
These people are so much more than just co-workers. They’re family, I love em and I’ll miss the heck outta them! As sad as it is to leave, I’m at a point in my career where I’m ready to make a change. I’ve been working in slots professionally since 2015, starting with my in-house gig at Beecave Games and then SciPlay. It’s time to tackle some new problems and learn some new skills. THANK YOU SciPlay for all that you’ve given me!
Lining Up My Professional and Personal Lives
If I’m honest with you all, when I reach for a phone or a controller to play a video game… it’s not a slots or casino based game. No offense meant to those who do love slots! I respect the complexity that comes from that genre of games. Also slot development CAN be very stable and dependable. Many of my SciPlay co-workers have been there for over 10+ years. That’s rare in the games industry! While I’ve loved my time with SciPlay, I wanted to find a situation where my day job lines up with my personal interests. With Unbroken Studios, I’ve been able to find a situation where the game they’re building (currently unannounced) perfectly matches up with me as a gamer! It aligns with me as a person. I find this VERY exciting! Plus, I’ll get to learn some new skills and work in a new area of game development! A win-win! Unbroken Studios recently won an award from GameIndustry.biz so I’m quite humbled and proud to be able to join this crew!
The journey to this point has been quite interesting and taught me several things about myself and this ever-changing industry. One thing I can say right now is job hunting is HARD. There are so many highly qualified and talented folks out there. Once the dust settles some, I’ll pull together my thoughts and create a vlog about this topic.
Other Happenings
I’ve been hired to work on two more short films. For one, I’m doing the music as well as some sound design and mixing. For the other, I’ll be mixing and doing sound design. I love working on films and both of these tell very interesting stories with some fantastic cinematography. There’s also an Anime-inspired short film where I’ll be doing all of the sound design once the picture is locked. I recently finished up sounds for another turn based card game and I should have more details on that soon. Finally, I’ve got some other irons in the fire still, which are all under NDA. I’ll share all of these projects with you all once they’re made public. Stay tuned!
BIO
Nate Madsen is an established composer, sound designer with 16+ years experience and over 1,035 credits. He’s worked in-house at FUNimation Entertainment, NetDevil, Bee Cave Games, SciPlay and is currently a Senior Audio Designer at Unbroken Studios. Two of his recent side projects have been Great Wolf Lodge’s Magiquest and Glass Bottom Game’s SkateBIRD. He lives in Austin, Texas, loves craft beer and dreams of queso. Be sure to reach out to Nathan with any audio needs you may have!