Rob Alvarez Bucholska
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Why Careers Need a Game Loop, with Unity’s Jessica Lindl | Episode 412

 

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Vice President at Unity and author of The Career Game Loop, Jessica Lindl shares how game-based strategies build better communities, improve retention, and drive real impact.

Jessica Lindl is the Vice President of Ecosystem Growth at Unity Technologies, where she leads global efforts to empower creators, learners, and professionals through transformative, game-inspired solutions. With over 20 years of experience at the intersection of gaming, education, and workforce development, Jessica has helped millions of learners build meaningful careers. She is also the author of The Career Game Loop: Learn to Earn in the New Economy, a groundbreaking book that applies game design thinking to real-world career growth. Jessica is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow and serves on advisory boards for GSV Ventures and Jobs for the Future.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in community building and education. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

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Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Jessica Lindl (00:00)
In games, you’re constantly getting feedback. Every move, every decision, every choice, you’re getting feedback. And if we design our lives in the same way, where it’s just constant feedback, we can just continuously get that feedback and learn from it.

Rob (00:13)
Hey, and this is Professor Game and yes, we’ll be talking about that feedback loop and how it actually works to make us better with Jessica. that because as you know, here we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply things like engagement, retention, motivation, community building and so much more.

I’m Rob Alvarez, I’m a consultant, I’m a coach and I’m the founder of the Professor Game Podcast and I’m also a professor at IU University, EBS University, EFMD and so many other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you are interested in getting better with this whole retention and community building game, please

Go to the link in the description and join our free community right away. So, Engagers, welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game Podcast. This time we are with Jessica, but Jessica, we need to know. Are you prepared to engage?

Jessica Lindl (01:08)
I’m already engaged.

Rob (01:10)
Let’s

do this. Jessica Lindell, is that a good way to say it? We have with us Jessica Lindell, who the vice president of ecosystem growth at Unity Technologies, where she leads global efforts to empower creators, learners, and professionals through transformative game-inspired solutions. So guess why she’s here. She has over 20 years of experience at the intersection of gaming, education, and workforce development, and she’s helped millions of learners build meaningful.

Jessica Lindl (01:14)
Exactly.

Rob (01:37)
careers and she is also the author of The Career Gain Loop Learn to Earn in the New Economy, which is one of the reasons why we got in contact for sure. I’m sure we’ll be hearing many insights from her book. This is a groundbreaking book that applies game design thinking to real world career growth. She is a Bahara Aspen Fellow and serves at the advisory boards of GSB Ventures and Jobs for the Future. Super interesting person that we have today.

Engagers. let’s get the best out of this interview at Jessica. Is there anything that we should know that we didn’t ask or didn’t include in the intro?

Jessica Lindl (02:10)
I think you did that. Yeah, it’s incredibly comprehensive.

Rob (02:15)
Good stuff. So Jessica, if we were to follow you around, with you for a day, a week, a month, whatever you want to go for, what would it look like? What are the kinds of things you’re doing nowadays?

Jessica Lindl (02:24)
Well, I think the key is that no two days ever look the same. ⁓ As you mentioned, I ⁓ like to do a lot of different things ⁓ all at once. And so I would say a normal day is ⁓ me getting up and ⁓ preparing for the day with some sort of ⁓ boost to my adrenaline in whatever form that exercise takes and some coffee. And then just sort of diving in and scanning.

what’s happened overnight, Unity is a global company. So I usually have things coming in from APAC over to offices in the Middle East and then Europe that I’ve got to do a quick scan of. ⁓ And then I just like lock and load basically for back to back 30 minutes, ⁓ conversations with our teams and just trying to support them and what they’re trying to achieve, remove blockers for them.

And then towards like middle afternoon, I would say I’m sort of at the point too where I’m kind of trying to level up on something. ⁓ Is there something I’m learning or deep in and doing some like real thought? So I sort of in that co-op mode and go more into this kind of level up mode. ⁓ And then when it wraps, I like to play. Yeah. Whether it’s outside or video games or any of the above. Yeah.

Rob (03:47)
Awesome, awesome. Sounds like an awesome routine. It’s like one of those, know, what would you want your day to look like? You know, would sound probably very similar to that for many, for many people. I am sure. And Jessica, let’s, let’s dive in because, you know, with all this experience, the work that you do, the book that you wrote, I’m sure that there have been times when these game inspired approaches, as in games, you know, you try things and they don’t work. I just recently watched a Ted talk about, it’s the, the,

the trial and error, essentially. And that’s what we do in games and oftentimes in life. And that’s how we actually achieve success often. So what is actually a fail that may even led you to further success or a first attempt to learning, as we to frame them, ⁓ that you want to tell us about? We want to be in the grounds right there with you in that story. Don’t give any details you don’t want to give, of course, of companies or any proprietary information. But we want to essentially have that feeling and take away any lessons that we can.

Jessica Lindl (04:44)
Yeah, so I’ve had a ton of failures. ⁓ After I sort of early in life reframed my view of failure versus my schooling, which is very afraid of failure, ⁓ I became a lot more comfortable with it. And to your point, realize that it’s really where I learned the most and I improved the most. And so the more risk I took, the more I learned through failure. But I think one of my more epic fails

Um, was what I actually transitioned into gaming. Um, as you sort of heard from my background, I didn’t grow up in the gaming industry. I had this realization about halfway through my career that was really focused on young people and learning and opportunity that most of the young people that I was working with were spending way more time playing video games than they were focusing on learning and education. And so I did this total 180 into the gaming industry. I was lucky enough to be part of this new idea around.

how do we take video games that kids love to play ⁓ and look at the evidence and assessment behind them and actually provide for stakeholders like parents and teachers, look at what these kids are learning. ⁓ The company was called Glass Lab and it was this crazy concept and co-op of video game leaders, electronic arts, education leaders, Pearson ETS, philanthropy.

Gates and the Carther to come up with this hypothesis of like, let’s do a bunch of ⁓ work around the video games and what kids are learning and get traction and transform the education industry. But it was a failure. It was a total failure for one key reason. And I think this is what’s applied for me for the rest of how I’ve looked at my career in gaming in general, which is the target.

persona and users, the teachers using it in classrooms, middle school classrooms, didn’t want it. It wasn’t solving a pain point for them. ⁓ It wasn’t making their jobs easier. They’re kind of the key gate or decision maker. And it was this realization that no matter what great idea you have or what beautifully designed game you have, if it’s actually not giving your player joy.

⁓ or improving their life in some way, then it’s just never gonna work. But that failure actually sort of helped me understand a whole bunch of other things, which is, kids are actually learning a lot from video games. And in fact, if they can play more high quality video games, the better, ⁓ because those young people who grew up playing video games actually understand how to navigate, right, the careers of today, as you’ve proven, Rob, with your career.

And they have the mindset, the agility, the ability to build community and relationships, all the things that are essential for not just a high quality career, but a high quality life. And so that was really the springboard of how I became obsessed with the gaming industry and went on to work at Unity. And here I am today.

Rob (07:56)
Awesome, awesome and of course, a lot of water has gone under that bridge by now but if you were like to face an initiative like that one today, like you were going to try and do something like that, what would you do different? Maybe at the start, I don’t know, the starting point or whatever you want to go for.

Jessica Lindl (08:13)
Yeah, I think I would really focus on the person that we’re trying to make a difference for. When you have these kind of big names like Gates and MacArthur and Electronic Arts and you’ve got their leaders and some of them are board members, you sort of get caught up in that vision. And that’s like not

what’s going to move the needle. Like none of that matters. What matters is like, is the person you’re trying to serve really seeing value in what you’re creating? And so I think that’s just totally reframed how I go about my career now. I have an amazing CEO and we’ve got a really supportive board, but his feedback is not as important to me as the person, you know, the, the unity.

developer or monetization person that I’m trying to serve and making a difference in their lives.

Rob (09:09)
That sounds amazing and very, very insightful. it’s as we like to call it in our, in the frameworks that we use, of course, it’s, it’s about the player, right? It’s the person who’s going to be playing whatever, whatever is going to be, is to be played. Right. And, know, from, from all those difficulties there, and of course all the success you’ve had after, there, is there one story that you’d like to highlight of a success, something that like went really well. ⁓ and you know, perhaps why it happened that way, or how did you pivot from it not going very well to, get into that point?

Jessica Lindl (09:39)
Yeah, well, I think something that’s gone really well is ⁓ the kind of broader education and learning and career work that’s happened at Unity. I sort of had an inkling of this because we built GlassLab on Unity way back in 2012. And I realized that the people I was hiring to become the developers or the 3D artists and using Unity.

didn’t need to have this big degree from a four-year university. They just had to continuously be willing to learn. And so when I went over to Unity to build out our education work, ⁓ which is like learning Unity in schools, and then more of our adult learning work, which is you’re deciding to pivot into the industry, I had this confidence that it didn’t need to be ⁓ this kind of traditional model.

⁓ And in fact, we should probably eliminate as much friction as we can for anybody to be able to do this so they don’t have to pay. The learning is accessible almost everywhere. And it’s really, if you have a motivated driven individual, they can, you know, on their own, wherever they live in the world, move into this type of work and build their destiny on it. And so ⁓ here we are.

eight years later, and there’s over a million students learning Unity and about half a million adults learning and reskilling into Unity. And it really propels the long-term success of the business because all those people bring the services into their companies or build their own successful companies on top of it. And so I think that was taking that learning of like focusing on the individual, what created success.

Rob (11:21)
Yes, still focusing on the players. I love it. They are at the center. They are at the core. And, you know, when we talk about these game-inspired strategies, sometimes people say, well, I’m not a gamer and I don’t play a lot of games. Well, you know, I can still challenge that assumption. But even if you assume that as part of your thing, game design is also something that you can think about. And game designers have to think about their players because that’s the only reason that they’re there for. Yes, they’re there to tell a story. They figured out this new game mechanic, whatever.

But if they don’t think about who is going to play it and how they’re going to play it and if it’s easy to play or difficult to play intentionally, then it doesn’t matter. Everything else stops mattering entirely, entirely.

Jessica Lindl (12:01)
Exactly, exactly. So well said. Just took me a longer time to figure that out.

Rob (12:07)
It takes time. takes trial and error, right? We were talking about how you try something. doesn’t work. You try something else. There’s, you know, with all these experiences and especially now relating, think this would go directly into your book is when you’re creating these game inspired solutions, do you have some sort of process or maybe it has to do with, you know, finding the career path and using these game inspired strategies for probably being pulled in their careers? Are there some steps? Is there a process? I don’t know, like

I’m sure you’ve gone through a lot of these in different ways. I’d like to know what’s your latest and greatest in that sense.

Jessica Lindl (12:42)
Yeah, there’s definitely a framework and a process that we use overall for learning anything for playing anything and then also just like navigating life. It’s very meta for us. So there’s four steps. Step one is just going on your quest, figuring out what it is that you want to do, what you like, what it is that gives you passion, joy, whether that’s a game, what genre that you’re, you know, really looking forward to or

What is it in your career that’s going to give you fulfillment? Understanding your community at the center of those steps, like who can you really work with and collaborate with and learn from? And then once you’ve kind of got that locked in, step two is really just leveling up. How do you actually build those skills, either to crush it in that game or to crush it in the next job opportunity for the skills that you just don’t have quite yet for the aspirations that you defined in that first step of going on that quest.

⁓ Step three is like really accomplishing what you wanted to. Again, getting to kind of that master level in that game or getting the job that you were looking for or the promotion or what have you. And then we all know that once you get to that level, you’re not happy. You just want to start the game all over again. So that’s where we have that final step of step four of your crafting. You know, you’re either crafting.

the game itself, you’re crafting into your next game, your job crafting into your next opportunity and starting that loop all over again. And so at the center, as you guys had heard from the book in the beginning, we call that the career game loop when you apply it to a career, but you can apply it to anything you’re trying to achieve in life.

Rob (14:26)
sounds amazing. love it. ⁓ And it’s very clear, like, what are the things that are that are going for and how people are going to into each and I’m sure there’s a lot more detail into that book that you’re selling. Is there curious right now? Is there like, do you have an associated course or something like that? Or is it for now? It’s just ⁓

Jessica Lindl (14:44)
Now

we’ve got a lot of free materials online. There’s a whole course that goes with it. There’s a virtual coach that comes along with it, community guides if you wanted to do this with a community. So it’s all at careergameloop.com.

Rob (14:56)
Careercameloose.com, amazing. Good stuff. Jessica, and in this world of game-inspired strategies, do you think there is some form of a best practice? That thing, again, no silver bullets, but that thing that you do and it’s like, well, your project, is at least going to be better if you think through it this way or if you do this thing, whatever that looks like.

Jessica Lindl (15:16)
Yeah, I mean, think it’s oftentimes hard to see this when you’re in a game happening all the time, but and it happens very rarely in life. games, you’re constantly getting feedback, every move, every decision, every choice, you’re getting feedback. And if we design our lives in the same way, where it’s just constant feedback, whether you’re trying to create a prototype of a new product, whether you’re interested in dating somebody,

whether you’re building a new friendship, like what are the signals and feedback that we’re designing the experience from so we can just continuously get that feedback and learn from it as opposed to being nervous or scared that it’s going to be some sort of personal statement on who we are as individuals. And so I think that best practice of continuous feedback ⁓ is probably the most valuable.

Rob (16:08)
⁓ Of course games can take so many different forms, but you have always, always feedback, whether it’s you’re Mario and you jump and you die. Okay, you didn’t jump far enough, you jumped too soon, jumped too late. ⁓ Or in physical games, like you play football, you didn’t do the thing you were supposed to do and they took the ball from you or you made a foul or whatever that looks like in a card game. feedback is something happens and you get that feedback immediately. You seem to come from the education world as well and you know how long it takes.

for us. Exactly. Because I’m a professor as well. To give that feedback, that feedback does not like you’re not working on your essay and suddenly like, ⁓ no, you shouldn’t be going this direction. No, no, that doesn’t happen. You finish the essay entirely. deliver it. And you know, in the best of cases, in a few days, if not weeks or a month, you will get some form of feedback. Right. Certainly too late. It’s way too late. You’re not going to rewrite the essay.

Jessica Lindl (17:01)
That’s right.

Rob (17:06)
Unless that’s built into and that’s very few people who do it. You’re not going to rethink about this. It’s like, I got this feedback maybe next time. And that’s it. That’s it. It’s like I fell down. Now I’m going to jump. It’s not that immediacy and that changes the game. That’s right.

Jessica Lindl (17:22)
That’s right, exactly, exactly.

Rob (17:25)
Jessica, hearing these questions and sort of the tone that we’ve had on the podcast, ⁓ is there somebody that you think would be interesting for you? Like you personally would like to hear this person talking about this and hearing their insights on the Professor Game podcast, of a future guest that you would like to hear.

Jessica Lindl (17:42)
Well, to no surprise, I think based on the topic that we’ve discussed is games applied to career or applied to life. Obviously, Jane McGonigal, because she is the key leader in all of this with Reality is Broken and yeah, everything that she’s written. So we’d love to hear her point of view on everything we’ve discussed.

Rob (18:01)
Absolutely, Jane is a super rock star for sure. And keeping up with those recommendations, you mentioned, of course, Reality is Broken. I don’t know if that’s the book you would like to recommend, but is there a book that you recommend this audience, the Engagers? And of course, why?

Jessica Lindl (18:15)
Yeah, I think it probably is reality is broken because I think it just continues this theme of how you’re applying game design to your life overall. ⁓ And just taking a much more feedback first agile, playful approach to life versus kind of yeah, the the heaviness and the linearity.

Rob (18:38)
You’re mentioning before also dating, like getting that feedback. It’s, you know, maybe if you’re very perceptive and you’re on the date, maybe you’re getting that feedback immediately. But if you’re like texting or trying to get a call, or you’re not perceptive, you know.

Jessica Lindl (18:53)
Swiping, swiping, right.

Rob (18:56)
that too. Never did that. I was already, you know, engaged by the time that came up. But I know the I understand the whole thing. ⁓ Or if you’re not very perceptive as well, you might not be catching all that feedback. And that’s why part of the players of the game are are broken or ⁓ lost in the whole game until you understand how that how that’s actually working because you’re not getting that feedback. You’re not able to iterate on what that’s. And you don’t get too many second chances as well.

Jessica Lindl (19:20)
That’s right.

Yeah,

totally. It’s one and done.

Rob (19:26)
Yeah, for sure. For sure. Jessica, in this whole world of gaming and game inspired solutions, what would you say is your superpower? That thing that is you do very well or at least better than most other people.

Jessica Lindl (19:39)
I think it’s probably pattern recognition. Like I understand systems very well and how system design happens and then across systems recognizing what I would say is the signal from the noise. ⁓ It’s something I do all day long in my job, ⁓ which is like, what’s that one nugget that, you know, we’re going to run with there and what’s the rest of this that isn’t really going to move.

the needle. ⁓ I think I do it in people too, that I just see, again, independent of background or pedigree, what, you know, I can, I can have some strong intuition on who’s going to be a great leader, how to organize teams, almost like puzzle pieces to bring together the best in everybody. So I think it’s really comes down to that pattern, pattern recognition.

Rob (20:30)
Awesome. Very, very important, especially in the kind of work we do. Yeah. Jessica, the difficult question now, the really hard question, at least for me ⁓ anyways, what is your favorite game?

Jessica Lindl (20:42)
Well, okay, this is very hard. ⁓ Because I think it just goes back to what I love playing with my kids. ⁓ At this phase of life, I probably would have answered it differently at different phases. But ⁓ I just loved the open world nature. It’s Legends of Zelda. And it’s just timeless. you know, the trade offs and the decisions and some of the, yeah, the morality. It’s just, yeah.

It’s an endless game. And I love too how it’s age independent. Like you can play it with, you know, a seven or eight year old and a 50 year old.

Rob (21:22)
I completely agree. that one of the games in the series or the series almost as a whole?

Jessica Lindl (21:31)
⁓ I would just say the series as a whole. Like just the, yeah, like the overall relationship with the series.

Rob (21:38)
It’s dangerous out there, take the sword. All the way to, you know, the super modern, amazing graphics and stuff that we get nowadays. Everyone I’ve played, I can’t say I’ve played them all. It’s just an amazing look of the game. It’s always, and it’s always, you know, on spot. Like I can play, here’s your sword. It’s dangerous out there today. And I’m sure I’d spend hours stuck on things and I don’t remember how to pass this dungeon. And, you know, I get stuck there and try to figure it out again. ⁓

Jessica Lindl (21:46)
So beautiful. ⁓

Rob (22:08)
I’m sure I would get there for sure as well. Jessica, we have one last question. It’s a random question coming from the audience. We have a list of questions and every now and then we have a few more minutes, a couple more minutes to answer that. And this one is pretty straightforward actually. What game experience has personally inspired your work the most? And of course, Quick Why is always in place.

Jessica Lindl (22:31)
Huh. Writing with me as a player, what game experience? Is that what you mean? Or design?

Rob (22:38)
player

as a designer as in your work and your book and i don’t know what whatever that hits you i’m not sure i didn’t write the questions that i’m reading into the question as far as i can

Jessica Lindl (22:49)
It’s the community. It’s the any game that really intrinsically embeds community into the game ⁓ itself, or even the community surrounding a game on Discord or Twitch. Or, you know, I just think that like the, when we think about the role of community in a game.

and make it analogous to how we wish other parts of our lives worked, where all of a sudden we’re giving people free advice all the time. We’re building great relationships that last a lifetime with people that we’ve never even met from the other side of the world. Like there is just something magical about the gaming community that I don’t think we appreciate as much because we’re in it. But if only all of our communities ⁓ could work with

like the best of the gaming community. know there’s dark sides to it too, like the best. Yeah.

Rob (23:44)
Totally.

I always struggle not to understand it because I think I understand it, but I’m sure there’s I’m getting like 20 % of that is the whole, you know, females in gaming, right? When when some, some girls like playing Fortnite, and they don’t say a word, you don’t know it’s a girl, but you start getting, you know, clues because they don’t talk because they’re afraid of some stupid person doing something stupid. And I just don’t understand how it gets there. And of course, I

Again, I understand the problem, but not really. I’ve never experienced it myself. ⁓ So it’s, you know, you were talking about the dark side of communities. That’s a very dark side, which I’ve always struggled to understand. But it’s also interesting how the best communities do a much better job than other communities in managing these kinds of things. So that that toxic behavior is not, is not acceptable basically. And it’s the same community that says, you know, get out of here. We don’t want you here. That’s right.

And that’s hard, but it’s very, very meaningful, in my opinion, at least. I agree. it from the sidelines in that sense. Jessica, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. I don’t know if you have any final piece of advice. Of course, let us know where we can find out more about you, your book, the work that you’re doing in Unity or wherever else. ⁓ And before we say it’s game over.

Jessica Lindl (25:03)
All right, this sounds good. So unity.com is where you find everything related to Unity and ⁓ our work around how to support you in leveling up in the gaming industry. And then for myself personally, it’s just LinkedIn ⁓ is the primary vehicle for me. ⁓ And I’m very responsive to DM. So feel free to reach out at any point. And then finally, last but not least, for your game loop for all of your leveling up in your career.

Rob (25:54)
Hey Engagers, and thank you for listening to the Professor Game…

And since you’re interested in this world of creating motivation, engagement, loyalty, using game inspired solutions, how about you join us on our free online community at Professor Game on School. You can find the link right below in the description. But the main thing is to click there, join us. It’s a platform called School. It’s for free and you’ll find plenty of resources there. We’ll be up to date with everything that we’re doing, any opportunities that we might have for you.

And of course, before you go on to your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

 

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