Gamedev Camp
From Ideas to Playable Games
UX Research | Program Design | 2020–2024
An incubator experience designed to help underrepresented developers in Eastern Europe gain industry access, mentorship, and a supportive network — by turning creativity into real, playable results.
Project Overview
Gamedev Camp is an online incubator focused on supporting emerging game developers across Eastern Europe, strongly emphasizing Ukraine. Co-founded in 2020, the initiative was created to bridge the gap between aspiring developers and the professional game industry by helping them build real, portfolio-ready projects and connect with expert mentors.
Goal: To design an inclusive, empowering experience for beginner and mid-level game developers, guiding them from idea to a playable game demo. This included curating a supportive learning environment, crafting a structured program journey, and providing access to personalized mentorship. The broader vision was to help participants strengthen their portfolios, grow professionally, and become part of a collaborative creative community.
My Role
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UX Research & Program Design
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Visual Communication & Branding
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Art Direction (stickers, posters, merch, website)
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Web Design
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User Support & Journey Facilitation
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Community Experience Strategy
Tools
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Google Forms & Sheets
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Miro
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Zyro
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Adobe Illustrator
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Discord
Discover
Market Research
Competitive & Industry Landscape
We identified several key gaps in the Eastern European gamedev ecosystem:
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Limited Access to Industry Experts
Talented developers from Ukraine and nearby countries often lacked connections to Western professionals and mentorship opportunities. -
Solo-Focused Education
Traditional gamedev education typically centered on individual assignments, despite the fact that most game development roles require effective teamwork. -
Lack of Real Collaborative Experience
While game jams were common, they were short, chaotic, and required participants to self-organize into teams. There were almost no structured programs that allowed people to build long-term game projects collaboratively.
What We Wanted to Change
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Bring Western Mentorship to Eastern Europe
We created a bridge between experienced industry professionals and up-and-coming developers from underrepresented regions. -
Focus on Team-Based Learning
We emphasized collaboration as the core of our program—helping participants build essential soft skills, learn project communication, and succeed in real-world team environments. -
Enable Long-Term Game Creation
Our 3–4 month incubator allowed teams to build playable demos, not just prototypes. Unlike game jams, we helped participants form balanced teams from day one and offered guidance throughout the full development cycle. -
Clear Deadlines & Milestones
We introduced structured schedules and weekly deliverables to keep motivation high and ensure steady progress, which led to more completed games and stronger portfolios.
Market Positioning
We aimed to fill a gap that traditional education and short-term programs couldn’t address.
Competetive Map
We created a positioning map to better understand where Gamedev Camp could stand out. Here's what we noticed:
Most accessible resources were either passive (like online courses) or chaotic (like game jams). None offered long-term support for team-based game development with expert mentorship. That’s where we saw our “blue ocean.”
User Research
Goals
Before finalizing our structure, we needed to understand:
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What challenges Eastern European developers face when trying to break into the industry
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What support they actually need to complete a full game project
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Why talented individuals often abandon their games despite their skills.
Methods
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1:1 conversations with aspiring developers, artists, and game designers from Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania
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Feedback from alumni of game jams and online game dev courses
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Research on graduation rates and portfolio quality among beginner gamedevs
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Consultations with mentors and HR professionals hiring for gamedev studios
User Interviews
We conducted in-depth interviews with over 15 aspiring developers and recent graduates from gamedev-related programs. Here’s what we uncovered:
Key Findings
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💬 “I don’t know anyone who could join my project.”
Most participants struggled to find reliable collaborators, especially programmers or artists with the right mindset. -
🎯 “I can never finish my projects.”
People were excited about game ideas but lacked the structure, deadlines, or support system to bring them to life. -
🧩 “Education doesn’t teach teamwork.”
Many graduates had never worked in a group project before and were unprepared for the realities of studio pipelines or collaboration tools like Git or Trello. -
🌱 “I need someone to push me.”
Soft accountability, emotional support, and weekly structure helped participants stay committed without feeling overwhelmed.
Promotional Posters
To connect with our audience on an emotional level, I created a set of visual posters highlighting the common frustrations and aspirations we uncovered during user interviews. These posters were part of our early outreach and resonated deeply with aspiring developers who felt unseen by traditional education or overwhelmed by the solo journey.
Define
Making Sense of the Data
Affinity Mapping
To synthesize the insights gathered from our interviews and observations, we used an affinity map to group recurring themes and uncover deeper user needs.
Several strong patterns emerged:
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A lack of access to Western industry experts, despite high talent and motivation
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Difficulty finding a reliable team, especially for long-term projects
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Frustration with traditional education, which often emphasized solo work over collaboration
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A desire for structure and accountability, since most programs lacked clear milestones or support systems
These themes helped us define the emotional and practical barriers our users faced and how we might help them overcome them.
Value Proposition Canvas
We then created a Value Proposition Canvas to better understand how we could deliver measurable value to our audience.
Mapping these out helped us stay user-centered as we designed the core offering of Gamedev Camp, keeping the emotional experience just as important as the practical tools.
Goals
✅ Make a playable game
✅ Learn real industry practices
✅ Build a team they trust
✅ Get feedback from experts
Pains
❌ No access to mentors
❌ No structure or motivation to finish
❌ No teammates or collaborative experience
❌ Constant burnout from doing everything alone
User Persona + Journey Map
To make our users’ needs more tangible, we created a persona that embodied many common traits we saw during research.
Meet Dmytro:
A 24-year-old game designer from Kyiv who recently graduated with a computer science degree. Oleh is ambitious and full of ideas, but has never shipped a full game. He dreams of working in the industry but feels stuck without a team, feedback, or a way to stay motivated.
This persona helped us stay grounded and avoid designing for ourselves. Every feature and decision was checked against what would actually support someone like Dmytro, not just what sounded impressive.
As-Is Scenario & Journey Map
We mapped an As-Is Scenario that illustrated what the user journey usually looked like for people like Oleh before Gamedev Camp.
From "I have an idea" → to "I tried to start something with friends" → to "it all fell apart after a few weeks," we saw a rollercoaster of excitement, confusion, and disappointment.
We visualized this in a User Journey Map and saw three consistent emotional pain points:
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Feeling isolated while trying to start a team/project
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Losing motivation without accountability or structure
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Lack of feedback leading to imposter syndrome and abandonment
These emotional lows helped us clearly define three problem statements to solve.
So, What Was the Real Problem?
From our journey mapping and interviews, we identified 3 core problems:
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Our user feels stuck because they can’t find teammates who share their vision or commitment
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Our user feels lost because there’s no structure or guidance on how to actually finish a game
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Our user feels overlooked because they lack access to mentors who could give meaningful feedback and encouragement
These weren’t just technical gaps, they were emotional and motivational barriers. And that’s what made solving them so important.
Develop
Problem Meets Solution
MoSCoW Method
We used the MoSCoW method to prioritize features based on our research and the real struggles faced by aspiring game developers like Dmytro.
This method helped us to stay focused on solving the core issue: talented solo developers without access to structure, teammates, or expert feedback.
Once we aligned our top features with the Value Proposition Canvas, we ensured that each solution was tightly connected to a real user frustration or need.
Minimum Viable Product
Our MVP focused on building a lightweight but impactful platform to support early-career game developers.
It offered:
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Team matching based on skills and availability
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A structured program with deadlines and deliverables
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Access to industry mentors for personalized feedback
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A motivating community through Discord and events
Rather than throwing in fun extras, we doubled down on delivering what users like Dmytro needed most to actually finish and ship their first game.
User Flow
We mapped out a user flow that follows a developer from registration all the way through to project completion. Our goal was to keep the experience simple, motivating, and collaborative.
Deliver
From Idea to Launch
Digital Experience and Program Infrastructure
Since Gamedev Camp was a fully remote accelerator, we focused our design efforts on creating a seamless digital experience through a website, application system, onboarding flow, and communication infrastructure.
Website & Application System
Our website served as the primary entry point for applicants and our main communication tool with the public. We structured the site around key user questions, including:
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What is Gamedev Camp?
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Is this program right for me?
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What does the timeline look like?
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Who are the mentors and partners?
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How do I apply?
We emphasized clarity and emotional appeal, showcasing the community vibe and highlighting real participant testimonials and past projects. We also integrated our application form into the website using Marquiz for easy access and streamlined processing.
Communication Platform (Discord)
Once accepted, participants were onboarded into a custom Discord server, which became our program hub. We designed channels to reflect key workflows:
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💬 Team formation & matchmaking
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📅 Deadlines and reminders
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🧠 Mentor announcements and session recordings
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👀 Project progress & feedback
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🎉 Community spaces for peer bonding
We also used automation tools like Discord bots to pin resources, manage schedules, and keep the space organized without overwhelming participants.
Mascot & Personality
Halfway through, I noticed that many participants felt like lovable underdogs: talented but often overlooked, scrappy but driven. I turned this energy into a mascot — a confused but determined pigeon 🐦.
The pigeon showed up in our stickers, announcements, and posters. It wasn’t just cute, it reflected how participants saw themselves, and helped us build a brand they felt emotionally connected to.
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Iteration in Real-Time
Since the camp was live and experimental, delivery was iterative. Every week, we listened to feedback and made small changes to Discord channels, time formats, and even mentor scheduling.
By the end, we had a format that felt “invisible” — it just worked, because it was shaped by real people using it.
Outcomes
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The website helped attract over 500+ applications across Eastern Europe.
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Our Discord flow helped match over 120 participants into collaborative teams.
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Participants said they felt guided and supported, even in a fully remote setting, and several teams continued to work together after the camp ended.