Hi Nick! Thank you for taking time to share a bit about yourself and what do you do in our industry?

I currently have two jobs in the toy industry. First and foremost I am a Product Design Manager on the Games Design team at Mattel. We do all the gameplay and toy design for Mattel’s tabletop games – UNO, Pictionary, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Kerplunk, Magic 8-Ball, etc.

I am also a Senior Lecturer at Otis College of Art and Design. I teach a course there on Game Design and Game Theory to seniors in the Toy Design department.

Were you obsessed with any toys, games or objects as a kid?

I was obsessed with video games. Sure I enjoyed riding bikes, posing action figures, shooting BB guns, and building forts, but I was obsessed with video games.

The Nintendo Entertainment System was the first and final nail in the coffin for me. It was all I could think about. I would spend my days at school drawing choose-your-own-adventure-style games in notebooks, imagining I was playing them on the NES. I would sometimes bring a controller to school in my backpack, shove my hands in during class, and press the buttons and d-pad while the teacher gave lessons.

Yes, it did affect my grades.

Why and how did you get into the Toy and Game industry?

Some people seemed to know early on what they wanted to be when they grew up. I wasn’t one of those kids. It took me a long time. Even into my first few years of college I had no idea. The thought of having a career – doing the same job, day in and day out, for the rest of my life – sounded horrible.

For a number of years after high school I just sort of followed my interests: games, art, foreign language, wilderness living. I bounced around from job to job (cheesesteaks, pizza delivery, armed forces). I met a girl (it turns out both David Lee Roth and the Beach Boys were right about the northern states). We got married, visited foreign lands, had a kid, and after all that I realized that games was the one interest that never waned.

So with new focus, and thanks to my Uncle Sam’s deep pockets, I ended up heading back to college in my 30s. My wife, son and I moved out to Los Angeles where I began working towards a degree in Toy Design at Otis College. We also added three daughters to the family.

In 2011, while still at Otis, I was hired on to the Games team at Spin Master by Jim Keifer. I worked there just shy of four years, but it was my first day on the team, while sitting down to design a dice version of Stratego, that I realized that game design was finally a career I could enjoy.

What advice would you give a young adult graduating from high school or college today?

One thing a lot of students don’t realize is when you have a job you are being evaluated across three different categories: work ethic - how hard you work, technical skill - how good you are at doing your job, and social compatibility - how much fun you are to be around.

Some people max out social compatibility at the cost of work ethic. Some focus on technical skill but are lacking in the other two categories. (For those of us with any amount of time in the professional work force, I’m sure these descriptions will bring to mind a few past or present coworkers.)

School, however, only rates you on technical skill. Many students with no real-world work experience end up developing an unrealistic expectation that you can get a job on skill alone. This is not the case. You must also work hard and be personable. All three are important.

What do you hope your legacy will be?

I’ll be happy with no legacy. It will be enough for me to spend the rest of my life eating good food, reminiscing with good friends and family, and playing until I’m old and gray.