Void Industries, 2024-2025

Helping indie game developers stay in flow, together, from prototype to production

My Role

Product Design and User Research

Company

Void Industries

Date

2024-2025

The Challenge

Design a modern game engine, from scratch that helps indie creators collaborate, iterate and stay in creative flow, across the entire game development suite.

Making games is uniquely difficult. It's a fusion of storytelling, animation, music, design, programming, and systems thinking. Tools like Unity and Unreal are powerful—but because of UI bloat and a disconnection from their users, they interrupt flow, require deep technical fluency across all members of a team, and create friction at every step, from your first attempt at building a scene, all the way to to sharing a build of your game.

 

Void was founded to change that.

Our mission: make game creation more fun, intuitive, and collaborative—across the entire game development pipeline.

Context

Void was a pre-launch game engine startup backed by Thrive Capital and founded by GitHub co-founder Chris Wanstrath and veteran game developer and software engineer Neil Sarkar. We aimed to rethink game creation from the ground up—modern, extensible, collaborative, and built on a lightweight ECS architecture.

 

I joined as an early team member as a product designer and led discovery and UX research. While the product never launched due to a shift in funding priorities, our work laid the groundwork for a radically new approach to game creation.

Understanding our users

We partnered closely with indie game studios and conducted dozens of interviews with solo and small-team indie game developers. Our research included:

  • Naturalistic observations of dev workflows
  • 1:1 interviews about tools, mental models, and pain points
  • Weekly usability testing of our early prototypes
  • Comparative analyses of Unity, Godot, Unreal, RPG Maker, and ECS-based editors like Bevy and Murder Engine
  • Deep dives into developer tooling for animation, asset hierarchies, and collaboration patterns

 

We conducted dozens of 1-on-1 interviews with professional indie game devs who were in the process of building their games to understand pain points with current tools, and start identifying unifying themes to drive our product development. Interviews were recorded and transcribed using AI tools and quotes representing key insights were recorded in Figjam.

Socrates

Hat Games- Technical Lead

Alisa

Game Design, Programming

Paul

M. Paul Games- Solo Dev

Hasan

Snowtail Games- Art, Game Design

Danielle

Ephemerald Games- Solo Dev

Chris

Hat Games -Game Design, Ops

i) A sample of our product trees, used to group user insights into actionable themes

ii) Real indie game devs, our beta users

iii) Representative quotes from our target users

Pathfinding research

We partnered closely with indie game studios and conducted dozens of interviews with solo and small-team indie game developers. Our research included:

  • Naturalistic observations of dev workflows
  • 1:1 interviews about tools, mental models, and pain points
  • Weekly usability testing of our early prototypes
  • Comparative analyses of Unity, Godot, Unreal, RPG Maker, and ECS-based editors like Bevy and Murder Engine
  • Deep dives into developer tooling for animation, asset hierarchies, and collaboration patterns

 

We conducted dozens of 1-on-1 interviews with professional indie game devs who were in the process of building their games to understand pain points with current tools, and start identifying unifying themes to drive our product development. Interviews were recorded and transcribed using AI tools and quotes representing key insights were recorded in Figjam.

Selected research artifacts

i) Initial product recommendations: Snapshot of features our three partner studios considered essential in a new engine.

ii) Competitive breakdown: What’s working (and what’s not) across Unity, Godot, and other major engines.

iii) Secondary research: Developer reactions to ECS-based engines like Bevy and Murder—insight into pain points and potential.

Key Insights

Through research, we uncovered three critical challenges indie devs face. These insights became the foundation for our product strategy and the first problems we set out to solve.

Technical friction kills momentum

Long loading screens, errors, and dev-only systems turn small tasks into big probelms. Progress get bottlenecked when only engineers can fix bugs, implement patterns, or unblock others.

Iteration is slow and discouraging.

Trying new ideas should be fun, but instead it's tedious. Mistakes are hard to recover from, so devs often avoid risk—and the magic moments never come.

Collaboration tools are stuck in the past.

Most current tools have no shared canvas, no multiplayer editing, and no easy way to stay in sync. Early-stage teamwork is stuck in a zip-file era.

Brainstorming

I hosted multiple brainstorming activities to start ideation, including generating “I” statements and “How Might We...” questions to guide our explorations.

How might we...

Let's brainstorm "How Might We" questions to spark creativity and explore new possibilities.

... reduce blank canvas paralysis and help devs start fast

...make a workspace that feels focused and customizable

...keep devs connect to their work at every step of the way

...make iteration joyful, not painful

...empower each team member to do their best work in engine

...support teams who want to collaborate in engine without breaking things

Jobs to be done statements

When I...

I want to...

So I can...

  1. When I’m exploring new ideas, I want to quickly build and test prototypes without worrying about breaking things or getting blocked by technical issues, so I can stay in flow and make creative decisions faster.
  2. When I’m collaborating with teammates I want to work in the same space in real time and stay in sync effortlessly, so we can move fast together without duplicating or overwriting each other’s work.
  3. When I’m building something new I want iteration to feel lightweight and forgiving, so I’m not afraid to make mistakes or try unconventional ideas.
  4. When I’m setting up my workspace, I want it to feel intuitive and customizable to how I think, so I can focus on the work instead of fighting the tool.
  5. When I hit a bug or need to make a change, I want to fix things myself without needing an engineer to unblock me, so I can maintain momentum and not stall the whole team.
  6. When I’m setting up my workspace, I want it to feel intuitive and customizable to how I think, so I can focus on the work instead of fighting the tool.
  7. When I contribute to a shared project I want visibility into everyone’s work without complex sync setups, so we can coordinate smoothly and feel like we’re building something together.

Turning Insights into Solutions

We used the three core insights from our research to start creating solutions, always aligning ourselves on the goal of Building a focused, collaborative engine and editor that makes game creation fun.

Solution 1

A focused game editor with distinct workspaces

What we heard: Loading screens, errors, and dev-only tools turned small tasks into major roadblocks. Creative flow broke down when only engineers could unblock others.

 

We designed modular tools, each living in their own disticnt workspace— like Animation, Scripting, and Level Editing — to reduce context switching and lower the barrier for non-engineers. Each workspace was fast, focused, and built for clarity.

 

Impact:

  • Creators could work on the stuff they do best without deep technical ramp-up
  • Tools loaded quickly and felt intuitive
  • Engineers weren’t a bottleneck for creative progress, everyone on the team was able to contribute and iterate.

Solution 2

Realtime game rewind and replay

Go ahead and say just a little more about what you do.

Solution 3

Multi-dev collaboration and shared presence

Go ahead and say just a little more about what you do.

Let’s work together

Void Industries, 2024-2025

Helping indie game developers stay in flow, together, from prototype to production

Company

Void Industries

My Role

Product Design and User Research

Date

2024-2025

The Challenge

Design a modern game engine, from scratch that helps indie creators collaborate, iterate and stay in creative flow, across the entire game development suite.

Making games is uniquely difficult. It's a fusion of storytelling, animation, music, design, programming, and systems thinking. Tools like Unity and Unreal are powerful—but because of UI bloat and a disconnection from their users, they interrupt flow, require deep technical fluency across all members of a team, and create friction at every step, from your first attempt at building a scene, all the way to to sharing a build of your game.

 

Void was founded to change that.

Our mission: make game creation more fun, intuitive, and collaborative—across the entire game development pipeline.

Context

Void was a pre-launch game engine startup backed by Thrive Capital and founded by GitHub co-founder Chris Wanstrath and veteran game developer and software engineer Neil Sarkar. We aimed to rethink game creation from the ground up—modern, extensible, collaborative, and built on a lightweight ECS architecture.

 

I joined as an early team member as a product designer and led discovery and UX research. While the product never launched due to a shift in funding priorities, our work laid the groundwork for a radically new approach to game creation.

Understanding our users

We partnered closely with indie game studios and conducted dozens of interviews with solo and small-team indie game developers. Our research included:

  • Naturalistic observations of dev workflows
  • 1:1 interviews about tools, mental models, and pain points
  • Weekly usability testing of our early prototypes
  • Comparative analyses of Unity, Godot, Unreal, RPG Maker, and ECS-based editors like Bevy and Murder Engine
  • Deep dives into developer tooling for animation, asset hierarchies, and collaboration patterns

 

We conducted dozens of 1-on-1 interviews with professional indie game devs who were in the process of building their games to understand pain points with current tools, and start identifying unifying themes to drive our product development. Interviews were recorded and transcribed using AI tools and quotes representing key insights were recorded in Figjam.

Socrates

Hat Games- Technical Lead

Alisa

Game Design, Programming

Paul

M. Paul Games- Solo Dev

Hasan

Snowtail Games- Art, Game Design

Danielle

Ephemerald Games- Solo Dev

Chris

Hat Games -Game Design, Ops

i) A sample of our product trees, used to group user insights into actionable themes

ii) Real indie game devs, our beta users

iii) Representative quotes from our target users

Pathfinding research

We partnered closely with indie game studios and conducted dozens of interviews with solo and small-team indie game developers. Our research included:

  • Naturalistic observations of dev workflows
  • 1:1 interviews about tools, mental models, and pain points
  • Weekly usability testing of our early prototypes
  • Comparative analyses of Unity, Godot, Unreal, RPG Maker, and ECS-based editors like Bevy and Murder Engine
  • Deep dives into developer tooling for animation, asset hierarchies, and collaboration patterns

 

We conducted dozens of 1-on-1 interviews with professional indie game devs who were in the process of building their games to understand pain points with current tools, and start identifying unifying themes to drive our product development. Interviews were recorded and transcribed using AI tools and quotes representing key insights were recorded in Figjam.

Selected research artifacts

i) Initial product recommendations: Snapshot of features our three partner studios considered essential in a new engine.

ii) Competitive breakdown: What’s working (and what’s not) across Unity, Godot, and other major engines.

iii) Secondary research: Developer reactions to ECS-based engines like Bevy and Murder—insight into pain points and potential.

Key Insights

Through research, we uncovered three critical challenges indie devs face. These insights became the foundation for our product strategy and the first problems we set out to solve.

Technical friction kills momentum

Long loading screens, errors, and dev-only systems turn small tasks into big probelms. Progress get bottlenecked when only engineers can fix bugs, implement patterns, or unblock others.

Iteration is slow and discouraging.

Trying new ideas should be fun, but instead it's tedious. Mistakes are hard to recover from, so devs often avoid risk—and the magic moments never come.

Collaboration tools are stuck in the past.

Most current tools have no shared canvas, no multiplayer editing, and no easy way to stay in sync. Early-stage teamwork is stuck in a zip-file era.

Brainstorming

I hosted multiple brainstorming activities to start ideation, including generating “I” statements and “How Might We...” questions to guide our explorations.

How might we...

Let's brainstorm "How Might We" questions to spark creativity and explore new possibilities.

... reduce blank canvas paralysis and help devs start fast

...make a workspace that feels focused and customizable

...keep devs connect to their work at every step of the way

...make iteration joyful, not painful

...empower each team member to do their best work in engine

...support teams who want to collaborate in engine without breaking things

Jobs to be done statements

When I...

I want to...

So I can...

  1. When I’m exploring new ideas, I want to quickly build and test prototypes without worrying about breaking things or getting blocked by technical issues, so I can stay in flow and make creative decisions faster.
  2. When I’m collaborating with teammates I want to work in the same space in real time and stay in sync effortlessly, so we can move fast together without duplicating or overwriting each other’s work.
  3. When I’m building something new I want iteration to feel lightweight and forgiving, so I’m not afraid to make mistakes or try unconventional ideas.
  4. When I’m setting up my workspace, I want it to feel intuitive and customizable to how I think, so I can focus on the work instead of fighting the tool.
  5. When I hit a bug or need to make a change, I want to fix things myself without needing an engineer to unblock me, so I can maintain momentum and not stall the whole team.
  6. When I’m setting up my workspace, I want it to feel intuitive and customizable to how I think, so I can focus on the work instead of fighting the tool.
  7. When I contribute to a shared project I want visibility into everyone’s work without complex sync setups, so we can coordinate smoothly and feel like we’re building something together.

Turning Insights into Solutions

We used the three core insights from our research to start creating solutions, always aligning ourselves on the goal of Building a focused, collaborative engine and editor that makes game creation fun.

Solution 1

A focused game editor with distinct workspaces

What we heard: Loading screens, errors, and dev-only tools turned small tasks into major roadblocks. Creative flow broke down when only engineers could unblock others.

 

We designed modular tools, each living in their own disticnt workspace— like Animation, Scripting, and Level Editing — to reduce context switching and lower the barrier for non-engineers. Each workspace was fast, focused, and built for clarity.

 

Impact:

  • Creators could work on the stuff they do best without deep technical ramp-up
  • Tools loaded quickly and felt intuitive
  • Engineers weren’t a bottleneck for creative progress, everyone on the team was able to contribute and iterate.

Solution 2

Realtime game rewind and replay

Go ahead and say just a little more about what you do.

Solution 3

Multi-dev collaboration and shared presence

Go ahead and say just a little more about what you do.

Let’s work together

Void Industries, 2024-2025

Helping indie game developers stay in flow, together, from prototype to production

Company

Void Industries

My Role

Product Design and User Research

Date

2024-2025

The Challenge

Design a modern game engine, from scratch that helps indie creators collaborate, iterate and stay in creative flow, across the entire game development suite.

Making games is uniquely difficult. It's a fusion of storytelling, animation, music, design, programming, and systems thinking. Tools like Unity and Unreal are powerful—but because of UI bloat and a disconnection from their users, they interrupt flow, require deep technical fluency across all members of a team, and create friction at every step, from your first attempt at building a scene, all the way to to sharing a build of your game.

 

Void was founded to change that.

Our mission: make game creation more fun, intuitive, and collaborative—across the entire game development pipeline.

Context

Void was a pre-launch game engine startup backed by Thrive Capital and founded by GitHub co-founder Chris Wanstrath and veteran game developer and software engineer Neil Sarkar. We aimed to rethink game creation from the ground up—modern, extensible, collaborative, and built on a lightweight ECS architecture.

 

I joined as an early team member as a product designer and led discovery and UX research. While the product never launched due to a shift in funding priorities, our work laid the groundwork for a radically new approach to game creation.

Understanding our users

We partnered closely with indie game studios and conducted dozens of interviews with solo and small-team indie game developer to understand pain points with current tools, and start identifying unifying themes to drive our product development.

 

Research included:

  • 1:1 interviews about tools, mental models, and pain points
  • Naturalistic observations of dev workflows
  • Weekly usability testing of our early prototypes
  • Comparative analyses of Unity, Godot, Unreal, RPG Maker, and ECS-based editors like Bevy and Murder Engine
  • Deep dives into developer tooling for animation, asset hierarchies, and collaboration patterns

Socrates

Hat Games- Technical Lead

Alisa

Game Design, Programming

Paul

M. Paul Games- Solo Dev

Hasan

Snowtail Games- Art, Game Design

Danielle

Ephemerald Games- Solo Dev

Chris

Hat Games -Game Design, Ops

i) A sample of our product trees, used to group user insights into actionable themes

ii) Real indie game devs, our beta users

iii) Representative quotes from our target users

Pathfinding research

To shape our product direction, I led foundational research that combined competitive analysis, user interviews, and secondary sources. We focused on the pain points indie dev teams face when trying to bring their games to life—and identified actionable opportunities for a better toolset.

 

Because game development tools are inherently complex, we prioritized depth over breadth, looking closely at critical workflows like animation, asset management, and collaboration. The goal was to uncover both MVP features and long-term opportunities that would actually move the needle for small teams.

 

Research included:

  • Comparative analysis of Unity, Godot, Unreal, RPG Maker, and ECS-based editors like Bevy and Murder Engine
  • Deep dives into tooling for animation, asset hierarchies, prototyping workflows, and multiplayer collaboration
  • Synthesis of user interviews into themes, jobs-to-be-done, and opportunity areas
  • Visual mapping of developer sentiment and tool feedback to guide scoping decisions

Selected research artifacts

i) Initial product recommendations: Snapshot of features our three partner studios considered essential in a new engine.

ii) Competitive breakdown: What’s working (and what’s not) across Unity, Godot, and other major engines.

iii) Secondary research: Developer reactions to ECS-based engines like Bevy and Murder—insight into pain points and potential.

Key Insights

Through research, we uncovered three critical challenges indie devs face. These insights became the foundation for our product strategy and the first problems we set out to solve.

Technical friction kills momentum

Loading screens, errors, and dev-only systems turn small tasks into big problems. Progress stalls when only engineers can fix bugs or unblock the team.

Iteration is slow and discouraging.

Trying new ideas should be fun, but instead it's tedious. Mistakes are hard to recover from, so devs often avoid risk—and the magic moments never come.

Collaboration tools are stuck in the past.

Most current tools have no shared canvas, no multiplayer editing, and no easy way to stay in sync. Early-stage teamwork is stuck in a zip-file era.

Brainstorming

I hosted multiple brainstorming activities to start ideation, including generating “I” statements and “How Might We...” questions to guide our explorations.

How might we...

Let's brainstorm "How Might We" questions to spark creativity and explore new possibilities.

... reduce blank canvas paralysis and help devs start fast

...make a workspace that feels focused and customizable

...keep devs connect to their work at every step of the way

...make iteration joyful, not painful

...empower each team member to do their best work in engine

...support teams who want to collaborate in engine without breaking things

Jobs to be done statements

When I...

I want to...

So I can...

  1. When I’m exploring new ideas, I want to quickly build and test prototypes without worrying about breaking things or getting blocked by technical issues, so I can stay in flow and make creative decisions faster.
  2. When I’m collaborating with teammates I want to work in the same space in real time and stay in sync effortlessly, so we can move fast together without duplicating or overwriting each other’s work.
  3. When I’m building something new I want iteration to feel lightweight and forgiving, so I’m not afraid to make mistakes or try unconventional ideas.
  4. When I’m setting up my workspace, I want it to feel intuitive and customizable to how I think, so I can focus on the work instead of fighting the tool.
  5. When I hit a bug or need to make a change, I want to fix things myself without needing an engineer to unblock me, so I can maintain momentum and not stall the whole team.
  6. When I’m setting up my workspace, I want it to feel intuitive and customizable to how I think, so I can focus on the work instead of fighting the tool.
  7. When I contribute to a shared project I want visibility into everyone’s work without complex sync setups, so we can coordinate smoothly and feel like we’re building something together.

Turning Insights into Solutions

We used the three core insights from our research to start creating solutions, always aligning ourselves on the goal of Building a focused, collaborative engine and editor that makes game creation fun.

Solution 1

A focused game editor with distinct workspaces

What we heard: Loading screens, errors, and dev-only tools turned small tasks into major roadblocks. Creative flow broke down when only engineers could unblock others.

 

We designed modular tools, each living in their own distinct workspace— like a Scene Tool, Animation tool, and Game balancing tool— to reduce context switching and lower the barrier for non-engineers. Each workspace was fast, focused, and built for clarity.

 

Impact:

  • Creators could work on the stuff they do best without deep technical ramp-up
  • Tools loaded quickly and felt intuitive
  • Engineers weren’t a bottleneck for creative progress, everyone on the team was able to contribute and iterate.

Solution 2

Realtime game rewind and replay

Go ahead and say just a little more about what you do.

Solution 3

Multi-dev collaboration and shared presence

Go ahead and say just a little more about what you do.