Name: Alyssa Kollgaard
Job Title: Producer
DnD Class: Drow Necromancer
Hogwarts House: Ravenpuff
Pokemon Go Team: Insight
Empire or Rebellion: Star Trek (plot twist!)
Turtle: Donatello

When did you first get started in games and how?
People say it all the time, but I have been gaming literally as long as I can remember. I probably have my father’s obsession with pinball to thank for my introduction to gaming, and I spent a ton of time in the arcades growing up back when arcades served pizza instead of booze. I was probably five when I started gaming and I just never outgrew it. Turns out you CAN turn a love of games into a career.

How did you first get started in the game industry?
I started in 2007 working for THQ in QA, like a lot of people in the industry. I happened in during a time before a lot of the work was outsourced and there was a more difficult barrier to entry. My first game was Ratatouille for the Xbox 360.

Where do you draw inspiration from?
Ah – lots of places. I am an artist in my downtime and I work mainly under the umbrella of dystopia, so pull a lot of inspiration from post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, atompunk and dieselpunk fiction. I’m also a cosplayer, fabricator and medieval re-enactor, so a lot of what I create is under that context as well. Plus I inject a healthy dose of nostalgia into a lot of what I do (like everyone born in the 80s). Pulling inspiration for project management is a tougher question – I think it scratches the same itch for me as orchestrating a symphony or solving a complex puzzle does for other people.

What is your favorite video game or series?
Castlevania! But only because Legend of Dragoon never got made into a series ;(

What is your favorite tabletop game?
Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and Cyberpunk 2020, so I am pretty excited for Cyberpunk 2077.

If Akupara could partner with any person, who would you want to work with?
Ken Levine (Bioshock) or Shigeru Miyamoto.

What is your proudest accomplishment before coming to Akupara?
Pulling myself up by my bootstraps from QA to producer was pretty exciting and happened in a 6 month period of time. Which in turn let me come be producer at Akupara – extra exciting!

Check out our other Meet the Team blogs here. You can feel free to follow Alyssa on twitter here. And as always if you want to connect with Alyssa or any other member of the Akupara team, join the Akupara Discord!