Meet our VP, Games — Ivan Fortunov!

Ivan Fortunov, Myria’s VP Games, is a natural designer, builder, and creator. With a background in architecture and an accomplished 12-year career in game design, he has the innate creativity to conjure up fantastical game worlds coupled with an analytical mind able to plan and execute the game’s mechanics.

Being the VP of Games, Ivan is responsible for bringing together the business vision of the company and the production pipeline. “I need to serve as a hub between all departments and have full visibility of all steps of the creative process up until and after the release.” A game designer is a jack of all trades by nature, which is the perfect fit for Ivan who has proven to be incredibly multi-talented. Throughout his time at Myria, the question that he seems to be asked most often by team members is:?“Is there anything you can’t do, Ivan?”.

During Ivan’s career in game design, he has worked at leading companies including Gameloft, CrazyLabs, GPG (Ubisoft), and others. He led the development of a wide spectrum of different games, ranging from casual runners like ‘Jumanji: Epic Run’ to the action-packed LiveOps of ‘Mortal Kombat: A Fighting Game’.

The transition to blockchain gaming was a natural progression for Ivan. Speaking on his views of blockchain gaming, Ivan noted, “I find that blockchain and P2E are intuitive augmentations to the emergent gaming-as-a-lifestyle model. Blockchain provides the tools to take the interaction with the gaming media to a whole new level by clearing a path to circumvent the classical and extremely single-dimensional flow of material from the corporate domain to the end customer.” This is one thing that Myria is most passionate about — shifting ownership and value back to the player through the use of blockchain and NFTs.

Truly enjoyable gameplay is another of Myria’s key tenets. In Ivan’s words, “We follow a very simple principle when crafting the Myria Roadmap: make it fun and exciting. We want to deliver products that are fun to work on and play in the first place. The games, the metaverse — everything actually comes together to a converging point of one unified experience.”

So what does a day in the life of Myria’s VP, Games look like? Ivan describes each and every day at Myria as “unique”. “We have so much going on and given the exciting challenge of this new type of ecosystem we’re trying to build, there’s an avalanche of unpredictable elements that pop in and out of existence as quarks on a quantum level. Lots of calls with different stakeholders, operational work, and tons of exploration. One day I might be writing a lore piece about the Myriaverse, while the next one you can see me drawing concepts of a new game world or discussing how a classical game mechanic is to be interpreted within the context of the blockchain framework.”

When asked about his work style, Ivan said, “I am very passionate about my work. I don’t really consider being a game designer a work, it’s rather a way of perceiving the world. Once you get to delve into the depths of this art you start to observe peculiar principles and patterns that transcend the field of game development. I am an avid believer that one should put all their heart and soul into what they do on a day-to-day basis. Time even though infinite per se, is kinda finite from a human’s perspective so you definitely want every second to count, right?”

Ivan went on to describe his creative process. “Creation is a weird thing. Usually, it’s hard to fit it into a specific time frame that you can fully control and switch on and off on demand. I would say that this is one of the biggest challenges as you try to grow as a designer — to master summoning those demons which bring power to your ideas”. Ivan draws his creative inspiration from books, movies (especially anime), and games — but music is what inspires him most. “My brain just loves to go places accompanied by the sound of any kind of music, preferably rock. One of the best ideas I had was born under the spell of Pink Floyd”.

And although he lives and breathes game design, Ivan’s lifestyle doesn’t match up to that of a stereotypical night-dwelling game designer. “I try to eat healthy and organic, hit the gym occasionally, and go to bed early. I still love pizza though!”

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