Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition we talked Hanna Steinhauer, Co-Founder & CEO of Spoonful Games. She speaks about the challenges of founding Spoonful Games, the importance of sustainable work, and how her musical background influences game design, while offering advice to aspiring developers on self-care, focus, and networking. Read more about Hanna here:
Hi Hanna! As the CEO and Co-Founder of Spoonful Games, what have been some of the biggest challenges and successes you’ve encountered in your role, and how have these experiences shaped your approach to leadership and game design?

I met the other Spoons during our studies of Digital Games at the CGL. When we founded Spoonful Games in 2021, we made the mistake of using our experiences working together on semester projects as a basis for calculating how much we can get done in a given amount of time. We severely underestimated the additional workload that comes with keeping a company running and we also did not sufficiently factor in that the way we made games in university (essentially crunching for the duration of the project) was not sustainable long term. We severely overscoped our first project Adventurers’ Advocate, realized halfway through and then tried to push the brakes. The realization still came too late and by the end of the prototype phase, we were burnt out and had two prototypes which both didn’t communicate our vision all too well. Unfortunately, we did not manage to secure funding to bring Adventurers’ Advocate to life. The disappointment of the continuous rejections in addition to being severely overworked was crushing. Due to the larger industry crisis, we had trouble finding commissions to keep us financially afloat. Spoonful Games almost didn’t survive.

This is a typical tale for the industry. We were fortunate: we survived as a company and were able to learn and grow from this experience. We have a much stronger emphasis on mental health now. In addition to monthly mental health check-ins, we do regular 1on1s to make sure everyone is happy, healthy, and has an appropriate workload. If this is not the case, we adjust accordingly. We all had to learn to distance ourselves emotionally from work, and now make an effort to stay within the agreed upon working hours. If we constantly push ourselves to our limits, we will not be able to make and release the kind of games we want to create.

From a game perspective, we had to learn to start small. You can always make a game bigger; but you cannot easily make a game smaller. We focus on the fun in minimalistic concepts and try to do one thing right instead of a million things half-heartedly. This change of approach has turned things around for us. We finally secured funding to produce one of our games Bauhaus Bonk and are on the road to releasing it in 2025. This year, we exhibited at Gamescom for the first time and had the absolute pleasure of seeing hundreds of people play and enjoy our creation.

Those last three years have been an intense journey, but I am happy to say we learned, we grew, and we improved as game devs.

Your educational and professional background includes a strong foundation in music, specifically jazz vocals and piano. How has your musical training influenced your approach to game design and narrative development at Spoonful Games?

Games and music have many similarities in how they are consumed and created. When you play a well-crafted game, you lose yourself in the experience. You normally do not stop to analyze to which degree which elements and creative choices contributed. Similarly, you do not think about technique or music theory when listening to music (unless you are also a musician). No, you enjoy the song, feel the emotions, maybe listen to the lyrics or dance to the beat. But both games and music are made by people who are very aware of the underlying methods.

Singing has always been my main instrument and I have been singing for well over twenty years now. Learning about vocal anatomy and understanding the intricacies of using my voice has trained my ear to recognize nuances and analyze how minor changes in technique affect the output. It made me understand how emotions can be shaped and purposefully incited by intentional creative choices.

During my training as a pop and jazz vocalist, I have also learned musical improvisation. When improvising, you do not always know what comes next, but extensive training sharpens your instincts and ability to adjust. In my experience, game design often also comes down to that. You do not know if your design has the intended effects before you make it and try it out, and that does not change, regardless of how much experience you have. You just get better at making guesses. And while there is methodology behind these guesses and estimates, there is no right and wrong, no correct formula. If your design does not work as intended, then you need to find ways to improve it. Musical improvisation has made me better at changing course and finding the “next note” or a different path altogether, depending on what kind of adjustments are necessary for the project.

Finally, making games and making music are both highly creative collaborative endeavors. I learned so much about teamwork and finding a shared creative vision through making music with other musicians; lessons which have been invaluable to my work as a game designer.

Given your passion for telling forgotten stories and highlighting underrepresented perspectives, what advice would you give to aspiring game developers who want to create impactful and meaningful content in the gaming industry?

1. Take care of yourself
This might sound cliché, but passionate creatives often tend to neglect their own needs. If you do not take breaks, you will not be able to see your ideas come to fruition. Making games is neither a sprint nor a marathon. Making a game can take anything from months to years and if you give 100% for such a long time a) your project will suffer because you are too exhausted to make good choices, and/or b) you will not finish this project and have enough stamina to make the next one.

2. Believe in yourself and your vision
This sounds even more cliché, but especially if you are from a marginalized background and want to make games centering marginalized identities, you will face additional obstacles. There will be people in the industry who do not take you seriously, and who react to your ideas with ridicule or contempt. You have to believe in your vision because others will not do it for you.

3. Network
As tough as this industry is sometimes, there are so many lovely and amazing game devs. Networking can be intimidating at first, but really, it is not about handing “the right, important” people your business card but all about finding people in this industry with whom you get along and enjoy spending time. Go to your local industry events and get to know other cool devs. Chances are, you meet people who are currently facing similar issues or who have already faced those issues and can tell you how to overcome them. I have learned so much from the friends I have made in this industry, and I would never be where I am now without their guidance.

4. Learn to sort criticism
Everyone will have an opinion on your game and that is okay. However, you should be careful when selecting which points of criticism to address. Pleasing everyone is a) impossible and b) almost definitely not what is best for your game.

Prioritize feedback from people that like the kind of game you are trying to make. When they tell you something is not working for them, listen and get to the bottom of the how’s and why’s. When they tell you how to fix it, be open-minded but come up with your own fixes – after all you know your project better than anyone else.

5. Start small
Do not try to do everything in one game. Rather, tackle one thing at a time and do it right. Highly focused, well executed games are preferable to games that try to do everything at once but fail to do so effectively.

Thanks for this interview, Hanna!

Hanna’s links: LinkedIn

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Madeleine Egger