Laura Mazgaj – Womenize! – Inspiring Stories
Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Laura Mazgaj, Lead Game Producer at Lively Studio. She speaks about how effective leadership in game production comes from creating the right balance between structure and creativity, fostering strong team collaboration, and leveraging a broad business and marketing perspective to connect disciplines, think systemically, and build high-performing teams. Read more about Laura here:
Hi Laura! Looking back, your career path took you from marketing and media into leading game production teams across the world. What key turning points or lessons helped you bridge those disciplines and carve out your own place in the games industry?
One of the most important realisations I’ve had is that creativity is a process, and within a team, the people who support and nurture that process are invaluable. That mindset made it much easier to move between disciplines, because I could see how many skills are genuinely transferable when you’re willing to look at them differently. What also helped was making a habit of looking outside my own industry for inspiration. Some of the most useful perspectives I’ve brought to my work came from consumer behaviour textbooks, podcasts on psychology, etc. and I think that’s what helps you become a well-rounded professional rather than someone who only knows one way of doing things.
As a Lead Game Producer, no two days are ever the same. What parts of your role energize you most, and how do you keep both creativity and structure alive when working with cross-disciplinary, often remote teams?
Collaboration is honestly where I get my energy. Watching team members achieve what they set out to do does something to my brain that makes me keep going. In terms of keeping structure alive, it comes down to never losing sight of the objective and checking in with it often, especially when things get complex or chaotic. Creativity, on the other hand, stays healthy when you understand that structure is the underlying frame that supports it, not something that stifles it. And perhaps the most useful thing I’ve learned working with cross-disciplinary and remote teams: take the work seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously. So finding time to bond over online games or just straight up banter is a great way to loosen the atmosphere and make everyone feel more comfortable to take creative risks with each other.
You hold dual master’s degrees in business and marketing, how has your education shaped the way you approach leadership, collaboration, and building teams and what advice would you give to others trying to blend different fields of study into a meaningful career?
Having dual master’s degrees in business and marketing has given me a bird’s eye view of how a business operates and where its interests lie. That perspective helps me understand how all the parts fit together, including at the level of creative teams, where those bigger organisational forces aren’t always visible but very much felt. As for advice on blending fields of study, it’s less advice and more a realisation I’ve come to: combining disciplines is a powerful way to become either a strong generalist with a broad span of knowledge that helps you think more systemically or to carve out a very specific niche as someone who sits at the intersection of two or more fields that perhaps very few others occupy. Both are valuable. The key is knowing which one you’re building toward.