04 / Meet the founder
Hi, I’m Ryan Dormanesh.
I’m a game designer and Unity developer in the Pacific Northwest, and I founded Funtownarcade Games LLC in Washington State in 2026. Looking back, every stop on my path taught me a different way to pay attention to the people on the other side of the screen.
01 The arcade at home
I grew up when neighbors still had original Pong machines in use. I played Atari 2600, while our family had a ColecoVision, followed by the NES, SNES, and TurboGrafx-16. On our early DOS computer, I wrote programs in QBASIC for my friends to play. Dialing into BBSes and playing Dungeons & Dragons on Saturday nights were part of that world, too.
Games are something you make for other people.
02 Onstage
One summer, I worked as a ticket taker at Disneyland. I’d never cared much about Disney before then, but what I saw behind the scenes changed that. When guests could see us, we were “onstage,” and everything about how we looked and acted was part of the show. Behind hidden doors was “backstage,” where cast members could step out of the show and just walk around.
Every detail had been thought through. Trash cans in one land were styled differently than in another, so even the smallest objects told you where you were. Tall landmarks pulled you forward and helped you find your way without a map. The lands spread out like spokes around a central hub, so you could always get back to the middle and set off somewhere new.
People feel the details they never see.
03 Behind the counter
My path into the game industry started with selling games at GameStop, helping people find their next game. Every day I talked with players about what they loved, what they were tired of, and what they wished existed. Over time I noticed a disconnect between what was being made and what people actually wanted to play.
Listen to players, not just to the industry.
04 Finding what breaks
From there, I moved into QA and learned to look closely at how games work, where they break, and what players experience. Play it, question it, test the edge cases, and keep improving.
“You can never take the QA out of me.”
05 The long game and the live game
My career took me from Red Dead Redemption at Rockstar San Diego into mobile game development at Zynga, Jam City, and MobilityWare, including designing match-3 levels and events. In console development, you can spend years working toward one big creative vision. In mobile games, you see how players respond almost immediately, tune the dials, and learn from the next round of play.
Hold a vision, and still respond to players.
06 The human at the controls
Today, machines can write code, draw, and test faster than any team I’ve been part of. What they can’t do is watch a family come through the gate, hear what a player at the counter wishes existed, sense that a detail is off, or know when a level finally feels right. That judgment is the job now, and every stop above trained it.
Disneyland taught me the details. GameStop taught me to listen. QA taught me to doubt until it’s right. Console and mobile taught me when to hold a vision and when to tune it. That’s why I’m the one directing the machines at Funtownarcade, and why every game still goes through a person who plays it before it ships.
Funtownarcade Games LLC is an independent studio and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by these past employers. Company and game names belong to their respective owners.
