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. 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
With older brothers, games were always around. Neighbors still had original Pong machines, I played Atari 2600, and our family went from a ColecoVision to the NES, SNES, and TurboGrafx-16. Games were social: playing Super Bomberman 2 with family and neighbors is a core memory. I also wrote QBASIC games for friends on our DOS computer, dialed into BBSes, and played Dungeons & Dragons on Saturday nights.
Games are something you make for other people.
02 Onstage
One summer, I was a ticket taker at Disneyland. I’d never cared much about Disney, but the dedication I saw behind the scenes won me over. In view of guests, we were “onstage”; behind hidden doors was “backstage.” Every detail was deliberate: trash cans styled to match each land, tall landmarks that guide you without a map, and lands spread like spokes around a central hub.
People feel the details they never see.
03 Behind the counter
My way into the game industry was selling games at GameStop. Every day, players told me what they loved, what they were tired of, and what they wished existed, and 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
At Rockstar San Diego, I started as a tester on Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and went on to lead QA for Rockstar Presents Table Tennis. QA taught me to look closely at how games work, where they break, and what players experience.
“You can never take the QA out of me.”
05 Two ways to push the limits
From QA, I moved into design on Red Dead Redemption, as a technical designer building its state machines, from the player and weapons to multiplayer, minigames, story missions, and the ambient life of its world. There, I learned there’s no secret: you do the hard work, and sometimes you push past what you thought was possible. On FarmVille and Café World at Zynga, I learned to push the limits another way, changing live games rapidly based on what the data showed. Designing match-3 levels and live events at Jam City and MobilityWare sharpened that loop.
Do the hard work, and let players show you what’s next.
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 wishes existed, or know when a level finally feels right. That judgment is the job now.
Disneyland taught me the details. GameStop taught me to listen. QA taught me to doubt until it’s right. Rockstar and Zynga taught me two ways to push the limits. That’s why I’m the one directing the machines at Funtownarcade.
Funtownarcade Games LLC is an independent studio and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any company mentioned on this page, including past employers. Company names, game names, and trademarks belong to their respective owners.
