04 / Meet the founder
Hi, I’m Ryan Dormanesh.
I’m a game designer and Unity developer in the Pacific Northwest. I founded Funtownarcade Games LLC in Washington State in 2026 to make independent games with the care and curiosity that got me into this work.
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. We also had an early DOS computer, where 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. Playing, making things for friends, and sharing stories all belong to the same history for me.
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. Guests never saw most of that work, but they felt it. Good games work the same way, and I still think about that summer when I’m designing one.
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. I’ve never forgotten those conversations, and closing that gap is still part of why I make games.
From there, I moved into QA and learned to look closely at how games work, where they break, and what players experience.
“You can never take the QA out of me.”
That mindset still shapes how I make games: play it, question it, test the edge cases, and keep improving. It is part of why testing and learning run through the whole studio.
My career has taken 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.
The difference in feedback was striking. In console development, you can spend years working toward one big creative vision. In mobile games, you can see how players respond almost immediately, tune the dials, and learn from the next round of play.
I respect both ways of making games: the commitment and craft behind a long console production, and the responsiveness of a game that keeps evolving with its players. Funtownarcade carries that appreciation for patient creative work and close attention to player feedback into every project.
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.
