Episode notes
Amir Satvat spent 15 years in investment banking and enterprise tech — Goldman Sachs, VMware, Amazon — before finally breaking into games at 38. Then over Thanksgiving 2022, friends were laid off right before the holidays, and he sat down and built a simple Google spreadsheet of open jobs. Three and a half years later, that spreadsheet has become ASGC (Always Supporting the Games Community): 2,500 volunteer coaches, a 13,000-person Discord, and more than 4,700 confirmed job placements — with Amir pushing toward 5,000 by the Fourth of July.
In December 2024, Geoff Keighley called his name at The Game Awards for the inaugural Game Changer Award and the room rose for a standing ovation. Within days, the hate mail arrived — targeting his wife, his family, his employer. He answered it the way he answers everything: by getting back to work.
In this conversation, Amir and Greg cover the long wait of loving an industry from the outside, the moment a spreadsheet turned into a movement, what the layoff data actually says heading into 2026, why 80–85% of a successful job search has nothing to do with applications, the Game Awards moment (and the backlash that followed), and the strategy guides, the WoW raids, and the wife who keeps him grounded.
This is a conversation about what it looks like to choose to be a tank for an entire industry — and to do it without losing yourself.
About re:Play: Long-form conversations with the people who built this industry — peer to peer, not press to talent. Hosted by Greg Off.
Find ASGC: asgc.gg
Find Amir: linkedin.com/in/amirsatvat
Find re:Play: replaypodcast.com · Substack: gregoff1.substack.com