Founded by Fiona Cherbak, former Talent Acquisition Lead at Sony PlayStation Worldwide Studios and Lead Talent Program Manager at Xbox Game Studios, Rocket Game Talent bridges the gap between AAA hiring excellence and indie studio reality—delivering Fortune 500 recruiting expertise without the cost of a full-time hire.
Small game studios face an acute recruiting disadvantage: they need experienced mid-level and senior talent but lack the brand recognition, established recruiting processes and competitive compensation of major publishers and platform holders.
Rocket Game Talent addresses this gap by understanding limited production budgets, equity negotiations and remote-first culture. The agency is positioning creative vision and meaningful impact against platform holder stability by finding mission-driven candidates willing to take calculated career risks for the right opportunity.
Cherbak's track record spans some of gaming's most iconic franchises and studios:
- Staffed God of War at Sony PlayStation (Game of the Year 2018), hiring 250+ developers
- Staffed and shipped BioShock: Infinite for Irrational Games
- Led talent operations for 14 Xbox Game Studios first-party teams (Gears of War, Halo, Forza and more)
- Co-founded Boston Festival of Indie Games (grew from 2,000 to 7,000+ attendees)
- Co-produced Fantastic Arcade and advised IndieCade
- Invited to Obama White House in 2015 for Women in Games Initiative
- Former BAFTA Games U.S. Advisor (2018-2019)
- Co-founder, Women in Games International (50,000+ members globally, recently celebrated 20 years)
- Former Chair, IGDA Women in Games SIG
Rocket Game Talent is committed to providing comprehensive talent operations services tailored to game studios' unique needs.
"Most game talent specialists specialize in either AAA or indie. I've carefully mastered both," Cherbak said. "I understand why your 50-person studio can't hire like Xbox does—and I know how to position you to win top talent anyway. I understand both $200M blockbusters and bootstrapped startups—and that range is your advantage."
Cherbak's recruiting expertise has earned recognition from major studio leaders.
"As a hiring manager for well over 15 years, I've worked with dozens of recruiters, but Fiona is in a class of her own," said principal tech art director at Turn 10 Studios, developers of the Forza franchise.
"Fiona is the best talent acquisition partner I've worked with in my 15+ year career. She's tenacious, thoughtful, and deeply committed to finding the right people," adds a senior leader at Santa Monica Studio, developers of God of War.
Rocket Game Talent is offering talent operations services designed to support game studios of every size, but particularly small studios, startups and indie teams, including:
- Talent Operations Infrastructure: ATS setup and optimization, hiring process design, interview training, metrics and reporting, compensation benchmarking and remote team best practices.
- Full-Cycle Recruiting: From sourcing and screening to interviewing, negotiating, and onboarding—specialized in engineering, art, design, production, and executive roles across all game development disciplines for both contract and fulltime positions.
- Employer Branding: Employee value proposition development, careers page optimization, social media strategy, university relations programs and tradeshow presence strategy.
- Engagement Programs: University and bootcamp partnerships, diversity recruiting initiatives, community building and industry event representation.