// the daily specialnow baking
Now — lead creative on Episode, Pocket Gems' flagship interactive-storytelling platform, and Reality Stars — while building a next-gen AI product (currently in stealth): a highly customizable, interactive RPG for a female audience that looks live-action but is AI-generated — and the scalable workflow to responsibly generate and organize its branching narratives and character customizations.
Twenty years of shipped work across TV, mobile games, and creator economies — measured in retention, revenue, and loaves.
✦ fresh certification — Strive management training × 2 cycles
// about the bakerin plain language
I'm a creative executive with 20+ years across games, television, film, and AI-enabled content. I've led original products from blank page to global live service, run hit writers' rooms, coached creator ecosystems, and built production systems that scale without sanding off what made the idea good in the first place.
What I do: I define the creative problem, invent the idea that answers it, then build the teams, systems, and tools that get it out the door. Ideally the good door.
// house ruleshow i work
Creative leadership is part taste, part systems design, and part saying the useful thing in the room.
Start with the audience promise.
A team moves faster when everyone can say what the experience should make someone feel — not just what features it contains.
Make feedback executable.
"It's not landing" is an observation. Good creative direction explains why, protects the intent, and gives the creator a next move.
Build the system, not just the hit.
Curricula, tools, pipelines, and repeatable patterns let more creators do their best work without turning the work generic.
Use data without asking it to write.
Audience behavior sharpens the question. Taste and judgment still answer it.
I turn strategy into entertainment — and creative ambition into something a team can actually ship.games · television · interactive media · and the tools behind them
// fresh from the oventonight's bake
pocket gemsReality Stars
Slow-proofed on a player-fantasy starter: a standalone app, separate from Episode — collection RPG × scripted reality × dating sim. I crossed into game design at the fantasy and experiential level, writing gameplay specs from player-fantasy pillars; two shipped as core features — an async head-to-head PR-appearance showdown, and VMS Live!, a real-time 10-player fashion battle staged like a reality show. Vision-keeper across a 40-person team covering design, art, audio, narrative, and product, from ambiguous player promise to live service.
The brief was not "make one of those." It was to make three genres feel like they had always belonged together.
The Creator Engine
The UGC culture: wrote educational materials that passively widen the submission funnel, revamped the pitch greenlight process, and built the author-development system that levels green authors into hit-makers. Hosted a 3-day onsite intensive — every attendee went on to create their personal-best story; 3 reached the platform's highest tier, setting new $/story-start records.
the slides below are titles only — actual content is confidential and proprietary
The Kiss List
Seventy-three flaky layers of narrative × gameplay, laminated on Episode. Pioneered the format, codified it, and taught it to the studio and the UGC creator community — ~8% lift ≈ $1M annual revenue, +5% ARPDAU. The foundation every later bet grew out of.
From the test kitchen
RECIPE DEVELOPMENT · SLATE STRATEGY
Indexed and analyzed the entire Episode story catalog. Found over-concentration in high-school settings, skewing toward lower-disposable-income players. Identified the whitespace: post-education settings. Every good bakery tests its recipes.
the actual 2019 slate deck — research, taxonomy, findings, and the draft slate
The Network Years
Classic, crusty, no shortcuts. Hired at 21, head writer by 25 — head writer on iCarly and Victorious simultaneously, 7 seasons · 150+ episodes. Led a 12-person writing department; PGA nomination. Comedy was the output; alignment across a very large machine was the job.
Stolen Duck
Dev / production banner. Pilots with Nickelodeon; film with Disney/MarVista; self-produced Shayna's Place (eOne); viral comedy shorts. Est. 2010 · no ducks harmed.
Small plates
Organize & Create Discipline — book on creative productivity (Penguin/Perigee, 2014). Co-founded Goodie Goodie, a family chore/goal/reward app. Not the main quest, but they shipped.
// burnt batchesknown issues
// what's next
In the proofing drawer…
Open to creative leadership roles across games, AI media, and entertainment tech. My criteria are simple: your roadmap has an ambitious problem in it. Let's compare notes.
DOUGH AT 62% · DO NOT DISTURB// appendix Athe recipe book
ARTHUR GRADSTEIN
San Francisco, CA · gradstein@gmail.com · LinkedIn ↗
Executive profile
Creative executive with 20+ years translating strategy into audience-ready entertainment across games, television, film, and AI-enabled platforms. Defines the creative problem, invents the idea that answers it, then aligns design, art, audio, narrative, product, and production to ship efficiently. Equally effective as a title-level vision-keeper, a slate and programming leader who elevates creators, and a builder of content tools and pipelines that scale. Track record includes measurable gains in revenue, retention, conversion, and production velocity.
Core leadership
Professional experience
POCKET GEMS · San Francisco, CA — Creative Director / Senior Principal, Narrative Games
- Conceived and leads Episode: Reality Stars — the standalone app grown from the narrative+gameplay format pioneered with The Kiss List — blending collection RPG, scripted reality, and dating sim; launched worldwide (Dec 2025) at 45% D1 / 20% D7 retention with 10% first-session payer conversion — including a purchase moment I designed — and earned repeat Apple "Today" and Game-of-the-Day features.
- Crosses into game design at the fantasy and experiential level — wrote gameplay specs from player-fantasy pillars for Reality Stars; two specs shipped as core gameplay features.
- Sets creative strategy and serves as vision-keeper across a 40-person team spanning design, art, audio, narrative, product, and production — working hands-on with every function — turning an ambiguous player promise into a cohesive experience from concept through live service.
- Leads a next-generation AI product — a highly customizable, interactive RPG for a female audience with a live-action look, generated with AI — building the scalable workflow that lets the team responsibly generate and organize a huge volume of branching narratives and character customizations.
- Co-creates internal content tools and integrated AI across a Unity/Spine animation pipeline — where every character move, camera move, and animation is code — cutting the average directed scene from 5 days to 2.5 via writing strategy, templatized scenes, content tools, and AI-assisted directing, without lowering the quality bar.
- Runs Episode's global UGC pipeline: wrote the educational materials that passively widen the submission funnel, revamped the pitch greenlight process, and built the author-development system that levels green authors with potential into hit-makers.
- Hosted a 3-day onsite intensive for top creators — every attendee went on to create their personal-best story; 3 reached the platform's highest tier, setting new $/story-start records.
POCKET GEMS · San Francisco, CA — Senior Manager / Manager, Story Lead
- Created The Kiss List, the format that pioneered Episode's narrative+gameplay blend — codified and taught it to peers and UGC creators, lifting annual revenue 8% (+$1M) and ARPDAU 5%; the format became the foundation for the standalone Reality Stars app.
- Co-led Episode's Pitch Perfect licensed-IP adaptation, managing creative notes with Universal and producing an original album of a cappella covers to honor the source material.
- Indexed and analyzed Episode's full story catalog for slate balance — revealing over-concentration in high-school settings that skewed toward lower-disposable-income users and identifying post-education settings as the key whitespace.
- Used player data to edit internal and UGC stories for retention and monetization, improving story performance by as much as 2x.
STOLEN DUCK PRODUCTIONS, INC. · San Francisco / Los Angeles, CA — Principal / Founder
- Founded as a loan-out corporation and expanded into a development and production banner spanning television, film, games, publishing, and digital media.
- Developed two pilots with Nickelodeon and a film with Disney/MarVista; self-produced Shayna's Place and secured distribution through eOne, alongside additional original pilots developed for market.
- Co-created viral comedy shorts with the Secret Sauce comedy collective.
GOODIE GOODIE APP, LLC · Los Angeles, CA — Co-Founder & COO
- Led a family chore, goal, and reward app for iOS and Android from concept through launch and iteration, applying kids-entertainment instincts to product strategy, operations, and execution; wound down the startup after launch.
NICKELODEON · Los Angeles, CA — Writer → Producer / Head Writer · iCarly, Victorious, Zoey 101, Drake & Josh
- Hired at 21 and a head writer by 25; wrote and produced 7 seasons and 150+ episodes across four hit live-action series.
- Served as head writer on iCarly and Victorious simultaneously and as the showrunner's #2; consulted on both pilots from inception and directed all creative development for showrunner approval.
- Ran the 12-person writing and script department and led weekly production meetings with every department head, resolving script ambiguities and aligning budget, sets, wardrobe, stunts, and production execution.
- Nominated for a Producers Guild of America Television Producer of the Year Award for Outstanding Children's Program.
Selected work
Shipped titles: Episode: Reality Stars · Episode XOXO (Apple Arcade) · Episode: Pitch Perfect · Episode (flagship) · Shayna's Place
Publication: Collaborator, Organize & Create Discipline: An A-to-Z Guide to an Organized Existence by Justin Klosky (Penguin/Perigee, 2014); credited by name in the author's introduction.
Education
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania — B.S. in Economics, concentrations in Marketing & Communications (2005)
Strive management training — two cycles completed.
PHONE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST — EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE FULL CURRENT RÉSUMÉ