Marvel Snap is an undisputed hit with gamers and game journalists, but one month into an all out marketing blitz, achieving cohort paybacks looks like a challenge based on data.ai revenue estimates…

It’s tempting to run a gamer friendly, cosmetics-forward strategy for your live service game. But you can’t have a League of Legends sized outcome without a League of Legends sized audience. This is the lesson learned by Velan games as it shuts down Knockout City after one year as a free-to-play title…
Read MoreWhy was Hogwarts Legacy such a massive success when other Harry Potter games have faltered? It fulfills the core fantasy of the IP…
Read MoreIf you need a little inspiration in your life, you should look to Phoenix Labs Co-Founder and CEO Jesse Houston. After stints on some of the biggest games in the world at Riot, Bioware and Ubisoft, Jesse set out to build a Forever Company with the Dauntless maker…
Read MoreI wanted to make it spicy on my return episode of This Week in Games, so I asked the indomitable Eric Kress a simple question: why have gaming SPACs performed so poorly? In 2021 & 2022, I caught SPAC fever, putting small bets into Playstudios, Nexsters, Skillz and IronSource. My performance has ranged from -65% to a complete delisting. Here’s what Eric had to say…
Read MoreWith over $40m in lifetime revenue and still going strong, Mr Autofire is an understated and indisputable hit. And it’s journey began with five simple questions the team at Lightheart Entertainment asked themselves before deciding if this was the right first game for their fledgling studio.
Read MoreMarvel Snap is an undisputed hit with gamers and game journalists, but one month into an all out marketing blitz, achieving cohort paybacks looks like a challenge based on data.ai revenue estimates…
There are few leaders in the industry whose CV even comes close to Rod Fergusson, who currently serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Diablo franchise. With credits including Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, Shadow Complex, Infinity Blade, Bulletstorm, BioShock Infinite, Microsoft Train Simulator and now Diablo, few producers have had a lead role in as many big name franchises as Rod…
This one is an absolute treasure trove of information for game developers. IGN is one of the biggest games media organizations in the world, and in this interview, VP & Publisher John Davison gives us a peek behind the curtain at how videogames get covered. A veteran of games media, game development and entrepreneurship, there is no one better positioned than John to explain how games are covered in the current multimedia era…
Was all the crunch worth it? This is the question I’ve been asking myself after the recent backlash to the pro-crunch Tweet and resulting walk back from Striking Distance boss Glen Schofield…
I never went to Stanford Business School to learn the inside story of how venture companies work. The first time I co-founded a gaming startup, the world of VC was completely mysterious and impenetrable to me. Luckily, in the decade since that first, failed attempt, the world of venture investing has changed dramatically in ways that are hugely in the favor of gaming entrepreneurs…
1047 has captured lightening in a bottle with the viral success of Splitgate. Now they’ve made a challenging decision to end feature development on that go and go all in on a brand new Splitgate. This piece analyzes the choice and how they could have had their cake and ate it too by catering to their live audience.
Over on the Diablo IV blog, we’re getting substantial details about the game’s live service ambitions. They sound ambitious, familiar, and judging by Diablo Immortal’s $100m+ live service revenue to date, will surely be a massive success for Blizzard. It’s clear they’re working to differentiate D4 from Immortal and set the expectation that there is no pay-for-power / pay-for-progress in this game. It’s amazing to think how far the F2P and Live Services business model has come in terms of hardcore gaming acceptance over the past decade…
This episode of Tokenomics was pure delight for me, as I got to interview Graeme Devine, a true game design legend. From his groundbreaking work on 7th Guest and 11th Hour to Doom 3, to Age of Empires III and Halo Wars, to Magic Leap, Graeme has found success across many different platforms. Now, as a co-founder of QXR Studios, Graeme has added another notch to his belt with WAX-powered blockchain CCG Metropolis Origins…
With her very first game release, up-and-coming game designer Sophie Artemigi did the seemingly impossible: she reached the #1 spot on the Top Paid charts on the App Store. What has been the key to Sophie’s success with premium mobile game Hook Up? Designing an “unapologetically bisexual” game that was authentic to Sophie’s experience and captured the eye of App Store curators, paired with some clever TikTok marketing. As an “old”, this was a delightful […]
“Raising money is not a human right. Capitalism is evolutionary. Businesses are supposed to fail!” I shout at my cohosts, Eric Kriss and Mishka Katkoff. They summoned me to TWiG 193 to share my thoughts on crypto winter and we got into it!