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…
Diablo Boss Rod Fergusson On What Makes a World Class Videogame Producer
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…
IGN Publisher John Davison On How Games Get Covered in 2022
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?
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…
Top Gaming VCs Explain Their Obligation To Invest During Crypto Winter
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…
The Dangers of Splitting the Splitgate Audience
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.
Analyzing Diablo IV’s LiveOps Plans
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…
Why Design Legend Graeme Devine Revived Metropolis for Web3 with WAX
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…
How Being “Unapologetically Bisexual” Rocketed Hook Up to #1 on the Paid Charts
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 […]
On Crypto Winter, Capitalism and Early Stage Risk
“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!