The Venture Deadpool (Ep. 21)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake address the unpleasant topic of how and why venture-backed games companies fail. They look first at the nature of venture financing and the inherent differences between venture and publisher money. This leads to a conversation about how developers who were used to working with publishers treated venture capital like production financing as opposed to company financing, and why that distinction matters. They then turn to the flawed strategies and tactics of gaming funds and investors, who tried to make up for their lack of judgment and taste by placing many bets on startup...
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China (Ep. 20)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake look at the current state of the vitally important Chinese gaming market, on the precipice of a bitter trade war resulting from the Trump tariffs. They review the history of the games business in China, discuss the reasons China is so competitive in the global gaming market, and look at how some of the ways the Chinese market diverged from other markets influenced the strategies of Chinese game companies. In particular, they look at how China's relatively late entry into the games business proved to be a benefit, by allowing them to skip the packaged goods era and therefore...
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Valve (Ep. 19)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake take an in-depth look at one of the most important companies in the global gaming business: Valve. They trace the company's origin as the developer of first-person shooter Half Life, their use of the Quake engine and the benefits Valve derived from their relationship with id, and their development and deployment of the Steam platform. They explain how Valve used content like Half Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and other games to aggregate audiences on Steam, and how they used those audiences as the bedrock of their move to platform-based publishing on Steam. They discuss...
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The Mobile Gaming Duopoly (Ep. 18)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake discuss the mobile duopoly in which Apple and Google exert extraordinary power by tying their app stores to hardware and software platforms. They warn that the inflexible and expensive distribution systems on iOS and Android could be models for future PC and console distribution systems. They briefly review the history of mobile distribution and mobile technology innovation from the late 90's to the present, and what that development meant for content on the platforms. They discuss the similarities between the JAMDAT and Scopely content portfolio strategies as responses to...
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Cycles & Survival (Ep. 17)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake kick off Season 3 of the podcast with a high-level look at the current moment in the video game business, critiquing both the idea that the business is cyclical and we are in a downward phase of the cycle (and the naïve notion of "survive 'till '25"), as well as the idea that the business has simply matured, suggesting we are in a new phase of low growth and consolidation. Instead, they propose a framework for thinking about the games business that argues for the continuous interplay of three innovation forces: content, distribution, and technology. They outline how each of...
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Artificial Intelligence (Ep. 16)
Gamecraft
In their final episode of Season 2, Mitch and Blake take on the complex and highly speculative topic of the impact of recent improvements in artificial intelligence on the games business. Your hosts acknowledge that the sector is moving so quickly that this episode could be obsolete by the time it airs, and warn that it's difficult at this early moment to look too far into the future. Mitch offers a loose framework for thinking about AI in game production, mapping this framework to specific areas of game creation and publishing that could be effected by AI. They discuss in particular the...
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Intellectual Property (Ep. 15)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake look at the ins and outs of intellectual property licensing in games. After discussing the checkered history of the practice, they look at the creative and business reasons why licensed IP continues to be valuable to game creators. After a quick look at how IP licenses actually function and what to expect from licensors, Mitch and Blake discuss IP arbitrages -- finding gems in the rough that can be licensed at lower cost but with considerable customer acquisition lift, using the examples of Tony Hawk, Kim Kardashian, and Sponge Bob. They draw an important distinction...
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Distribution (Ep. 14)
Gamecraft
In perhaps their most important episode of the series, Mitch and Blake explain what they mean when they use the term "distribution" and why it is so important to their understanding of how the video games business functions. Like they did with the term "publishing" last season, they try to recontextualize distribution as a much larger and more important concept than simply moving atoms or bits into commerce. Your hosts define distribution as the myriad of systems that exist in between the developer of a game and the ultimate end-user of that game, all intended to enable access to the...
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Going Global (Ep. 13)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake discuss the massive expansion of gaming in emerging markets around the world. The begin with a discussion of the big-picture factors driving this expansion -- primarily mobile technology, but also new business models, payment systems, and demographics. They then take a closer look at the Middle East and North Africa, and how the different approaches that companies are taking in Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are making that region one of the fastest growing in the world. They contrast it with the Latin American market, which has had a longer history but which operates...
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Independent Intervention (Ep. 12)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake explore the idea of independent game development. They attempt to define "indie" in the video game context -- something that proves more difficult that it might seem on the surface. They discuss the early successful indie developers in the 90s, and examine how the technology and business innovations that revolutionized the industry in the 20th century (online distribution, new platforms, new business models) catapulted indie developers into positions of power and influence that rivaled, and even surpassed, their incumbent competitors. They discuss the new publishers like...
info_outlineMitch and Blake discuss the recurring industry obsession with the idea of virtual reality, beginning in the mid-1980s. Mitch recounts a story about his encounter with VPL and the weird world of digital artists and promoters in the early days of personal computing. They look at the second failed wave of VR investment in the 1990s and the importance of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Mitch talks about how Linden Lab's Second Life anticipated many of the ideas of the modern metaverse. They then look at the Oculus, and Facebook's decade-long failure to generate momentum behind a new wave of virtual reality, and what Apple's entry into the market may mean. They conclude with a look at the idea of the metaverse and its challenges.
Links and Show Notes:
Mark Pauline - Survival Research Labs
Neuromancer (William Gibson, 1984)
“Spawn of Atari” (Wired Magazine)
Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson, 1993)
Ready Player One (Ernest Cline, 2011)
The Metaverse (Matthew Ball, 2022)
Raph Koster’s “real talk about a real metaverse”