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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outline
A Changing of the Guard (Ep. 11)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake expand on last season's discussion of platform-based publishers by introducing a new kind of company: the game-enabling software platform. The five companies they discuss (Epic, Unity, AppLovin, Discord, and Roblox) are all pursuing customer aggregation strategies similar to the platform-based publishers, but -- with the exception of Epic, which has attributes of both a publisher and software platform -- they are doing so with enabling technologies (game engines, advertising tech, and communications software) rather than by producing content. Your hosts talk about the...
info_outline
Choose Your (ad)Venture (Ep. 10)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake discuss the nuances of game financing. They begin by explaining how the publishing model of advances against royalties functions, and what the expected costs and benefits are for both the developer and publisher. After a brief discussion of bootstrapping, they do a deep dive on venture capital financing for games. They reveal how venture capital firms make money, drawing a sharp contrast with how traditional game publishers make money. This leads to a conversation about the implied promises that game studios make when they take venture capital. Mitch talks about how...
info_outline
The State of Play: 2024 (Ep. 9)
Gamecraft
They're back! Season 2 of the GameCraft podcast kicks off with Mitch and Blake introducing the new 8-episode season, followed by an analysis of the current health of the games business. Mitch and Blake discuss the paradoxical state of the business, where a "golden age" of content is facing some increasing financial headwinds. They compare the games business to the post-pandemic video streaming businesses, which have all faced difficult belt-tightening after a growth phase that produced some of the best content ever. They look at the implications of increasing consolidation in the business...
info_outline
The New Gold Rush (Ep. 8)
Gamecraft
Mitch and Blake take on the complex topic of in-game economies. They discuss how the endemic problems of trust and arbitrage were present in the earliest in-game economies of the late 1980 and how they have persisted to the present web3 economies. They look at the concept of mudlfation, a unique economic problem of massively multiplayer online games, and the strategies for controlling it, as well as the idea of economic play. Mitch talks about how gold farming and real-money trading were early antecedents of play-to-earn, before taking a look at early web3 economies. They end the episode with...
info_outlineMitch and Blake discuss the nuances of game financing. They begin by explaining how the publishing model of advances against royalties functions, and what the expected costs and benefits are for both the developer and publisher.
After a brief discussion of bootstrapping, they do a deep dive on venture capital financing for games. They reveal how venture capital firms make money, drawing a sharp contrast with how traditional game publishers make money. This leads to a conversation about the implied promises that game studios make when they take venture capital. Mitch talks about how ill-prepared he thinks most game companies are to deliver on those promises, and how willing some venture investors have been to fund studios with no obvious competitive business advantages other than their ability to make cool games.
The hosts conclude with a discussion about liquidity. Mitch and Blake provide an overview of the initial public offering market for game companies over the last 20 years, and Mitch shares his experience taking a game company public. Mitch worries that most of the high-profile founders of new game studios are not prepared to be public company CEOs, and how that will affect the venture capital environment for game companies in the future.