Deconstructor of Fun

As games progress through their lifecycle, many games experience increased costs and stalls in growth over time. An excellent way to unlock growth is to find new pockets of players outside of English-centric countries. But what’s the optimal way to find these markets? How do you decide whether to make that investment decision? How much should you localize versus culturalize? What is the potential of these emerging markets?  To answer these questions and more, Nancy Huang and Ludovic Thevelin joined us for an informative discussion.  Nancy is the Head of User Acquisition and Growth Strategy at East Side Games, a publisher known for IP-driven hit games such as “The Office,” “Trailer Park Boys,” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Ludovic is an International Growth Consultant at Google who focuses on advising mobile gaming clients on their international expansion strategies.

This week, we get a peak behind the curtains of how videogames are covered in the enthusiast press, thanks to IGN VP & Publisher John Davison. 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. We use John's recent piece explaining how Squanch Games' High on Life unexpectedly won the Gamescom coverage competition thanks to easily digestible humor and the power of Tik Tok. This episode is chock full of lessons about how to make your game stand out in a crowded field, getting the attention of games journalists, and the importance of easily digestible messaging to helping your game cut through the noise. This interview is hosted by Ethan Levy.

A packed house for this week's TWiG as we delve into some juicy topics. Quick updates on Netflix Games latest hires (of course), Cyberpunk 2077, Apple's platform ruling on NFTs, the GTA VI hacker and more. For our headline topics, we discuss The Battle for Twitch's Soul following their announcement of deprecating the 70/30 revenue split for top streamers. We also go deep on ex-Machine Zone CEO Gabe Leydon's newest company, Web3 outfit Limit Break games, and how they're making waves with their "free-to-own" business model for NFT games. This week’s episode is hosted by Eric Kress, Eric Seufert, Laura Taranto and Ethan Levy.

Born from the ashes of a studio closure, Mighty Bear Games was founded by an experienced team of F2P veterans whose work crossed browser and mobile games. Having built up their studio and tech stack with Butter Royale and Disney Melee Mayhem, the studio's pivot to Web3 has seen it secure a $10m investment to build games for the blockchain. With Mighty Action Heroes nearing its initial mint, Ethan speaks with Might Bear CEO Simon Davis about his studio, his experience in F2P and his transition to Web3 gaming. In addition to Web3, they talk about learning from the pain of crunch and the lessons learned leading games and studios that have led to Mighty Bears culture and focus on the people who make the games.

Laura gives off strong American Psycho vibes with her choice of recording venue. Eric makes us all jealous with his recap of the BITKRAFT conference. Ethan makes mood boards. But more seriously, we talk the latest Call of Duty reveal, Sims 4 going F2P, the big Grand Theft Auto 6 leak and how it will have no negative impact on the product’s eventual sales dominance. We go deep on Nintendo direct and Laura amazes us with her commitment to completing lengthy JRPGs. Ethan tells the story of ex-Rocksteady dev Kim MacAskill, who sets an amazing example in living her values after removing herself from consideration from a Women In Games Lifetime Achievement Award because Rockstead, her former employer and a company she stood up against due to the misogyny experienced therein, was a sponsor of the event. This week’s episode is hosted by Eric Kress, Laura Taranto and Ethan Levy.

Tokenomics is back and what an absolute treat of an episode. This week, we're joined by two of the top VCs in the Web3 gaming space, Anton Backman of Play Ventures and Nico Vereecke of BITKRAFT, who are here to give us an inside look of how VCs are approaching investing during the latest Crypto Winter. Good news for all the gaming entrepreneurs out there, we learn that the VCs are still investing in worthy projects. In fact, they have an obligation to keep seeking out and investing in the best projects on behalf of their funds. Our host, Ethan Levy, asks all the questions a prospective gaming entrepreneur could want to ask from two of the top VC firms in the game. All ideas expressed here are the opinions of the guests and host, and do not represent the official position of their respective firms. Nothing contained within is financial advice. Please consult a qualified financial advisor before making any personal investments. 

After 16 months in soft launch, Supercell’s Clash Quest has reached the end of its run. The game has not achieved the business objectives set by Supercell and the game will shut down. Following an excellent postmortem by Laura Taranto, Javier Barnes and Anette Staloy, host Ethan Levy sits down with the writers to discuss what went right and what areas of improvement for Clash Quest. We discuss the writer’s experience playing and interacting with the Clash Quest community over the past year and a half, what they enjoyed about the game, and why they think the game was not able to meet its retention and monetization targets.

Eric Kress and Laura Taranto celebrate the 200th Episode of TWIG with a special guest, Joe Kim. In this episode, we take a walk down memory lane remembering the start of TWIG, how and when the hosts joined, discuss Scopely’s acquisition of Stumble Guys, and a recap of Ubisoft’s most recent announcement on mobile games and Netflix, and complete with a rant from Eric. Our headline covers Microsoft and Sony and the battle of exclusivity on platforms… or not. Oh, and here's the episode Joe Kim DOESN'T WANT YOU TO HEAR > Working With BIG Entertainment IPs on Mobile

Eric Kress, Laura Taranto, and Eric Seufert discuss Apple’s growing ambitions with its advertising business, the latest wave of layoffs that hit companies like Snap and Bytedance as well as Tencent's investment into Ubisoft's parent company. Most importantly, in this episode you'll hear about Seufert's latest Uber debacle, an update on Kress' son's thriving basketball career, and find out which continent Laura is recording the podcast this week. 

Whether you know it for its role as a hub of the Flash game development scene or in its later incarnation as a F2P mobile publisher, you are likely familiar with Kongregate. They have been making a lot of moves in the blockchain space recently, between their extension of The Bitverse into Web3, the announcement of NFT-powered game Blood Vessels, and the announcement of their $40m Web3 developer fund in partnership with Immutable. In this week’s episode, Ethan talks to Kongregate CTO Max Murphy and CBOO Michelle Shaw about their Web3 ambitions, the partners they’re looking for from their $40m fund, and just why Kongregate is so excited about the applications of Web3 in gaming.