Deconstructor of Fun

The focus of our conversation today is All About LTV.  Actually, when people talk about LTV they really mean pLTV (predictive Life Time Value). And increasingly pROAS (predictive Return on Ad Spend) especially for the self attributing networks like Facebook and Google.   Why is pLTV (and pROAS) so important to mobile marketers and product people?  How is it estimated?  How does...

Welcome to TWIG 66! This week we cover: #1. GameStop’s woes deepen as revenues crash #2. Might & Magic: Chess Royale is an auto battle royale from Ubisoft #3. Epic Games Store tops $680 million in player spending Plus a lot of game updates including Team Fight Tactics, Escape from Tarkov Twitch Stats, and more! Hit us up on Twitter with any feedback or suggestions for news to cover. You can re...

Welcome to TWIG 65! This week we cov er: #1. Tencent-owned Miniclip purchases Ilyon Games for $100 million #2. Xbox won't kick off the Series X generation with next-gen exclusives #3. A former Microsoft exec is PlayStation's new head of global business operations All About Steam: “Steam’s Shit Sandwich” #4A: Major slowdown of new releases on Steam last year #4B: Simplified Chinese is now the domin...

Happy New Year and Welcome to TWIG 64! This week we cover: #1. Report: New Switch model launching in 2020 #2. Respawn's Vince Zampella to lead EA DICE's LA studio #3. Google buys triple-A game dev Typhoon Studio to beef up Stadia #4. 49 top games in soft launch: From Marvel Super War and Disney Sorcerer’s Arena to Minecraft Earth and Tetris Royale Hit us up on Twitter with any feedback or suggesti...

Welcome to TWIG #63 everybody. This episode wraps Season 4 and is the last podcast episode for us for the year. Happy New Years and looking forward to 2020! This week we cover: #1. What was the biggest game of the year? By revenue? By downloads? #2. What was the best game of 2019 (your personal preference)? #3. Who was the biggest winner/gained the most in 2019? #4. Who lost the most 2019 (Studio...

Welcome to TWIG #62 everybody. This week we get a bit of a battle between Eric and Miska over Zynga growth prospects so stay tuned for that! This week we cover: #1. Kongregate acquires browser and mobile 2D battle royale Surviv.io #2. Roblox’s 10 biggest games of all time — each with more than a billion plays #3. Riot Games Creates New Publishing Label #4. N3twork Acquires “Funko Pop Blitz” from N...

Welcome to the first episode of UA (user acquisition) coffee talk. This is a new series, recorded initially for the GameMakers YouTube channel where I (Joe Kim) sit down with a couple of industry experts from UA and talk about specific UA topics and issues. In this podcast, I'm joined by two of the mobile industry's most well known experts in mobile growth: Nebo Radovic from N3twork and Jon Lau fr...

Wazzup DOF Nation! On the pod this week we have myself Joe Kim, Eric Kress, and new daddy club member Adam Telfer. We are also joined by *the* Nebo Radovic from N3twork. One of the very few handful of people in the world who has bought at massive UA scale for mobile having worked not only at N3twork, but also at MZ and Nordeus (Top Eleven). So we'll kick off with a couple of UA topics which is bec...

TWIG #60 Here we go! Today we have myself Joe Kim, Eric Kress, and Adam Telfer is back from paternity leave. Welcome back new dad! We also have 2 special guests related to the first article we will cover: Selcuk Atli CEO at Bunch and *the* Greg Essig Head of BD at Bunch. #1. Bunch scores $3.8M to turn mobile games into video chat LAN parties #2. Wildlife, Brazilian mobile gaming unicorn, valued at...

Kolibri has found great success with its first two mobile game titles Idle Miner Tycoon and Idle Factory Tycoon. Both titles have now amassed about 100M downloads.   How did students coming from University achieve so much success at such a young age?   What were the processes and philosophies they used to develop Idle Miner Tycoon?  What were some of the biggest lessons learned and...

Welcome everybody to TWIG #59! Today we have myself Joe Kim, Eric Kress, and Miska Katkoff joins in to defend himself on his Call of Duty prediction. We are also joined by Consumer Insights expert Stan Kwon from research firm BETAHAT . We discuss the following articles: 1. The top 1% of app store publishers drive 80% of new downloads 2. Valve’s Half-Life series continues with Half-Life: Alyx for V...

Namaste everyone and welcome to TWIG #58! Today we have just myself Joe Kim and Eric Kress. Miska and Adam are out for the rest of the year. The full news we discuss is as follows: #1. N3twork raises $40 million for platform to help mobile games gain traction #2. How a Chinese Developer at Tencent Is Shaping the Future of Gaming #3. Has the hypercasual game genre peaked? #4. We review some of the...

Welcome to TWIG #57. Today we have your usual hosts Joe Kim, Eric Kress, and Adam Telfer (Miska's out for the rest of the year). We do have a guest host Alex Collins though: a software engineer at Jam City and DOF blog contributor. The full news we discuss is as follows: #1. Mixer + Shroud + Ninja #2. Everything Announced at X019’s Inside Xbox Conference #3. Fortnite’s Android installer is now a l...

Welcome to TWIG #56 everybody. This week we focus on live ops companies like DECA and now Rogue Games who will live operate Vainglory for Super Evil Megacorp. Today we have your usual hosts Joe Kim, Eric Kress, and Adam Telfer (Miska's out today). Joining us however is Ken Go CEO of DECA who will talk about DECA's business and the business of live ops specialists. The full news we discuss is as fo...

Welcome to TWIG #55 everybody.  This week we get a bit of a battle between Eric and Miska over Zynga growth prospects so stay tuned for that! This week we cover: #1. EA games are coming back to Steam #2. Mobile game firm Scopely raises $200 million #3. One Million players now subscribe to PlayStation Now #4. Zynga posts record-setting revenues, net bookings in Q3 Hit us up on Twitter with any...

Apple Arcade launched on September 19 earlier this year and has been praised by many in the media and significantly backed by Apple. Having said that: #1. What are the future prospects for this service?  #2. Who is the audience?  #3. What are key strengths/weaknesses of the service?   #4. Finally, how well do we think Apple Arcade will do in the long-term?   Find out in our discussion today with m...

Welcome to TWIG 54! This week we cover: #1. Ghost Recon Breakpoint’s spectacular bomb blows up Ubisoft’s plans for 2019 #2. Google is making a "spectrum of bets" on Stadia content #3. Fallout 76 Now Has a $100-a-year subscription service, Fallout 1st #4. Why have hyper-casual games replaced gacha in Japan? Hit us up on Twitter: @jokim1, @ekress, @adamwtelfer, @m_katkoff Let us know which news topi...

Welcome to TWIG 53. This week we cover: #1. Everything Riot announced for League of Legends’ 10th anniversary #2. The 4 Features that matter on PS5 - and 5 that don’t #3. Call of Duty is the biggest mobile game launch ever, with 100 million downloads #4. CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE POST-LAUNCH APPROACH TO NEW CONTENT We are joined by Paul Bellezza who actually works on Project A at Riot Games!&nb...

Riot Games got hit with a tsunami in the form of the infamous Kotaku article Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games . The article was followed by several people writing publicly about their own experience with the company that underlined the same story and signalled a clear message - Riot’s culture needed healing. The person who took the ownership for leading the healing process was Angela Ros...

Welcome to TWIG 52. 1 Year of TWIGS! This week we cover: #1. Fortnite US July revenues down 52% year-over-year #2. App revenue climbs 23% year-over-year to $21.9B in Q3 #3. Blizzard's President On Making Sure Nothing Changes #4. Playable Worlds has a different mindset on engagement Hit us up on Twitter: @jokim1, @ekress, @adamwtelfer, @m_katkoff Let us know which news topics you want us to talk ab...

Today we are joined by guest host Eric Seufert who writes the really great marketing & UA focused blog: https://mobiledevmemo.com/ Also check out Eric's F2P Marketing/UA site: https://quantmar.com/ This week we cover: #1. The future of mobile growth teams #2, Acquisition and conversion costs threaten a mobile bust | Opinion #3. Call of Duty: Mobile is live after a troubled launch #4. Transpare...

In this week's TWIG we are joined by Damian Kim who is Director, Head of Gaming China for Facebook. The topics we cover today include: #1. PUBG becomes first mobile battle royale to surpass $1bn revenue #2. Expectations are ‘sky high’ for Nintendo’s latest Mario mobile game, analyst says #3. Mario Kart Tour’s $4.99 monthly subscription fee is out of touch with reality #4. Call of Duty: Modern Warf...

Today we are joined by guest host Lloyd Melnick who is EVP Casino at VGW and writes the fantastic blog The Business of Social Games and Casino . This week we cover: Subscriptions: The new weapon in the game monetization arsenal Rockstar Games Is The Latest Company To Put Out Its Own PC Game Launcher Zynga Climbs on 'Best Idea in Video Games' Nod from Stephens Google says 'Play Pass' subscription s...

Today we’re going to be talking about a little bit of a sensitive topic which is what you as an employee can and should do to protect yourself against companies that are facing layoffs or some form of restructuring. Also, how should you deal with work situations that you may not be happy with and how and when should you best optimize leaving your company if you are unhappy. We all know the video g...

In this latest TWIG episode we discuss: #1. T HINKING ABOUT DAILY ACTIVE USERS (AND THE LIMITATIONS OF THIS METRIC) , from AlexandreMacmillan.com #2. A Learning Journey: Announcing EA’s Cloud Gaming Technical Trial , from Medium #3. How Zynga looks for the right game companies to acquire , from VentureBeat #4. Disney reportedly planning sale of gaming division FoxNext , from Gamesindustry.biz #5....