Deconstructor of Fun

New week, new guest host. This week, Director of Product Tiffany Keller gets behind the mic to talk about Omega Striker's cross-platform strategy. Laura talks about the "games for good" trend and if it can help Peridot or Longleaf Valley stand out from the pack. Kress explains why Superman is a terrible IP for gaming, and is bewildered by EA Mobile's seeming lack of support for t...

With their mysterious, high drama, high production value advertisements featuring soap opera worthy twists and turns, Metacore's creative game for Merge Mansion has always been top notch. But last March, the chart topping merge game made waves when it released a series of live action advertisements staring The Mandalorian himself, Pedro Pascal. How did Metacore land one of Hollywood's hott...

The crew is dropping heat with another action packed week of news. Guest host extraordinaire Jen Donahoe returns to the podcast to educate us on how to be a better ally in the wake of the Activision and Riot gender discrimination settlements. Phil breaks down the incredible admission of defeat on the part of Xbox's Phil Spencer as he, in Kress's words, says the quite part out loud. Laura d...

As every Twiggy knows, successful marketing tactics are the cornerstone of any top grossing free-to-play game. So Ethan was delighted to be joined this week by Brian Murphy , the Head of Gaming at Appsflyer, to discuss their recently released report on the state of game app marketing in 2023 . And he was especially delighted because, as you'll hear, Ethan is extremely lazy and does not have ti...

Hold on to your hats, Twiggies! This week and for the first time ever, we have a female host majority on TWIG! We welcome Jen Donahoe to the guest host hot seat to break down the pros and cons of working with Netflix as a publisher, with special insight into the brand and marketing aspects, and debate Laura on the best use cases for the Subway Surfers IP. Nintendo’s move to join Gamescom this year...

Get your spray paint ready, Twiggies, because this week Jayne Peressini returns to the guest host chair to break down Sybo's latest - Subway Surfer's Blast - alongside the reigning puzzle queen, Laura . Can you believe Laura commented on this game without first beating level 100, as is her custom? Spurred by the latest, dramatic twist in the Microsoft/Activision "will they, won't...

12 years ago, Andrei van Roon was working in transportation modeling and analysis in New Zealand. But ever since seeing a job posting on the Riot Games forums, he has been on a meteoric ascent through the ranks of the League of Legends maker. Beginning as a Champion Designer, Andrei has worked his way up to his current post as a SVP and Head of the League Studio. In this wide ranger interview, Eth...

Sega buying Rovio for $775mm is just the tip of the iceberg in a jam packed episode. Phil explains how CoD's latest kerfluffle breaks the social contract with its players. Kress pull out the classic "two drunks holding each other up" catchphrase to describe the Rovio acquisition. Ethan implores you to remember Phantasy Star Online 2, and declares that Monster Hunter Go will be a sure...

This week Ethan is gushing with fanboy love for a hometown hero of his, Alex Seropian , founder of Bungie. Few people can claim the same amazing entrepreneurial accomplishments as Alex, having founded and "exited" three different game companies (Bungie, Wideload, Industrial Toys) to three very different, public, Fortune 500 companies (Microsoft, Disney, EA). But after some deep history o...

Greetings, Twiggies! The crew is back to discuss all the latest and greatest in games industry news. Hot on the heels of the big Scopely acquisition, Laura gives us a deep look at all of Saudi Arabia's recent moves into the games industry. Phil talks Super Mario Bros. box office domination, Kress compliments New Zoo, and as always, Ethan is here for the quips. We also talk the impending LoTR g...

Kress gives his quick take on Savvy's $4.9B acquisition of Scopely.  He reviews the pros and cons on this first major acquisition by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This week, one of the Erics says goodbye to TWiG, but which one? In the news, Kress mourns the end of E3 and regales us with a story of when PS4 was announced; Laura is already at the end of content of Dream Games’s new title Royal Kingdom and discusses their new social approach; an Economist article on “moviemaking and gamemaking are converging” triggers Phillip and Eric. Until next week, Twiggie...

Joining Ethan in conversation this week is long time games industry executive Chris Heatherly to discuss Chris's recent essay on LinkedIn about the death of the games-as-app era and the ascent of games-as-service. Chris argues that, fueled by "metaverse" hobbies such as Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft, we are entering an era of reduced content creation cost where the next land rush in...

Eric, Ethan, Laura and Phil are back from GDC and are eager to share all that they learned during the week long celebration of all things game development. They talk the biggest news of the show, including Unreal Engine for Fortnite + Creator Economy 2.0, the surprise announcement of Counterstrike 2, CCP's massive raise for a AAA Web3 game and more. And most surprisingly, vests! Kress hates ve...

The crew is back from Istanbul and what an event! Eric and Laura give Ethan and Phil major fomo about all the amazing people and sessions they missed at the gaming event of the year ! We preview all the amazing Deconstructor of Fun content coming next week to GDC then get into the news. We talk about the further democratization of the Epic Games Store, Redemption Games' spin out of AppLovin', the...

Kress sits down with Moritz Baier-Lentz to talk about if fundamentals matter in VC investing and whether we will return to the speculative investments that were made during the mania of the past few years.  And asked what exactly is investable in the gaming space for early stage investors?

Most of the team (and the audience) is off at the Istanbul Gaming Summit , leaving Ethan and Phil to hold down the fort. Today is LiveOps, LiveOps, LiveOps. We talk about the Apex Legends Mobile shutdown and the incredibly difficult challenge of feeding a live service content treadmill. We talk Knockout City's shutdown and the incredibly difficult challenge of profitably running a cosmetics forwar...

The crew discusses Neil Long's App Store exposé in The Guardian, Rovio pulling the classic Angry Birds from distribution, Playtika suspending new game development, Street Fighter: Duel's launch and the explosive success of Hogwarts Legacy. Join Laura , Eric , Eric and Ethan and help us settle which Eric is the grumpy one. 

Mr. Kress sits down with an executive coach and an investor Niklas Herriger to chat about what it takes for Founders, CEOs, and CTOs to grow their companies from 5 to 100 people. 
 Niklas Herriger is a former founder, whose company Gondola.io, was acquired by Tilting Point in 2019.  LINKS:  http://niklasherriger.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklasherriger/

The crew assembles to cover all the latest and greatest games industry news, including the latest annual letter from Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, Blizzard's return-to-office policy, the PSVR2 launch and more. Also, we've got a couple of exciting events coming up: Istanbul Gaming Summit on Thursday, March 9th: https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/istanbul Xsolla Game Night at GDC on Tuesday, March 2...

We got a spicy episode for you. Someone is either getting fired or assassinated as a result of this week's episode.

This week, Eric Kress updates us on the latest on Microsoft’s acquisition and Playtika’s bear hug of Rovio as well as a summary of earnings. Eric Seufert talks (rants?) about Alex Shea’s PCG talk on Hypercasual’s demise. Phillip discusses Knockout City’s sunsetting and joins Laura in covering Supercell’s beta game, Squad Busters. Türkiye was hit with magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes. Our thoughts...

It's a newspacked and unfortunately negative news cycle this week for the games industry. This week opens (as always) with a non apology apology from Kress . Laura talks about the let down of the promising looking Forspoken. Phil reads Supercell's offloading of Everdale to Metacore as a bad portent and Ethan defends the strategy. We lament the death of E3, the death of Apex Mobile, the death of Ba...

Before he took the entrepreneurial leap to found Phoenix Labs , CEO Jesse Houston had an enviable collection of gamedev experiences across Ubisoft (Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six), BioWare (Mass Effect) and Riot (League of Legends). With such a depth of experience, the success of breakout hit Dauntless feels almost inevitable. In this week's spotlight interview, Jesse sits down with Ethan to talk abou...

In a week chock full of games industry news, we've got a full house as Ethan returns from paternity leave and new face Phillip Black makes his second appearance on the pod. We discuss Playtika's unsolicited offer to acquire Rovio and how we expect they'll respond. We discuss the many gaming SPACs of 2021 and 2022 and learn that Ethan bought into many of them and why they've been so disastrous for...