Deconstructor of Fun

This week, the crew does their first ever book club on Matthew Ball’s headline making book “ The Metaverse .” What is the Metaverse? Do we believe in it? Can Ball’s vision for the Metaverse ever be achieved and adopted in our lifetime? Or will the laws of nature prevent this Metaverse dream from ever becoming a reality. Your hosts Eric Kress , Eric Seufurt , Laura Taranto and Ethan Levy discuss. W...

Sean Ryan has a deep history in gaming, from his highly innovative involvement in Sega's early online plays to a decade long stint overseeing gaming partnerships at Facebook. But as this is Tokenomics, of course he's here because he's red pilled on Web3 gaming as the CEO of NFT Marketplace AQUA . In this episode, Ethan talks to Sean about his history in gaming, how Ethan is a verified Sega Boi, an...

The Two Erics and Laura discuss the end of cloud gaming with the shutdown of Stadia and an update on CD Projekts’ PR shenanigans. Eric Seufert discusses the new world order of user acquisition in mobile.

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...

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 unexpect...

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 Gab...

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...

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 an...

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...

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 t...

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 a...

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 co...

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 f...

Despite the goodbyes, as both Mishka and Adam exit TWiG, this episode is filled with laughter and good times. Or maybe it is because the two fellas from the North are taking a hike? hosts: Eric Kress, Ethan Levy, Laura Taranto, Eric Seufert

Right before heading out for our party at Gamescom, our very own Eric Kress sat down with Mishka Katkoff to talk about his long career in games, his biggest regrets, where his independency stems from, and why you can't really cancel him.  Show Eric some love by sending him a DM on Linkedin.

While Kress, Laura, and Mishka were hosting a banging party at Gamescom, Ethan and Seufert carried the TWiG torch. The guys discussed 4 -day work weeks, flexible hours, and culture building for early-stage start-ups. They also talked about Embracer rolling up Lord of the Ring and The Hobbit into their vast portfolio. And they made sure to cover Diablo 4 live service plans, which were detailed in t...

This one is a treat! This week our stalwart host Ethan Levy interviews Graeme Devine , a true game design legend. From his groundbreaking work on 7th Guest and 11th Hour to Doom 3, to Age of Empires III and Halo Wars, to Magic Leap, Graeme has found success across many different platforms. Now, as a co-founder of QXR Studios , Graeme has added another notch to his belt with WAX-powered blockchain...

The crew starts off by recapping Unity's rejection of AppLovin and why it went the way it did. Adam does an update on Supercell's games in soft launch now that Clash Quest became yet another could-be-hit in the company's soft launch graveyard. Finally, the guys debate what’s the right role of market research in early game development. Hosts: Laura Taranto, Adam Telfer, Eric Seufert

It may be unthinkable for the Deconstructor of Fun audience, but people are still finding success with premium mobile games in 2022. It all depends on your aspirations and what your goals are. In this episode, Ethan Levy interviews fledgling game designer Sophie Artemigi whose freshman debut, the sex-positive Hook Up The Game found chart-topping premium game success on the App Store thanks to clev...

Seufert is back from Europe and has a couple of words regarding last week’s analysis of the Hypercasual games' economy following Google’s ad changes. We’ll deep dive into AppLovin’s gangster move. JamCity’s massive layoffs and Roblox’s bookings miss. The gang also discusses why Blizzard and NetEase scrapped Warcraft Mobile and PlayStation Mobile’s hiring spree. hosts: Eric Seufert, Ethan Levy, Ada...

Art outsourcing can become a game changer or a hopeless money sink. To discuss how to outsource art in the smartest and most effective way, the Deconstructor of Fun podcast was joined by Silver Saaremäel , co-founder and Art Director of a boutique art outsourcing studio Fantastic Vagabonds (ex-Wooga & Crytek), and Kshiraj Telang , Art Director from Moon Active (ex-King and Rovio).

Special guest star, Matej Lancaric, a household name in the user acquisition circles and a podcaster extraordinaire (Two and a Half Gamers) joins the TWiG crew to give his view on Google’s latest Play Store policies and Apple’s new ad placements for advertisers. We also discuss whether Rockstar can get their culture less toxic and whether that will impact their super violent franchises. And we dis...

You know her from TV (That 70’s Show, Family Guy), Film (Book of Eli, Black Swan), and have probably even heard of her hit NFT collections ( Stone Cats , The Gimmicks ). But did you know that Hollywood star Mila Kunis is a closet World of Warcraft addict? And that her love of WoW has led directly to the creation of a brand new, Web3-powered gaming IP in the Armored Kingdom ? Along with her raid pa...

As you may guess from his dadtastic body, the host  Ethan Levy  is a big fan of Peloton’s bike and fitness platform. That’s why he literally jumped at the chance to speak with Jim Green of Peloton Interactive about the present and future of gamified fitness on the Peloton platform.  The two discuss Jim’s background in Facebook and mobile free-to-play, his transition to a Product rol...

Ethan Levy is back to talk about the crypto Winter giving us an update from his blockchain snow castle. In addition to the latest high-school basketball news, Eric Kress analyzes Snap’s shares plunge. Mishka Katkoff discusses the pros and cons of having a transparent salary structure in a gaming company. And we discuss Netflix Games once again after receiving some insights on what the future portf...