Deconstructor of Fun

Welcome to TWIG 74! This week we cover: #1. Coronavirus impact on mobile games Even Virtual Goods From China Are Taking a Hit From Coronavirus (Bloomberg) Corona's impact on mobile ad spend (LI Post by Andre Kempe, who runs an app marketing agency) Coronavirus contributes to mobile game downloads climbing 39% (Business of Apps) #2. China approves 27 games including Brawl Stars #3. The exclusive as...

In this episode I'm joined by Joakim Achren, seasoned Finnish games entrepreneur, turned online coach and mentor for aspiring games entrepreneurs and business folks.  You can find the content he provides at (www.elitegamedevelopers.com). The content that EGD offers includes: The podcast where Joakim talks to founders, investors and other people who work closely with gaming startups. Here, hav...

Welcome to TWIG 73! This week we cover: #1. Former Glu CEO Niccolo De Masi is on the prowl for mobile app acquisitions #2. iOS games in China to require a Publishing License - Why now, and what is the impact? #3. How will Valorant’s cosmetics and microtransactions work? #4. MZ's: Crystalborne Game Launch Links for this episode: Tim Sweeney's Tweets supporting NVIDIA's GeForce NOW Super Evil Megaco...

Stillfront Group has been on a tear acquiring a number of marquee game studios. With the acquisition of Storm8, they have now grown their global gaming network to 13 total studios. Even further, the Swedish publicly listed company's stock has almost tripled in the past year.   Stillfront acquired Storm8 for $300M on January 21, 2020.   Who is Stillfront?  What is their overall strat...

Welcome to TWIG 72! This week we cover: #1. GDC 2020 has been canceled #2. State of Word Games: Rising Revenue, Emerging Markets #3. EPIC Questions SuperData on Fortnite Figures #4. Roblox raises $150M Series G, led by Andreessen Horowitz, now valued at $4B Hit us up on Twitter or Insta with any feedback or suggestions for news to cover. You can reach us at: @jokim1 @ekress @adamwtelfer @m_katkoff

Welcome to TWIG 71! This week we cover: #1. Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 2 is live: Everything you need to know #2. What the Facebook View-Through Attribution changes #3. Bethesda follows Activision in pulling games from Nvidia’s GeForce Now #4. Call of Duty to launch free ‘Warzone’ battle royale Hit us up on Twitter or Insta with any feedback or suggestions for news to cover. You can reach us at: @j...

Welcome to TWIG 70! This week we cover: #1. Unity Technologies Targeting 2020 IPO: Sources #2. MY TAKE ON SUPERCELL IN 2019 AS WE ENTER OUR SECOND DECADE #3. Tim Sweeney at DICE #4. Rovio profits tumble as Hatch continues draining resources Hit us up on Twitter or Insta with any feedback or suggestions for news to cover. You can reach us at: @jokim1 @ekress @adamwtelfer @m_katkoff LINKS: IronSourc...

The #1 mobile game development platform is getting a huge upgrade.  Find out about the 3 HUGE changes that Unity will be introducing that are all potential game changers.  In particular, we cover:  #1. The DOTS Architecture  #2. Scriptable Rendering Pipeline  #3. Multiplayer Netcode   What are the key implications all mobile PMs and executives need to know? Will these...

How should video games and video game developers address kids safety?   Today we speak to Laura Higgens the Head of Digital Civility at Roblox to discuss how Roblox deals with kids safety.   In particular, we will focus on issues such as:   #1. Current legal environment and requirements for game makers? #2. Policies for kids safety - what are options or alternatives?  #3. How t...

Welcome to our new mobile gaming markets series. In this series, we will talk to experts about different countries and geographies in the world.  We will get an overview of the specific market - Japan in this case - and key games, publishers, and platforms for the market.  Further we'll talk about the specifics of each market and what it takes to be successful. Hosts: Joseph Kim, @jokim1...

Welcome to TWIG 69! This week we cover: #1. Elodie Games raises $5 million for crossplay co-op games #2. P hil Spencer: "We see Amazon and Google as the main competitors" #3. Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser leaving the company #4. Ubisoft’s Uplay revenue is up 73% compared to last year #5. Call of Duty Players Spend More In-Game After Season Pass and Loot Boxes Removed Hit us up on Twitter or...

Welcome to TWIG 68! We've got the full crew today coming at you with a bunch of exciting news. Specifically: #1. ByteDance Takes Aim at Tencent's Core Gaming Business #2. Sensor Tower: Nintendo mobile games have earned $1 billion #3. Sea’s Garena acquires Dauntless game maker Phoenix Labs #4. EA Made Almost $1 Billion From Microtransactions Last Quarter #5. Ubisoft Acquires Mobile Game Studio Koli...

AppAnnie released their State of Mobile 2020 Report . In this podcast, we speak to AppAnnie to go over key takeaways from the report especially for mobile game developers. In particular: #1. High level overview of the main health of the mobile economy and or the mobile gaming sector #2. Key trends related to usage and monetization of mobile games and geo/country   #3. A look at some of the to...

Welcome to TWIG 67 everybody! Well the FoxNext transaction finally completed. As we've speculated on quite a bit with lots of different names and scenarios well we found out what finally happened in the end. In addition, the very interesting Stillfront Group acquired Storm8. And of course Funcom. Catch up on our thoughts and analysis on the latest M&A news from this past week now! This week we...

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...