Player Driven

Episode description (full): A trade group that speaks for nearly every major game publisher told California lawmakers that running a private or community server is piracy. The catch: you can download a Minecraft server from Minecraft's own website, for free. So what did the ESA actually mean? We brought back Jonathan Yarbor, co-founder of game-server host Nodecraft, to cut through the outrage...

Web games went from the thing you played to kill time in study hall to a platform pulling 100 million monthly active users. So why are so many developers still thinking about it like it's 2008? In this episode, Greg sits down with Stein, COO of Poki, the world's largest web gaming platform, to dig into the 2026 State of Web Gaming Report. Poki went from 10 million to 100 million players...

The system that decides whether you have a good night in multiplayer almost never gets explained by the people who actually build it. Today it does. Call of Duty just walked back the biggest matchmaking change in its history. Activision recently published internal white papers explaining parts of how their system actually works, which is rare for an industry that usually treats this stuff as propr...

Zach Letter spent over a decade as a full-time YouTube creator with billions of views before he saw Roblox and recognized the exact platform mechanics he had already mastered: a title, a thumbnail, and an algorithm to beat. He founded Wonder Works Studio in 2019, rode early success into a scale-up from six people to ninety, burned roughly $600K a month drifting into work-for-hire, then cut the stu...

Lewis Ward spent sixteen years covering games as an analyst at IDC. Now he runs Design Desk at Player Driven, and his obsession has moved upstream, into the design layer where games are still just ideas. In this episode he and Greg get into the part of game-making most teams skip: the psychology underneath the code, the math underneath the fun, and the reason a strong blueprint so often falls apar...

Bungie's total mindshare has collapsed 86% since 2019, Destiny is winding down to a final mission, and Marathon is on life support. Greg Posner and Colan Neese (SVP Gaming, ASI Screen Engine) work through what happens when a studio forgets who its audience actually is, then pivot to Activision's surprise Modern Warfare 4 announcement, Bond's launch curve under the GTA 6 shadow, why...

Matt Ball just joined Xbox, and Colan is calling his shot: a free, ad-supported Xbox tier is coming, and people are massively underestimating what free does to an ecosystem. Greg thinks it's a trap that splits the audience and pushes core gamers to PlayStation. They go ten rounds on it. Then the conversation shifts. Google IO basically announced the end of the open web. AI is now answering th...

Guest: Tess Lynch, Founding Attorney, Clause and Affect When Crimson Desert announced "no AI in our game," the internet applauded. But does anyone agree on what that actually means? Tess Lynch — gaming and IP attorney, founder of Clause and Affect, and one of the more practical legal voices covering this space — joined Greg to untangle what studios are really promising when they make tha...

What happens inside a studio when a game explodes past every projection on launch day? Jeremy Fielding, Community Manager and Narrative Coordinator at Stunlock Studios, was there when V Rising hit 150,000 concurrent Steam players — and he walked us through all of it: the chaos, the 60-hour weeks, the improvised official servers, and the feedback systems they built on the fly. Joined by Steve McLeo...

Episode Description (the version that goes in podcast players) New York City has tripled gaming industry jobs since 2008. The average wage is now 14% above the citywide average. Over half of NYC's game studios are indie teams of five or fewer. And almost nobody outside the city knows it. In this episode of Player Driven, Greg Posner sits down with Alia Jones-Harvey, Associate Commissioner of...

What does it really take for a two-person indie team to turn an after-hours idea into a real shipped game? In this episode of Player Driven, Greg sits down with Max Mraz of Moth Atlas to talk about the long road behind Tombwater, a handcrafted horror western action game built over four years while balancing full-time jobs. What started as a small experiment quickly became something much bigger, fo...

For years, mobile gaming operated under one unspoken rule: give up ~30% of your revenue to platform holders like Apple and Google. That model is starting to break. In this episode of Player Driven, Greg sits down with Gil Tov-ly, CMO of Appcharge, to unpack one of the biggest structural shifts happening in gaming right now: the move toward direct-to-consumer (DTC). Gil brings a unique perspective,...

Player Driven Live — April 9, 2026 The Q2 release window wars, Nintendo's dual-platform strategy, and whether the gaming industry actually understands its own audience. Hosted by Greg Posner & Colan Neese | ~57 min 🎬 THE MARIO MOVIE (00:00) The Mario Movie: A Kids' Film That Actually Works (And Why Critics Miss the Point) Greg and Colan return from spring break having both seen The...

This week’s episode takes a different angle. What started as a conversation about Epic, Disney, and the state of the market quickly turned into something bigger… a discussion about systems. From live service games to theme parks to parenting, the same core question shows up everywhere: What behaviors are your systems actually driving? We break down:  Why Fortnite’s evolution is less about content...

This week, we’re bringing back one of the most interesting conversations we’ve had on Player Driven. Andrew Wagner didn’t learn economics in a classroom first. He learned it inside a game. Before managing investment portfolios, Andrew was running a guild in an MMO, experimenting with supply, demand, reputation, and player behavior in real time. What started as “just playing the game” turned into a...

Guests:   Karin Johnson: Co-founder of Magic Potion Games (Veteran of Club Penguin and Fortnite ) Hege Tokerud: CEO/Founder of Aiba (Cybersecurity and AI moderation specialist)  Episode Summary In this strategic primer for GDC 2026, we sit down with industry veterans to discuss why community is no longer just a marketing checklist—it’s the new competitive advantage. From the "social-first&quo...

Episode Overview In this episode, Greg sits down with Renee Gittins — studio founder of Stumbling Cat, former IGDA Executive Director, ex-General Manager of Phoenix Labs Vancouver, Forbes 30 Under 30 for Games, Reddit legend, and now a debut author. Renee unpacks her wildly non-linear path into the games industry, the lessons she learned shipping her indie game Potions: A Curious Tale , and her ha...

Episode Summary: While the team is away at GDC in San Francisco, we’re bringing you a deep-dive encore of one of our most provocative conversations. Greg and Colan sit down to dissect the mounting pressure from the U.S. government on Tencent to divest its massive stakes in Riot Games, Supercell, and Epic Games. We explore the reality of data privacy in the modern age, the "cultural war"...

In this episode of Player Driven, host Greg welcomes back industry veteran Sharon Fisher to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of content moderation. From her early days building moderation at Club Penguin to her current work with AI-driven platforms like Checkstep, Sharon shares her unique perspective as both a trust and safety expert and a concerned parent. Key Discussion Points The Evolutio...

Episode Summary Why do we play the video games that we play? Is interest in the strategy game genre truly waning globally over time? Greg and Lewis sit down with gaming psychology pioneer and Quantic Foundry co-founder Nick Yee to answer these and many other questions. From dissecting the Proteus effect to comparing and contrasting the psychological motivations that drive GTA Online, Fortnite, and...

Episode Summary How do you break into the games industry later in your career? And once you’re in, how do you build a meaningful life and community without burning out? In this episode, Greg is joined by Amir Satvat, a Business Development leader at Tencent and the winner of the "Game Changers" award. Amir is one of the industry's most important connectors, having built a community...

On this episode of Player Driven, Lewis and Greg are joined by Joost Vervoort, Associate Professor at Utrecht University (in the Netherlands) and Science/Impact Director at Speculative Agency. We dive into the "imagination factory" of the games industry and explore how video games can move beyond simple escapism to become tools for systemic societal change and climate activism. 🎙️ Episod...

Recorded live at Pocket Gamer London , Greg sits down with Hill from Checkstep for a wide ranging conversation on trust and safety, AI powered content detection, parenting in a gaming household, and why moderation is no longer just about removing harm. Hill shares her journey from data analyst to GTM leader in trust and safety, how Checkstep is building on top of the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem...

In this episode, Greg and Colan break down the surprising success of Hytale after its departure from Riot Games, the strategic restructuring at Ubisoft, and the evolving multi-platform future of Xbox. Colan provides a deep-dive "dissertation" on the three eras of Riot Games publishing and explains why the studio may be "trapped by its own success". Key Discussion Points 1. The...

Episode Summary Is the gaming industry entering a "negative flywheel"? This week, we dive into the staggering reports of Black Ops 6 underperforming and what it means for the future of Microsoft Gaming and potential layoffs. We also tackle Jeff Bezos’ controversial take on the death of the PC and why "anti-appliance" gaming is the future—even if latency remains our biggest enem...