Daniel Huebner

A new breed of micro-indie publisher focused on sub $200K budget games is emerging. Low dev cost regions, shipping products fast, and building a repeatable machine for discovery in the attention war. When I asked Kirill Akimkin how PC games get discovered, he said, "It's half short-form content and the other half is from friends. But from friends means someone shared the video with them. So short form is the cheat code." Their strategy is working so far. Totally Secure Airport sits at 260K wishlists and counting, and got 75K wishlists in one day due to a single viral video. Final Sentence is sitting at 290K, and Deadhikers is at 130K as of this past weekend. Polden Publishing's portfolio to date includes: Fish Hunters, Football Story, Bus Flipper Simulator, Train Valley Origins, and the hotly anticipated titles of Meowgik and the titles mentioned above. In 2025, they shipped 7 games, and in 2026, they have aspirations to ship 20. 🔊We Discuss: - Where do Polden's developers come from, and are there challenges in speed and quality when trying to push so many games out the gate? - What does the relationship between the publisher and developer look like, and from the pipeline perspective, what is Polden looking for when it comes to game pitches? - The uncanny emphasis on user testing. If the game doesn't hit the scores across median play time on Steam or surveys, it gets cut. - Recipes for discovery, both outside of Steam and playing to their strengths on the Steam algorithm. - Why they'd made choices on delaying games and lessons learned on games that did not meet their expectations. ‼️And then we chat about all the existential stuff. - What happens if Steam changes the algorithm? - Do Steam Next Fests even matter? - In low-budget titles like this, do players still care about AI usage? - What is changing about the tastes of the modern gamer? - Where do we think discovery truly occurs right now? 🖥️ If you are shipping a game on Steam, this is a definite must-listen. Listen to Naavik's channels on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube below in the comments. #gaming #indie #discovery

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Thank you to Steve Ruddock for having me on the Straight to the Point podcast. Steve's daily newsletter is a must-read and his podcast goes deeper on issues that matter. This one was worth the time. Responsible gaming is a business advantage and operators who treat it that way are building something more durable. At Underdog, that belief shapes how we approach player protection and what we back through GuardDog, our responsible gaming innovation fund. A big part of our conversation focused on national self-exclusion. The current system is fragmented by state. That's a design flaw. Underdog is working with idPair and other operators to build a shared, cross-operator self-exclusion network that follows the player everywhere. This collaboration doesn't come naturally in a competitive industry. It requires operators to agree that some things matter more than short-term gains and I'm proud other RG leaders like Phil Sherwood are at the table too. The episode covers a lot of ground. Link in comments.

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Here's ChatGPT's assessment of Jason Robins' tenure as Draftkings CEO. It's based on three criteria ChatGPT itself suggested for assessing CEO performance. The initial assessment was somehwat better because it was per chatGPT "...largely narrative-driven and surface-level". After some back and forth the following is the outcome. I should say that this is mainly about my irritation with the fact that after twenty years this industry keeps putting leaders on pedestals who - in various ways - run the industry into the ground. So it's more about the the pundits than Robins. Defend your opposing views people. ------------------------------- CEO Performance Assessment: Jason Robins, DraftKings 1. Sustainable Value Creation (TSR, Profitability, Capital Efficiency) | Grade: C- Over Robins’ five-year tenure as a public CEO, DraftKings’ share price has declined materially from its 2021 highs, and four of the last five years have produced negative annual returns. While the business finally reached positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow in 2024, that milestone arrived after years of dilution and losses. For most investors, total shareholder return (TSR) since 2021 remains deeply negative, and return on invested capital (ROIC) is still below the cost of capital. The company has grown revenue roughly 8× since going public, but value creation has lagged because those gains were purchased with equity dilution, inflated marketing spend, and expensive acquisitions. Put simply, DraftKings has grown its top line, not its intrinsic value. 2. Strategic Execution & Innovation | Grade: C (was A-) Robins’ strategic playbook has emphasized scale and product breadth — sports betting, iGaming, and digital lottery — but most of this expansion has been bought, not built. The SBTech, Golden Nugget Online Gaming, and Jackpocket acquisitions together represent billions in equity issuance with limited measurable return to date. Integration costs have been high, synergies uncertain, and none of these assets have yet delivered meaningful incremental profitability. What the market has called “execution improvement” is really spending less badly, not executing brilliantly. DraftKings has indeed become more disciplined — lower CAC, improved unit economics, more rational marketing — but that’s a correction to past excess, not evidence of strategic excellence. The current trajectory shows a company learning how to be efficient, not how to be exceptional. 3. Organizational Health & Culture | Grade: B+ This is Robins’ strongest dimension. Employee engagement scores are high, and DraftKings has earned “Great Place to Work” certification. The company attracts strong technical talent and has maintained morale despite industry volatility. However, organizational culture doesn’t compensate for weak capital discipline. Healthy culture is valuable, but investors ultimately measure performance in return on capital, not employee sentiment.

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So many friends at SLICE, GamesBeat Engage, and PAX West are busy making plans for new businesses. To those starting a new game studio or publisher but struggling with funding? Here's a roadmap to help you! Game financing doesn't have to be a mystery. Whether you're an indie studio or established publisher, understanding your options is crucial: 💰 Key Funding Sources: • Publishers and Partners - Risk sharing + marketing power • Government grants and tax programs - Often overlooked goldmine • Crowdfunding platforms - Build community early and get proof points • Angel investors - Industry expertise included • Revenue-based financing - Keep your equity, private market money can help 💀 But Be Mindful Of: • Venture Capital - scaling and growth requirements are very high • Captive Capital Sources - They invest, but you can only use their platform • First-Time Investors - may want so much ongoing contact, it burns you out • Unfair Terms - where you make no money while investors reap the rewards • IP Licenses - may help discovery but curtail long term growth and sequels 🎯 Pro Tips: ✅ Know your avatar customer with data proofs ✅ Perfect your pitch by knowing what you will build ✅ Show market validation early with community involvement ✅ Build with clear development process mentality ✅ Showcase your monetization strategy early The gaming industry is projected to hit $600.7B by 2030 with a CAGR of 12.1%* - and capital raises are *growing* for the first time in several years. There's also never been so many studios and publishers looking for funding. *You have to stand out!* What's been your biggest challenge in securing developer or publisher funding? -- Meetings? Decks? Financial Projections? I'd love to hear about your experience below! 👇 *Grand View Research, 2025: https://lnkd.in/gSsFKjd4 #GameDevelopment #VideoGames #Startup #Funding #Indie #Publishers #GameBiz #Entrepreneur #VC #Financing #CFO #Advisory #Haldar

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One of Capcom’s most durable competitive advantages isn’t tech, engines, or even genre leadership. It’s characters. Specifically, their ability to create memorable, emotionally legible, mass-appeal characters that carry franchises across decades, hardware generations, and wildly different market conditions. Resident Evil is the best example of this. At its core, Resident Evil isn’t just survival horror. It’s character-driven storytelling disguised as genre fiction. Leon, Jill, Chris, Claire, Ada. These aren’t just avatars moving through spooky spaces. They’re anchors. You don’t follow the series because you’re desperate to learn the next Umbrella plot beat. You follow it because you want to see who survives, how they change, and who comes back. The stories are often simple by design, and that simplicity is a feature, not a flaw. It clears space for characters to breathe, to be remembered, to become iconic. That same philosophy shows up everywhere Capcom succeeds. Their characters are built to be instantly readable, emotionally distinct, and broadly appealing. Strong silhouettes. Clear personalities. Defining traits you can recognize in seconds. They’re designed to stick in your head and stay there. That’s why characters routinely outgrow their original games and become symbols of the brand itself. Even when a series goes quiet, the characters don’t. Fans keep talking about them. Asking for them back. Wanting to see what they’re doing now. This is where Capcom consistently outperforms peers. Many companies chase deeper lore, denser plots, or more elaborate worldbuilding. Capcom understands that attachment comes first, and players bond to characters before they bond to universes. When the characters work, everything else can be lighter. When the characters last, the franchise lasts. That bond translates directly into commercial power. Characters drive return purchases, remakes, DLC interest, and cross-media relevance. They create loyalty that survives genre shifts and design reinventions. You can reboot gameplay, modernize presentation, even reframe tone, and players will follow as long as they are attached to the characters. Capcom made people care about the people inside the horror. That’s the real advantage.

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Treyarch confirmed what every M&K player already knew: controller players win slightly more close-range fights in the Black Ops 7 beta. Their fix? Nerf rotational aim assist so it only kicks in when the right stick is moving toward the target. That's not a fix. That's admitting the old system was aiming for you. Rotational aim assist doesn't just slow your crosshair near an enemy. It physically rotates your aim to track a moving target - even when your thumbstick isn't pointing at them. Your opponent strafes left, your crosshair follows. No input required. No reaction time needed. A human M&K player reacts in 250-350ms. Rotational aim assist activates instantly when a target enters range. It's not bridging a gap. It's replacing a skill. And studios keep pretending these two inputs belong in the same lobby. ↳ Controller players dominate close-range because software tracks for them - not because they're better ↳ M&K players dominate long-range because precision rewards skill - not because they have an advantage ↳ Balancing weapons across both inputs is statistically impossible when one side has algorithmic assistance and the other doesn't ↳ Nerfing a gun that "overperforms" on controller doesn't fix the aim assist - it punishes M&K players who used the same gun with raw input The real problem nobody wants to say out loud: Mouse & Keyboard and Controller are not playing the same game. They haven't been for years. One is a raw input device. The other is a raw input device with a software layer doing part of the aiming. Behavioral telemetry would make this visible: ↳ Aim trajectory patterns between M&K and controller should look nothing alike - one shows human micro-corrections, the other shows algorithmic smoothing ↳ Reaction time distributions would split into two populations that shouldn't exist in the same lobby ↳ Engagement distance data could reveal whether controller players consistently take fights they mechanically shouldn't win ❌ Balancing mixed-input lobbies by nerfing weapons ✅ Admitting M&K and Controller produce fundamentally different mechanical data - and matchmaking accordingly Treyarch took a step by nerfing rotational assist. But nerfing aim assist is a band-aid on a design philosophy problem. As long as two input methods produce mechanically incompatible data, balancing them in the same lobby is guesswork. Does rotational aim assist need a massive nerf - or do M&K players just need to adapt? Let the war begin below. ♻️ Repost if you've ever died to a 0ms rotation ➕ Follow Art K. for more on Player Observability

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What if competitive gaming rewarded skill the way real sports do? Right now, most games fall into one of two categories: Player vs Player (PvP) - where players compete for ranking or progression. Chance-based systems - where outcomes are largely determined by probability. Both models work. But each has limitations. PvP rewards skill, yet most matches carry little meaning beyond rank points. Chance-based systems create excitement, but the outcome is often driven by luck rather than ability. So I started thinking about a different approach. What if competitive games were designed around a simple idea: Players should win because they are better, not because they are lucky. That idea led me to define a new competitive gaming framework: PvPG - Player vs Player Gaming. In PvPG systems: • Players compete directly against another live player • Matches reward skill, strategy, and execution • Pay-to-win advantages are removed • Competitive matches can include prize-based outcomes The goal is simple: pure competition on equal footing. Two players enter. They compete head-to-head. The better player wins. I believe this model could open the door to a new category of competitive gaming, one focused on skill-based prize matches rather than luck-based outcomes. I’ve written a deeper breakdown explaining how PvPG works and why it could reshape competitive gaming. If you’re curious, you can read the full article here: PvPG introduction Check it out here https://lnkd.in/g3NeVbbc I’d love to hear what others in the gaming space think about this.

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Some thoughts on the RMG debacle, from someone who spent 8+ years in it. I’ve spent over eight years in real money gaming, across both early stage startups and a unicorn, alongside some of the sharpest people I’ve known, which is why this week has felt like a real low blow. An industry built within the rules of the system, taxed, regulated, and openly celebrated, has been decimated overnight. For those still in the workforce, it feels like absolute betrayal. I understand the concerns of addiction, reckless spending, people losing fortunes. I’ve seen this firsthand during my tenure, and I know the problem isn’t imagined. But is this the solution? Installing stronger guardrails in the form of deposit limits, tighter enforcement, responsible marketing was always the answer. Not killing an entire industry just because fixing it required more work. And if the principle is protecting society from harm, where is that line drawn? Reckless & irresponsible indulgence in tobacco, alcohol, and day trading have all done far greater damage over time, and yet remain legal, regulated, and taxed. So why single this one out? The part that stings most is this — the industry was allowed to grow for nearly two decades, contributed thousands of crores in taxes, was repeatedly scrutinised, and even brought under a new GST regime, only to be shut down without a warning or a transition plan. If industries can be scaled, taxed, and then discarded at will, what message does that send? What’s also hard to ignore is the sudden wave of approval from people who had little to say until now. This is not the moment to cheer from the sidelines while thousands face imminent job losses & uncertainty. I can’t think of a single A-list Bollywood actor or cricketer who hasn’t endorsed an RMG brand over the past few years, not to mention the thousands of crores poured into advertising across every major OTT platform. If this was always about morality, where were you then? Capitalism has one north star metric—profits. And within a legal system, if you build something that finds users and makes money, it’s considered fair game. That’s what this industry did. Nothing more, nothing less. PLUS, what's getting lost in all the noise is the human cost. In the past few days, I’ve spoken to people who’ve given years to this space—founders, operators, product managers, analysts, marketers—all building with honest intent, solving real problems, doing their best within the rules of the system they were a part of. They’re all hardworking professionals who showed up every day and built something brick by brick, only to be completely blindsided by what’s now transpired. It’s been a year since I stepped away from RMG, but it remains a meaningful part of my journey. I may no longer be in it, but I still feel this moment deeply. If you’ve been impacted, directly or otherwise, and need someone to talk to, or share notes with, I’m around. Let’s not make a hard moment harder.

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I'll probably never provide consistent thought leadership type posts on this platform, but I do want to post a bit more on player agency and allowing folks to play games the way they want. I've spent a ton of time thinking about this the last few weeks about how we've deviated from this in most of the games the industry makes these days, especially since modding is rarely supported by the studio and Game Genie/Game Shark doesn't really exist in the same way. I'd love to see someone do a study on it (Bastian Bergmann if you have time...) but I think that's the primary reason why Terraria/Minecraft/Skyrim/Roblox/Sims all have such long shelf lives compared to others. It's about giving gamers freedom.

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Strong take — and I agree that 2025 is the year Roblox clearly crossed the line from “internal platform success” to industry-level competition for attention. One nuance I’d add is that we’re now past the point where most publishers can realistically compete with Roblox head-on. The more productive lens is to consider Roblox as part of the ecosystem — increasingly as an awareness, discovery, and early-engagement platform rather than just another competitor for spend. From an industry perspective, the real tension is around economics. Roblox is capturing a meaningful share of global playtime, but that playtime still monetizes at much lower ARPU levels than premium or mature live-service titles. Even if total engagement grows, this shift puts structural pressure on industry-wide ARPU. I also think Roblox is forcing a reframing of categories. It’s no longer just “a game” or even a UGC platform — it sits somewhere between a platform, a distribution layer, and a de facto entry point to gaming for younger audiences, blurring boundaries we’ve historically taken for granted. And on the snobbery point: this feels very familiar. We saw the same resistance during the rise of mobile gaming. Roblox arguably shares more DNA with mobile than with traditional HD gaming — different economics, UX, and expectations — but that never stopped mobile from reshaping the industry.

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Most gaming venue owners know how many PCs they have. Almost none of them know which ones are actually making money. This is the conversation I have constantly. An operator comes to us running 40 stations. They "feel" like the weekends are busy and weekday mornings are slow. But when we connect SENET and pull the first real report — the data tells a completely different story. Station 12 through 18? Barely touched. Ever. Friday evenings? Packed until 2 AM — but nobody offered a late-night package. Top game by session time? Not CS2. Not Valorant. Something nobody expected. Without data, you're running a business on vibes. SENET gives operators real-time analytics on revenue, user activity, peak hours, popular games, and hardware load. You see exactly what's working — and what's silently costing you money. The venues that grow with us don't grow because they got lucky. They grow because they stopped guessing. What's one assumption about your business that data proved completely wrong? 👇 #GamingBusiness #EsportsVenue #SENET #Analytics #CyberCafe #BusinessGrowth #NASEF

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"But the phenomenon of game industry hype cycles is actually serious business." There's so much wisdom and common sense in this post from Owen Mahoney, formerly head of Nexon, I'd have assumed it had to be coming from someone outside the games industry. This is probably one of the best industry-related posts I've read in years. Especially now, it's important for people with experience and a platform to speak out against the ridiculous way in which meaningless trends get irresponsibly hyped up for shameless profit, eventually coming at the painful expense of players and developers. https://lnkd.in/grgaq-Gf

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Community Request: Analysis to Tease Out Year-over-Year Steam CCU Trends 🎮 What this is For a while now, folks have asked if I could break down Steam data to normalize the huge volume of annual new game releases and identify trends in breakout performance. The question: "Out of the 1,000… 5,000… now 20,000+ new games released each year on Steam, how many actually go big? And is that number increasing?" 📊 What I did • Pulled every game released on Steam by year (excluding 2025 since it's in progress). • For each year, I measured how many new titles hit specific peak CCU thresholds. • Then I calculated: 1. The number of new games by year that hit each threshold 2. The percentage of all games released that year that hit each threshold 3. The normalized rate, i.e., how many games per 10,000 releases hit those marks 📈 Key thresholds analyzed 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, 50,000, and 100,000 peak CCU 📌 A few interesting takeaways • Only 683 of the 20,584 new games released on Steam in 2024 even hit 100 peak CCU • Just 52 hit 10,000, only 16 hit 50,000, and a mere 7 reached 100,000 • In 2024, only: - 1% hit 1,000 peak CCU - 0.25% hit 10,000 - 0.03% hit 100,000 → In other words, only 0–3 out of every 10,000 new games hit 100,000 peak CCU in most years • Two of the middle years (2012–2013) are interesting outliers: only ~400 new games released each year and CS:GO and Dota 2 dominated 📊 The last 3 years (2022-2024) are very consistent in terms of % of new games hitting different peak CCU marks • ~3% of new games hit 100 peak CCU • ~1.5% hit 500 • ~1% hit 1,000 • ~0.4% hit 5,000 • ~0.25% hit 10,000 • ~0.075% hit 50,000 • ~0.03% hit 100,000 🧠 Bottom line Don’t stress too much about how many new games are released on Steam. In most years for new titles: • Only 500-600 even hit 100 peak CCU • Only 200–300 hit 500–1,000 peak CCU • Only ~50 hit 10,000 • And just ~5-7 hit 100,000 📝 One last note You might think there are more high-CCU titles, than what I am sharing here, based on the Steam Charts. You're right, but this analysis is only for new games by year of release. Games with ongoing success are only counted once, in the year they launched. Hope you enjoy digging into the data!

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What a phenomenal RDC 2025!🔥 This year’s Roblox Developers Conference (held Sept 5–6 in San Jose) was packed with major announcements, and I couldn’t be more excited by the direction the platform is heading: • Roblox Moments: A built-in short-form video feed for capturing highlights and instantly sharing them across the platform, think a TikTok-style discovery tool tailor-made for Roblox. • Creator earnings boost: DevEx rates increased by 8.5%, putting more cash back into creators’ pockets. • Huge growth metrics: Over $1 billion paid out to creators in the past year, with daily active users climbing toward 112 million. • Emerging tech & safety upgrades: From acoustic simulation and hydrodynamic enhancements to emissive mapping, CSG on meshes, and server authority for anti-cheat measures • Infrastructure & community support: A new data center in São Paulo is now live, improving latency for Brazilian users, and the platform is reinforcing its commitment to safety with over 100 updates and better age-based moderation. This year, Lootbloc turned up with some unforgettable moments: • Partner Dinner: We hosted a special dinner for our 60+ partners, an opportunity to connect, eat great food, and relax after a long RDC weekend. • Claw Machine: We partnered with the Roblox Commerce team to have our Lootbloc-branded claw machine featured at their booth, where attendees could win merch • Luau Plushie Launch: We unveiled an exclusive Luau whale plushie with Roblox, themed after the Luau logo that attendees could earn by completing a scavenger hunt at the Luau booth • Co-hosting Quataun party Friday night at RDC where we gave away thousands of plushies, shirts, hats and more to fellow developers. Lootbloc is only continuing to grow by bringing on new partners this year like Piggy, Pls Donate, Murderers vs. Sheriff Duels, Twin Atlas and more! Bottom line: RDC 2025 wasn’t just about big tech announcements, it was a celebration of community and all of the successes this past year. I’m so excited by the possibilities ahead, and inspired by how platforms like Roblox and partners like Lootbloc continue to grow together. Here’s to next year, bigger, bolder, and even more connected.

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I have an opinion that has been brewing in my head for the last year. It's very relevant for mentors and advisor that run gaming incubators and conferences in the PC/Console content space but also just relevant info to game industry founders overall. This opinion is based on my unique experience of being an equity investor going out to multiple events, pitch competitions and taking so many meetings with studios and founders in the last couple of years. There's a challenge in the gaming industry, specifically for equity investors. There's a lot of great looking games being pitched and a lot of passionate founders. However it is actually very rare to see pitches that focus on how they are going to make a lot of money and create value in their company that will attract exit potential. What is their path to 10x and an exit? Is there an aggressive and strong long term strategy for this based on insight, experience or data? Do the founders feel like founders that are aiming to make strong money in this industry, for example through finding a market opportunity, creating quality or gathering strong experience together in a team? A lot of teams want money from investors, but a lot of them also just don’t think about what value they are planning to give back to that investor. It’s sometimes just another pool of money. The value for an equity investor is in the multiplication of money, usually through an exit, created through a long term plan of team, portfolio and IP building. It’s not the next game and revenue from that, that is the realm of publishing/project funding. It more often than not feels like the topic of money and creating money for the founders and investors is a secondary thought. Often I just get pitched a game. Nothing about long term plans. I feel like I have to ask the question about long term plans in around 90% of PC/Console content pitches I see and quite often I get blank stares. (The percentage is way better for mobile and tools/infrastructure I can add where the environment is very different). And I feel something is broken here. A lot of these teams and founders have come from incubators, pitch trainings, mentors, advisors or schools where I feel they should have learned this. But they have not and that is a broken path in my view. So my post here is quite pointed towards advisors, mentors, incubators, schools etc training PC/Console content teams specifically: If the teams want equity investors they need to be trained in what that means. It means showing that they will be aggressive in making money and have concrete plans to do so. I am a bit fatigued of being the one that tells them that and having to ask the question in most of my meetings. Getting to that stage in a meeting very rarely leads to an investment. I myself try to be on panels at conferences and will create a presentation on the topic to drive this point home. But I need help here in educating game teams on this please 🙂

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RPG, ARPG, Lite-ARPG. When does the label stop helping? Three letters. Potentially the most abused three letters in game marketing. Walk any Steam storefront and you'll notice that half the catalogue claims RPG somewhere in its description. The term has been stretched so far that it now covers everything from Baldur's Gate 3 (174 hours of branching D&D narrative) to a mobile tap-fest with a level-up animation. Same label. Completely different contract. 𝗦𝗼, 𝗹𝗲𝘁'𝘀 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗶𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻. 𝗥𝗣𝗚: 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥. Menus, dialogue trees, stat sheets. 𝗔𝗥𝗣𝗚: 𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘨𝘦𝘢𝘳, 𝘩𝘪𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴. Diablo defined this in 1997 and it has only been iterated since then. 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝗲-𝗔𝗥𝗣𝗚: the loot loop, streamlined. Hades makes it work brilliantly. Most mobile titles just borrow the credibility. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺. 74% of players rely on genre labels when choosing a game. Which means when you stamp "RPG" on something, you're activating years of player imprinting, the memories of their first RPG, their expectations of depth, progression, meaningful choice. If your game doesn't deliver on even one of those axes, you haven't just disappointed them, you have broken a contract. Last week I argued that audience clarity is a design decision. Genre labels are where that decision goes public. Cozy, strategy, bad game, they are all contracts with your audience. RPG is no different, except that the expectations are deeper, and harder to manage because the label covers so much ground. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀: What is the actual mechanic you're asking the player to repeat? Is it 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳? Then RPG earns its place. Is it 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭, 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘵, 𝘶𝘱𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦, 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘵? ARPG it is then. Is it 𝘲𝘶����𝘤𝘬 𝘳𝘶𝘯, 𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘵? Say roguelite. Pretty please, just don't say RPG and hope nobody notices. The Souls-like label is instructive here. FromSoftware never claimed it. The community built it and this is precisely because it describes something specific enough to set accurate expectations. "RPG" has lost that specificity, it has become what "cozy" was before anyone interrogated it: a comfort word, applied broadly hence meaning almost nothing anymore. Bummer! The studios getting this right lead with the 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘺, not the genre. They sell the feeling first, then let the label confirm it, it doesn't have to carry the whole weight. #GameDesign #GameDev #GamingIndustry #ProductStrategy #IndieGames

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One thing I learned quickly after moving into the US sweepstakes casino space: Traffic volume means nothing without compliance. In traditional iGaming, you can sometimes scale first and clean up later. In sweepstakes...it’s the opposite. A few early lessons from working with affiliates: • Clean creatives > aggressive promises • Fewer partners, but aligned long-term • Compliance issues kill brands faster than low traffic • “Quick wins” often turn into chargebacks & account blocks The biggest shift for me has been thinking long-term brand survival, not just short-term FTDs. Curious to hear from others in sweeps ... what was your biggest adjustment?

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5 companies did $3.4B. Whole industry (269,762 games) did $14.1B That's mobile gaming in Q1 2026 👇 $14.1B in IAP revenue. One quarter. Here's who captured it: ➡️ Top Publishers (IAP Revenue) - Tencent: $1.6B - Century Games: $650M - Dream Games: $425M - Playrix: $388M - FUNFLY: $382M Top 5 publishers = $3.44B, that's 24% of the entire market. Tencent alone captures more than 1 in 10 dollars spent on mobile gaming globally. ➡️ Top Games (IAP Revenue) - Honor of Kings: $471M - Last War: Survival: $381M - PUBG Mobile: $353M - Whiteout Survival: $326M - Royal Match: $312M Top 5 games = $1.84B, that's 13% of the entire market. ➡️ Top Games (Downloads) - Block Blast!: 77M - Free Fire: 66M - Roblox: 58M - Pizza Ready!: 43M - Subway Surfers: 42M 💡 The download chart and the revenue chart almost overlap. Breaking into downloads is hard, but breaking into revenue is a different game entirely. Data by AppMagic 🪄

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