Apr 30, 2025
Mitch and Blake address the unpleasant topic of how and why venture-backed games companies fail.
They look first at the nature of venture financing and the inherent differences between venture and publisher money. This leads to a conversation about how developers who were used to working with publishers treated venture...
Apr 23, 2025
Mitch and Blake look at the current state of the vitally important Chinese gaming market, on the precipice of a bitter trade war resulting from the Trump tariffs.
They review the history of the games business in China, discuss the reasons China is so competitive in the global gaming market, and look at how some of the...
Apr 16, 2025
Mitch and Blake take an in-depth look at one of the most important companies in the global gaming business: Valve. They trace the company's origin as the developer of first-person shooter Half Life, their use of the Quake engine and the benefits Valve derived from their relationship with id, and their development and...
Apr 9, 2025
Mitch and Blake discuss the mobile duopoly in which Apple and Google exert extraordinary power by tying their app stores to hardware and software platforms. They warn that the inflexible and expensive distribution systems on iOS and Android could be models for future PC and console distribution systems.
They briefly...
Apr 2, 2025
Mitch and Blake kick off Season 3 of the podcast with a high-level look at the current moment in the video game business, critiquing both the idea that the business is cyclical and we are in a downward phase of the cycle (and the naïve notion of "survive 'till '25"), as well as the idea that the business has...