In this episode, I talk with Celia Hodent, game user experience expert and former Director of UX at Epic Games. We talk about adapting the game UX mindset, breaking down how players learn and retain information, and how players are motivated to return to the games that they are playing.

The a16z folks recently interviewed Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen in their Clubhouse room. Below is a link to the recording of that conversation.

I recently invited Ethan Levy from N3twork back on the show, to talk about an interesting concept called the “Tower of Want”. The concept of “Tower of Want” is something that Ethan created some six years ago, to help free-to-play game designers to create long-term goals, through understanding the short-term and long-term loops and player motivations that would drive a successful free-to-play game.

In this episode, I’m talking with Sebastiaan Heijne and Elmer Bulthuis, from game scaling solution company Gameye. Both Seb and Elmer are long-time entrepreneurs and in this episode, we chat about their experiences on learning so many things the hard way, building Gameye now together, and what the future could look like for their game server startup.

I recently watched a presentation where Corentin Delprat from Hutch talks about developing and launching their F1 manager mobile game. The presentation revealed lots of insights from working with an IP like F1 and how that can work when dealing with a big audience like F1 fans, how you manage expectations, and how you take full advantage of an IP like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNFoopDP8kI This week I hosted a webinar with Jesse Lempiäinen from GeekLab and we talked about how game developers can validate their game concept before they start to write any code. The topics that we covered included: What does a...

I recently a webinar with Erik Bryant from Opera Event and Steven Chard from Luna Labs, on the topic of mobile game ad creatives. Both companies are at the forefront of innovative mobile game ads, and I wanted to explore several topics on how game developers can utilize game creatives to win players over.

Photo by Teodor Savin on Pexels.com ​It's Joakim here. Greetings from Helsinki! I'm kicking off the project on my second book! The goal is to have it launched in twelve months, right around March 2022. I'll spend every Friday on the book and will probably...

In this episode, I have a chat with Susana Meza Graham, Co-Founder of ALDEON, an investment company from Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on games and tech start-ups in their early stages. Susana started her career in gaming when she joined Paradox Interactive and later taking on the roles of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer.

It’s Joakim here. Greetings from Helsinki!

I’m quite thrilled about the spring weather that we have in Helsinki; it’s freezing, but the sun is up high, and things are looking good. This week I’ve been working on many podcast episodes that will be coming your way during the spring. Some of these will actually air in June, as there are so many in the pipeline.

Sophie Vo, Studio & Game Lead at Voodoo Berlin, has created a free masterclass for game studios, to learn how to hire people for the studio’s culture. The Masterclass is called Hiring with a Vision and you can find it from here.

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It’s Joakim here. Greetings from Helsinki! This week we closed the third investment with my syndicate. Things are really picking up, and lots of great gaming studios are being funded.

I hosted a webinar with Erik Bryant from Opera Event and Steven Chard Luna Labs. Both companies are at the forefront of innovative mobile game ads, and I wanted to explore several topics on how game developers can utilize game creatives to win players over.

I’m often seeing developers soft-launching games and knowing that they need to hit Day-1 numbers above 40% to feel that they can proceed with a game. Often I’ve seen developers lack preparation for all sorts of scenarios that can come up during the soft launch.

In this episode, I have a chat with Hakan Ulvan, the co-founder and CEO of Bigger Games from Istanbul, Turkey. Hakan and his co-founders left Peak Games a few years ago to start working on their own game studio. In this episode, we talk about their approach to making games, how the Turkish gaming ecosystem has evolved over the years, and what will happen next.

A developer has just entered soft launch, and they are expecting their first numbers in a few days. They are first anticipating the Day-0 numbers, looking at first session engagement metrics like session length and session count.

The biggest joy in my work is to work with founders at any stage of their careers as entrepreneurs. The second big joy for me is writing EGD news, being as honest as possible. It’s time to promote some great newsletters that I subscribe to.

This is part 2 of my discussion with Javier Barnes, Product Manager at Tilting Point. Javier has an extensive career in gaming, having worked at Gameloft, Social Point, and others. With Javier, we decided to make this episode a discussion around the topic of game design in 2021, as it’s of big interest for both of us. We talk about playtesting, player motivations, user-oriented design, the model of small teams, and more.

Today I’m talking with Javier Barnes, Product Manager at Tilting Point. Javier has an extensive career in gaming, having worked at Gameloft, Social Point and others. With Javier, we decided to make this episode a more of a discussion, around the topic of game design in 2021, as it’s of big interest for both of us. We talk about playtesting, player motivations, user oriented design, the model of small teams, and more.