Tobi Lutke and Brian Armstrong re-popularized the notion of companies as described as "families" or "high performance sports teams." This impacts 1. employee performance expectations, 2. how to deal with discussions of social issues at the workplace, and 3. dissociating personal vs. professional lives.   

Let's have a nuanced discussion with a strong cross-section of key people from the games industry.  

Speakers:

- Eden Chen, CEO Pragma.gg: 

- Drew Levin, Lead PM Zynga 

- Chong Ahn, Head of PM EA 

- Ken Landen, Sr. PM Blizzard

Relevant Links 

- Initial Netflix Culture document (this seems to be the original popularization of the team-focus theme)

- Tobi Lutke: We are not a family

- Brian Armstrong: Mission focused company

Today we will be talking about the current state of Game Company Growth and the various growth strategies being deployed by different game companies.  

SPEAKERS:

- Joseph Kim, CEO, LILA Games

- Eric Kress, Principal, Gossamer Consulting

- Chris Petrovic, Chief Business Officer, FunPlus

LINKS:

- Four Growth Paradigms on GameMakers Newsletter Part 1

- Four Growth Paradigms on GameMakers Newsletter Part 2

Today we are going to be talking about game publishing, the strategy behind consolidated studio organizations, and the future of the industry.   

Our speakers include:

  - Alexis Bonte, Group COO, Stillfront

  - Nadir Khan, COO, Candywriter

  - Tobias Kringe, Founder and Managing Director, Bytro Labs

Our hosts include

  - Joseph Kim, CEO, LILA Games

  - Eric Kress, Principal, Gossamer Consulting

  - Chris Petrovic, Chief Business Officer, FunPlus

Speakers:

    - Joseph Kim. CEO, LILA Games 

   - Eric Kress. Principal, Gossamer

   - Chris Petrovic. CBO, FunPlus (former SVP & Head of Corporate Strategy, M&A and Business Development at Zynga) 

Content Overview:

Today we are going to be talking about the Solana Blockchain, the Metaverse, and how it all ties to games.

To speak to these issues we spoke to Michael Wagner, co-founder and CEO of Star Atlas, the company making a Metaverse game using the Solana blockchain.

SPEAKER:

- Michael Wagner, CEO Star Atlas

LINKS:

- Upcoming Star Atlas drops: http://play.staratlas.com/

- Star Atlas Social Links: Twitter | Telegram | Medium | Youtube | Instagram | Discord | Reddit | Facebook | Linkedin

- Joseph Kim, CEO LILA Games

- LILA Games: We're Hiring! Especially Systems & Economy Designer, Product Manager, and Level Designer!

- GameMakers YouTube Channel

As game companies become desperate for growth, what are the different strategies they will pursue?

Zynga, Applovin, Skillz, and Jam City represent 4 different growth paradigms in F2P gaming. This week I discuss their different approaches to growth and the potential risks these companies face.

LINKS:

   - Joseph Kim, CEO LILA Games

   - LILA Games: We're Hiring! Especially Systems & Economy Designer, Product Manager, and Level Designer!

   - GameMakers YouTube Channel

Epic Games recently announced MetaHuman Creator, a cloud streamed application that enables the creation, live captured animation, and potentially, in the future, fully AI capable life-like NPCs.  What are the implications of this new technology to games? In terms of cost, capabilities, and production value?  

SPEAKER: 

   - Arvind Neelakantan, Tech Evangelist at Epic Games: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arvind-ne... 

HOSTS:  

  - Joseph Kim, CEO at LILA Games: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jokim/ 

  - Avinash Pandey, CTO at LILA Games: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avinash-p...

LINKS:

#1. Sign up for the GameMakers Newsletter

#2. Check out the GameMakers YouTube Channel

Key advancements in data infrastructure tech are driving big new changes in game development studios' approach to liveops data.

CHECK OUT:

#1. This episode on YOUTUBE

#2. GameMakers Substack NEWSLETTER

Sign up for the newsletter everybody: https://gamemakers.substack.com/

JK talks about 5 big changes that will potentially cause huge structural shifts in the games industry all coming to a head in 2021:

#1. Post-COVID Renormalization

#2. Lack of M&A Targets for Growth

#3. Impact of IDFA Deprecation

#4. Game Studio + Ad-Tech Vertical Integration

#5. The Rise of China

RELATED LINKS:

- Game Biz #1: Chris Petrovic, Eric Kress, and I talk M&A in 2021

- Mobile Ad Revenue in 2021+: With Josh Chandley (Wild Card Games), Sofia Gilyazova (Social Point), and Offer Yehudai (Fyber)

- Modifying Payment Behavior in Games: Clash of Clans: Bigger, Better, Battle Pass by Eino Joas

We talk about game development methodologies and best practices with how to structure and execute game development.   

SPEAKERS:  

   - Chris Cobb, co-founder and CTO of Pragma Platform, who also formerly worked as an engineering lead at Riot Games, and held software development roles at both Popcap and Microsoft.  

   - Noemi Rouleau, Associate Producer at Square Enix Montreal. Noemi also worked in production at Ubisoft on games like RainbowSix Siege , For honor, and Assassin’s Creed Origins  

   - Xiang Shen, CTO at Century Games. Century is a multi-billion revenue Beijing-based games developer and publisher. Xiang also formerly founded mobile games studio Outact, and was formerly a technical director at Roblox, and worked in software engineering at Tencent, EA, and Ubisoft.    

TOPICS: 

0:00 Intro 

1:18 Team Structure 

9:00 Dev Team Roles 

20:40 Game Dev Phases 

36:18 Engineering Practices (CI, Code Review, Coding Standards) 

50:27 Dev Methodology 

1:03:18 Sprint Estimates  

1:14:10 Final Message