Naavik Gaming Podcast

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on November 8th. In this week’s issue, we look at Hasbro, focusing on the way the company is shifting its corporate playbook to rely heavily on Magic: The Gathering crossovers while adopting a less risky, partner-driven strategy for video game development.

You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/hasbros-new-playbook-more-magic-fewer-big-bets 

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Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

AI and cloud technology are continuing to reshape not just how games are built, but what studios can afford to create and operate. Host Devin Becker is joined by Mihai Pohontu, CEO of Amber, and Andrei Muratov, Principal BD for Games at AWS, to discuss where AI is already proving useful across game development, from tooling, content pipelines, and LiveOps analytics to real-time experiences and cloud deployment. They explore why studios remain cautious about shipping AI-generated content, how teams are managing inference costs, when open models and smaller language models make sense, and what Amber learned from building Courtroom Chaos around AI as a core mechanic. The conversation also examines more practical uses beyond freeform NPC chat, the role of cloud in faster testing and distribution, and the growing impact of cloning and reverse engineering.

Big thanks to Heroic Labs for making this episode possible. Highway Racer Pro hit #1 in the US with zero paid marketing. When launch day traffic surged past forecast, Heroic Labs' engineers handled the troubleshooting, allowing Spektra's small team to focus on the racing their game deserves, not worrying if the backend can hold. Learn more: https://heroiclabs.com/blog/spektra-case-study/?_gl=1*1oqlcgu*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTcwODM4MzQ5My4xNzg1MjMwMzY5*_ga_R9WLGSZ1KN*czE3ODUyMzAzNjgkbzEkZzAkdDE3ODUyMzAzNjgkajYwJGwwJGgw  

If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].

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Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on November 27th. In this week’s issue, we're diving into the recent race toward prompt-based AI platforms, from Astrocade and Roblox Build to Google Playground.

You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/prompt-to-game-is-here-which-platforms 

Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ 

Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected].

Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel

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Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

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Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

For years, AI in gaming has promised smarter NPCs, cheaper content creation, and more dynamic worlds. Yet few of these promises have translated into commercially viable player experiences. Our host, Alexandra Takei, VP at Medal & General Intuition, sits down with Brian Tanner, co-founder and CEO of Artificial Agency and former DeepMind leader, to explore the emergence of agentic gameplay and the company's approach to building intelligent, autonomous virtual players.

The conversation examines how foundation models are expanding the capabilities of traditional game AI, enabling characters to understand player intent, improvise, and collaborate in ways previously impossible. We explore Artificial Agency's upcoming integration with Owlchemy Labs' Dimensional Double Shift, where three AI teammates replace human players in a cooperative VR experience. Brian also unpacks the economics of agentic gameplay, including how Artificial Agency reduced inference costs to single-digit cents per player hour, alongside the challenges of latency, QA, model ownership, and commercial deployment. Finally, we discuss developer skepticism toward AI, the importance of preserving designer control, and whether intelligent virtual players could fundamentally reshape multiplayer gaming.

We’d also like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv.

If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].

Watch the episode: YouTube Channel

For more episodes and details: Podcast Website

Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

Three years after raising a $31.3M Series A off a prototype shown behind closed doors at GDC, Gardens Interactive still hasn’t announced a release date. Investors just put in another $35M+ anyway. In this episode, Kalie Moore welcomes back Stephen Bell and Chris Bell, two of Gardens’ three co-founders and the team behind Journey, Sky, What Remains of Edith Finch and Blaseball, following a Series B led by Lightspeed that values the studio at $190M and brings total funding past $70M before launch. They explain what took three years, including a late switch from Unity to Unreal, how Chris handed the CEO role to Stephen to focus fully on the game, and what Gardens actually is now that it can speak for itself: an online survival roleplaying “strandbox” where players cross paths with strangers, build relationships, and reshape the world together. Stephen pushes back on the friendslop label and the idea that jank is a weakness, and Chris shares how a single image in an inspiration folder led to a cold DM to Ma-ko, the artist whose work now defines the game’s look.

The conversation also gets into the money. Stephen explains why the round leaned on traditional VCs rather than gaming funds, what separates Gardens from the wave of veteran-led studios that raised big in the zero interest rate era without breaking out, and why the reported “one year of runway after release” doesn’t tell the full story. He’s candid that this isn’t a funding recovery so much as a concentration, and why he thinks games are now underfunded rather than overfunded. They also cover how Lightspeed sees human connection as a bet that gets more valuable as AI spreads, why their proprietary tech blends procedural generation with hand-authored content, how they measure success in playtests by the stories and relationships players report, and how they’re approaching monetization with former Valve economist Mike Ambinder, starting with one firm rule: Gardens will never be pay to win.

We’d also like to thank Tebex for making this episode possible! With funding tight, the question isn’t just how big a game can get but how long a studio can run, and that starts with knowing what each sale actually returns. Tebex’s free Hidden Fees Calculator compares your provider’s headline rate with your true effective rate, including FX, payment method and chargeback costs, and shows the annual difference. Check it out here and learn more about Tebex at https://www.tebex.io/.

If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].

Who’s On:

Guests

• Stephen Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbellgardens/
• Chris Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gardenschris/

Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/ 

Watch the episode: YouTube Channel

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Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

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Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

Links mentioned:

• https://gardens.dev/
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-07/video-game-designer-behind-sky-journey-raises-35-million
• https://gardens.firstlook.gg/signup/closedalphamk1

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on October 18th. In this week’s issue, we look into Meta, exploring the company’s shift away from gaming-focused VR hardware towards AI and AR glasses, and its resurgent mobile advertising engine.

You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/metas-role-in-gaming-today-muse-vr-ua

Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ 

Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected].

Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel

For more episodes and details: Podcast Website

Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

Most studios have teams, funding, and a publisher behind them. Abe Train has a laptop and a handful of contractors. In this episode, Kalie Moore sits down with Abe, founder of Trainwreck Labs, to unpack how a former head of business intelligence at HelloFresh became one of the most successful independent developers in daily browser games. Abe quit his job on the last day of 2021 with about six months of runway, and a month later Wordle took over the internet. He built Globle, a daily geography guessing game, posted it to one Reddit community, and watched it climb to over a million players a day at its peak. They get into why that post worked when the identical one in a bigger subreddit got zero traction, why most Wordle clones vanished while Globle stuck, and why the best creator marketing he’s ever had came from people he never spoke to, including a Thai TikToker playing an English word game and a biology teacher who plays Metazooa on camera every day.

The conversation also covers how Abe has built a catalog of daily educational games as the only full-time employee. He explains why a small, obsessive audience is more valuable than a big casual one, why players always ask for games to get easier but never harder, and what he learned moderating taxonomy debates in his Discord. On monetization, he shares why he almost refused to run ads, how he ended up running them on his own terms through Nitro, why players barely noticed when he did, and the rule he brought from HelloFresh about the complaints you never hear.. He also walks through how he barely writes code anymore, why there’s no AI-generated art in any of his games, what he learned shutting down his newsletter, and his plans for native apps, real-world events, and the Trainwreck Club subscription he gives to teachers for free.

This episode is brought to you by Appcharge, the payments platform built specifically for mobile gaming that processes over a billion dollars annually. Learn more here: https://www.appcharge.com/?utm_source=naavik&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=sponsorship_payments

We’d also like to thank Dive for making this episode possible! With its fully managed analytics and LiveOps platform built for game studios, 95% of their clients grow revenue in one year. All of that without having to hire an in-house data team. Learn more here: https://www.dive.games/ 

If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].

Who’s On:

Guest - Abe Train: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abe-train-81418714b/

Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/ 

Watch the episode: YouTube Channel

For more episodes and details: Podcast Website

Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

Links mentioned: https://trainwrecklabs.com/

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on October 11th. In this week’s issue, we check in on CD Projekt, looking at the company’s current state, ongoing projects, and how the company has shifted its way of working to drive a more successful future.

You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/cd-projekts-best-days-may-be-ahead 

Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ 

Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected].

Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel

For more episodes and details: Podcast Website

Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

As cheating becomes more sophisticated, anti-cheat is increasingly shifting from detecting software to understanding player behavior. Host Devin Becker is joined by André Pimenta Ribeiro, CEO & Co-Founder of Anybrain, to discuss how behavioral anti-cheat analyzes player inputs, where it fits alongside traditional tools, and why some approaches avoid software access entirely. The conversation explores the business impact of cheating on retention and revenue, when studios should begin investing in prevention, and how even smaller teams can approach the problem. André also breaks down the growing cheat-as-a-service economy, the challenge posed by AI and hardware-assisted cheats, the risks of false positives for legitimate players, and how behavioral data could expand beyond cheating detection over the next several years.

We’d like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv.

If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].

Watch the episode: YouTube Channel

For more episodes and details: Podcast Website

Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

This episode covers Naavik’s AI x Gaming newsletter published on September 29th. In this week’s issue, we take a broader look at the entertainment landscape to map out what recent announcements from Disney, Hasbro, and miHoYo could mean for the future of gaming fandom.

You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/from-disney-to-mihoyo-the-road-toward 

Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ 

Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected].

Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel

For more episodes and details: Podcast Website

Free newsletter: Naavik Digest

Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website

Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.