A deep dive into the evolving landscape of video game publishing, offering invaluable insights for indie developers on how to thrive in a crowded market. This episode of the Player Driven Podcast features an in-depth conversation with Ben Kvalo, founder of Midwest Games, and Alex Joseph, CEO of the revived Acclaim.

From the importance of a well-crafted pitch to the nuances of monetization and discoverability, this fireside chat covers the essential strategies for developers looking to partner with a publisher. Ben and Alex share their unique perspectives on the current state of the gaming industry, the resurgence of AA titles, and the future of interactive entertainment.

The conversation delves into the operational realities of running a publishing house, the art of negotiation, and the critical factors that can make or break a game in today's competitive environment. Ben and Alex also touch on the significance of their respective companies, Midwest Games and the new Acclaim, in fostering the next generation of games and developers.

This episode provides a rare look behind the curtain of the gaming industry, offering practical advice and strategic insights for anyone passionate about the business of video games.

This episode of the Player Driven Podcast brings together two titans of the new era of game publishing: Ben Kvalo of Midwest Games and Alex Joseph of the revitalized Play Acclaim. In a candid conversation, they explore the challenges and opportunities facing indie developers today. From securing funding to navigating the treacherous waters of discoverability, this episode is a masterclass for anyone looking to make their mark in the gaming world.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The Rebirth of an Era: How Midwest Games and the new Acclaim are channeling the spirit of classic gaming into the modern age.
• The Publisher's Perspective: What Ben and Alex are currently playing and what excites them about the future of gaming.
• Monetization & The AA Revival: A nuanced discussion on game pricing, in-game purchases, and the resurgence of the "buy-to-play" model.
• The UGC Revolution: Is user-generated content a golden opportunity or a distraction for developers?
• The Discoverability Dilemma: Strategies for standing out in a market flooded with new releases and the potential of web-based games.
• The Art of the Pitch: What developers need to know before approaching a publisher, from crafting a compelling pitch to understanding the business side of their creative endeavor.
• Building a Lasting Partnership: The importance of relationships, trust, and finding the right publisher for your game.
• A Day in the Life: What it's really like to be the CEO of a game publishing company.
• Conference Survival Guide: Tips for developers on how to make the most of industry events like Gamescom and MDEV.

In this episode of Player Driven, Greg talks with Joe Pace, VP at ASICS Ventures, about the company’s surprising leap into virtual reality with DISC, a brand-new competitive sport built for Meta Quest. They explore what it means to build community before code, how fitness and gaming are converging, and what studios can learn from a 70-year-old brand embracing LiveOps. If you're thinking about building something new — or building it differently — this episode is for you.

Timestamps:

• 02:00 – Why ASICS is getting into gaming (and why now)
• 06:00 – The DISC origin story: air hockey meets VR
• 16:30 – Why they launched on Discord before they launched the game
• 21:00 – Surprising lessons from the VR community
• 38:00 – What’s next: arcade mode, cosmetics, and social scaling

Guest Bio:Joe Pace is the VP at ASICS Ventures, where he leads new product strategy across emerging digital platforms. Previously at Runkeeper, LL Bean, and Legendary Entertainment, Joe’s work spans fitness, technology, and innovation. LinkedIn

Key Topics:

• VR game development
• Community-first strategy
• Meta Quest platform
• Fitness and gamification
• LiveOps in non-traditional gaming studios
• Social dynamics in VR
• ASICS’s innovation model
• Building new sports for virtual platforms

Relevant Links:

• disc.asics.com

Credits:Hosted by Greg Posner, founder of Player Driven — a podcast about the business of games and how smart people scale them.

Episode Summary:
Mark Otero (CEO of Azra Games, creator of Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes) joins Player Driven to break down the real reason most games fail — they ignore what players actually want. In this raw, philosophical, and brutally honest conversation, Mark introduces the Hierarchy of Fun — a 5-layer model for building long-lasting emotional engagement in games.

From escaping poverty through fantasy as a child in South Korea, to scaling a yogurt shop to fund his first game studio, to building billion-dollar RPGs at EA, Mark’s story is a masterclass in design thinking, human behavior, and creative conviction. He also shares why AI will either multiply your creativity or expose your culture — and how his new title Ungodly aims to reset the bar for 4th-gen RPGs.

This episode is for game devs, LiveOps leaders, publishing execs, and anyone asking: Why do some games stick... and others don’t?

1. The Hierarchy of Fun
Mark breaks down his 5-layer framework for sustainable game engagement:

• First impression
• Core loop
• Progression
• Meta mastery
• Emotional connection
  Each layer must make the player feel something — and if you flip it, it becomes your funnel for long-term retention.

2. Design for Primal Desires, Not Personas
Mark argues that all player motivation maps back to love, power, or wealth. Most games try to broaden appeal and end up designing for no one. Pick one fantasy — and serve it ruthlessly.

3. 4th-Gen RPGs and the 9-Second Rule
With mobile phones now as powerful as last-gen consoles, we’ve entered a new generation of RPGs. Ungodly is designed to immerse players in 9 seconds, not 9 minutes — a 60x improvement over the old model.

01:00 — Mark’s origin story: poverty, fantasy, and Dungeons & Dragons as a lifeline
14:00 — The Hierarchy of Fun: a new model for player experience
31:00 — Why most games fail when they abandon their core fantasy
44:00 — What makes a 4th-gen RPG, and how Ungodly is redefining immersion
58:00 — AI, culture, and the edge small studios have (if they move fast)

• game design philosophy
• hierarchy of fun
• player motivation design
• RPG design frameworks
• mobile RPG engagement
• Azra Games Ungodly
• retention in game design
• AI in game development
• game publishing strategy
• Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes insights

Mark Otero
CEO & Founder of Azra Games. Former GM at EA Capital Games, creator of Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Veteran in collectible RPGs and systems design.
🔗 Azra Games
🔗 Mark on LinkedIn

Episode Summary:
Christina Camilleri leads trust and safety product strategy at Netflix Games — but her journey started as a shy kid finding refuge in online worlds. In this deeply human conversation, Christina shares how her love for hacking, community, and chaos turned into a mission to build safer systems in gaming. We talk about safety by design, the monetization myth, building meaningful controls, and why your systems are only as strong as the people behind them.

If you care about retention, LiveOps, or what makes a game feel safe (but still intense), this episode is for you.

Timestamps:
00:03:00 — Christina’s hacker origin story and gaming as escape
00:12:00 — Why safety in games is getting harder (and why it matters more)
00:19:00 — League of Legends, low-trust users, and the culture of competitive games
00:33:00 — Safety is a retention strategy: what the data actually says
00:45:00 — Feedback loops, reputation systems, and when reports fail players

Guest Bio:
Christina Camilleri leads trust and safety product strategy at Netflix Games. She’s a former ethical hacker and security engineer, with experience spanning BAE Systems, Riot Games, and now Netflix. Christina is passionate about building safe, inclusive player experiences — and believes good design can create both tension and trust.
🔗 LinkedIn

Key Topics:

• Safety by design in game development
• Player behavior and trust systems
• Reputation scoring and false reporting
• Game moderation tooling
• Accessibility through player control
• Real-time safety vs. reactive systems
• Why toxic behavior kills retention
• Community-led systems that scale

Credits Line:
Hosted by Greg Posner, founder of Player Driven — a podcast about the business of games and how smart people scale them.

What can a former QA tester at EA, a punk-rock producer at Midway, and the exec who helped launch No Man’s Sky teach us about today’s game industry?

In this episode, Adam Boyes (founder of Vivrato and longtime industry vet) joins Greg to talk about why handcrafted games still matter, how studios can ask for help before it’s too late, and what happens when we actually listen to the people who’ve shipped the games we love.

– From Floppy Disks to LiveOps:
How QA used to be “log bugs by hand and pray,” and what that taught Adam about modern workflows and AI.

– Midway Was Punk Rock:
Inside stories from Blitz, Slugfest, and the golden era of arcade innovation — where game feel was religion.

– The No Man’s Sky Redemption Arc:
What went wrong, what went right, and why Hello Games stuck the landing where others didn’t.

– The Quiet Crisis in Game Dev:
Discoverability. Burnout. Studios not knowing when to ask for help. Why Vivrato was built to change that.

– Why Every Studio Needs a “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” Moment
Real talk on vision, identity, and how to build games that last longer than the launch window.

• [00:00] Intro and 90s QA stories
• [05:00] AI tools vs. handcrafted game design
• [10:30] Midway memories: Blitz, Jam, and chaos
• [17:00] Game feel and the obsession with precision
• [24:00] Nostalgia meets the digital era at Capcom
• [33:00] Vivrato: Helping studios find their path
• [40:00] No Man’s Sky and the power of second chances
• [47:00] What we’re playing now + retro game pain
• [51:00] Why the future of gaming is built on collaboration

🎙️ Listen now on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube
🌐 More episodes and insights at playerdriven.io
📩 Want to share your story? Reach out to Greg on LinkedIn or Twitter

Adam Boyes interview Vivrato consulting Midway game design game studio struggles No Man’s Sky story game feel arcade era game discoverability

Guest: Andrew Wagner, Author of Economics of Online Gaming and Founder of Wagner Road Capital
CoHost: Lewis Ward, Research Director @ IDC

🎙 Episode Summary
What happens when a high schooler treats an MMORPG like a business case study? Andrew Wagner joins Player Driven to share how his time playing Eternal Lands turned into a crash course in economics, strategy, and systems thinking. From building a ruthless guild to influencing the game’s developer roadmap, Andrew didn’t just play — he disrupted.

We talk about market incentives, reputation management, and the blurry line between capitalism and corruption, both in games and in the real world. If you’re building economies, managing communities, or just love a good player-driven story, this one’s for you.

🧠 Highlights with Timestamps

2:34 — Learning economics through RuneScape-style gameplay
Andrew shares how Eternal Lands introduced him to core economic principles like supply and demand, specialization, and market incentives — all before he took a single college class.

7:59 — Embracing the villain role to change the game
Instead of rebuilding his guild’s reputation, Andrew leaned into their “bad guy” image, creating a strategy that ignored perception and focused purely on market disruption.

14:16 — How gaming shaped his real-world investment career
From managing a guild to managing portfolios, Andrew explains how the lessons from in-game economies now guide how he evaluates companies and competition in the financial world.

30:10 — Building an in-game advisory board of real experts
With rocket engineers and bankers in his guild, Andrew leveraged real-world insights to refine his strategy — proving that the best guilds function like startups.

49:50 — When players capture the dev team
Andrew recounts how a former guild member joined the dev team and created a secret mine just for them, triggering a real example of regulatory capture inside the game.

• Check out Andrews Book: https://www.amazon.com/Economics-Online-Gaming-Introduction-Economic-ebook/dp/B084Z77PSW
• Andrews Website: https://www.wagnerroadcm.com/
• Andrews Substack: https://wagnerroadcm.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/atwagner/

🎧 CTA
If you’ve ever seen the real world reflected in your favorite game, this episode will stick with you. Subscribe to Player Driven and share your favorite lesson learned from gaming.

What if you only had one digital life across all games... would you still cheat?
In this episode, we dig into the world of online cheating, digital accountability, and the business of fair play with Andrew Wailes from PlaySafe ID.

What started as a casual gaming session with friends led to a bold idea  one that could reshape how studios deal with cheaters and protect their communities.

The cheating economy is real
Some cheat developers make more money than the games they’re exploiting. We explore the underground networks fueling this industry and why traditional bans aren’t working.

One identity to rule them all
Andrew introduces PlaySafe ID, a system that gives each player a single anonymized identifier across games. It keeps players accountable without exposing their personal info.

Game economies, broken by bots
Cheaters ruin more than just competitive play. They crash in-game markets, devalue rewards, and destroy core gameplay loops. We talk through the impact on long-term retention.

Reddit as the proving ground
A low-budget Reddit campaign helped Andrew validate the idea and attract thousands of pre-registrations before a single studio integration went live.

From kitchens to code
Andrew’s path to gaming wasn’t straight. He went from Michelin-starred pastry chef to founder of a gaming trust and safety platform. He shares the lessons that transferred from fine dining to startup life.

• Cheating doesn’t just hurt games, it destroys trust and drives players away
• Accountability doesn’t have to mean giving up privacy
• Studios want to fight back, but they’re outmatched by organized cheating rings
• Solving this problem could unlock stronger communities and more sustainable games

• Developers, LiveOps leads, and support teams dealing with bad actors
• VCs and founders looking at trust and safety as the next big frontier
• Players who are sick of losing to cheaters and wondering if anything will change
• Anyone interested in how tech, ethics, and community all collide in online games

This one hits hard. Fair play matters more than ever. Listen now and be part of the change.
🎧 Available wherever you get your podcasts

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we're joined by Alex Seropian, a true legend in the gaming industry and the co-founder of Bungie, the studio behind Halo. Alex is now the founder of Look North World, a company focused on creating experiences within the Fortnite ecosystem using Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).  Alex discusses the evolution of the gaming industry, from the era of physical game distribution to today's platform-driven economy.  He shares his insights on where innovation in gaming is headed, the challenges of discoverability, and the paramount importance of building a strong community.  This conversation is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of game development, user-generated content, and the ever-changing landscape of interactive entertainment.

About Our Guest:

Alex Seropian is the founder of Look North World and has an extensive history in the gaming industry.  He co-founded Bungie, was part of Industrial Toys, and worked at Disney.  He is now focused on building user-generated content and experiences within Fortnite.

• Look North World: https://www.looknorth.world/
• The Fourth Curtain Podcast: https://www.thefourthcurtain.com/

Key Topics Discussed:

• [02:11] The Future of Innovation in Gaming: Alex shares his thoughts on where new and innovative ideas in the gaming industry will come from, highlighting platforms that support experimentation and risk-taking.
• [05:10] Discoverability in a Crowded Market: A discussion on the challenges of getting your game noticed on platforms like Steam versus UEFN and Roblox.
• [10:05] What Defines a "Good" Game?: The conversation explores how the definition of a quality game has evolved and how generational differences impact what players find engaging.
• [12:41] Creating Games for Younger Generations: Alex talks about his approach to creating content that appeals to him while also building a diverse team to create games for various audiences.
• [14:42] The Player Feedback Loop: How Look North World launches numerous games and uses player feedback to iterate and improve their experiences in a live service environment.
• [18:15] Company Pillars and Adapting to New Platforms: Alex discusses Look North World's founding principle of exceeding player expectations and how they've adapted that philosophy to the realities of the UEFN platform.
• [20:54] The Importance of Community: Alex emphasizes that building a direct relationship with players is a top priority for Look North World, as important as the IP they create.
• [25:08] The Early Days of Halo and Multiplayer: Alex reflects on the explosion of the Halo community and the surprising ways players connected to play online before the widespread availability of Xbox Live.
• [35:34] What Excites Alex Most About the Gaming Industry: From the advent of 3D graphics and the internet to the current "platform economy" where creativity is happening within larger game ecosystems.
• [47:16] Alex's Podcast, The Fourth Curtain: Alex plugs his own podcast where he interviews other luminaries in the game industry.

Episode Overview:
In this episode, Greg Posner interviews Fiene Ziegler, Senior Community Management Specialist at InnoGames. Fiene shares her journey into gaming, insights on merging community management with social media, the importance of data-driven strategies, and her vision for the future of player engagement. Her experience sheds light on how to effectively manage online communities in a dynamic industry and adapt to new platforms to reach a wider audience.

Topics: Community Management, Social Media Strategy, Gaming Industry Trends, Player Engagement

Key Takeaways:

1. Journey to Gaming and Community Management
   Fiene shares her unique journey from studying law to entering the gaming industry as a community manager. Her initial involvement was volunteer-based, leading her to a full-time role at InnoGames, where she manages community engagement for titles like Forge of Empires. Her background adds depth to her role, as she balances passion for gaming with the objectivity needed for community management.
2. Importance of Game Knowledge and Player Perspective
   Fiene emphasizes the value of knowing the game inside and out, even as a manager. By actively playing Forge of Empires, she stays in touch with the player experience, offering insights to developers and community managers. Her expertise positions her as a resource within InnoGames for game-related decisions, showing how deep product knowledge can enhance community relations and drive engagement.
3. Social Media and Community Strategy
   Fiene discusses the blending of community management with social media strategy, a trend she’s championed at InnoGames. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are essential for player engagement, though InnoGames finds certain platforms, like Facebook, more effective for its demographic. Fiene advocates for tailored content that resonates with current players while reaching new audiences organically.
4. Leveraging Data and KPIs in Community Engagement
   With a data-driven approach, Fiene and her team monitor KPIs like engagement, reach, and active player response to measure campaign effectiveness. She uses tools like Power BI to track data, helping her strategize content and engage players more effectively. Her focus is to balance entertaining existing players while reaching out to potential players through innovative, data-backed campaigns.
5. Future Goals and Constant Learning
   Fiene talks about her career aspirations, expressing an interest in furthering her skills in social media and marketing. With a passion for learning and self-improvement, she highlights the significance of acquiring diverse skills—like using Premiere Pro and Canva—to stay current in a fast-evolving industry. Her commitment to growth serves as an inspiration for others in community management and social media roles.

Episode Summary:
In this episode, Fiene Ziegler provides a comprehensive look at what it means to manage and grow a gaming community. She offers practical insights into blending community engagement with social media strategies, leveraging data for decision-making, and building credibility through in-depth game knowledge. For gaming professionals and community managers alike, her journey and strategies are both inspiring and actionable, showcasing the impact of a well-rounded approach to community engagement.

This episode of Player Driven, in collaboration with Community Clubhouse, dives into the future of kids' gaming and digital safety. Greg speaks with Karin Johnson, co-founder of Magic Potion Games and a former leader at Club Penguin and Fortnite, along with Kieran Donovan, founder of K-ID and a regulatory compliance expert. Together, they explore how studios can build engaging, age-appropriate games while staying ahead of global compliance challenges. From the development of Imagine Island to the regulatory maze K-ID helps developers navigate, this is a must-listen for anyone creating games for younger audiences.

• The rise of Imagine Island as a spiritual successor to Club Penguin
• Why building “kids-first” (not just kid-appropriate) matters
• How K-ID simplifies global compliance across age bands, chat, and monetization
• Best practices for launching safe online games with embedded trust and safety
• The business value of early compliance and community-focused design
• How emerging web game platforms are helping studios reach more players

• Magic Potion Games
• K-ID

• Game designers building for Gen Alpha
• Studio leads exploring COPPA and GDPR-K compliance
• LiveOps and trust and safety professionals
• Community managers seeking to scale safe social play
• Parents curious about the future of kid-friendly gaming

Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe to Player Driven for more episodes that blend player experience, safety, and smart business strategy. Leave a review and share this episode with fellow game developers, educators, and community leads.