The Business of Video Games Podcast

In this extra long interview I had the privilege of talking to the illustrious leader of Finji - makers of Canabalt, Overland, Tunic and many more fun games. We delve into the details and get a good understanding of why Finji - being an artist centric developer - has managed to also build and grow as a business successfully over the years.

Finji makes some truly magical games - which you can find here: https://finji.co/

Rebekah can be found here: https://twitter.com/BexSaltsman 

We return yet again to Hooded Horse for a Q&A episode - but almost immediately things go off the rails. The idea was to pepper the CEO of Hooded Horse Tim Bender with dozens of questions from the community - but instead we barely got past the 3rd question thanks to Tim's insightful answers and ensuing discussion. Take out your notepads for this one kids.

Send us more questions to attack Tim with in the future.

and find their games here: https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/HoodedHorse

How do you make the most out of a trip to the annual Game Developers Conference if you're starting out in the industry or generally want to up your game? In this episode we invited Fernando Rizo back to the show to talk about how to get the most out of a GDC (Game Developers Conference) show attendance. If you're Phil Spencer this episode isn't for you - but you might still enjoy it Phil.

GDC is one of the business development highlights of the year and it's hard to navigate if you haven't been there before - we demystify the whole process and save you a buck or two.

Visit Caboodle here https://www.caboodle.games/

Fernando can be pestered on twitter: https://twitter.com/choomsky 

This is the first episode of a multipart series where we talk to Kim Nordström, alumni of Sony, King, Paradox Interactive and other companies who's written an exciting book called Up, Down, Up - The Journey of a Successful Game Company. 

It's a must read for anyone interested in the business side of things in the industry. So no surprise then that we will cover the book over a number of episodes this season.

Kim has gone through the herculean effort of interviewing hundreds of business leaders in the games industry to understand why some game companies succeed while others fail.  

We return to the scene of (my) crime by having Sebastian Forsström from Paradox Interactive come visit us to talk about their newest publishing label Paradox Arc. Why does it exist, how is it different from the rest of the company and how do they operate? And we get to the heart of the matter - how does a big company innovate?

Visit Paradox Arc here: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/our-games/paradox-arc

and bother Sebastian here: https://twitter.com/SebastianFo 

Crowdfunding first made a huge impact on the business side of our industry about a decade ago. There was even talk of it rendering publishers irrelevant. Things didn't play out exactly that way. Well, they did for Chris Roberts and Star Citizen - but not for the rest of us.  We decided catch up with the eminent expert in the field - Anya Combs and learn how Crowdfunding is doing today as an option for games companies. 

If you want to get hold of Anya here's her contact info. Don't miss the spotify links! She's a mean sax player!

The first episode of 2024 is about Hooded Horse marketing apparatus and how they make sure their games get visibility in a marketplace where 40 other games are released every day. Joined as always by Hooded Horse's own CEO Tim Bender and Director of Marketing Abhishek Chaudhry.

This episode features a conversation with none other than Larry Kuperman! Larry runs biz dev over at Nightdive Studios. They've been banging out cool remaster/remake after remaster/remake (mouthful). We dig into this particular nostalgic slice of the industry and try to understand this old/new part of the business.

Check out Nightdives games here: https://www.nightdivestudios.com/ and Larry can be found on social media!

We return again to Hooded Horse (our home base for this season) and a favorite topic on the podcast - The timeless art of Negotiation! What's Hooded Horse's approach, what to do? What not to do? Tim Bender dispenses with some some tricks of the trade and it makes us a bit smarter. Hopefully.

Here's a link to the infographic mentioned in the episode: https://imgur.com/x5D02Be

How is the Swedish Games Industry doing? We catch up with Johanna Nylander Head of Analysis at the Swedish Games industry (the Swedish industry trade organization) and talk about the recent report about the state of the Swedish games industry. What do we have in the water that makes Swedes good at making games? Because it sure ain't tax breaks.