All 17 Gaming posts we have indexed from venture capital blogs and newsletters, plus the highest-scoring pieces of the past year and the people who write about it most.
Game studios typically allocate AI budgets backwards—splurging on tool licenses while neglecting the workflow redesign and change management that actually drives EBIT impact. A concrete allocation model for mid-size studios: 25% UA creative pipeline, 25% code assistance, 10% localization/voice, 10% art, and 30% change management; real spend runs ~30% over budget, funded by fewer junior hires.
A detailed competitive analysis of Just Desserts versus Gossip Harbor, unpacking the merge-2 game genre's core mechanics, monetization levers, narrative hooks, and live ops strategies that drive retention and spending in casual mobile gaming.
Mattel's head of digital gaming reveals how studios win IP licenses: pitch the unexpected, not the obvious. The company rewards creative risk alongside polish, targets specific audience cohorts, and values dormant IP arbitrage over marquee brands.
Sensor Tower's inaugural ad monetization report ($12B across 19 countries) underestimates the true market size and reveals that ads now represent 13–23% of mobile game revenues—a primary revenue engine, not a side system. The real opportunity lies in IAA-first hybrid games that monetize attention without cannibalizing their core ad loop.
Riot CFO Mark Sottosanti reveals how Arcane Season 2 broke even through skin sales and new player attribution, Riot's dominance in China and Korea (59% of player spending), and why the studio hit 5 of 7 game launches while protecting League's team from poaching.
Turkish mobile gaming's competitive intensity bred hungry founders but now stifles knowledge-sharing, talent mobility, and ecosystem retention—three structural problems fixable through co-development, cross-founder investment, and mentorship from exits.
Mark Pincus shares five lessons from building Zynga: avoid incremental compromises that erode your vision, culture is defined by execution not philosophy, ignore investors post-check-in to focus on product, trust your instincts over ideas, and the frameworks matter less than nerve when stakes are highest.
Playtika's acquisition of SuperPlay and its breakout hit Disney Solitaire created a paradox: the game is phenomenally successful but generates accounting losses, threatening debt servicing and forcing owners to choose between selling the studio to Tencent or keeping their growth engine.
Deconstructor of Fun (18) · USV (1) · Ben Yoskovitz (1) · Sierra Ventures (1)
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