GameMakers

The GameMakers podcast publishes current, entertaining, and in-depth discussions on F2P game development. Topics that we cover include the business of games, F2P monetization, liveops, game design, game development processes, team structure, and more.

Last refreshed: June 30th, 2025 at 9:28 PM ⓘ

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Episodes

GameBiz #1: Game Industry M&A (March 2021) ft. Chris Petrovic & Eric Kress

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: 1 :15 Intro / Context 4 :15 EA's Acquisition of Glu 1 1:16 Glu Reorganization 15:30 Zynga + AdTech 25:35 Industry Consolidation 38:40 Best M&A Targets 44:15 Smaller M&A Targets 5 0:00 Final Words...

Jul 07, 2021•53 min

Integrating Crypto and Metaverse in Games | Michael Wagner CEO of Star Atlas

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 , CE...

Jun 21, 2021•33 min

4 Game Company Growth Paradigms: Zynga, Applovin, Skillz, and Jam City

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...

Jun 20, 2021•40 min

MetaHuman Creator | Epic's Road to the Metaverse ft. Arvind Neelakanan (Epic Tech Evangelist)

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 Pand...

Jun 14, 2021•23 min

Data Infrastructure for Live Games ft. Andre Cohen (Tilting Point), Gaurav Gupta (Lightspeed VP), and Oliver Loffler (Fmr KOLIBRI)

Key advancements in data infrastructure tech are driving big new changes in game development studios' approach to liveops data. We're seeing rapid adoption of technologies from companies like Snowflake, Grafana, Prometheus, etc. What are the technologies and companies we need to be aware of and how does this impact F2P game live ops? Speaking on this we have world-class experts in André Cohen (Head of Data Science at Tilting Point), Gaurav Gupta (Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, board mem...

Jun 09, 2021•50 min

The Warning | Game Companies Face Structural Transition in 2021

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 ...

Jun 08, 2021•27 min

Game Development Best Practices | Chris Cobb (Pragma Platform), Noemi Rouleau (Square Enix), Xiang Shen (Century Games)

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, C...

Jun 03, 2021•1 hr 16 min

Self Actualization Through Video Games | Shahar Sorek CMO of Overwolf

Today we speak to Shahar Sorek to answer a core and fundamental question behind video games. We will discuss the question: Why do people play video games? JK discusses how Shahar's concepts are very similar to the Japanese game design concepts around "user needs": basically that players will play games to fulfill some latent psychological need or desire manifested through playing games.

May 28, 2021•41 min

Tom Kalinske | The King of Brands (From Flintstone Vitamins, Barbie, Hotwheels, He-man, and SEGA)

Tom Kalinske has had a career as the King of Brands. Tom first became well known for marketing Flintstone vitamins and then reviving Barbie and Hot Wheels at Mattel and then Launching Masters of the Universe. In the games industry and perhaps most famously Tom’s efforts to turn around SEGA of America were chronicled in the book and recent CBS documentary Console Wars. Tom famously turned around the SEGA console business growing SEGA of America from $72M to more than $1.5B in revenue. Learn the l...

Dec 04, 2020•40 min

Riz Virk | US-China App Wars, Life is a Video Game, Game Start-up Lessons

Riz Virk is Executive Director of Play Labs @MIT. Prior to that Riz has had a very successful entrepreneurial career as part of the founding team of TapJoy and CEO and co-founder of GameView Studios (makers of TapFish) that was sold to DeNA. More recently in addition to his work at MIT Riz has written three books: #1. Treasure Hunt: Follow Your Inner Clues to Find True Success #2. Startup Myths and Models: What you Won’t Learn in Business school #3. An MIT computer scientist shows why AI, Quantu...

Nov 26, 2020•59 min

Gaming Trends | A Look Ahead to 2021 (SensorTower's Randy Nelson Interviews JK)

In today’s episode, Randy Nelson from Sensor Tower interviews me ( Joseph Kim ) about gaming trends in 2020 and potential impacts for the future including 2021 specifically. In this discussion we talk about not only the defining trends of 2020 and what will be the longer term impacts from 2020 into 2021 and beyond but in addition: The nature of the firm Building not only product, but also organizational advantage How to think about and build structural advantage How we view India from the perspe...

Nov 26, 2020•44 min

LILA #2: Why Did We Start LILA Games?

In this episode Joseph Kim , Paul Leydon , and Avinash Pandey the three co-founders of LILA Games talk about each of their personal reasons for wanting to create the new company.

Nov 26, 2020•24 min

LILA #1: JK Gets Fired! What's Next?

In May of 2019, I (Joseph Kim) got fired (practically, although not "technically") from NBCUniversal as SVP of Games & Digital Platforms based on a mismatch of values, culture, and approach. This was the beginning of a long road that eventually led to the formation of LILA Games with my co-founders Paul Leydon and Avinash Pandey. A week after I was fired, my good friend Miska Katkoff hosted a podcast interview with me which we published on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast . In this episode, ...

Nov 26, 2020•53 min

Intro to the GameMakers Podcast

In which, Joseph Kim aka Joe Kim aka JK aka J-diggity-dog discusses the objective of starting this podcast. Also catch: The GameMakers YouTube Channel The Deconstructor of Fun podcast Your host: Joe Kim (Twitter = @jokim1)

Nov 24, 2020•3 min

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