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Today I’m talking with Salla Niemelä, who is responsible for Employee Experience at FuturePlay, a mobile game studio in Helsinki. With Salla, we talk about how game studios approach the employee and employer relationship, throughout the full lifecycle of the employment, from hiring, to working and developing the relationship and finally to an exit.

In today's episode, I'm going to be addressing some Ask Me Anything questions that I've been asking for on the Elite Game Developers newsletter. I sent out a survey form, where I asked subscribers of the newsletter to send out questions related to gaming studios, how to build successful businesses, and all things related. So let's get going with this first episode.

Today I'm talking with Anat Shperling, the co-founder and CEO of Toya, a Roblox game studio based out of Israel. Anat and her team started building games for UGC platforms in 2016, first on Minecraft, before moving fully over to Roblox. Anat's company Toya is a female-led studio developing digital games and media to empower a growing female user base.

I recently did a webinar with Collin Foss, the Co-Founder and CPO of Skunkworks, a Helsinki-based mobile games startup and makers of the wildly popular MergeFriends. With Collin, we talked about how the casual merge category has recently been blowing up with more and more developers moving over, and what makes these games differentiate from each other.

In this episode, I talk with Celia Hodent, game user experience expert and former Director of UX at Epic Games. We talk about adapting the game UX mindset, breaking down how players learn and retain information, and how players are motivated to return to the games that they are playing. Celia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/celiahodent/

I recently invited Ethan Levy from N3twork back on the show, to talk about an interesting concept called the "Tower of Want". The concept of "Tower of Want" is something that Ethan created some six years ago, to help free-to-play game designers to create long-term goals, through understanding the short-term and long-term loops and player motivations that would drive a successful free-to-play game.

In this episode, Sebastiaan Heijne and Elmer Bulthuis, from game scaling solution company Gameye. Both Seb and Elmer are long time entrepreneurs and in this episode, we chat about their experiences on learning so many things the hard way, building Gameye now together and what the future could look like for their game server startup.

In this episode, Sebastiaan Heijne and Elmer Bulthuis, from game scaling solution company Gameye. Both Seb and Elmer are long time entrepreneurs and in this episode, we chat about their experiences on learning so many things the hard way, building Gameye now together and what the future could look like for their game server startup.

I recently a webinar with Erik Bryant from Opera Event and Steven Chard from Luna Labs on mobile game ad creatives. Both companies are at the forefront of innovative mobile game ads, and I wanted to explore several topics on how game developers can utilize game creatives to win players over.

In this episode, I have a chat with Susana Meza Graham, Co-Founder of ALDEON, an investment company from Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on games and tech start-ups in their early stages. Susana started he career in gaming when she joined Paradox Interactive and later taking on the roles of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Operating Officer. For the last two years, Susana has been focusing on investing, and in this episode, we talk about culture, bravery, trust and how the Nordics have built an amazing gaming ecosystem.

In this special episode I’m joined by Ethan Levy, Executive Producer at N3twork, a San Francisco-based games company, behind the hit game Legendary: Game of Heroes. We talk about the topic of Founder/Idea Fit and how founders should think about themselves being a good fit for the idea or concept that they are pursuing.

In this episode, I have a chat with Hakan Ulvan, the co-founder and CEO of Bigger Games from Istanbul, Turkey. Hakan and his co-founders left Peak Games a few years ago to start working on their own game studio. In this episode, we talk about their approach to making games, how the Turkish gaming ecosystem has evolved over the years, and what will happen next.

This is part 2 of my discussion with Javier Barnes, Product Manager at Tilting Point. Javier has an extensive career in gaming, having worked at Gameloft, Social Point, and others. With Javier, we decided to make this episode a discussion around the topic of game design in 2021, as it's of big interest for both of us. We talk about playtesting, player motivations, user-oriented design, the model of small teams, and more.

Today I'm talking with Javier Barnes, Product Manager at Tilting Point. Javier has an extensive career in gaming, having worked at Gameloft, Social Point, and others. With Javier, we decided to make this episode a more of a discussion, around the topic of game design in 2021, as it's of big interest for both of us. We talk about playtesting, player motivations, user-oriented design, the model of small teams, and more.

In this episode, I talking with Phil Sanderson, the Managing Partner at Griffin Gaming Partners, a venture capital firm that focuses on investing across the broad gaming ecosystem. They announced a fund of $235 million that they will invest in game companies and related technologies around the world. I've known Phil for years, since he invested in my previous company Next Games. We talk about venture, how gaming has evolved and how Phil sees the recent boom and M&A activities affecting things going forward.

On January 28th, I did a webinar on the topic of how to create a game studio pitch deck. In this webinar, I shared all that I know about what pitch decks should communicate. Watch the recording and grab the presentation.

This is a recording from a webinar that I did with Anton Gorodetsky and Sergei Evdokimov from InvestGame.net and we reviewed gaming’s investment, M&A, and IPO landscape from 2020 and shared our predictions on what will happen in gaming during 2021.

In this episode, I have a chat with Anton Gauffin, the founder and CEO of Huuuge Games. Anton has been an entrepreneur in gaming for two decades now and has seen pretty much everything, all the ups, and downs. In recent news, Huuuge Games announced that they will soon go public in an initial public offering on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. In this episode, we talk about leadership, company mission, and vision and Anton has grown to lead a 600 employee company.

In this episode, I'm talking with Herdjie Zhou, the Co-Founder and CEO of Lucky Kat Games, a hyper-casual gaming studio from the Netherlands. Herdjie started Lucky Kat with his brother in 2015 and they've gone through an amazing journey at building a gaming studio, totally bootstrapped. In this episode, we talk about company building, rapid game development, and how to make tough decision.

In this episode, I'm talking about the company cap table. What it means to manage a cap table when you're starting off with just the founders. And when you start growing and building a company, bringing on more employees, bringing on investors, who are incentivized with equity in the company. So we're going to cover a lot of topics regarding how you can manage and model your cap table.