In this episode, I'm talking with Joe Schaeppi and Bastian Bergmann, the founders of 12traits, a company that helps you discover and analyze your audience. I've been following the development of 12traits since my Next Games days, and the service is incredibly valuable for service-based games. In this discussion, we discuss identifying your actual audience, excluding groups that won't stick to your game, and how games can grow when you better understand your players.

Elite Game Developers Podcast

Joe Schaeppi and Bastian Bergmann — Understanding your players

Guillaume Verlinden is the Managing Director of Kolibri Games, a game studio well known for its tycoon games like Idle Miner Tycoon. Guillaume started his career in management consulting and moved to game some eight years ago when he joined Social Point. He quickly grasped what gaming was about and started improving older live games, growing many plateaued games like Monster Legends and Dragon City. In this episode, we talk about Guillaume's experiences of leading game teams, how a greenlight process should work, and why growing teams and games can be challenging.

Guillaume Verlinden — Growing games and teams

This is my fifth Ask Me Anything podcast episode, where I answer people’s questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form.

Ask Me Anything #5

Today I'm talking with Ilya Eremeev, who is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at The Games Fund. Ilya has a really interesting story about how he started as a 3D artist in gaming and has gone through a career path in gaming that has lead him to now run an early-stage VC fund. In this episode, we also talk about VC funding for the gaming ecosystem in Eastern Europe, how the region is developing, and what Ilya has seen as drivers for success.

Ilya Eremeev — From 3D Artist to Gaming VC

In this episode, I'm talking with Alli Ottarsson, who is a Principal at gaming investments firm Makers Fund. Alli has had a long career in gaming, working at CCP on EVE Online, then at Riot Games on League of Legends. Recently he started doing angel investing and then eventually joined Makers Fund to become a VC. In the discussion, we talk about the game development lessons that Alli has learned and how he is now applying those lessons to investing.

Alli Ottarsson — From operator to VC

In this episode I'm talking with Elad Levy, who is the founder and CEO of Dive, who are a new kind of game analytics provider. As many of you know, I've previously worked at Supercell as Director of Analytics in 2011 and 2012, before I went on to found Next Games in 2013. I've worked with data in gaming for over ten years, and I was thrilled to have this discussion with Elad. His company Dive is operating in free-to-play gaming, especially with mobile developers, and they are now also providing analytics for Roblox games. In this first episode with Elad, we talk about how game studios are embracing and how studios are building data into their decision-making.

Elad Levy — Custom analytics for games

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Logan Dwight — Tabletop RPGs Go Online

Welcome back everybody for another set of Ask Me Anything questions. This is the fourth AMA episode, where I answer people's questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff. Before we go to the first question, I'd like to share the URL where you can submit your questions. To do that, you can go to this URL and I'll get your question answered in one of my upcoming episodes.

Ask Me Anything #4

I recently did a webinar with Anton Gorodetsky from InvestGame and Micha Katz from Aream & Co and we talked about the numbers from H1 of 2021 for the games industry. The industry saw explosive growth in terms of volume and size of M&As, private investments, and IPOs.

Games industry numbers for H1 of 2021

Martin Macmillan is the founder and CEO of Pollen VC, a financing company that provides flexible credit facilities for mobile game developers who are doing user acquisition. With Martin, we talk about the evolution of UA funding in mobile games, how debt financing is becoming the norm for marketing and we hear Martin's views on the boom of the games industry and how that is affecting everything.

EGD 099: Martin Macmillan, Pollen VC

I'm talking with Klaas Kersting, who is the Founder and CEO of Phoenix Games, a new kind of European gaming conglomerate, with six games studios under its belt. In this discussion with Klaas, we talk about luck and taking advantage of lucky moments, how the mobile games industry has evolved, what characterizes teams that can go from broke to hugely profitable, and what well-done mergers and acquisitions look like in gaming.

EGD 098: Klaas Kersting, Phoenix Games

I've known KooPee Hiltunen for close to twenty years now, ever since I started building games companies. KooPee is The Guy in the Finnish games industry, he knows everybody and has knowledge of everything when it comes to the Finnish games industry. He represents Neogames, which is a non-profit association, whose mission is to coordinate and support the growth and development of the Finnish game industry and its ecosystem. In this discussion with KooPee, we talk about a recent 2020 report on the Finnish games industry, how we got to this impressive size, and what things look like for the Finnish games industry?

EGD 097: KooPee Hiltunen, Neogames

This week I published my third Ask Me Anything podcast episode, where I answer people's questions related to game studios, fundraising, and all other entrepreneurship-related stuff. I will be recording another episode quite soon, so please submit your questions by filling out this form.

EGD 096: Ask Me Anything #3

Cordel Robbin-Coker is the co-founder and CEO of Carry1st, a mobile games publisher that is focusing on the content of Africa. Africa is the last frontier for basically anything. Mobile gaming is no exception. For a continent that is home to more than 1 billion millennials and Gen Zers, mobile gaming has never really picked up, despite the continent witnessing rapid economic growth and smartphone adoption. Carry1st is changing that with it's new approach for distribution and payments, custom made for Africa. In this episode, we talk about mobile gaming in Africa and about Cordel's entrepreneur journey.

EGD 095: Cordel Robbin-Coker, Carry1st

Today I'm talking with Jon Hook, who is an angel investor and VP of Publishing at Boombit. With Jon, we talk about the current state of mobile gaming, what is happening to hyper-casual and how Jon looks at angel investing in gaming.

EGD 094: Jon Hook, Boombit

Joakim Achren from Elite Game Developers talks to founders and investors on how to start, run and grow a games company. In a nutshell, this is a podcast about the founders and investors who are building the games companies of the future. What are their success stories, failures, what they’ve learned from them and how more people will be able to get into creating games through successful games companies.

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Elite Game Developers Podcast

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