Deconstructor of Fun

From promoting authoritarian states in unmarked ads, to mocking the homeless as not real people, to blaming Joe Biden for the EU existing (?!?) and now finally to Ai not succeeding in gaming not because it doesn’t work but because of “left wing artists”. How daft are they? They used to have an entire series dedicated to the “inevitable” rise of NFTs and web 3 gaming. Philip black may be known as the stupidest man in gaming for a reason… but please hire them as consultants!

For such a good newsletter the hosts are actually pretty weak in podcast form. Chore to listen to.

Need to drop Ethan though

The show breaks down weekly game industry news, giving high level takes and opinions on the goings on of the industry and the moves made by some of the biggest players. Generally the info they talk through is interesting and thought provoking. The things that filter to the top for discussion are usually sorted by amount of money at stake (if not intentionally, in practice). It leads to a lot of mobile games discussion, which I found enlightening due to the fact that the news in that sphere is less covered in other sources. It can sometimes lead to over focus on specific topics week after week, but more often than not the topic range is wide and informative. The experience in the room of this show is very high, with several charismatic, if spicy, hosts. Marketing, business strategy, and economy design are all well represented, although I would love more episodes with product or game design representation (Adam telfer stan reporting) I will say that my least favorite episodes, and the reason I’m giving this score mostly come down to Mishka, who I find doesn’t contribute a ton but takes up a lot of air. A lot of name dropping, intentionally needling the other hosts for reactions with irrelevant points. He seems far more interested in buttering up the C Suite of big game companies than he is in delivering interesting, meaningful content than in making a good show. That being said, he’s only on like 60 percent of the episodes and the rest of the cast does a great job having interesting conversations even when he is on. Overall definitely worth listening to if you’re interested in week by week updates to the games business.