In this episode of re:Play, Greg Off sits down with Michael Rubinelli — a 30-year veteran of the publisher and platform side of the games business. Across EA, THQ, Midway, Capcom U.S.A., Playdom, Disney, Kixeye, WAX, and now Tyranno Studios, Michael has been the person deciding which games get made, on which platforms, under which business models. From a video-game rental side hustle at 24, to a mock company letterhead that got him into CES, to an EA job offer in December '91 on Tony La Russa Baseball, Michael traces the whole arc — Madden's early franchise years, a Midway VP seat alongside arcade veterans Mark Turmell, Ed Boon, John Tobias, and Eugene Jarvis, running Capcom U.S.A. through a business-model inflection, joining Playdom in early 2010, overseeing Marvel Avengers Alliance, the Disney acquisition, a Facebook-to-mobile transition at Kixeye, an Australian public-company CEO seat, WAX, and finally Tyranno Studios as CGO — where he is working with Richard Garfield on Dirty Dealing, a heads-up card battler set in 1974 Chicago. In this episode: Wading into the deep end — the David Bowie quote that shaped a 30-year career philosophyFinding his place on Madden — the pass-interference exploit and the field-goal bug he caught before shipThe arcade masters who taught him to earn the next coin in sixty secondsMarvel Avengers Alliance — and why a JRPG-shaped Marvel game worked on FacebookThe signature framework: why platform and business-model transitions are extinction eventsCapcom, Konami, Sunsoft, Hudson Soft — who made the jump and who didn'tScratch: The Ultimate DJ — the game he calls his favorite that never shippedPlaydom, the free-to-play mental unlock, and being a "cultural czar" through DisneyKixeye as a cautionary tale about missing a transitionPlayer ownership, the "off ramp," and where Web3 gaming fell shortTyranno Studios, Dirty Dealing, and a lean studio around Richard Garfield's designRecorded in-studio at Off Base's Berkeley studio on July 22, 2026, this is a candid conversation about a career built on deliberate discomfort — and one line from Michael that anchors the whole thing: "Making games I look at as a calling, not really a job." Links & References Michael Rubinelli on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-rubinelli-gaming/ Tyranno Studios — https://www.tyranno.io/ Electronic Arts — https://www.ea.com Midway Games — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Games Capcom U.S.A. — https://www.capcomusa.com/ Playdom — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdom Marvel Avengers Alliance — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel:_Avengers_AllianceScratch: The Ultimate DJ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratch:_The_Ultimate_DJ
