The Gaming Founders Podcast Eden Chen and Kevin Zhang

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 10: From Passion to Palia: Unraveling the Gaming Industry with Aidan Karabaich of Singularity 6

In this episode, Eden and Kevin speak with Aidan Karabaich, co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Singularity 6, as he shares his journey in the gaming industry. From an early passion for video games (playing Pac-Man and never being able to beat his grandmother) and experiences at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy to his pivotal role in Riot Games' Research & Development department, Aidan provides inspiring insights into game development and design. The conversation also delves into his collaboration with Anthony Leung on their new venture, discussing their unique hiring strategy, focus on team diversity, and the decision-making process for design.

Discussion points:


Background and introduction - Aidan Karabaich
Aidan’s experiences at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy
Discussing project cancellations and career pivots in gaming
Tenure at Riot Games and its impact
Playtesting in game development
The concept of 'hygge' (Danish for comfort and coziness) in the Community Sim space
Karabaich and Anthony Leung's journey starting the company
Hiring strategy and the emphasis on team diversity
The use of critical thinking interviews to assess design talent
Discussing the challenges and validation processes in game development
The decision-making process for design
The role and importance of intuition in the gaming industry
Discussion on the challenges of founding a gaming startup
Don’t try to do it all, or be a hero, as a founder - it’s a marathon not a sprint
The anticipation and preparation leading up to launch

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma, and Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.

Pragma is a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. Eden Chen is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Pragma, Fishermen Labs and Lightmark Capital, and started his career in investment banking at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers.

Founded in 1996 in Los Angeles with investing professionals based in LA and SF, Upfront Ventures has backed startup teams across all technology sectors, with about half in Southern California, and the rest across the US and Europe. Kevin Zhang is an avid gamer and former neurobiology researcher who leads gaming and healthcare investments at Upfront Ventures, including Pragma.

-- Aidan Karabaich LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aidankarabaich

-- Singularity 6: https://www.singularity6.com/about

-- Gaming Founders Podcast: pragma.gg/gamingfounders

-- Eden Chen LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/edechen

-- Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang

-- Upfront Ventures: www.upfront.com

-- Pragma: pragma.gg

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 9: The Art of Game Creation: Slim and Trevor of Valorant and Raid Base Live from LA Tech Week

Welcome to our first-ever episode with a live audience coming to you from LA Tech Week. Our special guests are the co-founders of Raid Base - Stephen “Slim” Lim, Product Director, and Trevor Romleski, Game Director. Slim was a product designer and VP of R&D at Riot and is known for always doing right for players. Also at Riot, Trevor was a Game Designer and worked on League of Legends. The duo were the co-founding team at Valorant, then 3 years ago started a new studio called Raid Base.

Slim and Trevor discuss their approach to finding target audiences, ensuring game design decisions resonate with players, and using player motivation to create games catering to various skill sets, knowledge levels, and mechanics. Additionally, they explore the importance of trust and alignment in their startups, both in terms of hiring and funding decisions, to maintain a supportive environment. The guys offer valuable lessons for aspiring game developers, founders, and gaming enthusiasts alike.

Discussion points:


Background and introduction of Slim and Trevor
Slim and Trevor's gaming origins and influences
The importance of community engagement at Riot
Merging teams and deciding game direction
Developing the thesis for Raid Base's game
Balancing game features and team resources
Prioritizing and clarifying game design decisions
Aligning team visions for a cohesive product
Slim's focus on high-level vision, Trevor on execution
Prototyping and resolving design ambiguities
Navigating challenges in the gaming industry
Balancing work, gaming, and personal lives
Closing remarks on passion and creating games

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma, and Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.

Pragma is a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. Eden Chen is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Pragma, Fishermen Labs and Lightmark Capital, and started his career in investment banking at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers.

Founded in 1996 in Los Angeles with investing professionals based in LA and SF, Upfront Ventures has backed startup teams across all technology sectors, with about half in Southern California, and the rest across the US and Europe. Kevin Zhang is an avid gamer and former neurobiology researcher who leads gaming and healthcare investments at Upfront Ventures, including Pragma.

Resources:

-- Stephen Lim LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slimborama/

-- Trevor Romleski LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevorromleski/

-- Raid Base: https://www.raidbase.com/

-- Valorant: https://playvalorant.com/

-- Gaming Founders Podcast: https://pragma.gg/gamingfounders

-- Eden Chen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edechen/

-- Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang/

-- Upfront Ventures: https://upfront.com/

-- Pragma: https://pragma.gg/

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 8: 2x Founder Chris Scholz of Free Range Games and Upcoming Blockbuster: Return to Moria

Today’s guest is Chris Scholz, CEO of Free Range Games. The company’s mission is to make video games that people find meaningful, memorable, and fun. Established in 2009, and headquartered in Sausalito, California, Free Range Games was founded by veteran game developers and longtime collaborators. Game projects have spanned across PC, console, mobile, web, VR, and AR platforms. Free Range will be releasing their own fully developed game The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™ in 2023.

In this episode, you’ll hear Chris’ journey from a spate of temp jobs that he hated and wasn’t very good at, the ‘youthful exuberance’ that led him to start his first company, Shaba Games, and his later successes when Shaba was acquired by Activision, and finally leaving again to start Free Range Games. Chris talks about the early days of Free Range, their culture, their dedication to games that delight people, and the upcoming release of The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria™.

Discussion points:


Chris’ journey from ‘bad’ temp employee to focused gaming designer at Toys for Bob
Youthful exuberance led Chris to leave to start his own company
Sony, Activision, and Tony Hawk
Activision and its interesting characters
Starting Free Range Games in 2009
Past learnings that were useful at Free Range
The current state of things at Free Range
The license for LOTR and its many properties
Free Range’s organizational balance, culture
Advice for other founders - Stay small until you’re sure of what you’re doing

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Pragma, a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking, and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. CEO of Pragma Eden Chen was also the founder of Fishermen Labs and Lightmark Capital and was previously an investment banker at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers. Kevin Zhang leads the healthcare and gaming practices at Upfront Ventures. Upfront has backed standout teams across all technology sectors with a current focus in healthcare, fintech, consumerization of enterprise software, gaming, computer vision, and AgTech/ sustainability.

Resources:

-- Christopher Scholz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-scholz-12470b16/

-- Free Range Games Website: https://www.freerangegames.com/

-- Gaming Founders Podcast: https://pragma.gg/gamingfounders

-- Eden Chen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edechen/

-- Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang/

-- Upfront Ventures: https://upfront.com/

-- Pragma: https://pragma.gg/

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 7: SuperJoost - The Entrepreneurial Journey of Professor and Author Joost van Dreunen

Today’s guest is Joost van Dreunen, the former CEO & Co-Founder of SuperData Research, a games market research firm that was acquired by Nielsen. Joost is now an academic and entrepreneur, a professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, and author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games. In addition to being an investor and advisor for funds and firms active in interactive entertainment, Joost publishes a weekly newsletter on gaming, tech, and entertainment called SuperJoost Playlist. He received an MA from the University of Amsterdam and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Joost became fascinated with games at a young age, how he pitched and hounded his professors to allow him to write his Ph.D. thesis on the business of games, his experience prepping and selling his company SuperData to Nielsen, and how he sees the future of the gaming industry changing in the next five to ten years.

Discussion points:


How Joost got into games as a kid, studying games in the early 2000s, pitched games to professors as a PhD thesis, earned money as an analyst to start a company
Founding of SuperData in 2010 and the state of the industry at the time
Fundraising - appealing to a network of colleagues and friends, the new landscape of large VC firms, having all your paperwork and numbers in order
The process of selling SuperData to Nielsen and advice for others going through that process
The book - One Up - the new business models - innovation and strategy in today’s gaming industry
The outlook for the future of gaming - from product to service, and from fringe to mainstream - business models will change in the next 5-10 years
Reducing barriers to entry, tech vs. creativity, monetizing, marketing, and distribution
Advice to your younger self - focus on yourself and your own business, not everyone else’s. Your money is to buy you more time, not foosball tables

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Eden Chen, CEO of Pragma, and Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.

Pragma is a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. Eden Chen is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Pragma, Fishermen Labs and Lightmark Capital, and started his career in investment banking at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers.

Founded in 1996 in Los Angeles with investing professionals based in LA and SF, Upfront Ventures has backed startup teams across all technology sectors, with about half in Southern California, and the rest across the US and Europe. Kevin Zhang is an avid gamer and former neurobiology researcher who leads gaming and healthcare investments at Upfront Ventures, including Pragma.

Resources:

-- SuperJoost Video Game Playlist: https://superjoost.substack.com/about

-- Joost van Dreunen NYU Faculty: https://www.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/joost-vandreunen

-- Joost van Dreunen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joostvandreunen/

-- The Book: One Up: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/one-up/9780231197526

-- Gaming Founders Podcast: https://pragma.gg/gamingfounders

-- Eden Chen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edechen/

-- Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang/

-- Upfront Ventures: https://upfront.com/

-- Pragma: https://pragma.gg/

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 6: The Rise of UGC: Uri Marchand, Founder of Overwolf

Today’s guest is Uri Marchand, Co-Founder and CEO of Overwolf, one of the biggest platforms for creators to build, share and monetize mods, user-generated content, and companion apps for their favorite games. After 13 years, 98,000 creators, and 33 million players a month, Overwolf now functions across more than 1000 supported games.

In this episode, you’ll hear Uri discuss the early days solving problems like Skype freezing when a text came in, Overwolf’s many ups and downs raising and running out of money, the many necessary pivots until finding their lane as a platform for third-party creators, and the continual scaling challenges and pressure to grow the business.

Discussion points:


Overwolf’s origin story
Solving problems in the early days - Skype, Starcraft, World of Warcraft
Failed strategies early on, and challenges finding funding
Pinpointing problems that plague developers
2015’s first app for League of Legends
Acquisitions and integrations - at the time, creators wanted people to stay out of their creations
Building a modding strategy, hiring more staff, and acquiring Curseforge
The five-year gap in fundraising from Series A to B, team growth driven by P&L
Careful, planned scaling and growth - avoiding toxic pressure to grow too quickly
The Tel Aviv tech space
Communication, core values, and target numbers changing over time
Lessons learned? You can’t plan one year ahead in startups. Detailed vision for 90 days is now the standard for Overwolf.
Overwolf is strictly tools and services for third-party creators - and will remain so

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Pragma, a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking, and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. CEO of Pragma Eden Chen was also the founder of Fisherman Labs and Lightmark Capital and was previously an investment banker at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers. Kevin Zhang leads the healthcare and gaming practices at Upfront Ventures. Upfront has backed standout teams across all technology sectors with a current focus in healthcare, fintech, consumerization of enterprise software, gaming, computer vision, and AgTech/ sustainability.

Resources:


Uri Marchand LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/urimarchand/?…inalSubdomain=il
Overwolf Website: www.overwolf.com/
Gaming Founders Podcast: pragma.gg/gamingfounders
Eden Chen LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/edechen/
Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang/
Upfront Ventures: upfront.com/
Pragma: pragma.gg/

The Gaming Founders Podcast Episode 5: From Animation to Zynga to Baobab Studios - Maureen Fan on Building Interactive IP Across Platforms

Today’s guest is Maureen Fan, CEO and co-founder of Baobab Studios, the 9x Emmy Award-winning Disney of the metaverse with a track record of creating franchisable IP and virtual worlds. Currently the leaders of IP development in VR, their universes are being turned into films (Disney), series on premium streamers (Disney+, HBO Max), books (Penguin Random House, MacMillan), and games (Oculus, Roblox, Web3). Their projects have attracted talent such as Oprah, John Legend, Ali Wong, and more. Named Fast Company's 2018 Most Innovative Company, Baobab's investors and board include Ed Catmull (Pixar co-founder and former President of Disney), Kevin Lin (Twitch co-founder), Disney, Comcast, and Shari Redstone (chairwoman of Viacom).

Previously, Maureen held leadership roles in gaming, film, and the consumer web. She rose to VP of games at Zynga, directly reporting to the CEO, where she built and oversaw three game studios including the "FarmVille's" (40% of the company's revenues,120 million MAU), birthing the casual social games revolution. Previous roles include production on Pixar's "Toy Story 3" film, the Oscar-nominated "The Dam Keeper," and at eBay in product management and UI design.

In this episode, you’ll hear Maureen’s story- starting as a child of Asian immigrant parents in New Jersey, how animation was an escape from some of the racism she experienced, paying her dues starting out in Hollywood, and her journey from eBay to Zynga to founding Baobab Studios, navigating fundraising, and Baobab’s dual focus on the gaming world as well as the film world.

Discussion points:


Maureen’s origin story - racism, animation as escape, computer science classes
Immigrant parents forbade her dream jobs, so she started at Ebay
Looking for a start in Hollywood
Zynga & Harvard Business School taught Maureen a lot of what she needed to know about business
Petville, Farmville, and her various roles at Zynga
Motivation to start her own company - nights and weekends working with Pixar friends, and the advent of VR
Structuring an entertainment media company and fundraising
Early networking connections were fruitful later in Maureen’s career
Selecting strategic investors - aligned long-term for the industry
Maureen’s view of the VR industry, and gaming vs. film
Details on some upcoming properties and NOT being a web3 company
Founder’s challenges - having co-founders and entrepreneur friends is the best way to build a business
Advice for founders - it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and you are the energy source for the company, keep your light bright and strong

The Gaming Founders Podcast is brought to you by Pragma, a venture-backed backend game engine founded by the engineering leaders who built the platforms for some of the largest live service games including League of Legends, Fortnite, Destiny 2, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Pragma powers services like accounts, matchmaking, and player data for the world’s most ambitious live service games. CEO of Pragma Eden Chen was also the founder of Fisherman Labs and Lightmark Capital and was previously an investment banker at Citigroup and Lehman Brothers. Kevin Zhang leads the healthcare and gaming practices at Upfront Ventures. Upfront has backed standout teams across all technology sectors with a current focus in healthcare, fintech, consumerization of enterprise software, gaming, computer vision, and AgTech/ sustainability.

Resources:


Maureen Fan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maureen-fan/
Baobab Studios: https://www.baobabstudios.com/
HBO Movie: 38 at the Garden: https://www.hbo.com/movies/38-at-the-garden
Gaming Founders Podcast: https://pragma.gg/gamingfounders
Eden Chen LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edechen/
Kevin Zhang LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinyzhang/
Upfront V