Best of The Game Business Show 2025

Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Game Business Show. Our best of 2025. It was our first year really. Uh we produced 78 official shows, 13 micros, four bonus editions, plus 135 articles on the game business website. We now got over 18,000 subscribers. We've had more than two and a half million listens, views, or reads. It's been a phen phenomenal year. It's beaten all of our expectations. We are very, very happy. And to wrap everything up, we thought we would go back over our episodes and pick some of our favorite ones. Now, our first draft of this would have led to about a 3-hour episode. Uh, we wouldn't do that to you. Not this close to Christmas. Um, so we've had to be brutal. We had to select what we think were the more most interesting and entertaining moments from the past sort of nine months. And to begin with, we're going right back to the very first interview we recorded. It was with Shams Georgiani, the CEO of Arrowhead, the team behind Hell Divers 2. Now, during

that chat, Shams told the story of what happened after the shock success of Hell Divers 2, namely the game's rapid decline and then return to strength. Here's Shams telling me that story.
This is the thing. It was a shock success.
Yeah,
you've had to go on this learning journey, right? And you've got we've got a publisher in Sony that you know isn't a live service expert either or at least these sort of games
and it sounds like it's been a baptism.
It that's exactly what it's been. It's it's been I think it took us all by surprise and then I think Sony knew and we knew that we were not fully a full-fledged live service studio because we absolutely were not. It took eight years to make this game. Arrowhead was always used to doing postlaunch support with with DLC and stuff and quite a lot of it, but it's a different thing to be a live service. So, there was a man scramble to kind of keep up with the intense success and you know the saving grace was that this was a troubled

development cycle. It took 8 years to make and it shouldn't take 8 years to make a game. But during those eight years, a lot of stuff was made and put to the side and we put them in what we call the seller. So after the mad release of Hell Divers, we were like, "Oh we need to release stuff because the players are screaming for stuff." So all the stuff that we planned, we had to kind of get out faster. And then we kept reaching into the seller, pulled something out, and we're like, "Okay, what if we just uh you know, fix this up." And that's you, we just kept jamming out stuff. And that was the the saving grace that allowed us to keep the momentum going those first few months. And we had we peaked at around 750,000 players. And then over time it went down and then the honeymoon kind of ended and we started running out of stuff to do and the the we also ran out of stamina. So when I was asked to step in in May of last year, they gave me the keys to the to the to the car and they told me we're going off on summer vacation because we

haven't been taking a lot of vacation over the last few summers. And I was like we're running a live service game. People can't be off for the next 3 months. But that's what happens in Sweden because we take our summer vacations very seriously. So it was it was rocky there and then um we kind of came back but then we had you know the the the Sony account linking kind of adventure and it turns out and you when you made a game that trains the community to gather around communal goals they were very good at showing what their pleasure and displeasure.
So we went we went down to like 30 in user score and usually that's the death nail for a game, right? But we came back from that and then we fumbled with balancing and the focus for the game and that sent us all the way down to 19% I think was the lowest.
Oh wow.
And like games that get 19% user score do not generally recover. And maybe the lowest point during my tenure so far there's going to be many more I think was during the summer when everyone was

away our user score was down to 19. And I had to get on a call with Herman Hol and explain to the the the CEO of Sony why things were in the state they were and what we were doing to kind of recover. And I have to say the awkward, you know, truth that there is nothing we can do in the immediate short term to resolve this. But in the long term, we have plans that will get us back on track. And we issued a 60-day plan that put us back on the track. And we did an update and an update and an update. And I was very much inspired by uh No Man's Sky uh and the team over there uh that had a similar kind of uh journey. Very hyped then bombed and then they put their head to the grindstone and just updated the game. And since I want to say since September we've been on a very good trajectory, but it's been we've been just penduluming between it's so over and we're so back and it's become a meme within the community. But uh we we've so we went from 19 to 94 positive

on Steam.
Oh wow. Like the MCU with uh but in like one one title.
Exactly. And this is this is you know it's exactly 12 months since launch. But uh all of these things I described to you happened during the last nine months. It's it's been a real real uh roller coaster and it's we're still coming to grips with the phenomenon that this is
like you know Arrowhead and myself have been involved with releasing successful games but it's always hard to gauge how how much of a phenomenon it becomes and how many how much of a it wins hearts and minds, right? And it touches people in a lot of different ways and that's that's why we love it.
That was Shams. It was such a good interview. He actually joined us again in November. Um, I do recommend listening back to both of those episodes. Now, one of the big games of the year was Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 from Czech developer Warhorse. Now, we had an interview with the vocal and sometimes controversial game director Daniel Vavra, who is the co-founder of Warhorse, and he had an interesting view on storytelling in games and related it

to similar [clears throat] challenges that exist in movies. Here's a clip from that show. What do you think it is about the series that has, you know, resonated so well with players? cuz it's it's it started off you think you said the second game was what you wanted the first game to be. That was your objective, but the first game really won people over in a big way as well. So, what is it about it that's been so um enticing? I'm really actually surprised that so many people are surprised by the sectors of the game. I I I since the beginning, I was absolutely sure that it's a recipe for success if we do it right. I like similar games. There are very few of them. For some weird reason, nobody makes them anymore that much. So, generally, we are in the same genre, let's say, as Witcher or Reddit Redemption games. Actually, we pitched the game to publishers as Reddit Redemption with a sword 14 years ago.

So, generally, it's a strong story, but at the same time, big open world, lot of freedom for the player. And the story, which is very important, and that's where a lot of games today fail in my opinion. The story has to be good, by which I mean cool characters that you can relate to and humor and uh something they can kind of relate to and feel that it's them. And many games today when they have a story it's just like some fill in some random or or they try to tell the player some message or something. But usually uh there are very few games like that and every time such game is published it's it becomes very successful. Uh so it's kind of weird that nobody
Yeah. What do you think people rate them?
You get stories like that in film though all the time, right? It's it's um I know I know I think I know what you mean. Any

theories as to why you don't get quite so many well games like this cost?
I have a lot of theories. I have a theory about it of course. Uh it's probably a little bit controversial maybe. Uh but generally if you look at the movies at least in the past Hollywood studios are based very differently than games industry. You have a producers that choose some script and then they kind of try to find money and they assemble the team and they give lot of control to the director. So basically the the person who controls everything is the director and the producer and they give chances to even very young and sometimes even unexperienced people. So, so uh I don't know Brian Singer was very young when he was needed first X-Men for example and they give him a very important franchise reboot of superhero movies and he was a young director at the time. So Hollywood was at least in the past was willing to risk and try to do new stuff with new

people and they knew that it's about good director rather than some committee. While in games you have a company that that's making games and there's a board of people who are deciding stuff and director or writer is just one of them and very often doesn't have the final word. So it's there there's much bigger risk than
it will become some uh basically corporate product rather than the piece of art.
Yeah. This environment also kind of uh repels creative people but a lot. So u and still for a big game that similar to ours or RD or whatever you need a lot of money a lot of resources much more than for a typical movie let's say today it's you can say it and it takes much longer. So, so you can you can shoot a movie very quickly and then there's a lot of post-production of course but but

generally you assemble the small quite big team but for a short time while in games you have a large team for years so this work for hire that works in Hollywood doesn't work in games industry I see it comes all from that and also and that's the controversial part a lot of people think that uh the cultural wars they are here.
But generally, a lot of people think that it's some evil management that's forcing the creators uh to do something. But I would say that uh it's the opposite. It's coming from the creators. Actually, I I would even dare to say that some companies are not liking it and they don't know what to do about it. Uh so so so but generally we can see it now even in movies that they are a little bit or sometimes a lot kind of for a non-existent audience I would say even in Hollywood they are currently making movies sometimes for

non-existence audience and if you look at the old movies from the 80s or '9s I don't know spielback movies like ET extraterrestrial it's set in some small town uh with quite normal people. Everybody can relate to them. Uh they are behaving like normal people from small town. And when you like look at a lot of movies today, they are about people from California, rich people from California very often that have very different problems that normal people have. So that's there is this kind of difference between what basically I would say that the creators are making movies about themselves or they are using cliches that they see in other movies and they kind of stopped doing movies about regular people that are still existing in the majority of the world USA or whatever. So I would love to see a movie from Montana for example and tell me some I don't know

about any movie from Montana and when there is some it's I usually like it when there's not when it's different setting and stuff and the same can be applied to games uh when you look at the games from the '90s the scale of topics and different genres was I I would dare to say larger than it's today.
That's Fabra there with his views on stories in games and Hollywood. Now, there's been a few moments where someone says something that makes me go, "I'm sorry, what?" And here's a great example of that from an my interview with Indiana Jones developer Machine Games. You know, that's always the hard part. Um, but they want to consider it a hobby and, you know, there are other hobbies at Machine Games that are that trended there. There's a fight club going on the basement.
We have a lot of Hang on.
Yeah. our our animation director is uh jiu-jitsu like really high level and he's been holding this thing where

people can get down during lunch and get beaten up. There's a lot of people who are into sports shooting.
Okay.
As you can tell from Wolfenstein, a lot of
interest in weapons generally uh both inside the games and outside the games. So, it's it's it's a very nerdy culture, but outside of games as well.
I love that.
Lego building Thursdays.
Do you get beaten up in the basement?
I haven't been down to the basement to get beaten up. Yeah. No. We've been very busy on the on the game.
Yeah. For the last couple of years.
So, there we go. Machine games love a fight. What can we say? Now, back in June, I spoke to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. I asked Tim a question developers asked me a lot, which was around them wanting to have more control over the monetization of the games they make in Fortnite. At that point, developers got a cut of the revenue made from items sold in the Fortnite store. They couldn't add their own monetization. Now, Tim gave me a great answer as to why they don't want to do that. But here's the thing, they are now doing that. That just shows how quickly things are changing in this constantly evolving uh metaverse space

that Epic are are trying to push forward. But either way, I actually really like Tim's original answer, even if he has somewhat changed his mind since. So, here it is. So I I speak spoke to a load of devs at GDC about um UFN and one of their chief perhaps issues or little little peaks was um has been the control Epic has over the monetization and there's not the variety of revenue streams I think some of them would like. Is there any view on changing that or any plans to change that?
Yeah, Fortnite's built for players first and foremost. Players [clears throat] love the ability to buy outfits and then use them everywhere they go. And love the fact that Fortnite is a a game where everybody has an equal chance. You know, there's no pay to win and there's no scenario in which spending a lot of money gives you a benefit over other players that haven't spent money. It's all entirely America based game system. I think if you look at how Roblox monetization works, when you're spending money in an experience, you're mostly buying items that are allowed to only work there. you go play another mode or go into another island or another Roblox

experience that doesn't work there. Yeah, it's something we really are worried about as a concept. If that becomes the way gaming works, then it fuels there's going to be a lot of offers made to cosplayers that are just poor deals. H idea that like, oh, somebody bought a a better game in the Toronto now I'm going to go to that game and have to buy everything again. Yeah, that's not not what players want. And then you get into pay to win mechanics where people who spend more money have a better chance of winning. You get into a lot of scenarios where they're loot boxes or things that resemble loot boxes and you play paying for a chance at something rather than buying some specific identifiable thing, you know, and generally we've rejected those forms of monetization for our own games. And we really think that we can build an economy that's better for players and that rewards creators more as a result of the increased player trust and kind of avoid falling into the pitfalls of the pay to win and loot box mechanic games, right? And if you like Roblox is still in the pretty early stages of developing monetization at scale, you know, it's increased dramatically in the last 3 years, but it's not really played

out or reached the stages. If you look at mobile platforms, you really see where that path ultimately leads. And it's not a pleasant place. It's a place in which the most greedy games with the most aggressive pay to win mechanics and you know the most luboxy mechanics almost outright gambling in some cases make the most money per user in the economy where Apple and Google and others have driven it to be dominated by advertising. To reach user you must spend a lot of money on ads and they show up more and more of the revenue through advertising. You find the greediest games spit the most money on ads and then move up and up the charts until they completely dominate the ecosystem and now the entire ecosystem is well to use Cory Dr.'s term initified but just the pervasive inset of developers to adopt commercial virtual bracketses. So we're really really worried about that inification loop that emerges in systems like that. The ads are already emerged in app stores and I think we're starting to see some aspects of that in robots. were very much in tune with keeping the Fortnite economy

fair and welcoming to everybody and avoiding those sorts of practices.
That was Sweeney there speaking to us shortly after State of Unreal back in June. Now, one of the conversations all year has been around the battle for player time. Analysts have been saying to us that actually games aren't our biggest threat. It's things like Tik Tok taking up so much people's time, soaking up all those hours. Now, I had an interview with the CEO of Zinger, Frank Yabau, and as a developer of mobile games, I wanted to get his view on how we can combat the Tik Tok threat. This is what he said. You were talking about the single-digit growth in the west and the challenges there. And one of the thing that seems to be it used to be a time where games was at the rival to everybody else like film and TV and all the other entertainment mediums were looking at games a bit crossly, I guess. You know, it stopped taking all our audience and all our time. And now we've got one in terms of like short form video in in Tik Tok and things like that.
What do we do about that? How do you counter that?
Well, I I think I start at the fundamental level like linear content

versus interactive content. I think they both have places in people's lives.
They engage and reward you emotionally and and and creatively and competitively in different ways. Um so I think that one doesn't obsolete the other necessarily. So that's kind of the first thing I think about. The second thing I think about is what can we learn from these these new platforms like Tik Tok and reals and other things. What we found is that if you don't set the hook fast in a game, if it's not challenging very quickly, you're gone.
So if you're watching quick videos and you're swiping through them quickly, I mean I do this all the time myself. It has to hook you very quickly. And traditionally in mobile games, it was think the thought was, hey, I got to wait 80 levels to get to the challenge, right? I don't want to ease you in, get you to play. It's a very permissive nice environment. But what I think what you're finding in interactive right now is games that are more challenging earlier. Elden Ring on console, you know, Color Block Jam on mobile, it sets

the hook really fast on this is hard and challenging and therefore it compels you and you attach to it much quicker. So we think much more aggressively about day 1 3 and 7 uh in terms of the user experience and what degree of engagement and and frankly monetization as a result of a lot of this short form video that's been coming out. We also mine a lot of it for ideas. If there's a particular type of video that's working or or something that's fun and funny that can be inspiration for a game a game design.
Oh.
Or a game concept. So, I think there's a symbiotic thing. I think obviously there's a a zero sum. I only have so much time in the day. Am I going to watch Tik Tok videos or get a few turns in on our games? So, I think there's going to be kind of a constant one-upsmanship on that. Uh, but I think there's a lot of crossover there that people don't necessarily talk about. Frank was great throughout that whole interview. Check it out if you have the time. Next, one of the big AAA startups, Probably Monsters, broke cover this

year. And the games were not remotely AAA. It was a proper shock to see this new studio pivot so drastically as a result of the market. Here's CEO Howard Ryan sharing insight into that decision.
You know, if we were talking back in 2020, uh I would have said, "Hey, we've got, you know, AAA publishing deals signed. We're building, you know, big games and all of our games are built that way." I would say today, I think for the industry, for us, one sizefits-all isn't the way we're going. I think it's not the right way to go. And so we're still building what I would call long-term games, but also building midterm and and short-term games. And the two games I want to talk about today a little one of them is a short-term game. It's called Stormlancer. It's coming out on the Nintendo Switch. Oh. The other game that's more of a mid what we call a midterm game for us is called I a prologue. We kind of think of it as maybe this is the pilot episode for what we hope is a longer running franchise. It represents a little more time and investment into a game than a short-term game would to us.
So, excuse me if I'm being naive. What

do you mean by short-term and midterm?
I think a short-term game for us, I would say first really is quantified by taking a a game idea you're inspired by and looking at the tools and tech that are available to today and going, what would this be if it was a game we shipped next holiday? And so for us, for our uh our short-term games, they're really games where we're looking at, you know, less than 18 months of development time.
Wow. You know, and I think for both the games that are coming out this fall, they're very approachable, easy for consumers to play and hopefully love, but you know, we have to wait for that part. And both at a $19 price point,
really.
And both games we we think a skilled user in the genre can finish the first time through probably in in less than 10 hours. You know, we we think they're games where you can find more depth when you play. And certainly when we're talking the sides scrolling rogike, it's uh a very replayable, very fun round after round game as you as you go into it.
This seems to me quite the pivot from I was reading all the old press releases,

all the old stories that we wrote about it. It was AAA big games, AAA development veteran talent such as yourself. Obviously,
I know the market's changed. I know we can probably talk about that, but is that vision you've had to change all of that? In our long-term games, you're still going to see games that have bigger investments, games that that probably have bigger teams. So, I think today for us, when we when we talk about the best path to market for a game in the old school AAA space, it would be well build a studio, right? Hire 75, 100 or more, uh, depending on what publisher you're building for, and then, you know, train that team to ship the game you're going to ship. And I think that takes a long time. There were a couple opeds I did when we announced back in the day about the pluses and minuses of AAA. And really the goal then was to start with AAA under the assumption that that was the safest path to take to get the company established. that bigger budgets would allow us to have good benefits and good quality of life and and more

predictability and and certainly it's a space that I felt like I understood pretty well based on on on my background and have good relationships uh in the industry to help move that kind of thing forward. But yeah, I think you know the first few years of the company for sure and we had great success signing signing uh AAA deals and we have great great teams and great projects underway but the the market moved and I think today we'll still build long-term games and mid and short but I think the the world today is one where you need you the best path to market is also identifying the best resources and those resources might literally be just about anywhere as you go through it and I think that's part the, you know, the evolution in the industry since 2020. Game developers are working from all kinds of places they weren't working from before. And tools in tech have allowed us to, you know, connect in real time to people all over the world, which has really opened the door to, you know, pulling the right talent into the to the games at the

right time.
Shortly after speaking to Monsters, I spoke to another person from the AAA world, Call of Duty and Dead Space alumni Glenn Scoffield. This was back in August and the excitable creative director put up a valiant defense of AAA. But one of my favorite parts of the interview was hearing his story behind building Dead Space within the EA machine and whether or not Dead Space was really a AAA game. Here he is. I don't know when I started hearing um that I was, you know, my games were being labeled AAA. I'm like, do you have any idea what making Dead Space was like? Yes, I was at EA, but at that time EA published uh something like 60 games a year
and [clears throat] internally internally I mean it was you know they had studios in um you know we we were had five six games just down here in in Redwood Shores but they have studios all over the world and so

in order to get your Hey, even even like death space, I made a deal with the president at the time and I said, uh, I need 18 to 20 people put me in a room um because I was leaving after uh after Bond and I just didn't want to make another Bond game. Uh, no offense to Bond and and um and so I made a deal with uh the president at the time uh Paul Lee and uh just give me 18 or 20 people put me in a corner and leave me alone for a year because the big companies especially back then had a tendency to go I need 10 of your people you know just as you're about to hit a great milestone or anything comes in and takes your people. So I was used to that and hated it and so um we wrote that down and I got to

pick the people.
So uh you know I had already a group I had established a group of of people and then new ones every game and stuff like that. So you're making that face then after that is trying to keep it established within the company so people have heard of it
right you are you are marketing inside your own company I did a number of things made a calendar I made a scary freaking with with just kind of the concept art part that we had I was like I I spent like I don't know $4,000 on it or something and uh we put dates on it and you know like famous dates and and then we pass it out to the uh executive. We we kind of hit it. Holy crap did I get in trouble for that.
But at the same time now they're starting to hear death face.
Then I started taking we should take

posters. made some posters and we'd put them up like we'd go to the big the with any internal show like we would have one and I shouldn't say show John and meeting you know executives together.
Yeah. you know, we go there and uh put these posters by the urinals in the men's room so that you know whenever they're going into the bathroom seeing dead space. And so it was just we did this gorilla marketing to stay relevant, but it didn't take long. Uh it took about 6 month well took about 3 months to scare my boss and uh uh and and that was important cuz soon as he was always on board his Nick Earl I mean he wasn't like a boss he was like he's just this dude [snorts] that had more power and he just bought things for me. Um he let me make the game for a

while you know just
Yeah. And then he was there with me pretty much the the whole time. Um because it took over a year to get a green lit and this is after having McCami come in and go and just amazing. Um uh so but man that's about as indie as you can get. You inside a giant company.
Yeah.
You know um fighting for your dollars and then in the end dude you get this. They do this internal. So they're they're psyched because EA of now they're showing people Dead Despace people are like really excited for it now. Um but then they do this internal thing where they have this new thing where the chief chief creative officers they have there was two I guess at the time come in and they uh they look at all all games.
Mhm.
And [clears throat] they were comparing ours to Mirror's Edge because Mirror's Edge was the other new game coming out

that
I remember. Yeah. So, internally we're about 5 6 months before ship both games. Um, something like that. It could be. And, uh, they give Mirror's Edge a 90 and Dead Space is 72.
Yeah.
This is from And we're like, and the team is devastated. And we are like, five, six of us. And how do you talk to them? That's part of your job. You have got to explain to them, no, these guys are wrong. You know, it just sucks the wind out. What does that do though internally? They go, well, let's give Mary Z more money in marketing than Dead Space. I think we had something like 12, 14 million in marketing, which is uh, you know, the people going that's more than my budget for making the game. Yes, but we're talking EA and and
yeah,

so is that AAA?
That was Scoffield there. He also pitched an idea for an Egyptian-based horror game which I really want to see made. So, I'm just putting that out there. Next, we went to Gamescom and we spoke with NCOFT America boss Jean Gi Jin. NCoFT revealed a number of live service shooter games in Cologne. It's investing in things and in projects at a time when most other companies are simply not doing that. So, I wanted to find out why. So, you're being a lot more ambitious at a time when the rest of the games industry is is being more conservative, being more cautious.
Yeah.
What's your thinking behind that? What what's what's the why?
I think, you know, we're we're really at a point uh we we really want to kind of jump out. I mean I think the game industry just everywhere has been not very active like in investment and like the growing projects you know there are a lot of cancellations layoffs for the past couple of years

and we were the same you know we actually did a lot of you know restructuring efforts especially last year the company has gone through a lot of changes but I always believe that's also the time exactly the same time we really have to work on investment. So there is definite cautiousness internally. So we're not just going aggressive for you know external opportunities. I think we are just know working on all these things together. So when we were still like you know cutting on things we also had to announce like some you know like a project cancellations last year. So when these were happening we also just really had to just go out and find you know other opportunities that what I believe because the industry has been always cycling if you think this is really kind of deep down of the cycle I think that's exactly when you also really have to find a new opportunity because a lot of

teams good team are to say uh struggling because you know there's no new fund or there's a new you know active in that splint
I think this is really in a good time for somebody like us who really has to you know find a good growth momentum once again especially outside Korean just find a good partner just to work with and just find a good project we can you know support and make big so not only being aggressive I think we are also being very careful about you know budget and what project to grow and what project to you know hold on and evaluate again. So we're also being very careful but I think we just don't want to show this ambition right now.
That was our interview with Jyn around their Gamescom reveals. Now at the end of September myself and my producer Richard attended a special party to celebrate PlayStation's 30 years in

Europe. And during that, we did the first interview with former president and CEO Jim Ryan since he left Sony. But how is he doing post Sony? Well, here he is. We have now Jim Ryan with us, the former president of PlayStation. Jim, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Chris. Who are you and what did you do on the start of the PlayStation?
So, I'm now an aging retiree. I left Sony 18 months ago and I'm loving it. Also part of that PlayStation 30 piece, I chatted with former senior producer Martin Altimes and former VP of software development Juan Montes and they told me some surprising things that very nearly happened during those early PlayStation years. And here they are. My overabiding memory of Sony was great games and great parties. [laughter] It's always been we had and it's legendary and I don't think they've ever been topped. Those first generation PlayStation parties were legendary. We that's been the abiding uh

answer to that question, bud.
Yeah, it really was. It was amazing.
Um ask one more question. Um can you tell us something about that period or that time that perhaps people might many people might not know about the uh about the about that PlayStation?
Well, I'm sure uh other people might have mentioned it. You know, we had you know, Snosis were an established publisher. Uh they were not Sony Computer Entertainment. So we had to build all our developer relationships from scratch
and we we had no reputation. So the reason why in the end we ended up establishing relationships with completely new developers was because we had no other choice you know and um it was it was a real struggle at the beginning and the one story I would share which I I think is one of the best kept secrets is we almost bought Bullfrog Peter Molyneu's company
uh one of the producers there was a

friend of Peter's and uh I remember sitting opposite him when he was having his phone And it Peter pitched Dungeon Keeper, a game that never came out called The Invincibles was a superhero game and another thing. And uh at the end of it, uh we decided it was easier and cheaper to buy them. And that's how they ended up being bought by EA. Oh, really? I think um something that probably not many people can know is uh internally within development studios we were creating a football game at the time uh the technology was there it was pretty good and we were very close you know to getting the FIFA license ah very very close and at the end you know we didn't we decided not to pursue it for you know having a good relationship with a third party, but we were very close to being in that space.
It's a bumper episode, that PlayStation history video, and it's well worth

watching for anyone that's interested in the history of this industry. Now, in October, I traveled to EVO in France to do what I didn't know at the time would be the last ever interview of Katahiro Herada as the boss of Tekken. Herado announced that he'll be stepping down for the Tekken series after 30 years just a few weeks ago. Now during that interview I asked him what he would like to do next and his answer was far more worthy than just making more games. Here's a short clip. Is there anything you'd like to do next? Is there anything that you go like just for you know I can't imagine anything but tech is do you have any other anything else you'd like to do? Yeah. foreign.

newspap uh well you know he does other projects as he's mentioned in the past uh outside of Tekken as well. So, he has been able to do many different things, but he said recently he just wants to take it easy a bit. Uh as he mentioned on Twitter, his kidney function is uh down by 30 some%. So, uh he's feeling a little bit tired. He wants to uh recover, but apparently

kidneys don't really recover that much. So, he's uh stopped drinking alcohol and been uh improving his diet. So,
that was Herado there. Now, one of our standout interviews of the year was with Patrick Sodland, the CEO of Ark Raiders developer Embark. We could have picked any clips from this, but we thought one of the more entertaining stories was around the studio's first game, the finals, and what happened there and how that influenced Arc Raiders. Here's a segment of that interview. I think we kind of had a hunger to create something different, something that wasn't, you know, an FPS uh or or um a game where you shoot other people necessarily uh in in the same way. And we decided that, you know, well, we just that's when we started building on Arc Raiders and what was then Arc Raiders. But then obviously, you know, there's a reason why we built these types of games for so many years, many of us. And I think we we kind of got
an itch to to go and you know explore

that that segment again. And I remember telling um some of the individuals who were working on it that listen we won't go into this space unless we can come with something that have that can serve up and have a meaningful innovation and that that brings something new and fresh to the market. Otherwise, why bother? We're not going to go and try and build, you know, um, a game that's already out there and try and do it better or or or our version of it. That makes no sense. We wanted to did build something that brought brought something new. Um, so that's um, and then we had a long, you know, multiple conversations around what could that be, how how would it be executed, everything. And that eventually led to the finals. We also knew that we wanted to try and maximize um the amount of players playing the game. And being a relatively small studio, we felt like freeto play is is a business model that that that could make sense as long as we try and implement um a version of freeto play that's that's fair, that is um just

towards the players and that don't um that we don't take every angle to monetize them. Uh but it's built on on kind of a a fair um trusting relationship towards our our our paying and playing customers. Whether you whether you pay or play or or or just play, uh it doesn't really matter. Um and um yeah, we launched the game. Um we we were surprised at how many people played it to be honest. um we had over 20 million downloads very quickly and people you know came to play the game. So I think that we
we had obviously created something that people had an interest in playing that was obvious with you know mission complete on on that aspect. Um but then uh I remember it so well. I was we were all away during Christmas. I remember I was on a trip somewhere and um very addicted to my phone and reading

all the data that was basically hourly. We saw revenue numbers, player numbers, we saw everything coming in, you know, on it. So I was watching my my phone constantly during during the break and then January 7 I remember was the day when kind of everything started declining and declining rapidly to a large we were completely fine then and we were we thought that we were you know this is you know that we've created a monster and then um it took about a month and then people started um Yeah, doing something else. They they stopped playing the game to a to a large extent and we lost massive players player the player numbers went down very quickly and um we came back and started thinking what's happened has something else launched and you know it took us a while to fully understand why that was. I think um we got to a place where it was evident that we had uh there wasn't enough content in the game. We didn't do a good job enough

onboarding players. We didn't do a good enough job explaining the game modes. Um, we didn't I mean there were you know we had a problem with our menu and UI pro you know HUD HUD everything.
Um and then I think what was evident also for us was there's no quick fix. There's nothing that we can do. Uh there's not one thing that will that will that is wrong that will make this fix a fix that that that creates a solution that that then all the players are back. That wasn't the case. We quickly realized that that was the that wasn't the case. So we we had okay so we had to be very methodical about it. We had to go back and um talk to the players as best we could mine all the data and then um you know data is is is great and it's it's can be can be your best friend but it can also be your worst enemy because it's what you do with the data that dictates the outcome and and everyone talks about data but what people should be talking about is actually how to

what to do with data and and how to analyze data and what what decisions you make on something that is inherently creative and and a piece of entertainment, right? So, we had to learn learn how to do that our way. Um, and and it took time, but uh and we tried many things. We we thought that we were we're lacking a game mode and we had to fix that. So, then we added something that we thought were was awesome, the the terminal attack game mode. we loved it and I was thinking this is it you know now everyone's going to come back and everyone you know most people didn't like it no
so so okay now what what do we do now so that was kind of the constant loop that we had to go through in order to understand uh to get to a place where where we felt like we um made progress and then we did make progress I think we were by the people that that stuck to us and still played which you know there were still a lot of them um they were they could see what we were trying to

accomplish. I think they applauded the effort and then we slowly started seeing more and more players kind of either come back or come in and try the game and and then uh our you know retention mechanics were better um and got better over time and now um yeah for the last I would say 6 months we've been on a steady growth trajectory again and we're growing the you know the franchise we're
you know we're seeing and you know the game is is profitable um which is a good uh and and um we feel good about it. So, we're sitting here planning, you know, not months ahead, but years ahead of what this game can become and what to do with it. Um so, I know that that's a probably a relatively unusual story. Um a lot of, you know, a lot of games we've seen come out and then go through the same thing and unfortunately, um they cease to exist, especially in the freeto-play market. Um, so I'm a little bit surprised that we uh that we managed

to make the changes that we did and and and uh that we got to a place that's not now much better. Doesn't mean that it will last forever, but it means that we've done something right.
Well, is there anything from that that you're sort of you're able to take into Arc Raiders that you've learned?
No, no, of course a ton. Um, just launching with with more content, more depth. It's not necessarily about having, you know, more than three, four, five or seven. I mean, it doesn't it's not the amount of maps necessarily. It's how you utilize the content. It's the depth. What do people do? You know, the first thing you have to understand is when you play the game, the second to second, you know, if you don't nail that, there's no game. Uh, you know, then then you talk about, you know, traditionally talk about the what happens every minute in the game. You need to nail that too. those things you can't negotiate. Unless you have those figured out, no one is going to want to play the game.
Um I think that for both arcis and for

the finals, those two to a large extent we figured out. um you know then then you go into hour by hour and then you know day by day and then maybe week by week, month by month that's where the problem starts and you need to really make sure that you have uh things for players to do uh things for play pay players to to accomplish things for um that you have an ever evolving game that feels like you know you want to come back to um that that punish you punishes you enough but but not too much right that that that is rewarding yet not too rewarding. Um, and that that that feels
fair yet sometimes unfair.
And that's the balance you have to thread, right? And and um and as as a developer um it's it's um I'm not saying that we're going to get it right 100% for our creators, but I think that the learnings that we've had has taught us a lot. And I also know that in the events

or cases where we don't get it right, I think that we're going to be much quicker to jump on those problems and and cure them uh or try to cure them.
That interview really is a must listen. And it turned out actually to be part one of two interviews. A month later, I spoke with former Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney. Now Owen was responsible for Nexon acquiring Embark. So, having heard the story from the perspective of the developer, I thought it would be fascinating to hear the other side of it. Here's a bit from my interview with Owen. The whole business at the moment seems to have turned and looked at what Patrick and the and the team have been doing at Embark over at Arc Raiders.
Yeah,
you must be feeling pretty delighted about that as like a great example of of the strategy and then your your belief on where the industry is headed. Yeah, I mean Embark is a really good example of um so first of all to answer your question, yeah, I'm thrilled by what they're doing.
But I will tell you that the history of that deal is very interesting and it it probably says um a lot more about where the industry

is at than the than anything that we did. But but but the brief history of it is when I invest in that company originally and then bought the company um years several years ago, you know, I kind of joke around with friends who were there at the time that you know that was the deal that I I probably took more I'm not sure what the right word is, but I I raised a lot of eyebrows, I guess I would say. Oh,
really? I mean a nice way to say it is I got a lot of push back and it was push back from investors and then board members who were representing investors you know who were the owners of the company um certainly the sellside analysts um and a lot of the buy side analysts I talked to and they were like what the hell are you doing I mean that's that's crazy but I will tell you at the same time it was the easiest yes I've ever said I mean I I worked really hard or and the whole team worked really hard to make that happen. It was the easiest decision I ever made in I as as long as I can remember. But in the defense of the people who were skeptical, I'd say there were a couple things. Number one, at one level, the

mental models that are represented by what Emark did are completely different than most of the mental models operating in AAA online game development today. Another uh is that remember at that time they didn't have any profit as a company. And usually when you're buying a company, especially large numbers, you're looking at a company, you want to buy a company that's profitable. Not only did they not have any profit, they didn't have any revenue. Not only did they have any revenue, they didn't have a product. And they were three years away by our, you know, now clearly optimistic estimates of when they were going to come out with a product. And then beyond that, we all agreed that they were going to spend the first nine months developing technology to enable them to make the types of products that they wanted to make and we wanted them to make. And so when we talked about and articulated to our investors, okay, here's what we're doing. We think there's a real yin and yang here of this fabulous group of developers who are operating at a level that people don't really operate in our industry for the most part. They're very, very rare in terms of the level that they're operating. So, we're lucky to have them.

Um, at the same time, one of the things that they were in the market for was understanding how we at Nexon made games like Maple Story and Dungeon Fighter grow for 20 years and how is that possible? that was not in their, you know, theories of what they could pull off. So, it was a real yin and yang where their strengths were things that we wanted and our strengths were things that they wanted. That's what you look for in M&A. So, it was a it was an easy easy decision for me and the management team to make, but it was very very hard from the outside to understand it. So, from that perspective, yeah, it's really gratifying and I'm just thrilled for what they've done. I I want to say it's exceeded my expectations, but my expectations were very high because I think they're just such a wonderful team on so many levels. We had Patrick on the show a couple of weeks ago.
Oh yeah, it was great.
And he was saying and I think probably speaking to you about how when they launched the finals in 2021, 2021, I think it was 21. And um and how excited they got when all the numbers came in, but then everything came crashing down. And it seemed to be it was Nexon that sort of created a it's all right. Don't panic. Um there's just there we've got a

journey here. And he doesn't think that, you know, most other companies that would have even they would have got that far. they got to the point now where the game's profitable and and and it's like a it's just taken quite a while to get to that point.
Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that that Patrick's pointing to um is something that I'm probably going to write my next blog about over over the holiday, but
you know, a game you see this over and over in the games business. We experienced it when I was at Nexon numerous times. I've seen it around the industry numerous times, which is a a new game launches, it pops, there's a lot of excitement, ton of downloads, and then the numbers drop. So, when it pops, everybody says, "Oh, this is the greatest game ever. You got congratulations. It's a hit." And then it drops and everybody says, "Oh my god, it's a terrible failure." It is nowhere near what its peak number was, which is a which is not the right anchor. Um, and then what you see over time is it builds up over time. And we saw this for example with Maple Story Mobile. It did exactly that. It popped. It dropped.

Everybody said up, it's fizzled out. You know, it's never coming back. It'll be like Farmville or something like that. And it'll never come back. And guess what? It's much bigger now. Or at least when I was last at Nexon, it's much bigger than it ever was when it launched. You've seen that uh as I recall, and I I can't remember the exact numbers, but I think a Apex Legends certainly went through that period.
They had a you know, they had sort of a rough launch. generated a ton of excitement and then became bigger than it ever was. And then these waves happened over very long periods of time like No Man's Sky, right? Like like when that came out, people said, "Oh, they're so excited about it." And then it became, you know, kind of a laughing stock. I think very unfairly. And you know, it has come roaring back, you know, slowly roaring back. So I really have a lot of respect for companies that understand that. I think it creates it's a seriously misunderstood aspect of the games business especially online games and for investors it creates enormous opportunity of course because the broader market misunderstands what a game can do so there's a set of questions you can do to figure out that

when we were talking about the finals I mean it's a re if you play it it's a really really fun game to play it had some issues they could identify what those issues were and then we know that if you fix them you know it usually works out really well and when you're talking about a team that's that talented Yeah,
you know that thoughtful do that.
How do you know when not to be patient with it?
Is it when it's not fun?
Well, I you know at the risk of oversimplifying and I think I I think that that that is the answer.
And if you can't see where it's fun and if you can't really see where the team is going to get it fun, then you're going to have problems ever making it be successful. It sounds glib to say, but in fact, I think it's much more profound. And it's a problem that our industry doesn't spend a lot more time thinking about that exact point or say that exact thing that you just said, which is wait a minute. Okay. Is this fun to play? No, I'm not having a great time. I I think Patrick mentioned in the interview that you had certainly he and I spent hundreds of hours talking about this over the course of the development was, are we having a good time playing

Arc Raiders right now? Well, yeah. We have these incredible moments. This is years ago, right, when they were in earlier in development. Yeah, we have these incredibly high interesting moments,
but then we'll have periods where it's just not fun to play. Okay, well, what do we got to do about it?
And so for you can talk to a developer and see if they've got their head around it, if they can kind of light up the dark room and see where the parts are that aren't working and then evaluate pretty quickly if they've got their head around it. Um, but so much of the especially around AAA, so much of the game development process is no longer like that. And I think that's that goes to part of what are the problems.
So that's two interviews there that tell the story of Arc Raiders Embark and Nexxon and I think both interviews work really well side by side. If you have the time, please go back and listen. Now, before I sign off for the year, one topic that dominated 2025 was about the console war. We saw Xbox largely bowaring out of the console race while Nintendo launched its new Switch 2

console in June. I spoke about all of this with former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fzami in November and here's what he had to say. Let's talk a bit more broadly. Um, what do you think of the console space generally right now? But it's quite interesting with with Microsoft. I think Xbox is stopping doing exclusive games. Sarah Bond called exclusive games antiquated and PlayStation even PlayStation is putting more of its games on PC. It certainly seems like a sector's going through quite a big uh change. What do you make of all that?
Yeah, I I think you're absolutely right. Um and and I I think between Sony and uh Xbox, I think there's different things going on. You know, I I think from Sony's perspective, they have to be quite pleased with, you know, how they've launched their hardware. You know, the games that they've had for their system have been fantastic. And so now, you know, they're thinking, you know, how do we best monetize

our software and bringing that onto PC? Uh, and and PC gaming has had a bit of a of a resurgence these last number of years. It makes strong business sense for them. Yeah.
Yeah. The the team at at Xbox and you know I'm I'm very good friends with Phil u you know I know the team there. They've I think tried to redefine what success looks like for them. It's no longer selling physical boxes. It is about getting their software out to as many players as possible. And so it was somewhat inevitable that, you know, they would have games that would be on on Sony system.
Yeah.
What I find surprising, I'm surprised that Xbox has not yet fully embraced the Switch 2 platform from a software perspective.
Right.
That's the one that surprises me because certainly some games could easily be ported over to Switch 2. And uh and I

have to say I'm surprised that we haven't seen more of that. I I I thought there would be much more, especially during this time frame leading up into the holiday.
GameStop, who I know you had a brief um dealings with, they declared the console war is over on social media. Um do do you agree?
Yeah, it it was a good gimmick for them to do. Um [laughter] the look I do think that the years of direct competition I I think those times are done. Um, and part of it is that, you know, with a large part now of, you know, the Xbox business being publishing, you know, by definition, they're a big third party publisher that also makes some hardware.
Yeah.
And so from that standpoint, you know, they are no longer directly competing

with Sony PlayStation business. And in fact, they need support from Sony, I think, for their software, for Microsoft software to reach the largest audience.
And as I said earlier, I think it would be in their best interest to find ways for Xbox software be, you know, beyond Minecraft to make its way onto the Nintendo platform.
Yeah.
So, from that standpoint, you know, direct warfare is over. But but you know on the other hand you know gamers out there have limited budgets whether they're you know older gamers like us or younger gamers like our kids and and uh and so from that standpoint for every dollar spent, you need to win for every minute spent playing. And so from that standpoint, there's always going to be uh a war going on. It may be uh may be below the surface, but there's always going to be

uh there's always going to be a battle for attention and and for mind share. That's it from our best of show. Honestly, there was so many others we could have featured, including our interview with Sega bossumi, famous analyst Matthew B, Ubisoft's Lisa Opie, CD Project. We spoke to them. We spoke to a load of media and investors around what's going on in their worlds. Amia Savat was talking to us about the employment situation. We interviewed a bunch of retro companies including Atari, Twitch's Dan Clansancy, IO Interactives Hack and Amber, Unity, Remedy Sam Lake, plus our interviews that we only did last week, including with Bethesda's Todd Howard and Next Playgrounds Daniel Lee. Loads of stuff that we had to not feature in this episode, but I still think are very well worth a watch. Now, before we conclude, we're going to run one more clip. I'm a bit koi about this one, but our main back on the game business has been Jeff Keley. He popped up on the show just before Christmas and to send us off into the new year. Here he is talking about this very podcast. But before I hand over to him, thank you for listening and

watching this year. I can't wait to get going in 2026. I really can't. We've got a lot in store for you. So have a lovely holiday and I'll see you in the new year. Now here's Jeff. It's Jeff Keley. Hello Jeff. Welcome to the show.
Thank you Chris. It's uh good good to finally be on TG. Yeah, it's uh uh you managed to keep I managed to you managed to stay away for for the best part of nine months.
I know. Congratulations. I'm I'm really uh glad that you're doing this and uh it's been amazing to see how it's grown and and u I'm enjoying it. Obviously, I'm involved, but also I think you're you're serving a great uh a great role in the industry and have a lot of great content. So, congratulations to you on a a great first year.