The Attention Drain (Ep. 28)

Blake and Mitch discuss the thesis that the games business is losing share of attention to non-game interactive applications. They discuss whether there is actually a defined market for interactive entertainment, and whether applications like TikTok should be considered "interactive."

They discuss and try to quantify the impact of game-like retention and engagement mechanics being adopted by such disparate applications as Snap, Duolingo, Strava, Fan Duel, Polymarket, Tinder, and OnlyFans. They conclude that it is not only a problem of "share of day" -- the hours that are being devoted to these addictive, interactive apps -- but also "share of wallet" -- the disposable income they are harvesting.

They discuss the structural change that they noticed coming out of the pandemic: that children in the pre-teen and teenage cohorts sought a different kind of pleasure in gaming during lockdown -- the pleasure of sociality. Mitch and Blake both feel that this change is endemic, and as this cohort has now aged into the key 18-34 demographic, that change is being reflected in gamer taste. They riff on some of the games and games-adjacent companies that anticipated or reacted quickly to this audience change, and reaped rewards for doing so.

They conclude by discussing how these new non-game interactive competitors are tapping into ancient human interaction patterns around things like gambling, social competition, and sex that have been part of human culture -- and important categories of human spending -- for millenia. They warn that the games business needs to react to this current attention drain as an on-going competitive threat, and learn back some of the lessons these new competitors learned from games.

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QF Update: World Cup Consumer Guide (Ep. 36)

The "Second Tournament" begins with 4 tasty quarter-final matches. Mitch and Blake break down the Round of 32 and Round of 16, rate their recommendations from last episode, and then dive into the quar...

9 Heinä 1h 33min

R32 Update: World Cup Consumer Guide

Mitch and Blake look back at the group stage and talk about the main themes from the tournament so far. They review their picks for matches to watch from the last episode and what they got right and w...

28 Kesä 1h 22min

World Cup Consumer Guide (Ep. 34)

Football nerds unite! Mitch & Blake are back with a special episode on the 2026 FIFA World Cup. In this episode they provide a very opinionated "Consumer Guide" to the most watchable matches of the Gr...

12 Kesä 1h 24min

Holy Grail, or Poison Chalice? (Ep. 33)

Mitch and Blake conclude Season 4 with a review of a new kind of games company that is getting significant attention from investors: casual game portals with integrated AI game generation engines, see...

27 Touko 51min

Funding & Founding (Ep. 32)

Blake and Mitch discuss the current environment for funding games and some of the challenges and opportunities for founders in the games space. They begin with a short survey of the current venture ca...

20 Touko 55min

A Theory of Fun

Blake and Mitch discuss the possibility that games -- mainly mobile and live service games -- have concentrated on providing fun through progression and engagement mechanics rather than fun in the gam...

13 Touko 1h 5min

Navigating the AI Future (Ep. 30)

Mitch and Blake offer their thoughts about how to navigate the introduction and impact of large language model AI in the video game business. They begin by discussing their opinion that AI represents ...

6 Touko 1h 18min

How Istanbul Won the Mobile Puzzle Wars (Ep. 29)

Mitch and Blake discuss the rise of the Istanbul gaming scene, which has exploded in the last 15 years and come to dominate the incredibly lucractive "match 3" mobile puzzle genre -- a genre which rep...

29 Huhti 1h 6min