Gamecraft7 Touko 2025

Hasbro and Lego (Ep. 22)

Mitch and Blake look at two of the largest toy companies in the world, Hasbro and Lego, and discuss their divergent but ultimately very successful forays into the games business as licensors of intellectual property.

Your hosts discuss how both Hasbro and Lego tried to enter the games business directly as developers and publishers of digital games in the late 1990s, how they had very different experiences of success and failure, and how both decided to exit the business in the early 2000s only to return as licensors rather than publishers later in that decade. Mitch tells the story about why he went to Hasbro's private pre-Toy Fair meeting in Florida in the late 90s.

They then explore the licensing stategies of both companies in depth. They discuss the transformative partnership between Lego and Traveller's Tales, and the complexities of using IP licensed by Lego for toy sets, like Star Wars, as the narrative universes for Lego's video games. They discuss the rise of Wizards of the Coast inside Hasbro after the 1998 acquisition (culminating in the accession of Chris Cox, head of WoTC, to the CEO position of Hasbro), resulting in two defining license deals: Baldur's Gate 3 to Larian, and Monopoly Go to Scopely.

Mitch and Blake close the episode with a look at how a huge market for block-based sandbox play -- that should have been in Lego's wheelhouse -- was captured by new entrants like Minecraft and Roblox. They also speculate about Hasbro's challenges replicating their recent licensing success in the near future.

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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