Gamecraft21 Touko 2025

The Sum of the Parts (Ep. 24)

Mitch and Blake explore the role of consolidation -- primarily through mergers and acquistions -- in building some of the biggest and most durable companies in gaming.

They begin with a discussion of the four major strategic uses of mergers and acquisitions: economies of scale, entry into new markets, control of talent and intellectual property, and new technologies. They provide many examples along the way.

Mitch argues that M&A is so important to the business that it's actually difficult to avoid ending up on either side of that equation, as an acquirer or as a target of aquisition. Mitch and Blake map that idea onto their dictum that venture backed companies need to decide whether they are building a product or a company.

They talk briefly about the financial engineering side of M&A, particularly in the form of the "roll-up" -- where companies are entirely build from acquisitions with a (usually mistaken) hope that the value of the whole will exceed the sum of the parts. They discuss why this rarely works, and try to explain why Embracer is in such trouble as a result.

They close the episode with a closer look at EA, Activision, Sony, Microsoft and other companies and show how their acquisitions map clearly onto the four main consolidation strategies. They argue that leverage is the key component of M&A success -- that buying companies against some pre-existing competitive advantage (rather than just buying randomly) results in a much higher likelihood of success.

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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

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 en...

22 Huhti 1h 8min

Roblox (Ep. 27)

Mitch & Blake discuss one of their favorite companies in games, Roblox. They start by outlining Roblox's core competitive advantages, and how they are unique in providing creation, consumption, aggreg...

15 Huhti 1h 21min

2026 Trends & Specific Predictions (Ep. 26)

Blake and Mitch return! They begin with a discussion of the "Great Inflection" in software in the last several months. They then do some follow-up to last season, particularly their "deadpool" episod...

8 Huhti 1h 9min