Joost van Dreunen – Unlocking Value in Gaming – [Invest Like the Best, EP.210]

My guest today is Joost van Dreunen, an investor in the gaming space, professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, and former CEO and co-founder of SuperData Research, a data-driven gaming firm that was acquired by Nielsen. He also recently authored One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games, a great book on the business game industry and why I reached out to speak with him in the first place. Our conversation covers the rise and decline of GameStop, what parts of the value chain actually make money in video games, the evolution of video game business models from Nintendo to Fortnite, and what other industries can learn by studying the video game industry. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Joost van Dreunen. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content check out https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/14574831/van-unlocking-value-in-gaming This episode of Invest Like the Best is sponsored by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis. If you’re a professional equity investor and haven’t talked to Canalyst recently, you should give them a shout. Learn more and try Canalyst for yourself at canalyst.com/Patrick. Invest like the Best is a property of Colossus Inc. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best go to https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here - https://www.joincolossus.com/newsletter. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag Follow Colossus on Twitter at @JoinColossus Show Notes [00:02:38] – [First question] – First chapter of the modern gaming business [00:06:28] – The product era of video games [00:10:11] – The different pieces that take place in creating and selling a game [00:12:25] – The story of GameStop [00:18:45] – The transition to digital platform-based gaming [00:22:55] – How the breakdown of platforms has changed [00:27:35] – Free-to-play vs free-to-win in digital gaming [00:31:27] – How the revenue models are changing the type of games that are made [00:35:07] – Socializing games and the future there [00:38:14] – Who is making money in the modern gaming world [00:43:33] – The zones of opportunity to invest in within gaming [00:47:12] – Why the business models can be more powerful than new tech [00:53:52] – Strategies from gaming that the non-gaming industries can learn from [00:57:05] – Kindest thing anyone has done for him