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, seeking to become a "feed" for games akin to social media platforms like TikTok or YouTube. They show how these companies sit at the intersection of several of the most significant topics the hosts discussed throughout the season: artificial intelligence, casual games at scale, threats to the games industry from the feed-based "attention drains," and the human experience of play.

After discussing some key examples of this new company type, they show how this strategy is just a new spin on an old idea. They talk about the early in-browser portals like MiniClip and Kongregate 20 years ago, which got to large user scale but failed to monetize commensurate with their reach.

They then discuss how some modern attempts to do similar feed/portal UGC strategies pre-AI failed to work out, and why. They theorize that the friction of re-learning game mechanics and play patterns works against the idea of a game-feed -- and how the successful user-generated content platforms like Roblox and UEFN route around that friction with constraints.

They return to the new AI portals and talk about the bull and bear cases for their longer-term success.

The episode, and the season, concludes with the hosts saying farewell and thanking the audience for listening.

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Avsnitt(34)

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13 Maj 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 Maj 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 Apr 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 Apr 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 Apr 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 Apr 1h 9min