The State of Play: 2024 (Ep. 9)
They're back! Season 2 of the GameCraft podcast kicks off with Mitch and Blake introducing the new 8-episode season, followed by an analysis of the current health of the games business. Mitch and Blak...
24 Jan 20241h 18min
The New Gold Rush (Ep. 8)
Mitch and Blake take on the complex topic of in-game economies. They discuss how the endemic problems of trust and arbitrage were present in the earliest in-game economies of the late 1980 and how the...
22 Feb 20231h 2min
The Failures and Futures of Virtual Reality (Ep. 7)
Mitch and Blake discuss the recurring industry obsession with the idea of virtual reality, beginning in the mid-1980s. Mitch recounts a story about his encounter with VPL and the weird world of digita...
15 Feb 202353min
Console Castles (Ep. 6)
Mitch and Blake debate the continuing relevance of dedicated gaming consoles to the video game business. They begin with a discussion of the economics of the console business, and how console manufact...
8 Feb 20231h 1min
The Playground and the Stage (Ep. 5)
Mitch and Blake propose a framework for understanding user-generated content in games based on two central metaphors -- the playground and the stage -- representing the two ways users "create" content...
1 Feb 20231h 11min
The Forever Games (Ep. 4)
Mitch and Blake discuss how the rise of games-as-services has privileged durable, long-duration play-patterns -- leading to the modern idea of the "Forever Game" which can persist for decades. Mitch o...
25 Jan 20231h 21min
The Calculus of Fun (Ep. 3)
Mitch and Blake discuss perhaps the most important developments in the video games business since the 1990s: the explosion of casual and mobile gaming. Mitch explains how the casual business was catal...
18 Jan 20231h 10min
The Fall and Rise of Publishing (Ep. 2)
Mitch and Blake take a deep dive into the game industry's migration from physical goods at retail to electronic distribution over the internet. They explore the rise of platform-based publishing — a n...
16 Jan 20231h 3min
