Deconstructor of Fun

Joining Ethan in conversation this week is long time games industry executive Chris Heatherly to discuss Chris's recent essay on LinkedIn about the death of the games-as-app era and the ascent of games-as-service. Chris argues that, fueled by "metaverse" hobbies such as Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft, we are entering an era of reduced content creation cost where the next land rush in the industry is going to be creating hit games within other experiences, as opposed to standalone apps. In this thought provoking and wide ranging conversation, Chris avoids the hype and talks specifics about what this games-as-content transition means, and why we should all be installing Unreal Engine for Fortnite.

Eric, Ethan, Laura and Phil are back from GDC and are eager to share all that they learned during the week long celebration of all things game development. They talk the biggest news of the show, including Unreal Engine for Fortnite + Creator Economy 2.0, the surprise announcement of Counterstrike 2, CCP's massive raise for a AAA Web3 game and more. And most surprisingly, vests! Kress hates vests y'all! Mind your drip or else face Kress's wrath :)

The crew is back from Istanbul and what an event! Eric and Laura give Ethan and Phil major fomo about all the amazing people and sessions they missed at the gaming event of the year! We preview all the amazing Deconstructor of Fun content coming next week to GDC then get into the news. We talk about the further democratization of the Epic Games Store, Redemption Games' spin out of AppLovin', the total meltdown of Silicon Valley Bank and its effects on the gaming startup ecosystem, and the monster $55 million raise for the newly minted Believer Games. Remember, if you see a member of the DoF family at GDC, make sure to say Mice Nuts 😂

Kress sits down with Moritz Baier-Lentz to talk about if fundamentals matter in VC investing and whether we will return to the speculative investments that were made during the mania of the past few years.  And asked what exactly is investable in the gaming space for early stage investors?

Most of the team (and the audience) is off at the Istanbul Gaming Summit, leaving Ethan and Phil to hold down the fort. Today is LiveOps, LiveOps, LiveOps. We talk about the Apex Legends Mobile shutdown and the incredibly difficult challenge of feeding a live service content treadmill. We talk Knockout City's shutdown and the incredibly difficult challenge of profitably running a cosmetics forward monetization strategy. We talk Angry Birds Classic and the incredibly hard problem of getting organic traffic to your profitable games they are not #1 in the search results. And we talk Niantic's next game and the incredibly difficult challenge of finding a second, globe spanning phenomenon.  Headed to GDC later this month? Don't forget to show up for Ethan's Sunday night casual meetup at Standard Deviant Brewing company to meet your fellow Fundies. Or the Xsolla Game Night we are co-hosting with Mattel and Xsolla on Tuesday. And if you see a member of the DoF team, don't forget to tell them "Mice Nuts!"

The crew discusses Neil Long's App Store exposé in The Guardian, Rovio pulling the classic Angry Birds from distribution, Playtika suspending new game development, Street Fighter: Duel's launch and the explosive success of Hogwarts Legacy. Join Laura, Eric, Eric and Ethan and help us settle which Eric is the grumpy one. 

Mr. Kress sits down with an executive coach and an investor Niklas Herriger to chat about what it takes for Founders, CEOs, and CTOs to grow their companies from 5 to 100 people. 
Niklas Herriger is a former founder, whose company Gondola.io, was acquired by Tilting Point in 2019.  LINKS:  http://niklasherriger.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/niklasherriger/

The crew assembles to cover all the latest and greatest games industry news, including the latest annual letter from Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen, Blizzard's return-to-office policy, the PSVR2 launch and more. Also, we've got a couple of exciting events coming up: Istanbul Gaming Summit on Thursday, March 9th: https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/istanbul Xsolla Game Night at GDC on Tuesday, March 21st: https://events.xsolla.com/gdcgamenight

We got a spicy episode for you. Someone is either getting fired or assassinated as a result of this week's episode.

This week, Eric Kress updates us on the latest on Microsoft’s acquisition and Playtika’s bear hug of Rovio as well as a summary of earnings. Eric Seufert talks (rants?) about Alex Shea’s PCG talk on Hypercasual’s demise. Phillip discusses Knockout City’s sunsetting and joins Laura in covering Supercell’s beta game, Squad Busters. Türkiye was hit with magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been affected. Join us in helping by following this LINK.