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This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on November 27th. In this week’s issue, we're diving into the recent race toward prompt-based AI platforms, from Astrocade and Roblox Build to Google Playground. You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/prompt-to-game-is-here-which-platforms  Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

For years, AI in gaming has promised smarter NPCs, cheaper content creation, and more dynamic worlds. Yet few of these promises have translated into commercially viable player experiences. Our host, Alexandra Takei, VP at Medal & General Intuition, sits down with Brian Tanner, co-founder and CEO of Artificial Agency and former DeepMind leader, to explore the emergence of agentic gameplay and the company's approach to building intelligent, autonomous virtual players. The conversation examines how foundation models are expanding the capabilities of traditional game AI, enabling characters to understand player intent, improvise, and collaborate in ways previously impossible. We explore Artificial Agency's upcoming integration with Owlchemy Labs' Dimensional Double Shift, where three AI teammates replace human players in a cooperative VR experience. Brian also unpacks the economics of agentic gameplay, including how Artificial Agency reduced inference costs to single-digit cents per player hour, alongside the challenges of latency, QA, model ownership, and commercial deployment. Finally, we discuss developer skepticism toward AI, the importance of preserving designer control, and whether intelligent virtual players could fundamentally reshape multiplayer gaming. We’d also like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv. If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].   Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

Three years after raising a $31.3M Series A off a prototype shown behind closed doors at GDC, Gardens Interactive still hasn’t announced a release date. Investors just put in another $35M+ anyway. In this episode, Kalie Moore welcomes back Stephen Bell and Chris Bell, two of Gardens’ three co-founders and the team behind Journey, Sky, What Remains of Edith Finch and Blaseball, following a Series B led by Lightspeed that values the studio at $190M and brings total funding past $70M before launch. They explain what took three years, including a late switch from Unity to Unreal, how Chris handed the CEO role to Stephen to focus fully on the game, and what Gardens actually is now that it can speak for itself: an online survival roleplaying “strandbox” where players cross paths with strangers, build relationships, and reshape the world together. Stephen pushes back on the friendslop label and the idea that jank is a weakness, and Chris shares how a single image in an inspiration folder led to a cold DM to Ma-ko, the artist whose work now defines the game’s look. The conversation also gets into the money. Stephen explains why the round leaned on traditional VCs rather than gaming funds, what separates Gardens from the wave of veteran-led studios that raised big in the zero interest rate era without breaking out, and why the reported “one year of runway after release” doesn’t tell the full story. He’s candid that this isn’t a funding recovery so much as a concentration, and why he thinks games are now underfunded rather than overfunded. They also cover how Lightspeed sees human connection as a bet that gets more valuable as AI spreads, why their proprietary tech blends procedural generation with hand-authored content, how they measure success in playtests by the stories and relationships players report, and how they’re approaching monetization with former Valve economist Mike Ambinder, starting with one firm rule: Gardens will never be pay to win. We’d also like to thank Tebex for making this episode possible! With funding tight, the question isn’t just how big a game can get but how long a studio can run, and that starts with knowing what each sale actually returns. Tebex’s free Hidden Fees Calculator compares your provider’s headline rate with your true effective rate, including FX, payment method and chargeback costs, and shows the annual difference. Check it out here and learn more about Tebex at https://www.tebex.io/. If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected]. Who’s On: Guests Stephen Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbellgardens/Chris Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gardenschris/Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/  Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe Links mentioned: https://gardens.dev/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-07/video-game-designer-behind-sky-journey-raises-35-millionhttps://gardens.firstlook.gg/signup/closedalphamk1

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on October 18th. In this week’s issue, we look into Meta, exploring the company’s shift away from gaming-focused VR hardware towards AI and AR glasses, and its resurgent mobile advertising engine. You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/metas-role-in-gaming-today-muse-vr-ua Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

Most studios have teams, funding, and a publisher behind them. Abe Train has a laptop and a handful of contractors. In this episode, Kalie Moore sits down with Abe, founder of Trainwreck Labs, to unpack how a former head of business intelligence at HelloFresh became one of the most successful independent developers in daily browser games. Abe quit his job on the last day of 2021 with about six months of runway, and a month later Wordle took over the internet. He built Globle, a daily geography guessing game, posted it to one Reddit community, and watched it climb to over a million players a day at its peak. They get into why that post worked when the identical one in a bigger subreddit got zero traction, why most Wordle clones vanished while Globle stuck, and why the best creator marketing he’s ever had came from people he never spoke to, including a Thai TikToker playing an English word game and a biology teacher who plays Metazooa on camera every day. The conversation also covers how Abe has built a catalog of daily educational games as the only full-time employee. He explains why a small, obsessive audience is more valuable than a big casual one, why players always ask for games to get easier but never harder, and what he learned moderating taxonomy debates in his Discord. On monetization, he shares why he almost refused to run ads, how he ended up running them on his own terms through Nitro, why players barely noticed when he did, and the rule he brought from HelloFresh about the complaints you never hear.. He also walks through how he barely writes code anymore, why there’s no AI-generated art in any of his games, what he learned shutting down his newsletter, and his plans for native apps, real-world events, and the Trainwreck Club subscription he gives to teachers for free. This episode is brought to you by Appcharge, the payments platform built specifically for mobile gaming that processes over a billion dollars annually. Learn more here: https://www.appcharge.com/?utm_source=naavik&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=sponsorship_payments We’d also like to thank Dive for making this episode possible! With its fully managed analytics and LiveOps platform built for game studios, 95% of their clients grow revenue in one year. All of that without having to hire an in-house data team. Learn more here: https://www.dive.games/  If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected]. Who’s On: Guest - Abe Train: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abe-train-81418714b/ Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/  Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe Links mentioned: https://trainwrecklabs.com/

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on October 11th. In this week’s issue, we check in on CD Projekt, looking at the company’s current state, ongoing projects, and how the company has shifted its way of working to drive a more successful future. You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/cd-projekts-best-days-may-be-ahead  Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

As cheating becomes more sophisticated, anti-cheat is increasingly shifting from detecting software to understanding player behavior. Host Devin Becker is joined by André Pimenta Ribeiro, CEO & Co-Founder of Anybrain, to discuss how behavioral anti-cheat analyzes player inputs, where it fits alongside traditional tools, and why some approaches avoid software access entirely. The conversation explores the business impact of cheating on retention and revenue, when studios should begin investing in prevention, and how even smaller teams can approach the problem. André also breaks down the growing cheat-as-a-service economy, the challenge posed by AI and hardware-assisted cheats, the risks of false positives for legitimate players, and how behavioral data could expand beyond cheating detection over the next several years. We’d like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv. If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].   Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

This episode covers Naavik’s AI x Gaming newsletter published on September 29th. In this week’s issue, we take a broader look at the entertainment landscape to map out what recent announcements from Disney, Hasbro, and miHoYo could mean for the future of gaming fandom. You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/from-disney-to-mihoyo-the-road-toward  Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on Sunday, September 27th. In this week’s issue, we take a look at how seasonal live-ops performs in 2026, analyzing a decade of Sensor Tower revenue and download data across 15 top mobile titles, alongside console and Roblox data. Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

AI is making game creation more accessible, but building reliable games that can reach players across multiple platforms requires more than simply prompting an LLM. Host Devin Becker welcomes Robby Yung, CEO of The Sandbox, to discuss Sandbox Studio and its approach to AI-assisted UGC development. Robby explains what the team learned from the original Game Maker, where Studio draws the line between structured creation and “vibe coding,” and how AI can combine code, assets, systems, and accumulated development knowledge without turning game creation into an unpredictable black box. The conversation also explores The Sandbox’s shift toward letting creators publish beyond its own ecosystem, how LAND and Web3 fit into that strategy, and what becomes scarce when creators can produce far more content. Looking further ahead, Robby shares his perspective on how AI and UGC tools could reshape the roles of engines, publishers, and platforms as multi-platform game creation evolves over the next several years. We’d like to thank Overwolf for making this episode possible! Whether you're a gamer, creator, or game studio, Overwolf is the ultimate destination for integrating UGC in games! You can check out all Overwolf has to offer at https://www.overwolf.com/  If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].   Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on Sunday, September 20th. In this week’s issue, we dig into the data and assess to what extent external IP drives a video game’s success. You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/the-real-value-of-licensed-ip  Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

Gaming financing hit a 12-month high in Q2 2026, with over $2.5B raised across fewer than 100 rounds. In this episode, recorded in person at Gamescom, Kalie Moore sits down with Michael Metzger, Managing Partner at Drake Star Partners, to work out what that actually signals. Michael leads Drake Star's gaming and digital media practice and is behind the quarterly report the industry reads to track where capital is moving. He starts with the question everyone is circling: is this an AI bubble? His answer is that the money reflects a massive opportunity, that some of the companies raising today will become very large businesses, and that a good number of them will not make it at all. They dig into what that means for valuations like General Intuition's, and why he's more excited about the AI-native games that haven't been built yet than the current wave of AI used to make production faster and cheaper. The conversation also covers why financing rounds have fallen from roughly 200 a quarter to below 100 while the money per round climbs, where capital is actually landing across gaming AI, ad-tech and hardware, and why he thinks AR glasses are the platform bet worth watching. Michael breaks down what he tells founders about timing a sale, why inbound interest is a better signal than trying to time the market, and what makes a mid-market deal attractive to buyers right now. Drawing on transactions he's advised, including Trak Racer to Corsair, Hipster Whale to Atari, Ready Player Me to Netflix and Echtra Games to Zynga, he explains what actually determines whether a deal works after it closes. They also get into why raising as a game studio remains harder than almost anything else in this market, the state of esports monetization after years of false starts, and the one category he thinks is currently undervalued. This episode is brought to you by Appcharge, the payments platform built specifically for mobile gaming that processes over a billion dollars annually. Learn more here: https://www.appcharge.com/?utm_source=naavik&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=sponsorship_payments We’d also like to thank Dive for making this episode possible! With its fully managed analytics and LiveOps platform built for game studios, 95% of their clients grow revenue in one year. All of that without having to hire an in-house data team. Learn more here: dive.games  If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected]. Who’s On: Guest - Michael Metzger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmmetzger/ Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/  Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe Links mentioned: https://www.drakestar.com/news/global-gaming-report-q2-2026

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on Sunday, September 13th. In this week’s issue, explore the recent increase in notable indie game developers launching their own publishing businesses. You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/the-new-money-behind-indie-games  Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/  Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected]. Watch our episodes: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

AI is rapidly changing user acquisition (UA), not just by speeding up creative production but by expanding how campaigns themselves can be managed. Host Devin Becker is joined by Amit Carmi, co-founder and CEO of Sett, to explore how AI is being used to combat creative fatigue, generate video and playable ads, and increasingly automate parts of the UA workflow. Amit breaks down where AI creative works well today and where it still falls short. The conversation also tackles the risks of increasingly homogenous or misleading ads, how platform-owned AI tools from Meta, Google, and AppLovin affect third-party providers, and whether creative teams are being replaced or simply evolving. Finally, Amit explains Sett’s move from data-driven creative generation into UA management agents and shares his view on what AI-driven UA could look like over the next few years. Big thanks to Heroic Labs for making this episode possible. When MADFINGER expanded from mobile to PC they used Heroic Labs to build a preview mode with full progress carryover. Read how the work led to increases in every core KPI from CCU to DAU/MAU, retention and session length, at launch: https://heroiclabs.com/blog/madfinger-spearhead-case-study/?_gl=1*8j79a3*_up*MQ..*_ga*MjA4MDI3MTc4OS4xNzg1MjI0MDk5*_ga_R9WLGSZ1KN*czE3ODUyMjQwOTkkbzEkZzEkdDE3ODUyMjUxMjIkajU3JGwwJGgw  We’d also like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].   Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

Live from Gamescom at the Xsolla Clubhouse in Cologne, Alexandra Takei, VP of Platform Revenue & Gaming at Medal and General Intuition, sits down with Ben Kvalo, Founder and CEO of Midwest Games, to unpack what she calls "new age publishing." With traditional deals no longer the only game in town, Ben explains why he built Midwest Games to run two publishing models under one roof: a classic invest-and-revenue-share arm, and "Shadow Publishing," a for-hire services model that lets developers keep their IP and revenue entirely. Drawing on his background at 2K, Blizzard, and Netflix, Ben breaks down why he chose to root the company in the Midwest rather than a traditional hub, how studios actually choose between the two publishing tracks, and why investors like Prevail, Kun Gao (Crunchyroll), and Mitchell Patterson (Wolfjaw) bet on a hybrid publisher in a moment when capital is fleeing games for AI (and how it completely reversed from the VC financing era in 2021 where VC’s wouldn’t touch publishers). The conversation gets concrete with real portfolio examples plus Ben's take on discoverability, sourcing enough quality titles to publish something every month, and how AI is reshaping both developer costs and his own underwriting. The episode closes with Ben's outlook on where publishing goes next. We’d also like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments, or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv. If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected].   Watch the episode: YouTube Channel For more episodes and details: Podcast Website Free newsletter: Naavik Digest Follow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | Website Sound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.