AAA mindset, indie budget: Adam Krause and TJ Consunji on discoverability and the art of getting found

Welcome to Coffee.Press.Play., brought to you by The Business of Games Podcast, powered by Xsolla. Recorded live at GDC 2026 inside the Xsolla Clubhouse, this series puts a twist on the traditional interview format: guests play a round of a classic video game against our Xsolla host and the outcome determines whether they face an easy question or a hard one.In this episode, host Ed Lin sits down with Adam Krause and TJ Consunji, Managing Partners and Co-Founders of Miniboss Solutions — an embedded publishing partner helping indie studios and smaller developers take their games to market with the strategy and discipline of a AAA publisher.Between them, Adam and TJ bring over 40 years of industry experience. Adam has worked across paid media and go-to-market strategy at Ubisoft, Capcom, Striking Distance, and 2K. TJ spent nearly two decades at PlayStation, working on franchises like God of War, Uncharted, Horizon, Gran Turismo, and SOCOM. Now they've taken everything they learned in the big leagues and built a company designed to give smaller studios access to the same caliber of thinking.What you'll hear:Why discoverability is the defining challenge in today's market and how 20,000 games a year on Steam makes it existential for smaller studiosWhy the AAA mindset isn't about budget — it's about the discipline to ask the right questions before you spend a dollarHow smaller developers often don't realize how hard publishing is until they're already halfway through itWhy modern targeting tools level the playing field, but only if you know what to say once you reach your audienceWhy building a brand, not just launching a game, is the shift that separates studios that sustain from ones that spike and fadeCoffee.Press.Play. is an ongoing mini-series, and more conversations with our GDC guests are on the way. Listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch full episodes on our YouTube channel.Missed us at GDC 2026? Stay tuned to our LinkedIn page for announcements on where we'll be next. And catch up on recent episodes at xsolla.com/podcast.For more insights and resources, visit xsolla.com/podcast. Want to join the conversation? Follow and comment on our LinkedIn page at The Business of Games Podcast. That’s where we’ll be sharing updates, highlights, and continuing the discussion. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share the podcast with friends who want to learn more about the business of games.