PODCAST · leisure
Gamecraft
by Mitch Lasky / Blake Robbins
Gamecraft is a limited series about the modern history of the video game business.Beginning in the early 1990's, the video game business began a radical transformation from a console and PC packaged goods business into the highly complex, online, multi-platform business it is today. Game industry legend Mitch Lasky and game investor Blake Robbins go on a thematic tour of the last 30 years of gaming, exploring the origins of free-to-play, platform-based publishing, casual & mobile gaming, forever games, user-generated content, consoles, virtual reality, and in-game economies across the eight episodes of Season 1.In Season 2, Mitch and Blake are back with a new series analyzing the state of the video game business in 2024. They start with a macro view of the current business, before looking at some hot topics in gaming: the rise of powerful independent game studios, emerging markets for games around the world, how innovations in artificial intelligence will change game creation, and th
Episodes
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QF Update: World Cup Consumer Guide (Ep. 36)
The "Second Tournament" begins with 4 tasty quarter-final matches. Mitch and Blake break down the Round of 32 and Round of 16, rate their recommendations from last episode, and then dive into the quarter-finals and trace the paths of the 8 teams competing for the Jules Rimet trophy. Then they…
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R32 Update: World Cup Consumer Guide
Mitch and Blake look back at the group stage and talk about the main themes from the tournament so far. They review their picks for matches to watch from the last episode and what they got right and wrong. Then they turn to the knockout stage and break down the road to the quarter-finals for each...
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World Cup Consumer Guide (Ep. 34)
Football nerds unite! Mitch & Blake are back with a special episode on the 2026 FIFA World Cup. In this episode they provide a very opinionated "Consumer Guide" to the most watchable matches of the Group Stage of the tournament. Show Notes: Mitch's previous World Cup Consumer Guide blog on Medium...
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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…
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Funding & Founding (Ep. 32)
Blake and Mitch discuss the current environment for funding games and some of the challenges and opportunities for founders in the games space. They begin with a short survey of the current venture capital environment and the difficulties presented by industry consolidation, which has taken…
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A Theory of Fun
Blake and Mitch discuss the possibility that games -- mainly mobile and live service games -- have concentrated on providing fun through progression and engagement mechanics rather than fun in the game experience itself. They point to signs that the market is showing signs of a backlash -- and a...
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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 a significant technological innovation with potentially profoundly disruptive implications.…
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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 represents a significant percentage of global mobile game revenue. They discuss some of the…
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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 entertainment, and whether applications like TikTok should be considered "interactive." They…
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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, aggregation, and monetization in a single platform. They also discuss how unusual it is for a company…
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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" episode that turned out to be way too kind to the companies they profiled. The hosts then "draft" six...
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The EA "LBO" (Ep. 25)
In this Special Edition of the GameCraft podcast, Mitch and Blake discuss the $55 billion leveraged buy-out of Electronic Arts by the Private Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Siliver Lake Partners, and Affinity Partners -- the largest LBO in US history, and the second largest transaction in the...
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The Sum of the Parts (Ep. 24)
Mitch and Blake explore the role of consolidation -- primarily through mergers and acquistions -- in building some of the biggest and most durable companies in gaming. They begin with a discussion of the four major strategic uses of mergers and acquisitions: economies of scale, entry into new...
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AI as a Platform (Ep. 23)
Last season, Mitch and Blake discussed the implications of new Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence in games. In this episode, they return to the topic, this time focusing on games that are using AI as a platform -- meaning, the games are predicated on the use of LLMs to manage gameplay…
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Hasbro and Lego (Ep. 22)
Mitch and Blake look at two of the largest toy companies in the world, Hasbro and Lego, and discuss their divergent but ultimately very successful forays into the games business as licensors of intellectual property. Your hosts discuss how both Hasbro and Lego tried to enter the games business...
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The Venture Deadpool (Ep. 21)
Mitch and Blake address the unpleasant topic of how and why venture-backed games companies fail. They look first at the nature of venture financing and the inherent differences between venture and publisher money. This leads to a conversation about how developers who were used to working with...
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China (Ep. 20)
Mitch and Blake look at the current state of the vitally important Chinese gaming market, on the precipice of a bitter trade war resulting from the Trump tariffs. They review the history of the games business in China, discuss the reasons China is so competitive in the global gaming market, and...
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Valve (Ep. 19)
Mitch and Blake take an in-depth look at one of the most important companies in the global gaming business: Valve. They trace the company's origin as the developer of first-person shooter Half Life, their use of the Quake engine and the benefits Valve derived from their relationship with id, and...
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The Mobile Gaming Duopoly (Ep. 18)
Mitch and Blake discuss the mobile duopoly in which Apple and Google exert extraordinary power by tying their app stores to hardware and software platforms. They warn that the inflexible and expensive distribution systems on iOS and Android could be models for future PC and console distribution...
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Cycles & Survival (Ep. 17)
Mitch and Blake kick off Season 3 of the podcast with a high-level look at the current moment in the video game business, critiquing both the idea that the business is cyclical and we are in a downward phase of the cycle (and the naïve notion of "survive 'till '25"), as well as the idea that the...
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Artificial Intelligence (Ep. 16)
In their final episode of Season 2, Mitch and Blake take on the complex and highly speculative topic of the impact of recent improvements in artificial intelligence on the games business. Your hosts acknowledge that the sector is moving so quickly that this episode could be obsolete by the time…
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Intellectual Property (Ep. 15)
Mitch and Blake look at the ins and outs of intellectual property licensing in games. After discussing the checkered history of the practice, they look at the creative and business reasons why licensed IP continues to be valuable to game creators. After a quick look at how IP licenses actually...
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Distribution (Ep. 14)
In perhaps their most important episode of the series, Mitch and Blake explain what they mean when they use the term "distribution" and why it is so important to their understanding of how the video games business functions. Like they did with the term "publishing" last season, they try to...
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Going Global (Ep. 13)
Mitch and Blake discuss the massive expansion of gaming in emerging markets around the world. The begin with a discussion of the big-picture factors driving this expansion -- primarily mobile technology, but also new business models, payment systems, and demographics. They then take a closer look...
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Independent Intervention (Ep. 12)
Mitch and Blake explore the idea of independent game development. They attempt to define "indie" in the video game context -- something that proves more difficult that it might seem on the surface. They discuss the early successful indie developers in the 90s, and examine how the technology and...
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A Changing of the Guard (Ep. 11)
Mitch and Blake expand on last season's discussion of platform-based publishers by introducing a new kind of company: the game-enabling software platform. The five companies they discuss (Epic, Unity, AppLovin, Discord, and Roblox) are all pursuing customer aggregation strategies similar to the...
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Choose Your (ad)Venture (Ep. 10)
Mitch and Blake discuss the nuances of game financing. They begin by explaining how the publishing model of advances against royalties functions, and what the expected costs and benefits are for both the developer and publisher. After a brief discussion of bootstrapping, they do a deep dive on...
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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 Blake discuss the paradoxical state of the business, where a "golden age" of content is facing some...
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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 they have persisted to the present web3 economies. They look at the concept of mudlfation, a unique...
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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 digital artists and promoters in the early days of personal computing. They look at the second failed...
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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 manufacturers built defensible moats that have remained relevant for over 40 years. Mitch compares the...
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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 in games through play and performance. They discuss the rise of sandbox games, The Sims, GTA3,...
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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 outlines his five attributes of long-term engagement and provides examples of each from games like...
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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 catalyzed by the most unlikely of heroes. He talks about his time as the CEO of the first public…
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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 new concept that marries the internet's remarkable utility in aggregating customers on digital...
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Steal This Game (Ep. 1)
Hosts Mitch Lasky and Blake Robbins discuss the rise of free-to-play as a dominant business model for video game marketing and distribution. They look at the roots of free-to-play in the shareware business, where companies like id Software and Apogee used it to build independent game businesses....
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Introducing Gamecraft
Gamecraft is a limited series podcast about the modern history of the video game business hosted by industry veteran Mitch Lasky and investor Blake Robbins. In this introductory episode, Mitch and Blake discuss the series as a whole, breaking down the eight episodes and why the themes explored in...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Gamecraft is a limited series about the modern history of the video game business.Beginning in the early 1990's, the video game business began a radical transformation from a console and PC packaged goods business into the highly complex, online, multi-platform business it is today. Game industry legend Mitch Lasky and game investor Blake Robbins go on a thematic tour of the last 30 years of gaming, exploring the origins of free-to-play, platform-based publishing, casual & mobile gaming, forever games, user-generated content, consoles, virtual reality, and in-game economies across the eight episodes of Season 1.In Season 2, Mitch and Blake are back with a new series analyzing the state of the video game business in 2024. They start with a macro view of the current business, before looking at some hot topics in gaming: the rise of powerful independent game studios, emerging markets for games around the world, how innovations in artificial intelligence will change game creation, and th
HOSTED BY
Mitch Lasky / Blake Robbins
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Gamecraft have?
Gamecraft currently has 37 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Gamecraft about?
Gamecraft is a limited series about the modern history of the video game business.Beginning in the early 1990's, the video game business began a radical transformation from a console and PC packaged goods business into the highly complex, online, multi-platform business it is today. Game industry...
How often does Gamecraft release new episodes?
Gamecraft has 37 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Gamecraft?
You can listen to Gamecraft on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Gamecraft?
Gamecraft is created and hosted by Mitch Lasky / Blake Robbins.
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