Joakim Achren from Elite Game Developers talks to founders and investors on how to start, run and grow a games company. In a nutshell, this is a podcast about the founders and investors who are building the games companies of the future. What are their success stories, failures, what they’ve learned from them and how more people will be able to get into creating games through successful games companies.
21 Subscribers
Podcast hosts
- Joakim_a
@Joakim_a
© Joakim Achren
Elite Game Developers Podcast
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21 Subscribers
Reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 Based on 2 reviews
JosephJKim
5 out of 5 stars
Great podcast
Joakim is dope. Great content. Get a cohost though - a female cohost would be better.
LamestarGames
5 out of 5 stars
Great interviews!
Insightful perspectives from many successful and diverse members of the game dev community. As a lifelong student of design and game development, this is a must listen!
Podcast information
- Amount of episodes
- 100
- Subscribers
- 21
- Verified
- Yes
- Website
- Explicit content
- No
- Episode type
- episodic
- Podcast link
- https://podvine.com/link/..
- Last upload date
- January 17, 2023
- Last fetch date
- January 26, 2023 7:31 AM
- Upload range
- WEEKLY
- Author
- Joakim Achren
- Copyright
- Joakim Achren
susbcribers
- First chapter of my audiobook "Long Term Game: How to Build a Video Games Company"My book, "Long Term Game: How to Build a Video Games Company," came out in March 2020. It was also released as an audiobook version, which you can find on Audible and other major online audiobook stores. I want to share with you the first chapter of the book. I hope you enjoy this read from Keith O’Brien. Get the book from here. Note that this episode is a repost from 2020.0 comments0
- EGD Podcast Highlights From 2022Here are the Elite Game Developers podcast highlights from 2022. This year, 36 podcast episodes went live, and I spoke to founders and investors from all over the globe, who all are working to build great gaming companies. Now, I want to end this year with my favorite highlights. The transcript is available here.0 comments0
- Cyril Barrow — Interoperability of assets between gamesCyril Barrow is the co-founder and COO of Village Studio, a new kind of games company that is building cross-game avatars that act as portable avatars dressed in NFT wearables with unique attributes that can be utilized across multiple games. Cyril has been in the games industry for a long time. He has had leadership roles at companies like Digital Chocolate, Rovio, and EA, most recently leading the EA Helsinki studio. In this episode, we talk about Cyril's lessons learned from working in leadership, building studios, and what he sees as the true potential of interoperability of assets between games.0 comments0
- Kelly Wallick — 1Up Venture's Community of FoundersKelly Wallick has worked in the tech and video game industry for over ten years. She’s the founder of the Indie MEGABOOTH and is now a Partner at 1Up Ventures. She has also been the longest-sitting Chair of the Independent Games Festival and the first woman to hold the title. In addition, Kelly is proud to serve on the GLAAD Media Award Advisory Board. Kelly is a passionate believer in the strength and impact of community and implementing long-term change to support creative, unique, and diverse voices. in our discussion, we talk about investing in gaming, and then we talk about 1Up's founder community and how that community is adding value to the founders.0 comments0
- Maor Sadra — Measuring your marketing and entrepreneurship lessonsToday I'm talking with Maor Sadra, the co-founder and CEO of INCRMNTAL, which is a company that evolves digital marketing from measuring traffic to measuring value. In this episode, we talk about how Maor's company changes the daily life of online marketers, including UA professionals in gaming. Then we cover Maor's background, how he approaches entrepreneurship and what lessons he's picked up along the way.0 comments0
- Tom Hammond — On entrepreneurship and doing a startupTom Hammond is the co-founder and CEO of Userwise, a company that is shaping up live-ops in gaming, and they call themselves the world’s first player experience management platform trusted by teams to power their Liveops all-in-one place. Tom is an entrepreneur who shares a lot about his founder's journey on social media and also on his podcast, Mastering Retention. In this episode with Tom, we talk about bootstrapping a company versus the venture-backed path. How small game studios, with not a lot of cash or experience, can still break out. And what Tom thinks is the reason that developers don't build games with live ops from day one0 comments0
- Jenny Xu — Fitness games and entrepreneurshipThis week on the podcast, I'm talking with Jenny Xu, the co-founder and CEO of Talofa Games, a fitness games company based out of California. Jenny is a first-time founder with an impressive background from working on games as a teenager, getting millions of downloads, then spending time at Google, EA, and N3TWORK, and then starting her own venture-backed gaming startup. In this discussion, we talk about Jenny's journey, how she got into gaming, learning to work in teams and manage teams, and what she's learned from being a CEO.0 comments0
- Touko Tahkokallio — On game creation and founding a new studioIn today's episode, I'm interviewing a friend of mine, my ex-colleague Touko Tahkokallio, who was the designer on games like Hay Day, and Boom Beach and led the Brawl Stars team at Supercell. And he's now doing his own studio in Helsinki with a group of experienced game developers. In this discussion with Touko, we talk about his learnings from creating both board games and video games and how he sees teams or pairs of excellent individuals working together to create these games.0 comments0
- David Amor — Two decades of gaming entrepreneurshipDavid Amor is the co-founder and CEO of Playmint, a new kind of games company building games for web3. David has had a long career in gaming, from EA in the early nineties to having started several gaming startups, including Delinquent, which got sold to MAG Interactive some years ago. In this discussion with David, we talk about the lessons he’s learned from his previous gaming startups, what are the commonalities of successful gaming founders and why David decided to start a new games company, doing Web3.0 comments0
- Benjamin Carcich and Aaron Smith — Building Better LeadersAfter visiting the Building Better Games podcast, I invited the podcast hosts, Aaron Smith, and Ben Carcich, to my podcast. The guys run a leadership consultancy called Valarin, and both Aaron and Ben have an extensive experience from management positions at companies like Riot Games. Besides leadership, we talk about a lot of topics that relate to company building, like product vision, holding off from starting game projects too quickly without proper planning, and what has been the thing that has enabled so many ex-Riot people to start great gaming companies.0 comments0
- Jon Radoff — On entrepreneurship and the metaverseIn this podcast episode, I'm speaking with Jon Radoff, the founder and CEO of Beamable, a company that enables game developers to launch live service games. Jon has been in gaming for ages and has founded several startups in the gaming space. In this discussion, we talk about what Jon learned about company building from his previous company Disruptor Beam, what he thinks is happening with all the buzzwords in gaming, like the metaverse, and where that is leading the industry. To share one quote from Jon, it would be this one: "The thing the game industry will teach you is humility. And if you don't have humility, when you start building games, you will eventually have humility because it's only a matter of time. Before you find out that your, your brilliant idea, your beautiful idea, just doesn't resonate with a large enough audience to become commercially viable because you look at the intersection points of success in this industry." And there's so much more. Here's my discussion with Jon Radoff.0 comments0
- Sophie Vo — How to share feedbackI invited Sophie Vo to my podcast. Sophie has an extensive background in gaming, and she's most recently been managing the Voodoo Berlin studio. You might have also been listening to her podcast Rise & Play, where she talks with guests about leadership in gaming. With Sophie, we talk about the topics of giving feedback and receiving feedback. I’ve seen a lot of startups where the co-founders don’t really talk about issues, and then it comes to the point where someone needs to leave. I believe we can all better communicate our expectations and issues and share feedback with the people we work with.0 comments0
- Ask Me Anything #9 — Investing questionsThis is the ninth Ask Me Anything episode, where I answer questions on how I look at investing. I had a session with a team from one VC firm and they were asking me questions. And then I also picked up another interesting question about angel investing. If you have questions you'd like me to ask, you can go here to submit them. As I mention in the episode, I'm gonna take a break for July and August on the podcast, and we'll be back in early September with new episodes.0 comments0
- Halli Bjornsson — Industry life cycles in gamingIn this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Halli Thor Bjornsson, who is the CEO of Lockwood Publishing, a games company based out of England. In this discussion with Halli, we talk about the industry life cycles in gaming, how console and PC transitioning to mobile is very similar to now as many folks are moving to web3, and we spend some time talking about our experiences as entrepreneurs.0 comments0
- Ads in mobile gamesThis recording is from a panel I did last week with Jan Pollack from Wooga, Ross Brockman from Google, and Christian Facey from Audiomob, where we talked about ads in mobile games and how things have been changing in the recent years. Topics that we cover include the privacy changes on mobile, what kind of future trends the panelists are seeing get materialized, and how game developers should optimally approach ad monetization.0 comments0
- Asbjoern Malte Soendergaard — Games company builder storyIn this week's podcast episode, I'm talking with Asbjoern Malte Soendergaard, the founder and CEO of Tactile Games, who are based out of Copenhagen, Denmark, and are the makers of the hit game Lily's Garden. In this discussion, we talk about how company culture has developed at Tactile over the years, how new projects get started, and what kind of a role does celebrating success and failure play at Tactile.0 comments0
- Andres Constantinidis — Building a remote-first game studioIn this podcast episode, I talk with Andres Constantinidis, the co-founder and CEO of TinyBytes, a remote-first mobile games studio. Andres has built his game studio as a remote company all the way from the founding days, which happened almost ten years ago. In this discussion, we talk about creating quality games with a remote team, but still keeping up a high velocity, how to make product decisions on continuing a game that is still unsure of its success, and what Andres would do differently if he'd go back to the early days of his company.0 comments0
- Derek Lau — Building Guild of GuardiansIn the latest podcast episode, I have Derek Lau ( LinkedIn, Twitter) from Immutable, talking about his journey into web3 gaming and how they are building the blockchain game Guild of Guardians at his company Immutable. Guild of Guardians is a mobile RPG where players can turn their gaming passion into assets. Once launched, the game is a multiplayer fantasy action RPG game, where players build their dream team of ‘Guardians’ and compete in a guild to earn rewards. In this discussion, we talk about Derek’s beliefs in crypto, why blockchain makes sense for the future of gaming, and what game developers could do to attract the masses into web3 gaming.0 comments0
- Alexander Bergendahl — A repeat founder storyIn this podcast episode, I'm talking with Alexander Bergendahl, who is the co-founder and CEO of LootLocker, a games backend solutions company from Stockholm, Sweden. Alexander is a repeat founder, who's been doing games companies for a while now. With Alexander, we talk about his founder journey, learnings from doing his companies, and how Alexander is still learning to be a better founder.0 comments0
- Neil McFarland and Matthew Ryan — Pivoting from F2P to Web3In today's episode, I'm talking with Neil McFarland and Matthew Ryan from First Light Games, a game studio based in London, UK. The founders started the company a few years ago, to work on free-to-play games for mobile, but last year, decided to pivot to web3 gaming. In this episode, we talk about the funding models that the founders have used in web3, what the challenges our in getting the tokenomics right, and how to build a core team in web3 gaming.0 comments0
- Adam Jaffe — What it takes to succeed in gamingIn this podcast episode, I have Adam Jaffe on the show. Adam is the founder and CEO of Mega Studio, a gaming outfit based out of Barcelona, Spain. Adam has a broad scope of knowledge from the gaming space, having worked at companies like Playtika, Moon Active, Jam City, and Social Point, before founding Mega Studio. In this discussion, we talk about advising startups, how to build games that make money, and what unconventional solutions should game developers apply to create success in gaming.0 comments0
- Nick Kneuper and Nat Eliason — Building Crypto RaidersIn this podcast episode, I talk with Nick Kneuper and Nat Eliason who are building Crypto Raiders, which I believe is one of the best web3 games out there. Both Nick and Nat haven't been in crypto for that long, but as long-time entrepreneurs, they've channeled their skills in creating products to take on blockchain gaming. In this episode, we talk about how Crypto Raiders got started, how they've grown the player base, how they manage their cryptocurrency treasury and how they see things developing for web3 gaming in the near future.0 comments0
- Are Mack Growen — Helping founders buildIn this podcast episode, I'm talking with Are Mack Growen, a General Partner at London Venture Partners, a VC firm focused on investing in founders in the game sector at the seed stage. In this discussion, we talk about Are's extensive background in gaming, his journey to VC, what kind of learnings he is sharing, and how Are approaches risks, luck, and other challenges in gaming.0 comments0
- Mika Tammenkoski — Building MetacoreIn this week's episode, I'm talking with Mika Tammenkoski, who is the co-founder and CEO of Metacore Games, the company that is well known for their hit game Merge Mansion. In this discussion with Mika, we talk about his long journey in gaming, what he has picked up on leadership and startups from all the projects he's been involved with, and what Mika thinks about building teams, pivoting, and increasing the likelihood of finding a hit game0 comments0
- Alex Arias and Andreas Risberg — Game Devs Going Web3In this episode, I'm talking with the co-founders of Trailblazer Games, Alex Arias, and Andreas Risberg. Trailblazer Games is a new web3 games company, founded in 2021 and recently they've announced a seed round of $8.2m raised from investors like Makers Fund and Play Ventures. In this discussion, we talk about the founder's background, how they both worked at King and brought learnings to their own startup, and what kind of games the founders are now building with blockchain technology.0 comments0
Podcast hosts
- Joakim_a
@Joakim_a
© Joakim Achren
