ggDigest 1: Gaming Insights Inaugural Edition (2/16/2020)
👋 Hi! Welcome to the inaugural edition of ggDigest, a weekly newsletter dedicated to providing you with the most important insights and updates from the complex and fun universe of game development.
🕹️ Our names are Kenny Liu, Joseph Kim, and Jeff Witt. Combined, we have a total of 27 years of gaming industry experience, serving in various leadership roles at Riot Games, SEGA, GREE, and many more.
👾 We promise to regularly deliver curated content of the highest quality straight to your inbox, so please stay tuned and share the news!
news 📣
⚠️ Highlights ⚠️
- CEO Ilkka Paananen on Supercell’s past decade
- Matthew Ball: The Next Frontier in Storytelling Universes
- Related: Disney Invites Game Developers to Tell Original Stories With Popular Franchises
- HBR: How Digital Design Drives User Behavior
💻 PC / Console 🕹️
- Sony paid $229mm for Insomniac
- Yager receives strategic investment from Tencent
- Expensive components drive PS5 production costs to $450 per unit
- Ubisoft reveals surprise Division 2 expansion ‘Warlords of New York’
- Remedy Entertainment jumps into the live-service multiplayer game pool
- Activision Blizzard pulls all games from GeForce Now a week after launch
- Opinion: Anthem gets a rare second chance
📱 Mobile
- AdColony: 89% of mobile app and game publishers use video ads
- Double Loop Games raises $2.5 million to make mobile games for everyone
- Atari acquires Wonder, a hybrid mobile gaming and entertainment platform
- Project xCloud finally comes to iOS, but with some serious limitations
👓 XR: AR / MR / VR
- Apple seeks patent for AR/VR video recording with multi-angle playback
- WaveOptics debuts Katana, a 1.15mm waveguide display for AR glasses
📡 Livestreaming
- Game livestreaming hours watched up 17% in January
- Blog: The future of influencer marketing? Dynamic deepfake ads
- Gillette & Twitch round up esports influencers in gaming alliance
- Drake will debut Rap Battles livestreaming show on Caffeine
🌏 Asia
- China’s mobile giants to take on Google’s Play store
- Between censorship and Steam, Chinese indie devs are hanging by a thread
- Video game development in Iran: Limited tools, front companies and a specter of war
creative 🎨
- The Animation of Phoenix Wright
- How Hades plays with Greek myths
- The Making of ‘Effect and Cause’ in Titanfall 2
- Saving Rainbow Six Siege: Ubisoft’s Hard Fought Victory
business 📊
- How to get the best game publishing deal
- Deconstructor of Fun: Why Auto-Chess Games Can’t Monetize
- Sony files patent which encourages stuck players to spend money on DLC
- HBR: Constraints Don’t Have to Be Constraining
glhf 👾
- Nintendo Opens Game Lounges at U.S. Airports
- Pokémon Home storage service launches on Switch, iOS, and Android
- The ‘Always Sunny’ Creators Have Opened Up the TV Gaming World With ‘Mythic Quest’
- ‘Nobody talks about it because everyone is on it’: Adderall presents esports with an enigma
- Microsoft’s double-screen Android phone
- HBR: The Era of Antisocial Social Media
✍️ About Us
Kenny Liu: Product Lead at Snackpass. ex-Riot & ex-Goldman alum. @kliuless
Joseph Kim: Deconstructor of Fun podcast host. GameMakers YouTuber. @jokim1
Jeff Witt: Founder of Funzio & Storm8. Mobile F2P game design consultant. @jwittsf
