The State of Play: 2024 (Ep. 9)
Description
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 increasing financial headwinds. They compare the games business to the post-pandemic video streaming businesses, which have all faced difficult belt-tightening after a growth phase that produced some of the best content ever.
They look at the implications of increasing consolidation in the business (i.e., Activision/Microsoft, Zynga/TakeTwo, etc.), the end of the ten year surfeit of cheap money (the "Zero Interest Rate Policy"), and, finally, the over-investment of private capital into studios to fund game creation.
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...
Published 03/13/24
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...
Published 03/06/24