Player Driven

Hosted by Greg

Business Management

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173

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Oct 2026

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About the show

Welcome to Player Driven, the hub where gaming insights and community collide. We believe that behind every great game is a thriving community and an unforgettable player experience. Whether it’s building inclusive environments, exploring the latest tech, or diving into the art of storytelling, our mission is simple: to empower the creators, communities, and players that make the gaming world extraordinary. What We’re About: 🎮 Insightful Conversations – Through our podcast and community clubhouse, we bring industry leaders, creators, and innovators together to explore the cutting-edge of gaming. 🌍 Player-Centric Focus – From accessibility to trust and safety, we champion the initiatives that keep players at the heart of the industry. 📈 Data Meets Creativity – With a knack for combining KPIs with compelling narratives, we highlight strategies that don’t just work but resonate. 🤝 Community Building – We celebrate what makes the gaming community special: its people. From indie developers to AAA veterans, every voice matters here. Join us as we explore what drives games, empowers communities, and defines success in the ever-evolving gaming landscape. Your Game. Your Story. Your Community.

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October 20, 202646 min

Game Publisher or Marketing Agency? Ben Kvalo, Midwest Games

Everyone is calling themselves a publisher. Midwest Games founder Ben Kvalo explains what the word actually covers, why marketing is only part of it, and why nuance still beats the prompt. Ben also talks through two months on the road, why the US games industry needs more hubs, and how MDEV is being built to last. Chapters below. 0:00 Welcome back, Ben Kvalo 0:33 Two months of travel and what Midwest Games is building 3:15 New York Games Week and what the New York ecosystem lacks 6:16 If games stay in four cities, the US falls behind 8:53 Lower cost is not lower quality 9:28 What is a publisher, really? 9:56 40 disciplines: publisher or marketing agency? 11:12 Full-service publisher vs fractional publishing 12:06 You no longer need a big-box publisher to get help 12:48 Can AI make you an expert? The fractional CMO trap 14:26 Why people overgeneralize how easy things are 15:46 Nuance beats the prompt: AI, engineers and vibe coding 17:01 Expertise, doing it recently and pulling all five levers 18:09 One-hit wonders and why IP takes decades 19:53 What Ben would do differently four years in 23:59 Earning your lessons the hard way 25:55 The week before the money runs out 26:57 Find the people who stick with you 30:58 Support systems and getting feedback early 33:11 Why MDEV feels like true community 36:35 Keeping a volunteer nonprofit sustainable 38:08 MDEV keynotes: Jesse Schell and a Friday kickoff 41:30 You do not have to live in Wisconsin to join 43:06 Where to find MDEV, Ben and the Games Alliance 44:30 Madison cheese curds and the Capitol Square Read the write-up: [RECAP URL]?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=2026-10-w3&utm_content=longform MDEV: https://www.mdevconf.com Wisconsin Games Alliance: https://wisconsingamesalliance.com Ben Kvalo is the founder of Midwest Games, president of the Wisconsin Games Alliance and chair of MDEV, with earlier roles at 2K and Netflix. A new conversation every Tuesday. The Operator's Briefing and the community are at https://playerdriven.io and the Discord is at https://discord.gg/zdwAqvgvfy #GamePublishing #GameDev #MDEV

October 13, 202658 min

Xbox wants to be the number one entertainment company. Does it have the IP?

Xbox says it wants to be the number one entertainment company in the world. Not the biggest game company: the biggest entertainment company, across film, TV, products and live experiences. The same week, it launched a division to do it. The panel's question is whether it has the IP to get there, after two years of cutting almost every bet that wasn't already a hit. Simon Pulman's answer was the line of the episode: "Nobody knows anything." Nobody predicted K-Pop Demon Hunters, or Sony would never have handed Netflix the rights. You don't find the next big franchise by only funding the last one. Greg Posner is joined by Simon Pulman of Pryor Cashman, Justin Ruiss of BWG Global and Stephen Lenz. IN THIS EPISODE - Galactic Racer and Gears of War: E-Day both scored 87. Why the Steam numbers only tell half the story - "You know what really works? Call of Duty": Activision as Xbox's shooter factory - Who is the biggest entertainment company in the world right now? Greg says Disney. Justin says YouTube: "All of that IP lives rent free on YouTube." - Xbox's dormant catalogue: Rare, Banjo, Viva Piñata, Perfect Dark - Is Xbox just picking a fight with Sony it already lost once? And who is producing the Zelda movie? - Who gets to stream GTA 6, the report and Xbox's correction, and the new cloud streaming caps - A round of our favorite licensed games, from X-Men Legends to GoldenEye, and why licensed games are a graveyard of dead IP - AI can now rebuild almost any game. Simon on why selling an AI copy gets you shut down, why the real fight is over the tools, and the indie developers being cloned in real time - What's keeping us entertained, including Angel Down, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction Two corrections after recording: Matthew Ball said Xbox's GTA 6 streaming rights are not exclusive; he did not rule the game out of the cloud. And the last mainline Gears of War was Gears 5 in 2019, not twenty years ago. Never Entertained is live every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/QOQOQ1XBc_I Read the full write-up: https://playerdriven.io/live/never-entertained-whose-ip-is-it-anyway?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=never-entertained-005 The Operator's Briefing, every Tuesday: https://playerdriven.io/newsletter?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=shownotes&utm_campaign=never-entertained-005 Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zdwAqvgvfy

October 6, 202645 min

The invisible backend behind games that do not fail, with Mitchell Patterson of Wolfjaw Studios

There is a half of every online game that almost nobody thinks about. Matchmaking, inventory, entitlements, and the account services that decide whether you actually get in on launch night. By Mitchell Patterson's own estimate it is about five percent of a game's budget, and close to all of whether a player ever reaches the thing the other ninety-five percent paid for. Mitchell is the founder and CEO of Wolfjaw Studios, which builds that layer for other people's games. He came to games from finance, he never wanted to make a game of his own, and he has an unusual business problem: his games do not fail, so almost nobody knows his studio exists. In this episode: • Why the reward for a flawless launch is a smaller contract • Why the infrastructure vendors you can name are usually the ones attached to a public outage • The first system a small multiplayer team should build, and why everything else hangs off it • Why he refuses to advertise where any of his staff used to work • What he learned the two weeks he paid payroll out of his personal bank account • What he would tell a three person team to do on Monday morning Chapters 00:00 The half of every online game nobody thinks about 00:03 Why a finance guy started the studio nobody wanted to build 00:08 Launch day, and why nobody can predict the curve 00:12 Hybrid on-prem and cloud, and why redundancy is the only security 00:13 Punished for being good: the five engineer contract 00:16 Selling work whose best outcome is that nobody notices 00:22 Identity is step one, and everything hangs off it 00:23 The TwitchCon origin story 00:25 The hill he dies on: past credits are not your credits 00:28 What cash flow actually teaches a founder 00:33 What a leader can honestly promise right now 00:35 The Among Us call 00:41 Where the back end goes after games 00:45 What a three person team should do Monday morning 00:47 Wolfjam, and where to find Wolfjaw About the guest Mitchell Patterson is the founder and CEO of Wolfjaw Studios, a backend and co-development studio in upstate New York. Wolfjaw builds matchmaking, inventory, identity, and live service infrastructure for other studios, with client relationships running seven years. Player Driven is the learning network for the people who design, run, and rebuild live games. New conversation every Tuesday. Get The Operator's Briefing each week: https://playerdriven.io/ Join the operators in Discord: https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH

September 29, 20261 hr 5 min

Nobody was on the hook for fourteen years of Halo

A game takes four to five years to build. A vesting schedule takes four to five years to finish. So the people who greenlit it have been paid and moved on before anyone finds out whether it worked. Colan Neese said that about forty minutes into this episode and it reframed the whole hour. Microsoft moved Halo to Activision, cut 268 more roles and set five studios loose. Bungie started giving back the Destiny content it deleted six years ago. A game from 1996 made sixty million dollars at the box office. Underneath all three is the same question nobody in the industry likes asking out loud: when the person who decides is never in the room for the outcome, who is actually on the hook? Greg Posner is joined by Colan Neese of ScreenEngine ASI, Simon Pulman of Pryor Cashman and Justin Ruiss of BWG Global. IN THIS EPISODE - Why fourteen years and four declining Halo games produced no consequence - The opportunity cost problem: why Activision will always make another Call of Duty map instead of reviving Spyro - Whether Halo's DNA was ever the campaign, and why the remake shipped without multiplayer - Simon on the five divested studios: "imagine Adidas buys a t-shirt company" - What a private equity buyer would actually own if they bought one - Why subscription funding divorces a studio from cause and effect - The engineering reason Bungie vaulted Destiny content in the first place - The rule nobody states about video game adaptations, and why Resident Evil worked where a Dead Space film would not A correction we made after recording: Ninja Theory was not sold. Microsoft could not find a buyer, two deals fell through, and a proposed closure was confirmed the same day we recorded. Never Entertained is live every Friday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern. Read the full write-up: https://playerdriven.io/live/never-entertained-nobody-is-on-the-hook The Operator's Briefing, every Tuesday: https://playerdriven.io/newsletter Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zdwAqvgvfy Colan Neese writes Patch Notes: https://patchnotesgaming.substack.com/

September 22, 20261 hr 4 min

Game Pass bought installs, not players: what actually brings someone back

Microsoft is reportedly ending day-one first-party releases on Game Pass and capping cloud gaming hours. Most people read that as a subscription story. On this episode it turns into a much bigger one. Greg Posner is joined by Simon Pulman, Justin Ruiss and Colan Neese for an hour that opens on Control Resonant shipping eight weeks before GTA 6 and closes on Blizzard reopening a twenty year old back catalogue. Four separate stories, one argument underneath all of them: almost every way this industry gets a player in front of a game is a cheque somebody else can stop writing. In this episode: Control Resonant landed at 84 on OpenCritic with a 6 and a 10 in the same week, and why the spread is more interesting than the average Why review scores arrive too late in the funnel to move units, and what a strong score actually buys you The release-date rule almost nobody follows: do not ship the same day as EA FC What success even looks like for Remedy, and why that question cannot be answered without knowing the budget Everyone's top three game trailers of all time, including one a panellist can still quote thirteen years later from a game he did not like The leaked Game Pass changes, and why two million players on a free tier is not two million players The case for advertising inside games, argued by the people who would get blamed for it Blizzard, BlizzCon, and the millennial nostalgia wave landing inside a single month Never Entertained is live every Friday at 10am ET. Full written recap: https://playerdriven.io/live/never-entertained-why-players-come-back The Operator's Briefing, every Tuesday: https://playerdriven.io/newsletter Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zdwAqvgvfy

September 15, 20261 hr 1 min

Never Entertained: GTA 6 versus Zelda is the wrong fight

The internet spent the week arguing about which game wins the holiday. We think that is the wrong question, and the right one is which brand still has your attention after the controller goes down. This is the first episode of Never Entertained, a new show we do live every Friday at 10am ET. Four of us argue about the week in games, media and IP: Greg Posner on live games, Simon Pulman on IP and media, Justin Ruiss on advertising and the business, and Colan Neese on the news and the numbers. Three arguments in this one. Nintendo is taking the shelf space Sony and Xbox are giving up, and doing it on purpose. A Wolverine game built for everybody landed for nobody, and the panel splits on whether that is a design problem or a culture one. And Netflix is reaching for cinemas while the person already paying for it every month cannot name a single thing on the service. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 01:30 The internet is asking the wrong question 01:56 Meet the panel 03:04 Nintendo's foil box and the shelf everyone else left 06:21 Going outward versus going inward 07:38 What the new Zelda actually sells 10:32 Nintendo's real problem is the Switch 2 transition 12:57 Nostalgia as a purchase driver: the Costco napkin 14:27 "I don't know who Sony is aiming at" 18:29 The barbell: aggregators, IP, and the middle you die in 24:32 Sony's risk is becoming a machine, not a brand 25:01 Wolverine lands, and the discourse is not about the score 28:40 A culture where games must be for everybody 31:02 Discovery, mastery, and what a guidance line costs 34:24 Six-year dev cycles aimed at a moving culture 36:48 Everyone gets one strike 39:31 What Marvel actually cares about 42:38 "94% of the market hasn't played your game" 45:20 Netflix wants cinemas, and is reporting box office 47:02 Why Netflix's hand was forced 52:04 "A midlife crisis company" 55:14 You can license the show, you cannot own the creator 57:08 Last words 59:03 What we are working on, and where to find it WATCH IT INSTEAD https://youtu.be/bTgaleZwS5I THE WRITTEN VERSION The arguments laid out properly, with the quotes and the numbers attributed: https://playerdriven.io/live/never-entertained-gta-6-vs-zelda-wrong-fight IF YOU RUN A COMMUNITY Community Driven is a three part series that gives you a method rather than a think piece. You start with the game rather than the channel, work out where your players already gather, and build a hunt map as you read. It hands you into a free Academy pack at the end. Part one: https://playerdriven.io/blog/start-with-the-game-not-the-channel The pack: https://academy.playerdriven.io/packs/find-where-your-players-gather THE REST OF THE WEEK Tuesdays: this podcast Wednesdays: Design Desk with Lewis, on systems, player psychology and game design Thursdays: live with Colan Fridays: Never Entertained, live at 10am ET MORE FROM PLAYER DRIVEN The Operator's Briefing, every Tuesday: https://playerdriven.io Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH Player Driven is the learning network for the people who design, run and rebuild live games.

September 8, 202657 min

GTA 6 has not started marketing yet: the two billion question and the fall nobody can schedule around

GTA 6 is already the biggest launch Colan Neese's team has tracked since they started measuring in 2019, and it is on pace to pass Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's peak roughly two months before it ships. Here is the part nobody is pricing in. The marketing has not started. Everything the industry has reacted to so far was aimed at the industry. The campaign built for people who have never watched a games showcase in their lives begins at NFL kickoff. Greg Posner and Colan Neese, SVP of gaming at Screen Engine/ASI, spend the hour on what that does to everyone else. Whether the number in the launch press release is one billion or two. Why every other fall release is losing oxygen rather than losing on quality, including a Call of Duty that Greg played and liked. And the thing Rockstar is quietly doing to protect the players it already has, which is the only defense on the table that does not require a marketing budget to run. They also get into why Sony's Tokyo Game Show State of Play reads as a completely different show depending on which continent you are watching from, why consoles took hold in the West for reasons that turn out to be mostly about living room square footage, and how Guitar Hero used to turn songs into hits before games traded the needle drop for interchangeable orchestral filler. Then they argue about Weezer. (00:00) Show open (00:45) Sony's State of Play, and who it was actually for (09:47) Why your game does not travel: China, mobile, and the space a console needs (17:15) The billion dollar question is already stale (21:02) The bite GTA 6 takes out of the box office (25:36) The marketing has not started yet (27:58) Call of Duty is not losing on quality (32:29) What Rockstar is doing to protect the players it already has (39:20) Stage Tour, and the return of the rhythm game (40:17) The ideal set list, and an argument about Weezer (48:09) How games forgot to use a song (51:20) Wrap Full write-up and notes from this episode: https://playerdriven.io/live/gta-6-has-not-started-marketing-yet The Operator's Briefing, every Tuesday. One email: the best thing we published, the next thing we are doing, and one open argument. https://playerdriven.io Bring your own read to the room. Colan takes questions in the Discord, and genuinely wants the argument. https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH Colan Neese writes Patch Notes: https://patchnotesgaming.substack.com

September 1, 202648 min

Gaming is a lifeline: why the number one Make-A-Wish request type is video games

Make-A-Wish sorts every wish into four kinds: to go, to meet, to be, or to have. Travel is still the biggest category overall, but when a child anywhere in the world asks to have something, the number one request is gaming. April Stallings runs charitable gaming fundraising for Make-A-Wish International, the arm of the organization covering 43 countries with more than 650,000 wishes granted. She joins Greg and Lewis to explain why kids in treatment wish for games (her word is "lifeline"), what a gaming wish actually looks like, and why even Make-A-Wish hears no from game studios more than yes. In this conversation: Why gaming tops the "to have" category worldwide, and why the Nintendo Switch is the most-wished-for console The wish stories: a day at Mojang's Stockholm HQ, a Brawl Stars wish built around vision loss, and Arrowhead's dev team spending a day with a Helldivers superfan The research: measured wish outcomes in the high-90th percentile, now presented at pediatric oncology conferences How studios of any size can help: the giving program starts at $5,000, and codes, studio days, dev time, and introductions count too How New Blood Interactive became Make-A-Wish International's biggest gaming donor at $100,000 The John Cena playbook: what 650+ wishes of preparation looks like up close Roll for Wishes, the TTRPG fundraising month running all of October Learn more or start the conversation: https://worldwish.org (the wish impact research is under Our Impact) Find April Stallings on LinkedIn. Player Driven is the learning network for the people who design, run, and rebuild live games. Get The Operator's Briefing, our weekly newsletter: https://playerdriven.io/ Join the community on Discord: https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH

August 25, 202659 min

GTA 6 Leaks, Wolverine Backlash & Disney’s Big Gaming Bet

GTA 6 is leaking all over the internet, Wolverine is getting dragged before anyone has even played it, and D23 may have quietly shown just how serious Disney is getting about games. This week on Player Driven Live, Greg Posner and Colan Neese are joined by Justin Ruiss from BWG Global to break down: The GTA 6 leaks, the ethics of covering them, and why leaks may become an even bigger problem for game studios Why Disney appears to be leaning harder into gaming after years of keeping the industry at arm’s length Kingdom Hearts, Dreamlight Valley, and the power of Disney’s IP flywheel Why licensing games to the right studios may be one of Disney’s smartest strategies The backlash around Marvel’s Wolverine and whether Insomniac really needs to reinvent its formula Why not every game needs to be open world Whether Netflix should stop trying to build gaming internally and borrow a page from Disney’s playbook What we’re playing right now, including Saros, Marathon, Fortnite, Madden and more Plus, things inevitably get a little off the rails when Disney World vs. Disneyland enters the conversation. Guest: Justin Ruiss, BWG Global Hosts: Greg Posner and Colan Neese Player Driven covers the business, strategy and people behind games, from live ops and community to player experience, monetization and the industry stories shaping what comes next.

August 18, 202656 min

The Hidden Creator Economy Built on Top of Games, with Nathan Lindberg of Overwolf

If George Clooney walks into a coffee shop, everyone looks up. If Banksy walks in without the mask, nobody does, and the work outside is worth millions.That's Nathan Lindberg's description of the gaming creator economy, and he's spent twenty years inside it. GamePro through the print-to-digital collapse. Curse, before it became CurseForge. Seven years at Twitch convincing people that watching someone else play was a real business. Epic, building the NFL zone inside Fortnite. Now VP of Global Brand Partnerships at Overwolf. His argument is that the creator economy we photograph is the smaller one. Sixty-six games account for more than eighty percent of all the time people spend playing, most of them are a decade old, and what keeps them there isn't the publisher's roadmap. It's thousands of people whose names nobody knows, building mods, add-ons, wikis and private servers on top of games they didn't make. We get into what the ladder from first dollar to first million actually looks like, why advertising stopped being a toll, and the single sentence that finally moved publishers after years of losing the argument. In this episode 00:00 Intro 02:19 Nathan Lindberg 02:34 GamePro, Curse, Twitch: what changes and what never does 10:24 Triple-A, indie, and where a creator lands after building something good 11:15 George Clooney walks into a coffee shop. So does Banksy. 13:59 The ladder from first dollar to first million 15:37 Rev share, and the tax problem nobody warns you about 18:21 Do CurseForge, Tebex and the ads actually connect? 20:09 The one number every team is judged on 26:06 The case for advertising, made by the ad guy 31:26 The generational split on ad tolerance 33:14 "What am I getting in return?" 36:49 66 games hold 80% of all playtime 38:07 The wiki maintainers nobody credits, and why tools outlive personalities 40:47 "Like allowing someone to take a highlighter to a Rembrandt" 44:11 PUBG, Hytale, and why indie studios said yes first 45:26 Why "good for the community" never gets past the CFO 47:27 Spotting Arc Raiders before anyone was talking about it 50:24 What GTA 6's creator economy could unlock 54:05 Wrap, and if not now, when? Numbers Worth Keeping 66 games account for more than 80% of all time spent in games. Overwolf shares 50 to 70% of revenue with creators, sometimes up to 80%, and its in-app ads carry an on-screen line saying 70% goes to the creator. The largest apps on the platform have sold for over €40 million. Every department in the company is measured against one metric: creator payouts. Guest Nathan Lindberg is VP of Global Brand Partnerships at Overwolf, the tools and services company behind CurseForge and Tebex. Mentioned : Hytale, the Krafton partnership bringing mods to PUBG, Gamer Grid, Arc Raiders, and the proverb Nathan took from his time at Curse: if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together. If the CFO conversation is one you keep losing, we built a free Academy program about exactly that. Three short packs on why safety and community arguments die in front of finance, how to read what a public company actually spends, and how to build the one-page case. academy.playerdriven.io New episodes every Tuesday . Get The Operator's Briefing at playerdriven.io/level-up, or come argue with us in Discord.