All 14 Gaming posts we have indexed from venture capital blogs and newsletters, plus the highest-scoring pieces of the past year and the people who write about it most.
A detailed competitive analysis of Just Desserts versus Gossip Harbor, unpacking the merge-2 game genre's core mechanics, monetization levers, narrative hooks, and live ops strategies that drive retention and spending in casual mobile gaming.
Mattel's head of digital gaming reveals how studios win IP licenses: pitch the unexpected, not the obvious. The company rewards creative risk alongside polish, targets specific audience cohorts, and values dormant IP arbitrage over marquee brands.
Sensor Tower's inaugural ad monetization report ($12B across 19 countries) underestimates the true market size and reveals that ads now represent 13–23% of mobile game revenues—a primary revenue engine, not a side system. The real opportunity lies in IAA-first hybrid games that monetize attention without cannibalizing their core ad loop.
Mark Pincus shares five lessons from building Zynga: avoid incremental compromises that erode your vision, culture is defined by execution not philosophy, ignore investors post-check-in to focus on product, trust your instincts over ideas, and the frameworks matter less than nerve when stakes are highest.
Playtika's acquisition of SuperPlay and its breakout hit Disney Solitaire created a paradox: the game is phenomenally successful but generates accounting losses, threatening debt servicing and forcing owners to choose between selling the studio to Tencent or keeping their growth engine.
CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 disaster wasn't driven by public market pressure but by remote work that fragmented visibility across a complex pipeline—a waterfall process where no one saw the whole picture. The studio's recovery, transmedia strategy, and structural culture offer lessons on franchise building and the risks of scaling.
Turkey's gaming ecosystem became so efficient at casual puzzle games—through founder playbooks, government subsidies, and AppLovin distribution—that top talent stopped questioning the path and kept replicating the same formula. The real constraint isn't talent or capital; it's permission to try something different.
Two newly appointed gaming CEOs share six operational lessons from their first 100 days: execute a pre-made plan, cut rather than add, make deep personnel changes early, leverage insider knowledge without presumption, protect sacred boundaries, and align board and internal narratives—because the honeymoon period is the only window to reshape the organization.
Deconstructor of Fun (15) · Ben Yoskovitz (1)
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