Habby (Happy + Hobby) rewrote mobile’s growth playbook when Archero exploded in 2019, and the studio has remained a case study in scaling hybridcasual hits ever since. The game coined “hybridcasual,” surpassed $500M in revenue, and, more importantly, created a meta sturdy enough to be recycled in every project that followed. Despite a surge in…
Extraction shooters were supposed to be the next big leap, and Escape from Tarkov was the movement’s exemplar. Titles like Jager’s The Cycle: Frontier and Call of Duty’s DMZ failed to generate meaningful traction. Many mistakes stem from a misunderstanding of Royale’s place in shooter evolution, creating an inability to conceptualize what’s next. Bungie’s Marathon…
In 1989, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay asking if we’ve reached The End of History? Often mischaracterized, the essay argues democracy and free markets represent the last evolution of political-economic systems. Fukuyama writes: What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular…
There’s been recent enthusiasm about the need for “Game Economists.” I guess good things come in packages!
Battle Royale and Roguelike are remaking game progression before our eyes. Popularized in earnest during the rise (and eventual pruning) of the MOBA genre, in-round progression mandates players accrue vertical power in the context of a single round. MOBA sessions start with players farming in-round currency to spend on items that persist until the round…