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DEEP DIVES
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Stillfront: Understanding Gaming’s Dark Horse
Reading Time: 24 minutes Welcome to Master the Meta, the #1 newsletter analysing the business strategy of the gaming industry. This company deep dive is a collaboration between Aaron Bush and Abhimanyu Kumar from Master the Meta, a newsletter analysing the business strategy of the gaming industry, and Joakim Achren from Elite Game Developers, an online resource that helps…
Three Reasons Why Playco is Worth $1 Billion
Reading Time: 10 minutes This past week, the mobile gaming industry got a new unicorn! On September 21st, Playco announced a whopping $100M Series A at a valuation just north of $1B. Playco regards itself as the first instant play gaming company that hopes to create games that not just millions, but billions of people can play together. Instant…
How Gaming’s Most Underrated Acquirer Struck Another Incredible Deal
Reading Time: 7 minutes Sep 20View fullsize On September 17th, Stillfront Group announced its acquisition of Nanobit, thereby making the company now 15 studios strong! More notably, this is Stillfront’s 3rd acquisition already in 2020 — Storm8 (January 2020) and Candywriter (April 2020) — resulting in a very impressive rate of one acquisition per quarter. If that doesn’t awe…
Everything You Need to Know About the IDFA
Reading Time: 10 minutes If you’re a regular reader or have been following general mobile advertising news, you must already be well aware of Apple’s bombshell move to become user privacy first by deprecating the IDFA, and in turn completely resetting the mobile advertising ecosystem as we know it today. For those of you catching up, here is a…
Unity: Analysing the First Game Engine IPO
Reading Time: 18 minutes Welcome to Master the Meta, the #1 newsletter analysing the business strategy of the gaming industry. Hi everyone, On August 24th 2020, Unity filed its S-1, a ~300 page document jam-packed with information that not only explains what the business does, but also details how it scaled and what it wants to accomplish in the…
A Look Under the Hood of Skillz
Reading Time: 6 minutes Two weeks back, mobile game developer Big Run Studios (BRS) raised a second seed funding round of $5.25M through investment firms Transcend Fund and Galaxy Interactive. This comes a few months after BRS’ first seed round of $1.4M, and is most likely due to the recent success of their flagship title “Blackout Blitz” – a…
Why Nintendo Isn’t the Next Disney (And What It Will Be Instead)
Reading Time: 19 minutes Welcome to Master the Meta, a newsletter focused on the business of video games. There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and false beliefs that “Nintendo is the next Disney.” Even if hyperbolic — because apparently some people have never heard this comparison — it’s as if there is a natural cycle at play….
Epic Games & The Quest to Push Boundaries
Reading Time: 14 minutes Welcome to Master the Meta, a newsletter focused on the business of video games. This is the first of many company deep dives Master the Meta will publish going forward, and there’s no better place to start than with Epic Games, perhaps the most forward thinking business in the industry. This is my attempt to…
The Path to Titan
Reading Time: 6 minutes Revisiting The Path to Platform For those who didn’t read the original article, the general idea is that there are tiers of success that games and franchises can achieve. A brief summary: Tier 4: Standalone Games. One-and-done experiences that aren’t designed for infinite play (like God of War, Uncharted, BioShock). Tier 3: Games as a Service. Whether…
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