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📈This Week in Numbers
$13.7B - Unity valued at $13.7bn after successful IPO
$100M - Stillfront Group acquires Nanobit for at least $100 million
€50M - Koch Media acquires Vertigo Games for €50m
€25M - Metacore gets €25m investment from Supercell
According to this blogpost by their CEO - Merge Mansion has exceptional metrics. Our D1 is above 60%, D7 is 38% and D30 is 24%!!
$20M - Social Gaming Startup Bunch Snags $20 Million Series A, Backing From Major Game Studios
2021 - Facebook is launching smart glasses in 2021, its ‘next step’ to an AR device
🍿Good Content
📺 From Unknown Title to Viral Game: 12 Growth Lessons from Spellbreak
Earlier this week, I watched this video by Seth Sivak, CEO of Proletariat, makers of Spellbreak. Spellbreak managed to get 600,000 pre-release signups. Proleteariat was a relatively unknown studio before Spellbreak.
These growth lessons are also super relevant for non-gaming companies releasing digital products (kind of what we are seeing with smaller evangelist communities and first 1,000 true fans.)
💳 CardVCard - MSCHF’s newest drop! We covered MSCHF in issue
Card V. Card is a competitive multiplayer bank account, giving out free money 💸All players’ cards connect to the same account. Money is deposited at random. So, nobody knows when money will be deposited into their account or how much money there is in the bank account. As I covered in LB #14, MSCHF’s founder thinks about a single question:
How do you just create something that will naturally spread across the internet without having to resort to hacking an algorithm on Facebook or optimizing for what YouTube wants to see?
⭐️ The Future of Game Engines & Infrastructure
Great optimistic read from Compound VC about game infra and ML applications, here are the key takeaways:
Many of the core functions of game engines are being unbundled as a direct result of the massive changes currently occurring in the industry.
The robustness of gameplay (again, as depth and specialization increase & barrier to entry decreases) creates robustness of behavioral data that is unparalleled and represents great potential we think will see much greater use in the next 3 years.
Machine learning will continue to be applied to various creative processes to give creators greater scale — gaming will be no different.
Game infrastructure companies targeting unbundling for middle-sized games who use hyper specialized tooling or monetization as a wedge to challenge monolithic players of unity and unreal are poised for great success.
💰How to identify million dollar ideas for your games studio
Very tactical insights from Mighty Bear co-founder and CEO Simon Davis about to identify winning concepts, he also shares their template to evaluate concepts.
📒Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games
New memoir by the man himself.
These days I’m playing Creaks (Steam, Apple Arcade) by Amanita Design (makers of Machinarium). It’s full of smart game design, amazing puzzles, art and soundtrack (by Hidden Orchestra!). Great for those who wants to take break from short attention games..
You can see the launch trailer below - highly recommended:
Here’s a great thread, in case you missed this trend:
Have a great weekend,
Emre
Curated by Emre Colakoglu, an experienced product manager and data scientist working in gaming. I’m based in London. You can find me on Twitter, my website and LinkedIn.
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Hey! Glad you enjoyed my game engines piece :)