Player Driven

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.

Player Driven is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Player Driven, a business show with 0 episodes published.

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  Player Driven

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

  Aug 18, 202656 min

  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.

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  Player Driven

  Earnings Everywhere: GTA's Netflix Stunt, Nintendo's Flat 130 Million, and Roblox's Safety Bill

  Aug 11, 20261h 6m

  Three of the biggest names in games reported inside a single week and the headline numbers pointed three different directions. Nintendo's profit nearly doubled. Roblox missed on revenue while its player count rose. Take-Two was hours from reporting a loss. Underneath all of it sat the same question, and it's the one worth asking about your own game: is the pool of players getting bigger, or are you just getting better at extracting from the pool you already have? Greg Posner and Colan Neese are joined by Simeon McMillan, founder of the media and tech stocks newsletter Accrued Interest, who came up through TV, radio and cable ad sales before he started writing about the companies. Plus the debut of Bull or Bear, where we assign the side and make you argue it whether you believe it or not. In this episode 00:00 Cold open and intros 03:05 Rockstar announces a trailer, and premieres it on Netflix 09:27 Greg thinks it's a stunt. Colan doesn't. 12:26 The black hole: why games launching before GTA are already losing share 14:51 Bull or Bear, round one: can GTA 6 hit investor expectations? 18:35 13% attention share against a 2% field 22:16 How to actually read an earnings call, and why EPS is the wrong line 27:51 Nintendo: profit doubled, forecast unchanged, and the tariff asterisk 29:05 The number nobody leads with: 130 million players, flat for three years 37:02 Ocarina of Time, the Zelda film, and Nintendo's two-ponds problem 43:22 How Switch became the value machine by standing still 49:13 Bull or Bear, round two: has Switch 2 already proven itself? 52:35 House notes 53:42 Roblox: what trust and safety actually costs a platform 55:11 Trapped in kid land, and the ad ceiling Roblox can't move 01:00:50 Where to find everyone Numbers worth keeping GTA 6 at roughly 13% demand share against a field where most fall titles sit near 2%. Nintendo's total player relationships flat near 130 million for about three years. Roblox averaging around a minute and a half per experience. Demand-share figures are Colan's own MindGame data at Screen Engine/ASI. Guests Simeon McMillan writes Accrued Interest at accruedint.com, also on Substack. Colan Neese is SVP of Gaming at Screen Engine/ASI and writes Patch Notes on LinkedIn and Substack. Correction: Greg refers to Roblox reporting "yesterday." Roblox reported its Q2 2026 results on July 30, a week before this conversation. Player Driven Live runs every Thursday. Get the week's argument in The Operator's Briefing at playerdriven.io/level-up, or argue it out with us in Discord.

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  Player Driven

  How AI erased the barrier to cheating (and why trust is the real fix)

  Aug 4, 202642 min

  Most anti-cheat scans your game. Anybrain watches how you move. Andre Pimenta, CEO and cofounder of Anybrain, joins Player Driven to explain why your mouse and keyboard are a fingerprint, how AI just made cheating easy for everyone, why consoles are no longer safe, and why the real product isn't detection, it's rebuilding player trust. Episode summary (longer, for YouTube / site) Cheating touches every player, and almost nobody covers it well. In this episode Greg sits down with Andre Pimenta, CEO and cofounder of Anybrain, a company that takes a completely different approach to anti-cheat. Instead of scanning your game's memory, Anybrain reads your inputs, your mouse, keyboard, and controller, because the way you play is effectively a signature that a human can't fake. Andre traces the unlikely path from his PhD on detecting mental fatigue, through workplace wellness and esports performance coaching, to catching aimbots, bots, smurfing, and boosting. Then the conversation gets to the part every operator needs to hear: AI has collapsed the barrier to cheating. You used to hunt a forum or GitHub for a script. Now an LLM writes it and computer vision lines up the shot, and new input-injection devices bring the same techniques to consoles that everyone assumed were safe. But the through-line is trust. Most players genuinely can't tell if they were beaten by a cheater or by someone better, and that doubt is what erodes a game. Andre makes the case for transparency (publishing ban numbers, like Crytek did on Hunt: Showdown), explains how humans stay in the loop on every ban, and shares one of the most surprising uses of the tech: flagging a likely adult on a kids' server from behavior alone, without ever revealing an identity or an exact age. What you'll learn Why behavioral anti-cheat reads your inputs, not your game's memory, and why humans aren't random How AI (LLMs plus computer vision) lowered the skill floor for cheating, and why volume is rising Why "you can't cheat on console" is no longer true Why the real damage from cheating is the doubt, not the loss How transparency and published ban numbers rebuild community trust How Anybrain estimates a player's age band from behavior to help keep kids' servers safe, without revealing identity Why cheaters are still bad players (you can automate aim, not game sense) Chapters / timestamps 1:30 The most impossible cheat patterns you'll ever see 4:19 From a burnout-detection PhD to anti-cheat 9:39 How a cheater looks in the data 14:18 Beyond aimbots: bots, parallel economies, smurfing, boosting 18:48 The cat-and-mouse game, and why you can't fake a signature 20:08 AI erased the barrier to cheating 21:18 Consoles aren't safe anymore 23:55 Fireball round 26:42 Why you can't tell a cheater from a good player 31:32 Crytek, Hunt: Showdown, and the case for transparency 34:51 Where the humans fit in (appeals and evidence) 37:36 Age verification with no ID 41:56 Where to find Anybrain, and one thing operators should understand (Times are on the raw-recording timeline. They'll shift by a few seconds once your edit cuts land, re-stamp against the final export.) Notable quotes "As humans, we are not random. We have our own way of playing, and the random is possible to detect, because the way we play games is not random. We have our own signature." "In the past, you needed to look for a forum or a GitHub to get your script. Nowadays, you can use an LLM that will help you create a program." "Most people have no idea if they were killed by someone good or a cheater. At the end, it's about trust that we need to build." About the guest Andre Pimenta is the CEO and cofounder of Anybrain, which he cofounded almost eleven years ago out of his PhD on using AI to analyze human-computer interaction. Anybrain's behavioral platform monitors millions of players and works with studios including Crytek (Hunt: Showdown) and Embark. Andre is based in Portugal. Links Anybrain: https://www.anybrain.gg/ Andre Pimenta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrepimentaribeiro/ Full episode: [full episode link] Get The Operator's Briefing (weekly, Tuesdays): https://playerdriven.io/level-up Join the Player Driven Discord: https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH Call to action If you design, run, or rebuild live games, this is the conversation to send your trust and safety and community team. Subscribe, drop your take in the comments, and join the operators talking it through in our Discord.

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  Player Driven

  Games Can Be Positive in Ways You Can't See | Games for Change 2026

  Jul 28, 202646 min

  Mats Steen spent most of his short life indoors in Oslo. To his parents he looked like a young man with no one. When he died, hundreds of people reached out to say they had known him for years, inside World of Warcraft, as a character named Ibelin. His parents had no idea. That story sits at the center of this episode, and so does the question underneath it: how much of what games actually do is invisible to the people measuring them? Recorded on a rooftop in New York at Games for Change 2026, this episode brings together three people running the organization. Susanna Pollack on twenty-plus years of arguing that games carry purpose beyond entertainment. Then Dr. Rachel Kowert and Arana Shapiro on brand-new research that says the panic about kids and gaming is not coming from the evidence. Guests Susanna Pollack, President, Games for Change Dr. Rachel Kowert, Research Director, Games for Change Arana Shapiro, Chief Program/Operating Officer, Games for Change Interviews by Lewis Ward. Chapters 00:00:00 Cold open: the story of Mats Steen 00:00:42 Games for Change 2026 00:04:38 Susanna Pollack, and this year's awards 00:06:30 What Games for Change actually is 00:09:05 Rebuilding the festival: workshops and the Playtest Lab 00:12:23 The argument the industry keeps failing to make 00:14:37 Games are one of the few places failing is fine 00:15:41 The education spine, and kids in 92 countries 00:18:25 Raising Good Gamers: the 2019 origin 00:22:11 Going global, and working with the UN 00:27:54 What's coming next 00:28:57 Dr. Rachel Kowert and Arana Shapiro 00:30:00 The white paper, and 200,000 articles 00:31:43 Why bad news about games travels further 00:32:52 Stop counting hours, start asking why 00:33:55 Most media is passive. Games are not. 00:35:17 SPACE: the five moves 00:36:25 60% of kids want their parents to play 00:36:57 What Raising Good Gamers ships 00:41:53 Self-determination theory and the Proteus effect 00:43:41 Academy, Intel, and the Discord What you'll take away There is more positive coverage of games than negative. The negative just gets shared further, which leaves parents inside what Dr. Kowert calls a biased information ecosystem. A game does not need to be designed for impact to have it. Joy, stress relief, connection, and a space where age, gender and location stop deciding anything. Games are one of very few activities where failing is acceptable and repeatable. That is how mastering a system quietly builds resilience. The parental concerns have not changed in fifty years. What changes is the question: not how many hours, but what purpose the play is serving. SPACE, the framework: Start with curiosity. Play together. Adjust for context. Cultivate digital citizenship. Establish boundaries together. 60% of kids want their parents to play with them. What stops most parents is assuming they'll be bad at it. Mentioned in this episode Raising Good Gamers, and the white paper by Dr. Rachel Kowert. Free, along with a conversation guide and a family gaming code of conduct template. Workshops rolling out through the PTA, Boys and Girls Club, and libraries. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin , the Netflix documentary about Mats Steen. A feature film is in development. The Games for Change Student Challenge, 10+ years, participants from 92 countries. 2026 award winners: South of Midnight (Compulsion Games), the Vanguard Award to Jenn Panattoni, and the Giving Award to SpecialEffect for their adaptive controller work. The Proteus effect, first described by Nick Yee, who joined us back in February. Katie Salen, professor of informatics at UC Irvine, co-creator of Raising Good Gamers. Disclosure: the FTI Consulting media analysis underpinning the white paper was commissioned by Tencent. Where to go next Academy — free, built in short packs you can finish on a commute. academy.playerdriven.io Intel — our prediction game. Call what the industry does next and see if you were right. intel.playerdriven.io Discord — where this conversation actually continues. The Operator's Briefing — Tuesdays, if you'd rather it come to you.

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  Player Driven

  Microsoft's Xbox reckoning: layoffs, the Minecraft raid, and the case for ad-funded discovery

  Jul 14, 20261h 13m

  Xbox just laid off thousands, spun off four studios, and cancelled games it had defended a day earlier. Greg Posner and games-industry analyst Colan Neese take apart Microsoft's restructuring memo and land on an uncomfortable read: this wasn't a bad week, it was the bill coming due for a decade of running gaming as a lifestyle business. They dig into the losses (64 cents gone on every dollar spent), the decision to starve Minecraft to prop up everything else, the Game Pass numbers that never made the memo, and the blame pie: how much lands on Phil Spencer, and how much on CEO Satya Nadella. Then they split hard on the future. Colan makes the case that the fix is an ad-funded, one-to-one discovery engine. Greg goes down swinging for a different read of why players won't leave the games they already know. Two live games along the way: ranking Microsoft's biggest IP by revenue (and where the AI got it wrong), and an invest-or-sell round on Xbox's dormant franchises. In this episode (0:00) Cold open, and the week that broke Xbox (9:00) The layoffs and studio spin-offs: Avowed cancelled, a new Fallout greenlit (11:54) The memo: losing 64 cents on every dollar, and starving Minecraft (18:15) Phil Spencer, the "wayward son with a credit card" (19:07) Restructuring, and the Game Pass numbers that never got named (23:49) Colan's "script for Asha Sharma," and why Xbox is a distant fifth platform (29:24) The pitch: ad rev-share, the way YouTube pays creators (32:00) Game: rank Microsoft's biggest IP by revenue (37:35) Game: invest or sell Xbox's dormant franchises (44:49) The blame pie: how much is on Satya Nadella (49:56) The debate: is discovery broken, or are players just comfortable? (1:09:00) Games for Change NYC, and what's next Quotables Colan Neese: "You lost 64 cents on a dollar, and you took from the profitable engine that was Minecraft." Colan Neese: "Ads are just content. It's just a different kind of content." Links and mentions Player Driven: https://playerdriven.io The Operator's Briefing, our weekly newsletter: https://playerdriven.io/level-up Join the community on Discord: https://discord.gg/GC5PkbKFH Games for Change, NYC, July 21 About Player Driven Live breaks down the business behind the games every week, for the people who build, run, and rebuild them. Hosted by Greg Posner with analyst Colan Neese. If this is your kind of conversation, subscribe, and come argue with us in the Discord.

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