-
2 months ago | 
polygon.com | Ryan Rigney
Push to Talk is a weekly newsletter about the business of making and marketing video games, written by games industry veteran and marketing director Ryan Rigney. Subscribe here for eclectic and spicy interviews and essays in your inbox every Friday. Like a lot of people, I adored Hyper Light Drifter, the debut title from the Culver City, California-based game devs Heart Machine.
-
Jan 12, 2025 | 
polygon.com | Ryan Rigney
It’s really important to note that both myself and Raw Fury always recognized that we were making a niche product. As such the most important thing was to not try and make or sell something that was “all things to all people.” Instead we made a lot of effort making sure we were talking to the people who were our target audience. So this gets you to the starting line and day one sales, right.
-
Dec 13, 2024 | 
polygon.com | Ryan Rigney
Push to Talk is a weekly newsletter about the business of making and marketing video games, written by games industry veteran and marketing director Ryan Rigney. Subscribe here for eclectic and spicy interviews and essays in your inbox every Friday.
-
Nov 21, 2024 | 
msn.com | Ryan Rigney
Continue reading More for You Continue reading More for You
-
Nov 21, 2024 | 
polygon.com | Ryan Rigney
That’s the challenge that Émi Lefèvre and the team at Plane Toast had to solve when designing Caravan SandWitch, a breakout hit adventure game that features no combat. ”To be honest we realized very late that the game had potential to be a success,” Lefèvre, the game’s creative director, told me this week.
-
Oct 21, 2024 | 
polygon.com | Ryan Rigney
It would be so funny if they let you reverse the sorting order — I want to play the least popular demos. After all, the behavior fit the character he was playing. It’s not like he was actually an asshole, right? Full disclosure: I joined Respawn in September of 2020 as Director of Comms and Community, so I wasn’t part of the Apex launch and I don’t have any special access to player data or budgets. All the numbers shared here are public. Great-performing ads can be much cheaper, though.
-
Oct 4, 2024 | 
pushtotalk.gg | Ryan Rigney
Halfway through PLAY NICE, Jason Schreier’s new book about the history of Blizzard Entertainment, there’s a story that permanently altered my view of Bobby Kotick. The story is about how Kotick, the longtime head of Activision and a perennial games industry villain, reacted to Blizzard’s pitch for Overwatch. You can picture the scene in your head. It’s a conference room. Kotick is leaned back in his chair, stone-cold look on his face, exactly how he looked while arguing with Brad Pitt in Moneyball.
-
Sep 20, 2024 | 
pushtotalk.gg | Ryan Rigney
This week’s post is a two-part combo: a short essay about a concerning trend in the PC and console games market + an interview with one of the creators of Arco, who has something to say about the state of the industry for indies. An almost-funny tragedy is decimating basically every artistic industry: there are too many things. Too many movies, too many shows, way too many songs and books and videos and email newsletters.
-
Mar 8, 2024 | 
pushtotalk.gg | Ryan Rigney
A decade ago, I left a career in games journalism. After achieving my dream of writing for print magazines like GamePro, PC Gamer, and EDGE, it all fell apart. That’s the funny thing about games media—it’s always dying, and somehow it always endures in some form or another. So, in a fun role reversal, this week I interviewed some games journalists and a PR pro about the current state of games media. The resulting piece is a weird mishmash of personal essay and a reported deep dive.
-
Feb 23, 2024 | 
pushtotalk.gg | Ryan Rigney
In recent years a number of game devs—most recently the Helldivers 2 team—have faced widespread outcry from players after implementing kernel-level anti-cheat drivers in their games. To learn more about this phenomenon, I decided to interview people who've led anti-cheat teams on games like Fortnite, Roblox, and VALORANT. Find that story below. First up, this week's spiciest news links. Subscribing to Push to Talk will definitely not install a rootkit on your machine (probably).
