We're not even halfway through, but I already know my Game of the Year
Company arrivals and departures, new League of Legends, 2025's game of the year contenders
Today’s newsletter: Two big business moves, one legacy game update, going deep with a new game of the year contender, and a few bonus items.
How quickly things can change.
NetEase’s Seattle-based president of global investments and partnerships and notable gaming investor, Simon Zhu, announced on LinkedIn on Friday that he’s no longer with the company. In his post, he also highlights a behind-the-scenes look at his job for the past twelve years, and a few thoughts on the industry’s future.
Zhu has been previously quoted in Updater, the April 2023 edition, as saying, NetEase doesn’t provide quarterly guidance to investors so developers won’t feel pressured to crunch to meet internal deadlines.
In his Friday LinkedIn post, Zhu expressed an emotional hope that indie game developers will be able to push through, despite the obstacles. He described the reason he entered the space: “I realized that even the best developers, after early success, often couldn’t pursue their dream projects due to complex business terms such as profit-sharing constraints.”
Zhu’s department at NetEase defied industry trends, investing in creators that few were already backing. But Zhu’s departure is more indicative of the new trend that NetEase CEO William Ding is cutting back on gaming investment.
In other huge moves, Discord CEO Jason Citron is stepping down and handing the reins over to Humam Sakhnini, formerly of Activision Blizzard. This move is pretty huge. One of Sakhnini’s accomplishments was overseeing the acquisition of King by Activision, which then went on to be an extremely lucrative business for the company. “I’m a lifetime gamer and I love games, and you could tell that there’s something there [in the mobile space],” Sakhnini told me in 2021 of his first time playing “Candy Crush” in 2012. “We saw the hallmarks of what we’re seeing in console and PC, which is that this could be a very long-lived franchise, which it turned out to be.”
Here’s a quote from Citron explaining the move, emphasis mine: “His deep gaming industry expertise and proven track record of scaling businesses while fostering genuine friendships through play and shared experiences positions us perfectly for our next phase of growth. I believe this transition will accelerate our momentum and unlock even greater possibilities for Discord, our consumers, partners, and the overall gaming ecosystem in the years ahead.”
I’m reminded of speaking to one gaming veteran who said the CEO you found a company with is not the one you want to have on board when you’re scaling up the business.
League of Legends’ New Season Leans On Nostalgia
On April 30, League of Legends is getting its next season of Spirit Blossom, which essentially means Eastern themes throughout, beautiful flowers, cute skins, and just more of everything fans want. And you can believe the updates are exactly what the fans want. Some of the tweaks are just downright specific. Some even revert numbers to what they were before, just based on fans’ complaints.
I asked Riot how it stays true to the vision while incorporating so much player feedback. Lead gameplay designer Matthew Leung-Harrison said, “We use player feedback to determine whether we're violating principles, and we use our skill as designers to write down what those principles mean, and what they should be.”
Captivating puzzler Blue Prince
I’ve been trying out the new Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remaster, but before that I was sinking a hundred hours into Blue Prince. I also spent forty minutes speaking to Blue Prince creator Tonda Ros, who was much more willing to give an interview than some other debut indie game developers (such as Balatro’s LocalThunk, who has been elusive even at award shows). I’ve published much of the interview here already, but here are some parts that didn’t make the final draft:
Ros says he tried his hand at game development just to see how hard it was and began by looking at a tutorial for 30 minutes to see how difficult it was, and realizing he was willing to keep going. "Within three months, I had the first prototype of the game,” Ros says, “At that point I decided to start dedicating myself to it.”
Ros is a good example of somebody who didn’t wait around for anyone to give him permission, or for some amount of funding to land on his lap. Using money he made from running ads on a Magic the Gathering fan site he owned, he worked on Blue Prince for eight years until the game was ready.
As IGN writer Tom Marks writes, it feels like Blue Prince was made for him. Ros clarifies that he made the game for himself in fact, but it just so happens that he shares that taste with several games critics and a wider pool of people.
While he wouldn’t tell me his favorite part of the game, saying it was a tough call, he did describe his favorite part of watching people playtest his game — the first few game sessions. “At least as a designer, it’s always fun to watch people gradually learn the rules of the world,” Ros says, “The way people figure things out and learn is drastically different from one person to another, and there is never so much learning as in those first few hours.”
When I confessed I spent the first few dozen hours not beating the game but just accidentally meandering through most rooms in the mansion, Ros said I was playing the game correctly. That’s a sign of someone who would do well with his game, he said, something he observed while watching dozens of playthroughs. Although I eventually did beat the game, I spent all those extra hours learning more about how the world works, he noted, which would go a long way towards figuring out the later mysteries of the game. And later mysteries there certainly are! I’m still peeling the damn onion to this day, and Expedition 33 and Oblivion are already challenging Blue Prince’s time slot on the game queue.
What I’m consuming
White Lotus Season 3 has me mesmerized. I’ve started taking an online screenwriting class on the weekends just to brush up on an old hobby, and I’m developing an idea based on the infamous monologue in season 3, in which a man declares he just really wanted to become an Asian woman. Walton Goggins watches on, and his uncomfortable, outright shocked and puzzled reactions add everything to the scene. Things are already off to a hilarious start.
Mark Zuckerberg thought about deleting friends lists to boost engagement. I’ve been reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which chronicles the early days of Facebook and how its leaders did not originally make a plan to engage with world politics, and failed to prepare for the impending conflicts that inevitably broke out.
Is games journalism enjoying a comeback? Game Informer is back, GamesBeat has spun off and become independent, Nintendo allowed journalists to see its new Switch 2 wares first, before the celebrities or influencers could. Rule of threes, anyone?
I played the Nintendo Switch 2 with my pants. ‘Nuff said. At Inverse, we profiled Josef Fares, and the producer of Yakuza.
And happy April! I just confirmed I’ll be in Los Angeles in early June for the industry’s former E3 week now turned Summer Game Fest. Hope to see some of you there!