Alexandre Macmillan

Here’s a scene you’ve probably witnessed: a game, months into soft launch, is missing its targets. The team presents a plan: The plan is full of hope. It talks about a future feature that will fix retention, a new offer that will solve monetization, or a new user acquisition strategy that will find the “right” players. The meeting ends with a decision to extend the soft launch for “just one more month.” Three months later, the game is finally killed, having burned hundreds of thousands of dollars in team salaries and UA spend for no additional insight. This is the slow, expensive death that plagues our industry. The problem is rarely the game or the team; it’s the process. We are emotionally invested, so we optimize for hope. We ask, “What could this game become if everything goes right?” instead […]