Deconstructor of Fun

User-generated content (UGC) isn’t “make anything.” It’s “make something that someone cares about.” In this Deconstructor of Fun conversation, Julia Polatovska, founder of Dorian, a creator platform for mostly women + Gen Z, goes past the pitch and into the operator questions. Who creates, who wins, what monetizes, and what breaks at scale when you're building a UGC platform.
Connect with Julia: www.linkedin.com/in/palatovska/

Supercell’s annual CEO blog post reads equal parts culture memo and a recruiting pitch. We break down what is behind the PR spin before zooming into Clash Royale’s Lil Wayne halftime show as a case study in where “brand” ends and product-led fandom begins.

From there, we triangulate the broader market: Newzoo’s year-end PC/console recap as a reminder that attention is consolidating, not expanding; Roblox’s growth story as it starts acknowledging gravity; and an update on Budge and PE as capital keeps rewriting the rules of what “good” looks like. We close by wishing the best to the team impacted by Riot’s 2XKO layoffs.

00:31 Podcast Overview and Today's Topics
00:58 Market News: Roblox Earnings and More
02:14 AI and Gaming Industry Insights
03:25 Unity's Financial Struggles
04:43 Community Engagement and Volunteering
20:44 Game Industry Updates: Budge Studios Acquisition
24:23 Roblox Q4 Earnings Analysis32:19 The Challenge of Monetizing Young Audiences
32:33 Roblox's Strategy to Age Up
33:02 Advertising Challenges for Under-18 Demographics
33:26 Negative Margin Users on Roblox
35:19 Upcoming Episode Teaser: Roblox's Algorithm Changes
38:23 Supercell CEO's Annual Blog Post
39:05 Clash Royale's Rebound and Marketing Strategies
44:14 Squad Busters: A Postmortem
44:54 Supercell's Future and Industry Insights
49:01 The Role of PR in CEO Letters
52:18 Supercell's Innovation vs. LiveOps Debate
01:02:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

The evolution of art direction, the integration of AI in creative processes, and the balance between creativity and business acumen. That's on the menu as SciPlay's Sr. Art Director, Peter Franco, joins Michail Katkoff on the podcast.
Read more about Peter's work on modernizing a top-grossing game: https://tinyurl.com/mn2bdweb

Timestamps:
2:12 - Peter's journey into Social Casino
4:42 - Evolution of art direction roles
7:13 - Balancing creativity and business
9:23 - User feedback in design
12:07 - Importance of seamless UX
15:44 - Player behavior insights
20:28 - Benefits of using IPs
25:16 - AI in art pipelines
30:18 - Future skills for art directors
35:33 - Maintaining stylistic consistency
40:49 - Future of art direction
45:07 - Personal influences and career advice
53:25 - Advice for aspiring art directors
59:25 - AI and creativity

Mobile publishing isn’t dead, it’s mutating!
In this TWIG episode, we break down how Ares Interactive is trying to resurrect Glu with a $70M Series A and what that says about the current “publisher vs. studio” power balance.
We also tackle Google’s new immersive world model, Genie 3, and the industry’s first defensive reflex: how do you keep the genie in the bottle when the bottle is an API?
Phil drags us into Highguard Marketing, making us unpack the pitch, the incentives, and why “pseudo-defending” it still feels like a red flag.
Finally, we hit Arknights: Endfield launching off the back of a reported 35M pre-registrations, and what that number does (and doesn’t) predict once the game meets CPI, retention, and live ops gravity.

The question nobody in the West wants to answer honestly: the biggest shooters in the world are not the ones you argue about on Twitter.This episode rips into Highguard’s shadow drop, the “beta that isn’t labeled beta” problem, and the stubborn reality that the shooter market has converged into two and only two genres: Battle Royale and tactical.We talk Highguard and Spectre Divide as case studies for why “ex-Apex devs” is marketing copy, not a strategy, and why in 2026 a shooter doesn’t get a long runway to “fix it live.”Guest: Christopher Anjos, with Chris Sides and Feras Musmar.We discuss:- High Guard as a MOBA-raid shooter hybrid and why its best moments arrive only after five minutes of downtime.- Defense phase, resource phase, then the game finally becomes itself: mounts, CTF energy, base raiding.- Shadow drops vs. tech tests: why the Apex Legends playbook doesn’t port cleanly into 2026.- “Early access” is just launch, and Steam labels don’t save you from retention.- The 3v3 trap: high risk formats where one leaver or one death warps the whole match.- Why 3-person squads feel like a couple plus a third wheel, and when 3v3v3 or 5v5 might actually work.- The “two genres” thesis: Battle Royale and tactical shooters as the market’s default equilibrium.- The creator-credit illusion: “ex-Red Dead lead designer” as a brand signal that often means nothing.- Players want auteur vibes; production reality is thousands of hands and fuzzy accountability.https://graygoatgaming.com/