The Business of Games
The Business of Games: A podcast for developers, publishers, and executives navigating the ever-changing game industry.
From monetization models to player behavior, from platform shifts to emerging markets, The Business of Games is your guide to all the things transforming how games are built, marketed, and scaled.
Hosted by Chris Hewish and Lia Ballentine, each episode blends strategic insight, cinematic storytelling, and candid conversations with the people driving the business of play. You’ll hear from top executives inside studios and strategic partners across the ecosystem who are uncovering the ideas, tactics, and trends shaping tomorrow’s opportunities.
Whether you’re launching your first game or scaling a global studio, you’ll find practical strategies, future-forward thinking, and real-world examples you can act on right away.
The Business of Games is brought to you by Xsolla, your strategic partner behind the scenes. We bring together “All the Things” to help you simplify operations, unlock new revenue, reach more players, and launch fast.
Visit xsolla.com to learn more, connect with our team, and access all the things you need to level up your business of play. Want to join the conversation? Follow and comment on our LinkedIn page at The Business of Games Podcast, where we’ll be sharing updates, highlights, and continuing the discussion. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share the podcast with friends and colleagues who want to learn more about the business of games.
The Business of Games
Curation, control, and connection: David Pava on the real work of direct-to-consumer marketing
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Welcome to The Business of Games Podcast, brought to you by Xsolla.
Marketing a game used to end at launch. In this extended cut, host Chris Hewish sits down with David Pava, Senior Director of Marketing for World of Tanks Modern Armor at Wargaming, to explore what happens when studios stop thinking in campaigns and start thinking in relationships.
David brings a career path unlike most, from webmaster for World Championship Wrestling in the early days of the internet to marketing console games for millions of players on PlayStation and Xbox. Along the way, he's developed a philosophy rooted in feedback loops, curation, and earning trust at every touchpoint.
In this conversation, he makes the case that direct-to-consumer is fundamentally about eliminating friction — between a studio and its audience, between data and decisions, between messaging and meaning. And he draws some surprising parallels between live service games and the world of professional wrestling to prove it.
We dive into:
- Why direct-to-consumer is really about two things: curation and control
- How World of Tanks Modern Armor tripled its Twitch audience, and why that matters as much as DAUs
- The 60-factor player segmentation model that shapes how the team targets and experiments
- Why AI accelerates your existing systems (for better or worse), and why authenticity is the antidote
- How an eight-week season pass cadence creates a build-test-learn loop that compounds over time
- What new marketing teams should prioritize first when building a direct-to-consumer foundation
Whether you're running a live service title, building your first owned channel strategy, or just trying to understand what it actually means to own the player relationship, David's perspective offers hard-won clarity.
Let's get into it.
For more insights and resources, visit xsolla.com/podcast. Want to join the conversation? Follow and comment on our LinkedIn page at The Business of Games Podcast. That’s where we’ll be sharing updates, highlights, and continuing the discussion. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share the podcast with friends who want to learn more about the business of games.
