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
Identity, inventory, and income: Arron Goolsbey on what DTC really requires
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Welcome to The Business of Games Podcast, powered by Xsolla.
Direct-to-consumer is easy to talk about in terms of web shops, payment rails, and platform fees. It's harder to talk about what's actually underneath it — the identity layer, the data architecture, the economic models, and the distribution infrastructure that either make the player relationship durable or leave it fragile. In this extended cut, host Lia Ballentine sits back down with Arron Goolsbey, Chief Operating Officer at Mythical Games, to go a level deeper.
Arron brings a perspective shaped by years of building platforms at scale, and a mindset that resists binary thinking at every turn. For him, DTC isn't a distribution decision — it's a consumer operating system. And building it right means asking the right foundational questions before the spark becomes a fire.
The conversation is grounded, practical, and full of frameworks that apply well beyond Web3.
We dive into:
- Why DTC is really about owning identity, payments, and inventory — not just adding a web shop
- The four questions every studio should answer before going to market
- Why data is a decision system, not a dashboard
- How Mythical's secondary market economics create a fourth monetization model that reaches players traditional approaches can't
- Why the best monetization decisions start with a stewardship mindset, not a pricing formula
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.
