Pragma

Zynga's stock was trading at $1.87 when Frank Gibeau took over. The enterprise value was around $200M. The eventual exit was $12.7 billion. He walks through exactly how that happened on the latest episode of the Gaming Founders Podcast, and it's one of the more candid turnaround stories I've heard. What he inherited was rough. $600M in revenue but only $17M in profit, 16 of 17 VPs gone within months, and a company that had missed the shift to mobile entirely. He describes it as a very fast race car with the parts all over the garage floor. The rebuild wasn't one dramatic move, but a culture reset grounded in Zynga's founding story, cutting 120 projects down to a handful so the best people were on the biggest ideas, an M&A approach that let acquired studios stay themselves, and data science fast enough that teams could skip the pitch deck and just pull cohort data. What struck me is that none of this was improvised. Frank spent 23 years at EA before Zynga, going back to Road Rash, and you can hear the playbook forming across those decades. His view on platform shifts stayed with me: if you're worried about the new thing disrupting the old thing, you've probably already lost. Thank you Frank for joining us and being so open with the story, and to Kevin Zhang for cohosting as always. Full episode linked in the comments 🎧

𝗖𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗥 𝗧𝗢𝗢𝗟𝗦 𝗚𝗢𝗧 𝗔 𝗙𝗘𝗪 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗕𝗨𝗙𝗙𝗦 👀 we’ve been putting our energy into creator workflows this last week, and shipped a couple of small (but powerful) updates: 🎥 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 paste in a URL and track any creator video or stream directly in the Content page. missed by auto-detection? no problem. now everything lives in one place. 🛂 𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘀 running a VIP-only playtest? special event? curated launch wave? you can now choose: open access for everyone or require creators to request approval first. more control. cleaner tracking. smoother campaigns. 🎮 for marketing teams → manage campaigns without spreadsheet chaos 📊 for partnerships → see all creator coverage, not just what’s auto-captured 🤝 for curated drops → hand-pick who gets in (when it matters) still haven’t tried our Creator & Content tools? enable them in FirstLook Labs 👀 we’ve got more creator-focused updates coming soon. we can’t wait to blow your socks off! 🧦

Games marketing is broken. After raising over $50M to support and work with hundreds of studios over the last 6 years, I find that the biggest problem is studios’ lack of direct connection with their players. Over the last six years, I’ve watched talented teams struggle because they never had a clear way to reach, learn from, and grow with players over time. Without that connection, everything becomes harder - validation, iteration, community growth, and retention all turn into guesswork. For most of the games industry’s history, platforms have controlled identity, communication, and distribution, which are invaluable to a game’s success. Apple limited how studios could collect and use player contact information outside the App Store, and Steam still doesn’t give studios access to the contact details of players who wishlist or sign up for playtests. Studios are left without a direct relationship with the audience they’re trying to serve. As a result, studios rely on fragmented tools and spreadsheets to manage players across different stages of development and live operations, with no continuity from first contact through long-term engagement. Today, that changes with the launch of FirstLook 1.0. FirstLook is the first Player Relationship Platform built specifically for games. It gives studios everything they need to connect with players across the full lifecycle, including playtests and feedback, community and communications, analytics, rewards, and creator programs, all in one place. We’ve been building under the radar, but FirstLook.gg already powers hundreds of studios, from indies to publishers like KRAFTON Inc., ArenaNet, and Skybound Entertainment, connecting millions of players with the developers who make the games they love. As part of the launch, we’re introducing a brand new limited time free plan, with access to all our features for up to 500 players. You can set this up now in under 10 minutes. If you want to learn more, book a demo and we guarantee that you will save you time and money and help you grow. Links in comments!

Screw the roadmap  Last week, the FirstLook.gg team locked ourselves in a room for our annual hackathon and the mission was simple: Forget the backlog and build something gamechanging for studios. In 72 hours, we shipped 6 completely new product demos that shouldn't exist yet. The demos and experiments the team worked on: ➡️ The First Multi-Server Discord Bot: One studio branded Discord bot that lives in your official and community servers and powers studio rewards, giveaways, announcements, and engagement analytics. ➡️ FirstLook Command Center: A live dashboard that lets community managers see all active players and trigger real-time in-game events - can be used for players or streamers alike. ➡️ Instant Browser Playtesting - A tool which allows instant playtesting in the browser, including watermarking, player session data, and live AI surveying based on what happened in the playtest. ➡️ScoutGG - Studios can track competitors and get recommended launch dates, sentiment shifts, and monitor every move competitors make. ➡️ PatchPulse: A player retention tool that turns player feedback into comeback moments. Player vents, studio makes the fix, then PatchPulse directly notifies them via Discord that the problem is solved. ➡️The Roblox Bridge: A tool that gives Roblox creators the things they need to test, reward, and grow with real players from day one. In 2025, we made "Shipping with Velocity" our north star. We pushed 100+ features last year, but seeing 6 entirely new product ideas come to life in 3 days was way more than I expected. The MVP: Massive congrats to Robert van Hoesel, Kyle Kury, Ernie Le 🔜 DICE, David McNally, Sayaad Ali, Sebastian Andronic Trandafir, Joe Geraghty for taking home the win with their Instant Browser Playtesting project! There are some massive ideas in here, if you’re interested in any of them, reach out for a demo.