Thoughts on Discord's IPO

Balancing user interest with shareholder value

The SuperJoost Playlist is a weekly take on gaming, tech, and entertainment by business professor and author, Joost van Dreunen.

What a difference a GDC makes.

Having successfully survived another edition of the Game Developer Conference, I’m happy to be back in Brooklyn.

The tone this year was notably muted. Lobbies weren’t quite as crowded as before, but everyone was clearly on their game. Indies were pitching with a vengeance, corp dev teams were taking all kinds of meetings in search of the Next, and the traveling circus of finance folk had healthily expanded.

To combat the sad vibes that have wholly taken hold of the broader discussion on the games industry, I presented at a few venues with the message that we’ve been here before. ICYMI, whenever the music industry has a bad year, no one expects people to stop singing and dancing. Similarly, a transitional period in interactive entertainment has little to do with the innate human instinct to play. Mostly it means that big tech firms …