Naavik Gaming Podcast

Three years after raising a $31.3M Series A off a prototype shown behind closed doors at GDC, Gardens Interactive still hasn’t announced a release date. Investors just put in another $35M+ anyway. In this episode, Kalie Moore welcomes back Stephen Bell and Chris Bell, two of Gardens’ three co-founders and the team behind Journey, Sky, What Remains of Edith Finch and Blaseball, following a Series B led by Lightspeed that values the studio at $190M and brings total funding past $70M before launch. They explain what took three years, including a late switch from Unity to Unreal, how Chris handed the CEO role to Stephen to focus fully on the game, and what Gardens actually is now that it can speak for itself: an online survival roleplaying “strandbox” where players cross paths with strangers, build relationships, and reshape the world together. Stephen pushes back on the friendslop label and the idea that jank is a weakness, and Chris shares how a single image in an inspiration folder led to a cold DM to Ma-ko, the artist whose work now defines the game’s look.The conversation also gets into the money. Stephen explains why the round leaned on traditional VCs rather than gaming funds, what separates Gardens from the wave of veteran-led studios that raised big in the zero interest rate era without breaking out, and why the reported “one year of runway after release” doesn’t tell the full story. He’s candid that this isn’t a funding recovery so much as a concentration, and why he thinks games are now underfunded rather than overfunded. They also cover how Lightspeed sees human connection as a bet that gets more valuable as AI spreads, why their proprietary tech blends procedural generation with hand-authored content, how they measure success in playtests by the stories and relationships players report, and how they’re approaching monetization with former Valve economist Mike Ambinder, starting with one firm rule: Gardens will never be pay to win.We’d also like to thank Tebex for making this episode possible! With funding tight, the question isn’t just how big a game can get but how long a studio can run, and that starts with knowing what each sale actually returns. Tebex’s free Hidden Fees Calculator compares your provider’s headline rate with your true effective rate, including FX, payment method and chargeback costs, and shows the annual difference. Check it out here and learn more about Tebex at https://www.tebex.io/.If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected]’s On:GuestsStephen Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbellgardens/Chris Bell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gardenschris/Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/ Watch the episode: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc CabeLinks mentioned:https://gardens.dev/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-07/video-game-designer-behind-sky-journey-raises-35-millionhttps://gardens.firstlook.gg/signup/closedalphamk1

Most studios have teams, funding, and a publisher behind them. Abe Train has a laptop and a handful of contractors. In this episode, Kalie Moore sits down with Abe, founder of Trainwreck Labs, to unpack how a former head of business intelligence at HelloFresh became one of the most successful independent developers in daily browser games. Abe quit his job on the last day of 2021 with about six months of runway, and a month later Wordle took over the internet. He built Globle, a daily geography guessing game, posted it to one Reddit community, and watched it climb to over a million players a day at its peak. They get into why that post worked when the identical one in a bigger subreddit got zero traction, why most Wordle clones vanished while Globle stuck, and why the best creator marketing he’s ever had came from people he never spoke to, including a Thai TikToker playing an English word game and a biology teacher who plays Metazooa on camera every day.The conversation also covers how Abe has built a catalog of daily educational games as the only full-time employee. He explains why a small, obsessive audience is more valuable than a big casual one, why players always ask for games to get easier but never harder, and what he learned moderating taxonomy debates in his Discord. On monetization, he shares why he almost refused to run ads, how he ended up running them on his own terms through Nitro, why players barely noticed when he did, and the rule he brought from HelloFresh about the complaints you never hear.. He also walks through how he barely writes code anymore, why there’s no AI-generated art in any of his games, what he learned shutting down his newsletter, and his plans for native apps, real-world events, and the Trainwreck Club subscription he gives to teachers for free.This episode is brought to you by Appcharge, the payments platform built specifically for mobile gaming that processes over a billion dollars annually. Learn more here: https://www.appcharge.com/?utm_source=naavik&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=sponsorship_paymentsWe’d also like to thank Dive for making this episode possible! With its fully managed analytics and LiveOps platform built for game studios, 95% of their clients grow revenue in one year. All of that without having to hire an in-house data team. Learn more here: https://www.dive.games/ If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected]’s On:Guest - Abe Train: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abe-train-81418714b/Host - Kalie Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliemoore/ Watch the episode: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc CabeLinks mentioned: https://trainwrecklabs.com/

As cheating becomes more sophisticated, anti-cheat is increasingly shifting from detecting software to understanding player behavior. Host Devin Becker is joined by André Pimenta Ribeiro, CEO & Co-Founder of Anybrain, to discuss how behavioral anti-cheat analyzes player inputs, where it fits alongside traditional tools, and why some approaches avoid software access entirely. The conversation explores the business impact of cheating on retention and revenue, when studios should begin investing in prevention, and how even smaller teams can approach the problem. André also breaks down the growing cheat-as-a-service economy, the challenge posed by AI and hardware-assisted cheats, the risks of false positives for legitimate players, and how behavioral data could expand beyond cheating detection over the next several years.We’d like to thank Medal.tv for making this episode possible. If you're a PC gamer and want to clip your moments or a studio, publisher, or marketer looking to reach a high-quality gaming audience and get your game in front of the right players, check out all Medal has to offer at https://grow.medal.tv.If you like the episode, please help others find us by leaving a 5-star rating or review! And if you have any comments, requests, or feedback shoot us a note at [email protected]. Watch the episode: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on Sunday, September 27th. In this week’s issue, we take a look at how seasonal live-ops performs in 2026, analyzing a decade of Sensor Tower revenue and download data across 15 top mobile titles, alongside console and Roblox data.Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected] our episodes: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc Cabe

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on Sunday, September 20th. In this week’s issue, we dig into the data and assess to what extent external IP drives a video game’s success.You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/the-real-value-of-licensed-ip Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected] our episodes: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.

This episode covers the Naavik Digest newsletter published on Sunday, September 13th. In this week’s issue, explore the recent increase in notable indie game developers launching their own publishing businesses.You can read the newsletter (with even more sections and visual detail) here: https://naavik.substack.com/p/the-new-money-behind-indie-games Want to explore working with Naavik? Shoot us a note: https://naavik.co/contact-us/ Let us know what you think by sending us a note at [email protected] our episodes: YouTube ChannelFor more episodes and details: Podcast WebsiteFree newsletter: Naavik DigestFollow us: Twitter | LinkedIn | WebsiteSound design by Gavin Mc Cabe.