Digital Magician Studios

Key Clients: Tiësto, Amazon Alexa, Popsockets, Dr. Squatch, Ralph Lauren, Perplexity Ai, Dr. Squatch

$5M in revenue for clients through organic and paid content, influencer campaigns, SEO, and paid ads marketing solutions across Instagram, Meta, Google, and TikTok.

Launched & Directed social media campaigns for Amazon Alexa, Ralph Lauren, Tiësto, PopSockets, and more. 
Managed teams, Creatives, & Influencers across dozens of campaigns.

Creative Strategist

Activision

GFX for Call of Duty: Mobile social media advertising

Produced over 300 thumb-stopping pieces of engaging content to introduce, tease, and inspire our community with news maps, gear, events and game modes. 

Provided valuable social media insight to help direct creative to maximum performance. Repeated record breaking organic social content performances surpassing millions of views in under a day.

Content Animator, Designer

Solve

Created GFX for over 100 crime solving episodes including interactive games, text animation, 3D renderings, and exploding heads.

Content Lead: VFX & GFX

Freelance VFX Editor

Digital Corps

Created videos and graphics for a wide range of internal and external clients both at Ball State and around the country.
Responsible for video production from on set interviews to post-production and other creative endeavors. Worked in various departments of production but specialize in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics. 

Spent the semester prior as a Video Apprentice training before being selected for a Specialist promotion.

Video Specialist / Motion Graphics 

Los York

Content/Editing Summer Intern

I'm the Head of Creative for Digital Magician Studios (DMS). A social media content marketing agency that specializes in Content Strategy & Content Creation for brands to build loyal communities and grow their businesses. I have a passion for helping brands create thumb-stopping content and grow online.

I've worked as a Content Strategist for over 6 years, a Content Creator for 10, and have a background in high end video editing, motion graphics, & visual effects (VFX). 

With +260 million organic views on Instagram & TikTok and $5 million in sales generated for our clients, I have proven experience in working with incredible brands like Amazon Alexa, Ferrari, Ralph Lauren, PopSockets, and more. I also have a background in digital marketing and content production for leading gaming companies like Activision and Snapchat, where I produced over 300 pieces of record breaking content for Call of Duty: Mobile and Solve. 

As an Adobe certified professional, I have expertise in video editing, graphic design, and animation, using tools like Premiere, Photoshop, and After Effects. I also have skills in content strategy, social media management, paid ads, and consulting. I am always learning and sharing my knowledge about marketing, business, mental health, and personal development on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn, where I have a combined following of over 170,000. 

My goal is to empower B2B, B2C, & DTC brands to connect with their audiences and grow their businesses through strategic and creative social media content. If you are interested in working with me or learning from me, you can view case studies on my website, email me, or follow me on social media. 

I would love to hear from you!

Denver McQuaid

Raftur Games

Co-Founder, Co-CEO & CMO

Senior Creative and Brand Director

The MadQueens

Digital Brand Builder & Creative Director - Gaming

YouTube

Partner

KaracterMania

Director of Creative Departments (Marketing/Brand/Product)

Malize Photography

Creative Director / Advertiser/ Photographer

Brand Manager/Product Manager

Product Developer

mazzima creative s.l.

Art Director

✦ ABOUT ME ✦

Visionary leader and internationally awarded manager with 18 years of experience driving engagement for top-tier IPs. As Co-Founder, co-CEO, and CMO at Raftur Games, I specialize in innovative marketing and brand strategies to shape the gaming industry's future. Specialized in video games, advergaming, and gamification of the customer journey.

★ Influencer Marketing Pioneer: Launched one of the first influencer campaigns for Disney merchandising, in the dawn of Instagram.
★ Brand Experience Innovator: Introduced "Branded Experiences" for retail and product showcase for Disney, Mattel, and Warner.
★ Virtual Vlogging Leader: Pioneered 2D virtual vlogging as a Gaming YouTuber.
★ PR Trendsetter: Created and tested a PR technique to influence social media trends.

☛ KEY COMPETENCIES ☚

• Video Games: Monetization, distribution, and user acquisition.
• Brand Exeriences: Engagement that turns customer into fans.
• Brand Storytelling: Crafting compelling narratives.
• Digital PR & Social Media: Engaging strategies.
• Content Strategy: Results-driven content creation.
• Leadership: Building high-performance teams.

⚡ PROFESSIONAL VISION ⚡

A gifted child who created my first video game at nine, I have always been driven by a unique perspective shaped by my neurodiversity. This allows me to think quickly and generate groundbreaking ideas. I believe in making the world a better place through creative brand management, crafting experiences that bring joy and positivity to people's lives.

At Raftur Games, I aim to drive growth and innovation, creating opportunities and jobs in the gaming industry.

SKILLS:
Product Marketing, Brand Management, Brand Development, Creative Direction, Creativity and Innovation, Video Game Monetization, Team Creation and Scaling, Budget Management, P&L Management, Communication Strategies, Leadership and Team Management, Coaching and Mentoring, Market Research, Consumer Analytics, Competitive Research, Creative Briefs, Audiovisual Assets Production, Events and Agencies coordination, Social Responsibility Branding, Content Strategy, Strategic Partnerships, Digital Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Data Analysis, Product Development and Validation, Project Management (Agile and Waterfall frameworks), Performance Management, Process Improvement

Technical: Kanban board, Meltwater, WGSN, Google Analytics, Tableau, Excel, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, After Effects, and Premiere, Python programming for analytics in Social Media and Steam

Malize E.

I think we can add this in Amir Satvat's mentoring resources for gamers looking for a job 😂 

Video credit: @yourboujeegal on Instagram.

Creative, Brand & Product Director | Innovator in Video Games and Brand Strategy | NeuroDiversity Advocate | Mentor & Advisor

I'm sorry for saying the obvious, but if it matters to your customers, IT MATTERS.

Thank you for attending my TED Talk.

Product Director of Wargaming.net Platform

AI labels in games. Helpful or pointless?

Steam says “tell players when AI was used.”
Tim Sweeney says “this makes no sense.”

The community is split into 3 loud camps.

𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽 𝟭: “𝗚𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆”
↳ They want to know how AI was used.

• Was it coding support?
• Was it art replacement?
• Was it voice, story, assets?

Players here fear “AI slop”

𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽 𝟮: “𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗹𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘆 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲”
↳ They say the tag becomes meaningless.

• Every dev uses copilots.
• Every engine has AI inside.
• Even Photoshop uses it inside.

Players say label will be on 99% games.

𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗽 𝟯: “𝗜𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝘀𝗲”
↳ The “tool, not replacement” view.

• AI for prototyping? Fine.
• AI to replace teams? Not fine.

Players accept help, not handover.

❌ The fight is not about tech.
✅ It’s about trust.

↓ Some fear losing human-made work.
↓ Some believe AI is just another tool.
↓ Some want nuance, not noise.

So here’s my question to you:

Which camp are you in?

Everyone is talking about Matthew McConaughey licensing his voice to ElevenLabs. The celebrity angle is fun, but the real story is about IP.

We’re watching voice turn into a living asset, the same way likeness rights, character rights and even costume designs became assets long before AI. Talent can now license their voice in a controlled way instead of watching copies circulate without consent.

But there’s something we shouldn’t overlook.

Even with the best models, capturing the nuance of a genuinely talented actor is almost impossible. A voice isn’t just sound. It’s choices, timing, breath, emotion. McConaughey didn’t build a career on having a pleasant tone (which he has). He built it on delivery. I’m skeptical that any model can replicate that without very strong human direction.

And there’s a creative consequence that people aren’t talking about. If AI can’t match the emotional performance of a great actor, studios might start using real actors as the emotional base, then replace their voice with a recognizable one in post. The body gives the emotion. The synthetic voice gives the brand recognition. It’s not hard to imagine a future where this becomes a practical shortcut and we'll have "ghost actors" the same way we have "ghost writers".

History already warned us what happens when you “replace” an actor.
Crispin Glover sued Universal after Back to the Future 2 because they hired someone else, applied prosthetics to look like him, and reused shots from the first film. He argued that the performance misrepresented him and created confusion. He won around $750,000, and the case reshaped how likeness rights are handled. 

That was the late 80s. No AI involved. Just the idea of a replacement was enough to trigger a legal precedent that still shapes contracts today.

This is the real story behind McConaughey and ElevenLabs. Not that “AI is coming for voice actors,” but that voices are becoming rights-managed assets with long-term value. Controlled. Licensed. Protected.

Angel Investor | Founder Product Market Fit

BREAKING: Matthew McConaghey just joined ElevenLabs as an investor & licensed his voice to be used in AI-generated models 🤯 

Matthew McConaughey just joined ElevenLabs as an investor and licensed his voice to be used in AI-generated models 🤯

Michael Caine did the same.

ElevenLabs now works with more than half of the Fortune 500, and this is their highest-profile move so far.

What this really means:

- Human voices are becoming licensed digital assets, not one-time 
performances

- Celebrities can earn royalties at scale, in any language, without re-recording
Brands get safer, approved AI voices instead of deepfakes

- The industry shifts from “AI steals my voice” to “I control it and get paid”

- A new multi-billion market forms around rights, licensing, and distribution (not just voice models)

My full breakdown:  https://lnkd.in/dwEDsEvp

When we were planning the Star Wars Episode VII immersive experience for Disney, there was one rule we couldn’t break: no spoilers. No Star Wars related product could leak to the internet. But we still needed to make the campaign feel alive, exciting, and unmistakably Star Wars.

The idea came from an unlikely place: the Stormtroopers from the official 21st Garrison fan club. Instead of being static props, they became the security team for the experience. Fans could see them moving through the space, performing a real-world function, and suddenly the universe felt alive in a way no ad or display could achieve. It was subtle, but it made a huge difference.

I also might or might not have cosplayed as an imperial officer to oversee the event without breaking the immersion. Too bad I can't find a picture 😅 

Leading the team that made this happen meant thinking through every detail. Every costume, every movement, every interaction had to feel authentic to the IP while delivering something new. And it worked. Fans were fully immersed, media coverage was electric, and even VIPs like the TV host Arturo Valls came on their own to experience it.

Moments like this are why working with global IPs is as thrilling as it is challenging. You have to honor the universe people love while finding a way to surprise them. That balance is where strategy, creativity, and precision meet, and it’s the work I live for.

That’s how I like to end my week ❤️

Just over a month to go! Check out the Fallout Season 2 Official Trailer from Prime Video. 

https://lnkd.in/gmxHT9br

Open video: Fallout Season Two Official Trailer | Prime Video on youtube.com

Fallout Season Two Official Trailer | Prime Video

A little fun for your Friday. Have a great weekend!

FROM GAME TO GLOBAL PHENOMENON: HOW TO TURN AN IP INTO CULTURE (PART 2)

Designing for Communities, Not Just Players

Every great IP starts with an audience. But the ones that become cultural phenomena build something more powerful: a community.

Players play games. Communities defend, expand, and evangelize them. That’s why the strongest IPs aren’t those that chase users. They’re the ones that build belonging.

This idea isn’t new. For the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons, 15 years ago, we had a simple yet powerful idea: dress an actor in a Homer Simpson suit and have him walk around crowded streets with a tourist influx. People queued to take a picture with him and shared the experience on social media. Probably also shared the experience in lunches and dinners with friends and family.

Let’s look at three dimensions that define this shift from audience to community.

🎮 Shared identity over shared activity
Communities don’t form around gameplay loops, they form around identity loops. When players start saying “we,” the brand has already crossed into culture.

This happens when the game’s language, values, and rituals give players a shared emotional code. Think about Swifties and Trekkies. Think about Helldivers 2 players using the phrase "not democratic" as a synonym of something bad. Think about metalheads nodding to each other on the street when they recognize the band on the other person's T-shirt. They aren’t just labels; they’re identities that carry meaning beyond the screen. A strong IP gives people the tools to recognize each other. That recognition creates loyalty no marketing campaign can buy.

🎮 Participation as creative ownership
Fandom thrives on proximity. Emotional, not physical. The closer people feel to the creators, the characters, and the world, the more they contribute. This is why communities explode when studios open the gates to player expression: modding, fan art, cosplay, user-generated content. It’s the moment an audience stops consuming and starts co-creating.

Roblox and Minecraft are textbook examples: they don’t dictate culture; they host it. Players aren’t content consumers, they’re world-builders. That sense of authorship makes the IP feel alive, even when the developers step back.

🎮 Continuity through conversation
Communities aren’t static. They survive through dialogue: between players, between fans and devs, between generations of followers. IPs that understand this design for connection loops: reasons to come back not only to play, but to talk, to share, to teach, to remember.

Besides, it's very hard to convince a group of more than 2 people to move into a different game. When players become a community, your IP stops being a product and starts being social infrastructure.

And that’s the real key to cultural longevity: not better marketing, but better relationships.

Some time ago (before the rise of AI) I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about current art trends. He said: "we're living in the times with the average worst artistic quality in history". It stuck with me.

While democratization is great to make sure that talent without the resources can shine, the negative side of it is that it also gives attention to the mediocre (and worse), which represent a higher percentage of the population. This, in turn, will make the gems much more difficult to discover.

Not counting with other ethical concerns around AI, I honestly don't think that the widespread use of it it's going to necessarily translate in higher quality games, but quite the opposite. I do agree with Chris that there is a part that is dependent on human creativity and it can't disappear, however, I may be less enthusiastic about the people taking the decisions on what parts are dependent on human creativity to be right about it.

Games & product executive, xDisney, xUniversal, xfrogdesign

Best bestie David Friedberg from All-In Podcast wrote this as part of a longer exchange with Congressman Ro Khanna on AI. 

This is exactly how I think things play out with respect to games. AI won't innovate away the creativity because that is the part that will require taste and human insight. What it will do is automate away everything else so game makers can focus on the fun part.

It will allow us to take more risk and be more creative. Appeal to smaller audiences. Make a profit with less cost.

Sucks for the publishers and the middle men, great for the creative.

https://lnkd.in/gDWZU47V

This is exactly what I was talking about the other day, thanks, Jakub Remiar for the clear example 😊 

It’s wild to see how far this has gone. Fake creatives were already a problem, but now we also have studios lifting each other’s ads, chopping off the end cards, and using them to funnel traffic into games that have nothing to do with what was promised.

There’s a bigger issue here than just “creative trends”. When stolen or misleading ads send players into predatory games under a false premise, the people who get hit the hardest are usually the most vulnerable: kids, low-information users, and players who don’t understand they’re being baited into mechanics built to extract as much as possible.

Some teams at least try to bridge the gap by adjusting onboarding to match the fantasy they sell in ads, which I still think is quite trashy by the way, but most don’t. They just steal creatives of games not even in the same genre because of their success. The result is churn on the first minute because expectations and reality don’t align but, and this is important for all developers at large, that gap erodes trust in ads across the board, and then the industry acts surprised when UA costs explode. Everyone treats it as the new normal instead of asking why platforms keep allowing it.

Add to that the number of games that encourage players to binge-watch ads they barely pay attention to just to farm hard currency, and you can call NASA to retrieve your CPI from the moon.

At some point we have to stop rolling our eyes and start questioning why the companies that manage the inventory aren’t stepping in. If the market keeps rewarding this behaviour, it’s going to get worse, not better.

Product & Game Design Consultant 🕹 Mobile F2P 📱 Monetization = Game design

Royal Kingdom a match3 game is using 4X ad creatives from Kingshot? 🤯 read why 😎 ...

It is very obvious these days that the main genre, which really figured out scaling user acquisition to giant install volumes is 4X, mainly Century Games and River game. Both companies use very similar strategies of fake ads- fake onboarding game - real game, in this bait and switch setup. So their ad creatives really work if you follow this execution. 

This essentially means that everyone is looking up what they are running and using the same. Even games totally outside midcore category, like Royal Kingdom, which runs this exact same creative extensively in their playable setup. 

What a time to be alive 🤣 when a casual game is running a midcore game creatives. The UA paradigm has totally change and if you don't catch this trend you will be pushed into the sidelines by the others, which are scaling these their games to giant volumes this way. 

And I even haven't started about the state of creatives being watermarked now, because competing companies are literally just stealing them, cutting of the end cards and running them in their own user acquisition campaigns 😅. 

This is just a tip of the Iceberg of what we saw in the latest episode of October creative trends. Join us as we talk about all of this with Felix & Matej on the two & a half gamers podcast 😎 .

Valve just revealed new hardware: a small living room PC, a new VR headset, and an updated Steam Controller. The products are interesting, but what really stands out is the strategy behind them.

On one side, the PC market is getting tougher. GPU prices keep climbing, and a lot of players simply cannot afford the latest cards that make ray tracing worth it. If fewer people can run high-end games, it is natural to wonder how has this affected the decline in sales in AAA games that expect top tier hardware that we've been seeing in the latest quarters. Not everyone can drop that much money to stay current, especially after a few difficult economic years.

At the same time, Valve is moving in the opposite direction of big console companies. Xbox is prioritising software and content, while Valve is expanding in hardware. They are giving players more ways to access their library without depending on a new GPU every two years, however, isn't yet clear to me if the Steam console can be upgraded like a PC or a new generation will be needed when a new generation of games comes out.

And of course, Valve can do this because their fanbase is incredibly loyal. Steam is not just a store. It has community features that make people stay, participate, share, and build. When you already have that level of trust, new hardware feels like a natural extension instead of a risky leap.

So the interesting question for me is simple. With hardware prices rising and high end gaming becoming less accessible, is this Valve’s way of offering an alternative path for players who still want great experiences without breaking their budget?

FROM GAME TO GLOBAL PHENOMENON: HOW TO TURN AN IP INTO CULTURE (PART 3): NARRATIVE AS A SOCIAL GLUE 

If community is what keeps an IP alive, narrative is what keeps it coherent. It’s the invisible thread that binds mechanics, art, and identity into meaning. And when it’s done right, it becomes the social glue that holds fans together long after the game ends.

Take it from the person who made a living out of explaining the lore of the video game Cyberpunk 2077 to gamers. Players may come for the gameplay, but they stay for the story they tell themselves through it.

🎮 Story as a mirror, not a script
Narratives that create culture don’t just tell stories; they let players inhabit them. The best games give players emotional authorship. They build worlds that ask, “What kind of person will you be here?” rather than, “Can you complete this task?”

Think of Mass Effect or The Witcher. Their cultural reach doesn’t come from plot twists but from moral choice, empathy, and the illusion of agency. It doesn't have to be a huge RPG to give players the illusion of choice. When players make meaning, they form memories. And memories are what anchor communities.

🎮  Shared mythology and communal storytelling
Every phenomenon has its myths. Pokémon has its regions and creatures. League of Legends has Runeterra. Even Among Us created a mythology of suspicion and humor.

Lore. Lore everywhere.

A shared mythology turns individual experiences into collective memory and gives fans a common language. That’s why storytelling in games is rarely about narrative structure alone. It’s about lore architecture: creating enough depth that fans can explore, debate, and reinterpret endlessly. When they start creating fanfiction around it: you did something write in the good direction, and the IP has achieved cultural autonomy.

🎮 Emotional continuity across platforms
True cultural IPs don’t limit their stories to a single format. They create emotional continuity across games, series, comics, social media, and even live events. That continuity is what transforms a franchise into a phenomenon.

Fans creating content on social media is also emotional continuity across platforms.

Players who grow up with a world and see it evolve across time feel ownership that no advertising can replicate. Star Wars, Final Fantasy, even smaller IPs like Life is Strange: all stay relevant because they allow the story to mature with their audience.
It’s a contract of trust: “We’ll keep growing this world as long as you keep believing in it.”

In the end, the real power of narrative isn’t that it entertains. It’s that it connects.
A good story can make a player care. A great story can make thousands of people care together.

And that is where culture begins.

FROM GAME TO GLOBAL PHENOMENON: HOW TO TURN AN IP INTO CULTURE (PART 5): MEMES, VIRALITY, AND CULTURAL MOMENTS 

Cultural adoption rarely begins with strategy decks. It starts when people use a piece of content to express something about themselves. Memes, GIFs, and viral trends are not just entertainment; they are tools of identity. The most powerful IPs understand that the moment someone uses their content to speak, the story ceases to belong only to its creators.

🎮 The emotion layer: GIFs as self-expression
GIFs are the emotional shorthand of the internet. When I worked on the Cyberpunk IP, I used them as a bridge between brand and player emotion. We created branded GIFs that gamers could use to express frustration, excitement, or triumph inside their communities. The idea was not to sell a message, but to give fans vocabulary. One of the simplest examples came from the intro of my own YouTube videos (a CAF rating, for "Cyberpunk AF"). It captured a tone that resonated with the community and was picked up on Twitter, spreading organically until it appeared in countless YouTube creators’ videos. That was the signal: when fans borrow your tone to express themselves, your IP has entered their cultural toolkit.

🎮 Designing for participation, not virality
Virality cannot be engineered, but participation can. Together with the community managers at CD Projekt Red, we focused on creating interactive touchpoints that rewarded curiosity rather than clicks, creating minigames that helped fans discover the lore of Night City, targeting the LatAM communities. The mechanic wasn’t complicated, but it turned information into play. When the experience feels like a discovery rather than a task, fans invite others in.

🎮 Memes as cultural mirrors
Memes are how culture comments on itself. A good meme strategy does not try to own the joke, but to give the audience the right raw material to create it. That means identifying moments within your IP that already act as emotional triggers: visual motifs, character lines, gestures, or glitches that can stand alone. Those fragments, if easily repurposed, become the DNA of cultural relevance. The goal is not control, but resonance. When people use your symbols to tell their own stories, you gain a level of visibility no campaign can buy.

The measure of success is not how far a piece of content spreads, but how naturally it embeds itself into language. A GIF reply, a community in-joke, or a user-made remix all signal the same thing: the story has escaped the marketing department and entered collective play.

Culture happens when people use your world to talk about their own. The task is to give them enough raw emotion, structure, and agency to make that possible. That is what turns content into connection, and connection into phenomenon.

It's going to be *Fast & Democratic*

Thoughts?

Entertainment Lawyer Focused on Complex Rights Deals, Film and TV Finance and Distribution, and Franchise Development; Partner and Media+Entertainment Co-Chair at Pryor Cashman

“Lin is not a gamer and leaned into that as a strength when pitching his take on the material, said insiders. He aims to find the humanity in the characters and weave timely themes into the story, while building out a world and mythology.”

TIMELY THEMES.

FROM GAME TO GLOBAL PHENOMENON: HOW TO TURN AN IP INTO CULTURE (PART 1)

The DNA of a Phenomenon

Every cultural phenomenon starts with a piece of creative work, but not every piece of creative work becomes culture. Some IPs are simply played. Others are lived, worn, drawn, quoted, and remembered for decades. The difference isn’t luck. It’s design.

After years working in games marketing, I’ve seen how certain titles don’t just grow. They ignite. They build emotional territory that people want to inhabit. That’s the real DNA of a phenomenon: something that moves beyond product to identity.

So what does that DNA look like?

🎮 A world that invites projection
Cultural IPs create space for players to project themselves into. Pokémon isn’t just about catching creatures, it’s about the fantasy of mastery and belonging. Roblox isn’t just about creation, it’s about authorship. Witcher isn't about monsters, but about decisions. When people can see themselves inside a world, they carry it with them. That’s why the best IPs aren’t only well-written. They’re open enough to allow interpretation, ownership, and self-expression.

🎮 Emotional resonance over mechanics
Mechanics make a game fun. Emotion makes it last. Every phenomenon has an emotional backbone, a feeling that defines the experience. Wonder. Rebellion. Nostalgia. Connection. These are the real engines of cultural growth.

When a brand gets this right, it doesn’t need to push itself into culture. Culture pulls it in.

🎮 Archetypes and universality
The strongest IPs speak to primal narratives that exist across cultures: the hero’s journey, the quest for power, the need to belong. They use archetypes as architecture, not decoration. That’s why kids in every country understand Mario without translation. Or why people who never played Cyberpunk 2077 still know what “Night City” feels like.

🎮 A visual and emotional signature
Great IPs have unmistakable DNA. You can recognize them instantly not just by logo or character design, but by mood. Think of the color palette of Zelda, the typography of GTA, the sonic identity of League of Legends.

These worlds feel coherent, even across decades, because they carry an internal truth: “this is who we are.”

🎮 A sense of continuity
Cultural phenomena don’t stop when players log off. They evolve through collective memory: sequels, memes, fan art, nostalgia cycles. Each revival isn’t just marketing. It’s ritual. It keeps the myth alive.

Creating something that becomes culture isn’t about building a viral hit. It’s about crafting meaning that resonates so deeply that people need to express it.

And that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the creative, the strategic, and the emotional align under one purpose: to make something that truly matters to people.

Years ago I was in a recruitment process with a gaming studio. Their last game flopped despite their efforts.

When the process was quite advanced, I got to talk with an executive. Right after answering a question regarding the target audience, this person started insulting gamers.

Insulting. Gamers.

They're toxic. They complaint about everything. They're cheap, always waiting for the game to be in sales to buy it instead of paying full price. They're entitled. They kept going on for good 10 minutes.

I sat there smiling and nodding, not really knowing what to say, and hoping they wouldn't ask me to agree with them. I had to fight the urge to say "well, now we know why your last game flopped".

You don’t need more content. You need a plan. | Creative Direction • Content Strategy • Brand Storytelling

What's the most absurd thing said to you in an interview?
I'll go first...

I was more than qualified for the position I was interviewing; I was familiar with the CRM they used, had the necessary certifications, worked in similar roles for years, knew how to work with different personalities (which was definitely needed!), and I had a great response for every questioned asked.

In my mind, it was a perfect fit.

Their only criticism left me speechless. I had no response, I was too stunned that this was even a concern.

I was told:
"You're not bubbly enough, we're looking for more of a cheerleader for this role."

And here I thought I was conducting myself with the utmost professionalism.

After a moment of silence, I finally gathered my spiraling thoughts and said,
"My outward facing personality doesn't really have anything with my ability to do well in this role."

The silence was deafening

"In fact," I continued, "I think the way I've conducted myself in this interview shows more competence and capability than someone with the personality that you described might exhibit on first impression."

Needless to say... I didn't get that job. 😅 

I still think about this moment from time to time... yes, everyone is entitled to hire who they want. And yes, character is very important when hiring someone new. Obviously they have to be a good fit for the team. But it's infuriating to waste my time only to be turned down, not by my qualifications, but by a PERCEIVED personality. 

What have you been told in an interview that still rattles around your brain today?

Over the past few days, I’ve been writing about how we can make gaming healthier for kids. Not by banning or blaming, but by understanding how these systems shape behavior.

From the way games are built to the way they’re marketed, we’ve created ecosystems that reward constant engagement. The line between play and compulsion has become dangerously thin, and kids are the most exposed to it.

I’ve talked about the mechanics that hook them: variable rewards, social comparison, resource scarcity. About the worst marketing tactics that keep them downloading games: False Personalization, Urgency loops, and Dark Patterns. And about the steps parents can take to guide kids through all this: learning the systems, building healthy habits, and seeing games as part of life, not the center of it.

Each of these pieces points to a bigger truth: we’ve outgrown the idea that parental control alone is enough. The responsibility is shared between developers, marketers, platforms, and policymakers.

The good news is that change doesn’t have to mean censorship or creative limits. It means putting the same intelligence we use to drive engagement into building systems that respect attention, emotion, and growth. It means designing for long-term trust instead of short-term metrics.

Games can still be ambitious, profitable, and loved, but they can also be healthier. The two things aren’t incompatible.

If we want the next generation to see gaming as a space for creativity and connection, not anxiety and dependency, then the reform starts here: inside the industry, not outside it. 

Because the truth is, we know how to make games irresistible.

Now it’s time to make them responsible.

FROM GAME TO GLOBAL PHENOMENON: HOW TO TURN AN IP INTO CULTURE (PART 4): LEVERAGING MULTI-PLATFORM EXPERIENCES

When an IP becomes culture, it stops asking for attention and starts offering ways to belong. That shift happens when the story is designed as an ecosystem rather than a single product. A successful ecosystem does three things: it gives people a role, it structures curiosity, and it hands them tools to extend the story themselves.

🎮 Give people a role, not just content
Culture arises when audiences stop being passive consumers and become characters in the narrative. To do that, every platform must offer different kinds of agency. A game can give tactical agency, through choices that affect play. A show can provide emotional agency, through perspectives that change how fans feel. Social spaces should provide social agency, where fans decide norms, create rituals, and define status. Each channel should allow people to act meaningfully inside it. When fans can claim a role, they stop watching culture and start performing it. Think about cosplay, just it's not always about dressing up.

🎮 Structure curiosity into ritualized discovery
Raw attention is fleeting; ritualized discovery creates momentum. Break the world into layers of reveal: entry experiences that make people care, mid-level mysteries that reward sustained attention, and deep lore that converts curiosity into lifelong investment. Stagger revelations across platforms, so each touchpoint pulls people deeper. A visual clue in a cinematic, a mechanic reveal in-game, or a character backstory in a short should all connect to a larger structure. Rituals grow from predictable moments such as weekly drops, seasonal pivots, and community challenges. These predictable hooks convert scattered attention into repeated practice.

🎮 Build scaffolding for co-creation and translation
If you want culture to spread, make it easy to translate your world into other forms. Provide assets, templates, and rules of play that fans can reuse: sound snippets, emblem kits, canonical constraints, and narrative beats that invite remix. Encourage low-friction contribution with tools that simplify participation, such as mod-friendly systems, filters for social posts, or creative prompts. When fans can reinterpret the IP without breaking its core truth, they take part in distribution, translation, and longevity.

The practical payoff is simple: treat each platform as a different instrument in the same orchestra. Tune them to the same emotional key, but give each instrument its own score and room to improvise. The result is a living world where fans do more than consume. They remember, perform, and pass it on.

That is how an IP moves from product to cultural grammar.

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