Modes of Play

Leadership

The Invisible Cost of Staying Composed

The Invisible Cost of Staying Composed What your team sees as calm, and what it actually takes to hold that line. The Feedback That Stung A few years into my time at Jam City, I received 360 feedback that stopped me cold. People said I had too much on my

Career Advice

What Actually Drives You? The Question Review Season Rarely Asks

Before you can design your career roadmap, you have to answer something harder: what do you actually want, and does that answer still hold? I Didn't Plan Any of This It is the end of Q1, which means annual performance review season is either already here or arriving

Career Advice

PM vs Live Ops: Role Clarity in Mobile Game Teams

In every live service organization, the question eventually surfaces: What is the difference between Product Management and Live Ops? That is not the real question. The real question is this: How should ownership of intent, operation, performance, and talent growth be architected so the game scales and so your leaders

The Product Sense Toolkit

UI/UX as the Translation Layer

Series: Building Player Experience With Intention – Part 3 of 3 In the previous posts, I explored how product managers shape player experience through intentional player journeys and interacting systems over time. This final post focuses on the layer where that intent becomes real for players: UI/UX. UI/UX is

The Product Sense Toolkit

Designing Cohesive Player Experience Across Systems

Series: Building Player Experience With Intention – Part 2 of 3 In the previous post, I focused on how product managers participate in game design by shaping individual player journeys with intent, and how those journeys can be measured through clear expected outcomes. Each journey should work on its own. It

The Product Sense Toolkit

Building Player Experience With Intention

Series: Building Player Experience With Intention – Part 1 of 3 Product management in games is often discussed in terms of execution. Roadmaps. Metrics. Delivery. Alignment. What gets talked about far less is how PMs participate in the actual act of designing the game. Not by inventing mechanics or defining moment

2025 End of the Year Reflection: Six Months of Writing & Building Modes of Play

Six months ago I started writing publicly about game product management and PM leadership in free to play games because I felt a pull I had ignored for years. I kept wondering why I saw things differently, why it was so hard to hire the talent I wanted, and why

Strategy

Roadmap Planning in Free to Play: How PMs Turn Data, Constraints, and Experiments Into Strategy

As we approach the end of the year, every game team I know is deep in the same annual ritual: roadmap season. Leadership sets new financial targets. Finance tightens constraints. Teams scramble to synthesize everything they learned this year into a plan for next year. And across the industry, there

The Product Sense Toolkit

Game Teardowns for New PMs: How to Analyze Features Like a Product Manager

Why this topic matters Most early-career PMs struggle with understanding why a game works, how systems interlock, and what design choices influence behavior. Game deconstructs are the fastest way to build design literacy, develop intuition, and learn how to think in systems. But this post isn’t about teaching you

Members only

Data as North Star

How to Run a Weekly Numbers Review: A Diagnostic Framework for Live Games

This companion to my Data as a North Star series translates strategy into execution, a practical operational framework for diagnosing weekly revenue shifts in live games. While Expected Outcomes help you define success before you build, a Numbers Review helps you understand what’s working after you ship. Together, they

Leadership Featured

Putting Stakes in the Ground: Leading Through Broken Systems and Change

Leading Through Chaos Every leader eventually faces a season where nothing seems to work, whether you inherited it or walked in by choice. The roadmap is shifting, metrics are slipping, and progress feels like running in sand. In those moments, leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s

Leadership

The Cost of Clarity: Why Leadership Requires Vulnerability

Last Updated: March 2026 Clarity does not come from having the answers. It comes from being honest enough to lead without them. Vulnerability Is Not a Weakness. It Is the Work. Most leaders spend years trying to project certainty. I did too. Early in my career I believed that if

Working with series

When Collaboration Breaks Down: How PMs Can Rebuild Trust and Alignment

Like any relationship, healthy PM x Design collaboration depends on trust, communication, and empathy. And like any relationship, it can break down — even when both sides have good intentions. Maybe you’ve had the 1:1s. You’ve aligned on outcomes. You’ve reviewed documents and sat through stakeholder meetings

Working with series

How Product Managers Collaborate with Engineering to Build Scalable Systems

Series: Working Across Disciplines in Game Development – Part 5 of 5 Why PM–Engineering Collaboration Matters In game development, engineers are the architects of scalability—the ones who turn creative vision into resilient systems that power every player experience. Yet too often, PMs treat them like ticket-takers instead of problem-solvers.

The Product Sense Toolkit

Systems Thinking for Product Teams: How to Learn It, Grow It, and Scale It

Your team ships a monetization feature that boosts revenue—for a week. Then engagement drops, players churn, and three teams scramble to patch the fallout. It wasn’t a bad feature. It was a system shock. In games, every decision echoes. Progression pacing affects monetization. Economy loops impact trust. One

Working with series

How Product, Marketing, and Community Build Player Trust in Games

Working Across Disciplines in Game Development – Part 4 of 5 Why Marketing and Community Matter in Game Product Management Marketing and community aren’t promotion—they’re how your game keeps its promises. In live service games, trust is retention. The story outside the game must match the experience inside

Working with series

Partnering with Production as a PM: From Vision to Velocity

Series: Working Across Disciplines in Game Development – Part 3 of 5 Why PM–Production Partnership Matters Production is the operating system of a game studio. It’s the invisible layer that keeps creative chaos and commercial pressure in balance. Producers turn ambition into motion—translating ideas into timelines, allocating resources

Career Advice

How Game PMs Stay Focused: The Art of Saying No

Last updated: February 2026 Live games never stop moving. There is always a new event to plan, a metric that needs attention, a stakeholder with a priority, a designer with a great idea. If you let the motion set your agenda, it will. And before long you are busy all

Working with series

How Game Product Managers Partner with Analytics to Turn Data into Better Decisions

Series: Working Across Disciplines in Game Development – Part 2 of 5 Why Analytics Matters to Product Managers Great PMs don’t just read dashboards – they partner with analysts to frame the right questions, define success, and interpret results. In live service games, analytics isn’t optional; it’s the backbone

Working with series

PM x Design: How Game Product Managers and Designers Shape Player Experience

Great product managers don’t just manage timelines—they build bridges across craft disciplines. And nowhere is that more important than in how you collaborate with design. Series: Working Across Disciplines in Game Development – Part 1 of 5 Why Understanding Designers Is Essential to Game Product Management Game PMs don’

Career Advice

The Game PM Career Ladder: From Associate to Director

Introduction Becoming a strong PM in games isn’t just about gaining years of experience—it’s about expanding your scope, shifting your thinking, and evolving your craft as the problems get bigger and more complex. But equally important is role clarity: knowing exactly how your responsibilities should grow at

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Data as North Star

How to Make Data-Driven Decisions Without Getting Paralyzed

Data as North Star

How to Make Confident Product Decisions Without Getting Stuck on P-Values

💡TL;DR: Don’t blindly wait for 95% stat sig. Use statistical confidence as needed—tailored to context, impact, and product risk. Prioritize action, not perfection. Understanding the Statistical Models Behind A/B Testing While PMs don’t need to be statisticians, knowing the types of statistical models used in

Leadership

Lessons Learned: From IC to First-Time Manager

Stepping into your first manager role in game product management is both exciting and daunting. I still remember my first week — I thought I’d be spending my time on strategy and big-picture planning. Instead, I found myself juggling three competing priorities, a last-minute feature change, and a teammate in

Members only

Data as North Star

Beyond the Numbers – Using Qualitative Signals in Game Development