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

Jenny Tai

07 Jan 2026 • 5 min read

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 so many teams and games operated in avoidable disarray.

When I published my first piece, Why I Am Writing This, I wrote about wanting to make the craft of game product management more transparent and to share the product frameworks I wish I had earlier in my career. That post was my first public commitment to treat my experience as something worth documenting and sharing, not just something I carried quietly from studio to studio.

This reflection is a checkpoint on that promise. It marks six months of showing up, a soft launch for a larger body of work, and a moment to be honest about what has had impact so far and what needs to become more intentional going forward.

What I Thought Writing Would Be

When I started, I assumed this site would be a repository for frameworks and how to guides. A place for clean thinking and structured templates built with the same rigor I bring to product development. Many of the early posts ended up being exactly that.

Expected outcomes and funnel guides for features in free to play games
Step by step approaches to feature flags and A B testing
Revenue investigation and weekly health reviews for live service titles
Collaboration models and communication tools for product and stakeholders

Looking back, this is very on brand. Every framework reflects how I lead. Clear intent, alignment before execution, strong problem framing, and a culture centered on learning over output. Writing made that pattern visible in a new way.

What Writing Actually Became

Somewhere in the process, the work shifted. Writing stopped being documentation. It became a mirror.

Putting my thoughts into the world forced me to articulate what I believe about game product management, not just what I know. It made me realize how much of my approach comes from building systems of clarity and trust in every team I have led. It revealed the throughline that connects my years at Zynga, Jam City, and Scopely. And it made me understand why structured product frameworks resonate so deeply with me.

Writing became a repeated moment of asking myself:

What am I really trying to say about this part of product management?
What do I want people to understand or do differently after reading this ?
What part of my experience as a product leader is worth passing on?

Those questions sharpened my voice in a way nothing else could.

Where I Am Relative to Why I Started

In my first post I wrote about wanting to help newer and mid career PMs see behind the curtain. I wanted to give people the playbooks I wish I had when I was growing up in free to play games. I also wanted a reference library that could support mentorship and help teams talk about metrics, experiments, and clarity with more confidence.

This is still a soft launch. I have not promoted the site widely or built a newsletter cadence. I have mainly written for myself, my teams, and the people who find this work organically. Even so, the original intent from Why I Am Writing This is starting to land. The work is useful, not just visible.

This Phase as a Soft Launch

I think of the first six months as a product beta for both my writing practice and Modes of Play as a resource for the game product management community.

I focused on three things:

Proving that I could ship consistently while leading a demanding product role
Finding a tone that feels like me and still serves readers growing their PM careers
Testing which topics feel the most alive and useful to PMs, analysts, designers, and leaders who care about data informed decision making

This soft launch gave me permission to experiment without treating every post like a final statement. It also created enough accountability to keep me honest. Once something exists publicly, a part of you wants to keep tending to it.

What I Learned About Myself

One. Clarity is my leadership brand.

Every post strengthened the same muscle. Define the problem, state the behavior, frame the outcome. Writing about experiments, feature flags, roadmaps, and revenue diagnostics made it obvious that clarity is not just my writing style. It is how I lead.

Publishing publicly made me more honest with myself. If I share a revenue investigation process or an experimentation guide, it has to match how I actually operate. Writing reinforces the leadership habits I want to model for my teams.

Three. You find your voice by using it.

My early posts were straightforward and tactical. Over time my voice became sharper, more confident, and more reflective. Writing consistently about real problems in live service games forced that growth.

From Impact Intent to Concrete Goals

Up to now, my goals for Modes of Play have been mostly qualitative. Make game product management more transparent. Help people feel less alone navigating a PM career. Capture the systems that shaped how I lead.

However, as my reader you know my love for measure able outcomes and goals. Now it is time to make those intentions measurable:

Cadence

I aim for one thoughtful post every three to four weeks, with room for shorter reflections on topics like feature flags, A B testing, metrics, and collaboration. The goal is a sustainable rhythm that fits my leadership responsibilities.

Depth and usefulness

After publishing each post I will ask:

Did this help me clarify a real decision or pattern I am working through ?
Can a PM or product leader apply this within a week ?
Did at least one person tell me it helped them with something specific in their role?

If the answer is no too often, I will adjust my topics or formats.

Reach that feels aligned

This next stage is about bringing Modes of Play into more conversations and making the writing easier to discover and share.

Introducing the blog to a broader set of peers and PMs Bringing posts into team discussions, leadership offsites, trainings, and mentoring sessions
Using the writing as a foundation for talks, workshops, and collaboration opportunities
Referencing my own posts more deliberately when explaining complex product concepts

These indicators reflect how I define impact right now.

What This Journey Means to Me

Six months in, this site is no longer a side project. It is a practice. It is my way of contributing to the craft of game product management at scale. It is how I build clarity for myself and for others. It is a long term commitment to generosity in a field where structured knowledge is often hard to access.

Writing has given me something I did not expect. Permission. Permission to take up space, articulate my point of view, reflect on a career I built with intention, and express the parts of leadership that never fit neatly into a framework.

Where I Go Next

The next chapter will include more than frameworks. It will include leadership lessons, perspective, and reflections on the harder middle parts of growth. The experiences behind the templates. The systems I wish I had earlier.

The first six months were about proving consistency. The next twelve will be about depth and intentional impact.

Writing has become the clearest expression of how I think and what I care about. It has made me a sharper operator and a more intentional leader. I am grateful for everyone who has read, shared, or used these posts. It means more than you know.

Thank you for being a part of this journey with me. Wishing everyone a wonderful New Year and here is to an amazing 2026!