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Leadership

Leadership lessons for Game PMs: influence without authority, making hard calls under pressure, and team scaling.

Lessons Learned: From IC to First-Time Manager

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

How to Manage Up and Across: Stakeholder Alignment in Game Development

How to Manage Up and Across: Stakeholder Alignment in Game Development

In data-driven mobile game development, great ideas can fail if the people around them aren’t aligned. Whether you’re pitching a new feature to executives or coordinating with peers in art, design, analytics, marketing, and engineering, your success as a product manager depends on how well you manage up

From Gacha to Ethical Crossroads

From Gacha to Ethical Crossroads

When Japanese mobile games popularized “gacha” mechanics in the early 2000s, few foresaw how randomized reward chests would reshape engagement across virtual worlds. Today, loot boxes—virtual packs of unknown items purchasable with real money—fuel as much as 40% of revenue for some publishers, thriving in both free-to-play mobile