Been cooking something very special for 1.5 years in complete silence.
I WROTE A BOOK.
A Million Players by Friday: An Insider's Guide to UGC Gaming for Creators, Brands, and Marketers
It started with a Secret Santa wishlist. I wanted a UGC gaming book for Christmas and discovered there are NONE. Not one. And I realised, who better to write it than me, who's been through the trenches since the dawn of Fortnite Creative 8 years ago.
The title says it all: somewhere right now, a fourteen-year-old with no studio, no publisher and no budget is building a game that a million people will play by Friday. This book is about the world that made that possible.
Inside: the opportunity hiding in plain sight for creators and brands, how discover(y) and retention actually work, the psychology of microtransactions, what separates the activations that explode from the ones that sink, building a studio in the fastest-moving space in gaming, plus the parts nobody talks about: the legal minefield, the black markets, the platform chaos. No theory. Lived it, wrote it down.
And one moment that still doesn't feel real:
@TimSweeneyEpic personally shared with me the paper from the talk he gave 20 years ago at the Principles of Programming Languages conference, the ideas that formed the base for what Verse is now. Full analysis in the book!
Out now on Amazon in ebook, paperback and hardcover available from Saturday, September 26. Link below. Tell me what you think, nothing beats that.