Keith Kawahata's guest appearances

Keith Kawahata

The Mobile User Acquisition Show

Newcomer | Cerebral Valley Podcast

OwlTail

Video games often represent the frontier of any new technology. Many of the most popular applications in the initial iPhone app store were games. Today’s virtual reality devices are dominated by video games. Artificial intelligence seems poised to upend the video game business and entertainment more broadly.On the third episode of our six-part Cerebral Valley podcast series, Max Child, James Wilsterman, and I game out how artificial intelligence could reshape the media we consume. It helps that Max and James are the co-founders of Volley, which builds AI-enabled games. They develop many of the most popular voice games on the Amazon Alexa and smart TV platforms like Roku. Max and James have been deep in the trenches of conversational-style gaming and have spent a lot of time thinking about how humans interact with ever smarter computers.In the second half of the episode, I talk with Menlo Ventures partner Amy Wu, who focuses on gaming and consumer investments, and Keith Kawahata, a former executive at Wargaming, AppLovin, and Kabam, who now has a stealth artificial intelligence gaming startup. Wu helps to articulate a three-part thesis on how artificial intelligence might change the gaming business. (1) artificial intelligence will help with the creation of the game art and graphics, (2) AI can create more sophisticated non-player characters, and (3) AI can help write the code of the game itself.One of the things that I was struck by from the conversation is that games may have a big leg up in implementing artificial intelligence over movies — because people interact so much more with a gaming, giving it tons of data to react to. While TikToks can learn what small populations of people like and what an individual likes over a long time, a game could learn a lot about a user in a single play session.Of course, there are real hurdles left standing. Most notably, text-to-image generation so far is mostly two-dimensional. Despite everything that’s happened, image generation models aren’t just whipping out 3-D levels that are ready to play. And it could be a while until non-player characters are as smart as humans. But imagine playing a game of Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption and the characters roaming around the game are self-aware agents with their own thoughts and drives. Give it a listenP.S. I’m on my honeymoon right now in Japan. I was working frantically to record these episodes before I left. My chief of staff Riley Konsella is sending the episodes out for me while I’m gone. If you need anything while I’m away, you should email Riley.Thanks in advance for being understanding that this newsletter is slowing down for my honeymoon. I’m going to dedicate myself to relaxing over the next two weeks so that I come back hungrier than ever. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Video games often represent the frontier of any new technology. Many of the most popular applications in the initial iPhone app store were games. Today’s virtual reality devices are dominated by video games. Artificial intelligence seems poised to upend the video game business and entertainment more broadly.On the third episode of our six-part Cerebral Valley podcast series, Max Child, James Wilsterman, and I game out how artificial intelligence could reshape the media we consume. It helps that Max and James are the co-founders of Volley, which builds AI-enabled games. They develop many of the most popular voice games on the Amazon Alexa and smart TV platforms like Roku. Max and James have been deep in the trenches of conversational-style gaming and have spent a lot of time thinking about how humans interact with ever smarter computers.In the second half of the episode, I talk with Menlo Ventures partner Amy Wu, who focuses on gaming and consumer investments, and Keith Kawahata, a former executive at Wargaming, AppLovin, and Kabam, who now has a stealth artificial intelligence gaming startup. Wu helps to articulate a three-part thesis on how artificial intelligence might change the gaming business. (1) artificial intelligence will help with the creation of the game art and graphics, (2) AI can create more sophisticated non-player characters, and (3) AI can help write the code of the game itself.One of the things that I was struck by from the conversation is that games may have a big leg up in implementing artificial intelligence over movies — because people interact so much more with a gaming, giving it tons of data to react to. While TikToks can learn what small populations of people like and what an individual likes over a long time, a game could learn a lot about a user in a single play session.Of course, there are real hurdles left standing. Most notably, text-to-image generation so far is mostly two-dimensional. Despite everything that’s happened, image generation models aren’t just whipping out 3-D levels that are ready to play. And it could be a while until non-player characters are as smart as humans. But imagine playing a game of Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption and the characters roaming around the game are self-aware agents with their own thoughts and drives. Give it a listenP.S. I’m on my honeymoon right now in Japan. I was working frantically to record these episodes before I left. My chief of staff Riley Konsella is sending the episodes out for me while I’m gone. If you need anything while I’m away, you should email Riley.Thanks in advance for being understanding that this newsletter is slowing down for my honeymoon. I’m going to dedicate myself to relaxing over the next two weeks so that I come back hungrier than ever. Get full access to Newcomer at <a href="https://www.newcomer.co/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&amp;utm_campaign=CTA_4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.newcomer.co/subscribe</a>

Someday That NPC Could Be More Alive Than You Are (w/ Amy Wu & Keith Kawahata) 

Jon Hook

Peggy Anne Salz

Cameron Thom

Why is the buzzword for 2022 “retention marketing”? How is the play-to-earn model going to grow next year?Cross promotions are on the rise. Will the move to self-publishing be worth it? We are here with the final episode of the Mobile Growth Crystal Ball series. Today we have Peggy Anne Salz (Mobile Groove) going into retention marketing, Keith Kawahata (AppLovin) who tells us about the play-to-earn model in games, Cameron Thom (Adikteev) who shares his thoughts on cross promotion and Jon Hook (BoomHits) bringing to the table his take on developers self-publishing their games.KEY HIGHLIGHTS 🎈 Retention marketing – the new buzzword of 2022 🔋 The economics behind retention vs. acquisition 🛎 Retention strategies for 2022  🔍  Web 3 – the latest emerging trend 🌊 The popularity of crypto gaming 🏹 The business model that allows all stakeholders to monetize a game 📣 Factors that contributed to the rise of cross promotion 💰 Performance retargeting was not universally adopted 🎤 Data science can help predict user behavior 🚴🏻‍♂️ The presence of self-serve tech platforms to facilitate self-publishing 🧦 A community to help fund game developers to self-publish **Check out the show notes here:https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-mobile-growth-crystal-ball-2022-predictions-part-3-peggy-anne-salz-keith-kawahata-cameron-thom-jon-hook/**Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here:http://RocketShipHQ.comhttp://RocketShipHQ.com/blog

Why is the buzzword for 2022 “retention marketing”?  How is the play-to-earn model going to grow next year? Cross promotions are on the rise.  Will the move to self-publishing be worth it? We are here with the final episode of the Mobile Growth Crystal Ball series. Today we have Peggy Anne Salz (Mobile Groove) going into retention marketing, Keith Kawahata (AppLovin) who tells us about the play-to-earn model in games, Cameron Thom (Adikteev) who shares his thoughts on cross promotion and Jon Hook (BoomHits) bringing to the table his take on developers self-publishing their games. KEY HIGHLIGHTS 🎈 Retention marketing – the new buzzword of 2022 🔋 The economics behind retention vs. acquisition 🛎 Retention strategies for 2022  🔍  Web 3 – the latest emerging trend 🌊 The popularity of crypto gaming 🏹 The business model that allows all stakeholders to monetize a game 📣 Factors that contributed to the rise of cross promotion 💰 Performance retargeting was not universally adopted 🎤 Data science can help predict user behavior 🚴🏻‍♂️ The presence of self-serve tech platforms to facilitate self-publishing 🧦 A community to help fund game developers to self-publish ** Check out the show notes here: <a href="https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-mobile-growth-crystal-ball-2022-predictions-part-3-peggy-anne-salz-keith-kawahata-cameron-thom-jon-hook/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://mobileuseracquisitionshow.com/episode/the-mobile-growth-crystal-ball-2022-predictions-part-3-peggy-anne-salz-keith-kawahata-cameron-thom-jon-hook/ </a> ** Get more mobile user acquisition goodies here: <a href="http://rocketshiphq.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://RocketShipHQ.com</a> <a href="http://rocketshiphq.com/blog" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://RocketShipHQ.com/blog</a>

🔮The Mobile Growth Crystal Ball 2022: Predictions Part 3: Retention marketing(Peggy Anne Salz, Mobile Groove); Play-to-earn gaming models (Keith Kawahata, AppLovin); Cross Promotions (Cameron Thom, Adikteev); Self-published games (Jon Hook, BoomHits) 📚