Scott Steinberg · Games Consultant, Reviewer and Business Strategist
Most video games do not fail on craft. They fail on a design decision made eighteen months before launch that went unresearched or unquestioned. Among the field's most well-known video game experts, mock reviewers and consulting business strategists, Scott Steinberg helps provide vital insight: an outside read on systems, economy and market fit from someone who has advised more than 3,000 businesses and covered this industry through multiple platforms and gaming generations.
Design and systems review, monetization and live operations strategy, free-to-play economy tuning, MMO and online service design, mobile design, mock reviews, platform and market fit, product testing and production consulting across PC, console, mobile, social, MMO and online formats.
Engagements range from mock reviews and product testing to sustained involvement through production and live operations. The areas below describe where studios most often bring in an outside perspective.
The core loop, progression curve and reward structure determine almost everything downstream, and teams deep in production lose the ability to see them fresh.
A review works through the systems as a player encounters them, identifies where the loop breaks or the pacing sags, and comes back with a prioritised list rather than a list of everything.
Economy design decides whether a business model works, and it is far cheaper to model before launch than to retune under live pressure with an audience already forming expectations.
Work here covers currency structure, pricing ladders, sink and source balance, and how the monetisation sits against the design instead of fighting it.
Free-to-play lives or dies on early retention and the path from first session to first purchase, and both are design problems before they are marketing ones.
Consulting covers onboarding, the conversion moment, spending tiers across the player base and where a title is leaking players it had already earned.
Shipping is now the middle of the project. Season structure, event pacing, battle pass design and update rhythm carry as much weight as the launch build.
Work covers live ops planning, content cadence a team can actually sustain, and the calendar that keeps an audience engaged without exhausting the studio.
Persistent online titles carry design problems single-player games never face: population management, social systems, endgame structure and economies players will optimise against you.
Consulting addresses server and shard structure as a design question, guild and social system design, endgame loops and long-term economy stability.
The same concept becomes a different game on console, mobile and PC, and choosing wrong costs more than any individual design mistake.
Work covers platform fit for a concept, what a port or a cross-platform build genuinely requires, and where a design has to change rather than scale down.
A title needs a clear answer to why a player would choose it over what already exists, and that answer has to hold at the moment of launch rather than at the moment of pitch.
Consulting covers competitive landscape, genre timing, differentiation and how a game reads to an audience seeing it for the first time.
Scope decisions get made under pressure with incomplete information, and an outside voice at milestone reviews changes what gets asked.
Work covers milestone assessment, scope and cut decisions, and honest reads on whether a build is where it needs to be for the date it is chasing.
Every studio arrives at a different stage with a different question, so engagements are scoped to the decision that actually needs making rather than to a fixed package.
An outside read on core loop, progression and systems, delivered as a written assessment with prioritised recommendations.
Sustained involvement through production, joining milestone reviews and working sessions as an external voice on the team.
Economy modelling, pricing structure and live operations planning for free-to-play, subscription and hybrid titles.
Facilitated sessions with design and production leadership on direction, scope decisions and market positioning.
Hailed as a 21st Century Icon, Scott Steinberg is an analyst, consultant and business trends expert with over 25 years of experience advising more than 3,000 businesses and brands, from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms, including the world's largest video game developers, publishers, investors and distributors.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles covering technology, marketing, leadership, innovation, advertising and digital transformation. He appears regularly on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.
He has served as a thought leader and strategic advisor for organizations including Activision-Blizzard, Microsoft, Sony, UbiSoft, Nintendo, 2K Games, Dell, and Procter & Gamble, and has been recognized by the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune and the 21st Century Icon Awards.
Independent teams, established developers and publishers, across PC, console, mobile, social, free-to-play, MMO and online titles. Engagements have ranged from a single design read for a small team to sustained advisory through production and live operations for larger organisations.
Earlier than most teams call. Concept and pre-production is where an outside read changes the most for the least cost, because the decisions being made there are still cheap to revisit. That said, live titles with a specific retention or monetisation problem are a common and productive engagement too.
Both, depending on what a team needs. Some engagements are a written assessment delivered and discussed. Others involve joining working sessions and milestone reviews over months as an external voice on the team. The scope gets set around the decision that actually needs making.
That tension is usually the whole assignment. Monetisation that fights the design produces short-term revenue and long-term churn. The work is finding the structure where spending fits what players already want to do, which is a design problem before it is a pricing one.
With a conversation about what you are building, what platform and business model you are targeting, and what decision is in front of you. That usually makes the right scope obvious within a call or two. Initial discussions are without charge and confidential.
Tell me what you are building, what platform and business model you are targeting, and what decision is in front of you. Initial conversations are without charge and confidential.
Platform and business model, target launch window, team size, and the specific question you want answered. A build or design document is useful but not necessary to start.