Richard Browne has spent 38 years in the video game business. He ran production at Universal Interactive, ran external development at THQ for the best part of a decade, and spun up the publishing operation for Digital Extremes alongside Warframe. Now he advises studios on funding and survival, he thinks most of the industry is getting it wrong, and he calls Game Pass "cancer" for the business even as it props parts of it up.

This is a straight conversation about why the AAA model has stopped working and why Microsoft has talked itself into a corner with Xbox. We get into the challenges nobody wants to say out loud: you cannot spend $300 million and five years on a brand new IP and expect to survive. Richard makes the case for beachheading an IP at $10 to $20 million, proving the audience, then committing to a ten year, three game plan. The path Naughty Dog, CD Projekt and Larian all actually walked.

We also cover the generation gap quietly reshaping everything: why his kids treat a game as one tab in an ecosystem of Discord and YouTube, why Roblox is the modern playground, why photorealism stopped growing the market, and why a 15 hour game you actually finish beats another 400 hour epic. Plus the Championship Manager origin story, killing games (he's shut down 35), the Concord post-mortem, and what's worth your time once GTA 6 clears the runway.

CHAPTERS

0:00 — Cold open: "It's in dire straits"

0:30 — 38 years in: from the BBC Micro to consulting the industry

1:33 — Why the market is in dire straits, and the COVID live-service hangover

2:53 — "Dad's IP": why kids won't touch Star Wars, Doom or Gears

5:32 — The broken maths of AAA, and the $10–20M beachhead

5:58 — The ten-year, three-game plan every IP needs

8:23 — Why a 15-hour game is enough, and the GameStop trap

9:39 — What he plays, and how his kids play completely differently

11:50 — Coding at home again: AI, Steam and where Minecraft came from

13:11 — Roblox as the modern playground, and the Payday conversion problem

16:11 — Why photorealism stopped growing the market

18:24 — The Microsoft mess and the Gears exclusivity mistake

26:04 — Nintendo is Disney: the power of generational IP

27:47 — Do we even need a PS6? The end of the visual arms race

29:08 — What investors want now, and why it doesn't build games that last

30:50 — The Championship Manager origin story

33:16 — Low risk, high reward: Crash, Among Us, and community first

37:01 — Killing games: Concord, ego, and the 35 he shut down

38:24 — Character vs world: The Last of Us and the God of War pivot

43:11 — "I think it's cancer": the case against Game Pass

51:54 — Netflix games, streaming latency, and what actually works

56:28 — Why Xbox can't build a studio system you can't live without

59:30 — How US studios survive now: small core, global outsourcing

1:03:38 — GTA 6's blast radius, what he's hyped for, and the takeaway

Guest: Richard Browne

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brownerichard/

Purpose Made Podcast, hosted by Pete Bell

https://purposemadepodcast.co.uk/

https://purposemade.uk/

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After 30 years at the top of entertainment, Marko Djurdjevic reached a point where nothing in client work excited him anymore. So he shifted his focus to building an entire transmedia universe, funding it out of pocket while his wife runs the outsourcing side of SIXMOREVODKA. The Kickstarter launches February 26th alongside a free playable Steam demo.

Marko is one of the most prolific cover artists Marvel has ever had. He produced 82 covers in his first year, was deliberately placed on titles close to cancellation because his art spiked sales, and ran 23 consecutive issues on Daredevil. His concept art fed the early MCU, and his studio held a seven-year exclusive partnership with Riot Games on League of Legends.

The conversation covers why client work stopped exciting him after 30 years, what The Last Unicorn at age six taught him about storytelling, how a viral X-Men redesign brought Marvel's talent scouts to his door at the exact moment he'd met his wife, and why he believes 2008 was the last great year of cinema.

Marko shares the painful lessons from Degenesis, a cult tabletop RPG that collapsed when free PDF downloads hit 3,000 per release while sales dropped to 80. That failure shaped everything about his new franchise, Orken, which spans novels, illustrated editions, graphic novels, and a video game built with Demagog Studio.

In 16 months he's produced 1,400 edited pages, over 350 original illustrations, and six books for print. He survived two heart surgeries during production. His wife thinks he's lost his mind. His son read the first novel and pitched it back as a 10-episode animated series.

This is a conversation about creative ownership, the cost of building something that's fully yours, and why the future of independent storytelling depends on small authentic communities rather than viral moments.

Timestamps:

00:00 Building a multimedia IP from scratch

01:14 Meet Marko Djurdjevic

02:35 No books at home: drawing as survival and 80s influences

04:30 Why The Last Unicorn still hits after 40 years

05:21 What's wrong with modern storytelling?

07:15 The anatomy book that changed everything at age 11

08:41 The viral X-Men redesign that brought Marvel calling

10:15 82 covers, cancelled titles, and the art of keeping deadlines

13:10 Beyond Marvel: the MCU pipeline and building a studio

15:32 Riot and League of Legends: seven years of exclusivity

19:17 2008 was peak cinema and he never went back

20:13 Orken's visual DNA: cultures the games industry ignores

23:01 Why creator-owned work dies in large teams

25:00 Degenesis: 3,000 downloads, 80 sales, and pulling the plug

27:35 How failure shaped Orken's transmedia architecture

29:11 Novels, graphic novels, illustrated editions, and a video game

30:49 The real motivation: autonomy, mastery, and running out of time

32:54 1,400 pages, two heart surgeries, and a Kickstarter

36:39 Working with his wife while betting against her instincts

42:19 The future of indie storytelling

43:55 Closing thoughts

• Orken Kickstarter (live February 26th)
• Wishlist Orken on Steam (free demo February 26th)
• SIXMOREVODKA
• Discord: https://discord.com/invite/sixmorevodka

Host: Pete Bell

Guest: Marko Djurdjevic

This podcast is produced by Purpose Made.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.