Joseph Kim is CEO of Lila Games and the founder of GameMakers, a Substack publication covering growth, AI, and distribution for independent and mid-size game studios. He writes from inside the business of games, drawing on studio economics, player acquisition data, and emerging AI tools to surface patterns other operators are too busy shipping to document. His work combines research with applied frameworks, often co-produced with practitioners in PR, media buying, and AI product design.
Operating themes
- AI-mediated discovery. Kim documents how the shift from search to AI-assisted recommendation changes the inputs that govern game visibility, from download counts to citation authority in written media.
- Incentive structure as the real AI bottleneck. He argues that organizational incentive misalignment, not AI capability gaps, is the primary reason most studios fail to see AI productivity gains translate into output volume.
- PR as a citation-graph strategy. Kim treats earned media not as brand building but as direct investment in the citation graph that AI systems use for recommendations, shifting the frame from awareness to discoverability.