The gaming industry is in a challenging position in 2026 — and it’s vitally important for leaders in the industry to discuss those challenges without fear of judgment.
Creating a safe space for candid discussions of the industry’s ups and downs is a key focus of the BIG Show, GamesBeat’s new podcast, which launched in December. Since then, we’ve published 10 episodes featuring experts and industry leaders from across all facets of the industry, including development, marketing, journalism, IP adaptation and a wealth of other sectors. Creating a welcoming recording environment was crucial for these episodes — which is why we did our first wave of recordings at GamesBeat’s own industry events, from November’s GamesBeat Summit to December’s GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood & Games.
Here’s a round-up of all BIG Show episodes filmed at GamesBeat’s Hollywood & Games event, with key takeaways for each.
Netflix’s new Director of Games Marketing shares her origin story
Last week, Netflix announced that it had appointed Magali Huot as its newest director of games marketing for mainstream games. Just a few months earlier, Huot sat down with GamesBeat’s Alexander Lee (that’s me) — representing Dentsu in her former role as the company’s senior vice president of global gaming strategy — to discuss her lifelong love of gaming and her thoughts on what brands should be doing more of to reach gamers.
“You need to think about something that is custom — and custom doesn’t mean one-off,” Huot said during the podcast interview. “It means you need to be always-on in gaming, but in a way that is highly custom to your brand and how you can show up in the space.”
Helene Juguet wants more game executives to follow in her footsteps
Helene Juguet has worked at Ubisoft for over 27 years, both on the brand building side for the company’s traditional game publishing business and as the leader of Ubisoft Film and TV Paris, helping translate popular Ubisoft properties to the big screen. During our 20-minute conversation at Hollywood & Games, Juguet said that she hoped her medium-spanning career could provide a blueprint for more game industry workers looking to straddle both gaming and traditional entertainment as gaming IP rises within the entertainment industry.
“What’s going to happen is that knowing how to handle community and fandom is going to become the core of the expertise,” Juguet said. “Once you’re in on that, you know how to create a cultural moment.”
Christopher Dring and Kaare Eriksen are searching for the path forward for games journalism
Few people have more of a comprehensive view of the challenges facing both gaming and games media than veteran game journalists. At Hollywood & Games, I sat down with Christopher Dring, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Game Business newsletter, and Luminate Intelligence media analyst Kaare Eriksen for a real conversation about why many gaming media publications have folded or consolidated over the past year, as well as some potential solutions to the industry’s ills.
“It is important to try and distribute your ‘content’ — I put that in air quotes — in as many ways as you possibly can,” Dring said during the 28-minute chat. “Because otherwise, someone else will do it.”
Amir Satvat wants to create more transparency in the gaming job market
Although his full-time role is directing business development at Tencent, Amir Satvat has made a name for himself within the gaming industry for his candid and eye-opening analyses of the gaming job market, which has been struck by a historic wave of layoffs over the past two years. At Hollywood & Games, Satvat sat down with GamesBeat editorial director Dean Takahashi to discuss the origins of his passion for tracking game industry job data — and where he thinks the industry is going from here.
“Until you know how to put all these building blocks together, it can feel foreign and feel impossible” to get a job in games,” Satvat said. “Beyond just a standpoint of human empathy, my own struggles and learnings from what I had to do to break into the industry, I never wanted anyone to feel like they were alone and having to do it all over again like I did.”
Berkley Egenes and Jen Donahoe understand the importance of brand building
For a bonus episode of the BIG Show sponsored by Xsolla, I joined Xsolla chief marketing and growth officer Berkley Egenes and JadeInferno founder Jen Donahoe for a wide-ranging discussion of brand building in gaming — including both Donahoe’s experience building the brands for entertainment IPs like Star Wars and Power Rangers and Egenes’ work on Xsolla’s recent rebrand.
“Don’t be afraid to fail,” Egenes said. “Everybody’s like, ‘we have to be perfect going into it.’ That is a dream and an aspiration. But when you fail, pull back that investment and go do something else. Pivot, and then you’ll see something else.”