Next Wave Acquisition Corp.
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Experienced senior entertainment and game industry executive with an extensive background…
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Lee Jacobson shared thisI’m headed 🔜 to DICE 2026! Looking forward to reconnecting with long time friends and colleagues and officially exploring my next executive challenge in Biz Dev, Operations and Leadership. I’m being intentional about finding the right partnership—specifically companies focused on Games Publishing, Web3, AI and scaling up (especially those with an interest in going public as I’ve done it twice). If you’re attending and want to discuss how we can drive growth in 2026, let’s chat. My schedule is filling up, but I’d love to make time for the right "what if" conversation. I’ve included the Calendly link or you can DM me. https://lnkd.in/gx3GPzKQ #GameDev #GameIndustry #DICE2026
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Lee Jacobson reposted thisAfter 25 years in this business—from the console wars to the rise of F2P—I’ve learned one thing: Innovation is always born out of friction. Right now, Web3 gaming is in a "war of attrition" that feels all too familiar. For those who don’t know me, I’ve spent over a 25+ years in the biz and a decade as a CEO covering console, PC distribution, and F2P. More recently, I’ve dived deep into the world of blockchain and Web3. It’s a segment that has been weighing on me lately, and I wanted to share some thoughts on where we’re headed. The "9-Inning" Evolution: • The 1st Inning: We saw the headlines of "Play-to-Earn" and assets worth thousands. It sounded interesting, but ultimately left many disheartened (and some losing significant capital). • The 2nd Inning: VCs stepped in, hoping viral communities and token sales would offset risk. Instead, we saw "pump and dump" cycles where people cared more about the exit than the gameplay. • The Current Reality: I’ve spoken with AAA developers—top-tier talent—who have raised millions and are finding it near impossible to fund 3rd and 4th rounds because of the shadow cast by bad actors and game failures. It is a tragedy to see such creative potential sidelined by the growing pains of the tech. Why I’m still optimistic: As I’ve said publicly before, we are only in the 3rd or 4th inning. Our industry is defined by talented developers and publishers who eventually find a way to make the "impossible" work. Innovation isn't a straight line. The friction we’re feeling now is the cost of pushing boundaries. History shows that once we move past the hype, the real content begins to shine. Are we looking at a temporary setback, or the necessary "growing pains" of a new standard? I’d love to hear your thoughts. #GameDev #GamingIndustry #Web3Gaming #BlockchainGames #ExecutiveLeadership #GameTech
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Lee Jacobson posted thisAfter 25 years in this business—from the console wars to the rise of F2P—I’ve learned one thing: Innovation is always born out of friction. Right now, Web3 gaming is in a "war of attrition" that feels all too familiar. For those who don’t know me, I’ve spent over a 25+ years in the biz and a decade as a CEO covering console, PC distribution, and F2P. More recently, I’ve dived deep into the world of blockchain and Web3. It’s a segment that has been weighing on me lately, and I wanted to share some thoughts on where we’re headed. The "9-Inning" Evolution: • The 1st Inning: We saw the headlines of "Play-to-Earn" and assets worth thousands. It sounded interesting, but ultimately left many disheartened (and some losing significant capital). • The 2nd Inning: VCs stepped in, hoping viral communities and token sales would offset risk. Instead, we saw "pump and dump" cycles where people cared more about the exit than the gameplay. • The Current Reality: I’ve spoken with AAA developers—top-tier talent—who have raised millions and are finding it near impossible to fund 3rd and 4th rounds because of the shadow cast by bad actors and game failures. It is a tragedy to see such creative potential sidelined by the growing pains of the tech. Why I’m still optimistic: As I’ve said publicly before, we are only in the 3rd or 4th inning. Our industry is defined by talented developers and publishers who eventually find a way to make the "impossible" work. Innovation isn't a straight line. The friction we’re feeling now is the cost of pushing boundaries. History shows that once we move past the hype, the real content begins to shine. Are we looking at a temporary setback, or the necessary "growing pains" of a new standard? I’d love to hear your thoughts. #GameDev #GamingIndustry #Web3Gaming #BlockchainGames #ExecutiveLeadership #GameTech
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Lee Jacobson shared thisLooking forward to seeing everyone next week! Hopefully I’ll get to see a lot of of you at the Marriott or one of our numerous Xsolla events!
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Lee Jacobson shared this#Gamescom2025 is next week!! if your company is into Blockchain reach out if you want to join our exclusive round table with thought leaders on the future of Web3 gaming!
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Lee Jacobson shared thisHopefully see you all there!Lee Jacobson shared thisAfter a full day on the gamescom floor, join Xsolla and AccelByte for an exclusive evening of curated drinks, light bites, and great conversation. Connect with fellow developers, publishers, and partners who are shaping the future of games — all in a relaxed, upscale setting. ⏳ Space is limited — RSVP now to request your spot! 👉 https://lu.ma/wj47orz5
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Lee Jacobson reposted thisLee Jacobson reposted thisXsolla Salons offer a curated space for game industry leaders to share ideas, tackle challenges, and build community during #devcom & #gamescom. There’s still time to take a seat at the table. Submit your interest here: https://xsolla.events/gc5s
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Lee Jacobson reposted this#Gamescom2025 and #Devcom are just around the corner! Look forward once again to be in Köln meeting with publishers to dive into all things blockchain and Web3 gaming. Have a game and want to keep your players engaged? We’ve got your back. Allow your gamers to have all their items in their own digital backpack on the Blockchain (incl. UGC) Everyone levels up! If you’re interested, let’s talk at our Xsolla Booth – Hall 2.2, Booth A30 Koelnmesse. See you there!!
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Lee Jacobson reposted this#Gamescom2025 and #Devcom are just around the corner! Look forward once again to be in Köln meeting with publishers to dive into all things blockchain and Web3 gaming. Have a game and want to keep your players engaged? We’ve got your back. Allow your gamers to have all their items in their own digital backpack on the Blockchain (incl. UGC) Everyone levels up! If you’re interested, let’s talk at our Xsolla Booth – Hall 2.2, Booth A30 Koelnmesse. See you there!!
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked thisThe team behind Atari Hotels just announced they will be breaking ground and beginning construction on their first Atari-branded hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. The immersive entertainment and hospitality venue translates decades of Atari play, creativity, and design into a tangible, real-world experience. The project, which falls under Atari’s well-established licensing business, is being developed and managed by Intersection Development, LLC and their project-specific investment entity, Central RoRo, LLC. https://lnkd.in/d347vBw7A 'High-Tech' Atari Hotel Is Officially Being Built in Phoenix, Arizona, Complete With an Esports Venue and Creator StudiosA 'High-Tech' Atari Hotel Is Officially Being Built in Phoenix, Arizona, Complete With an Esports Venue and Creator Studios
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked thisExcited to welcome Matt Hall to Atari's executive leadership team! 📱🕹️ Matt, co-founder of Hipster Whale and creator of Crossy Road, is now Atari’s Executive Vice President, Mobile. He leads our mobile games business and its place in Atari’s cross-platform strategy across PC, console, mobile, and web. I’ve worked closely with Matt since Hipster Whale joined Atari in June, and I’ve been consistently impressed by both his creative vision and his strategic judgment about where mobile fits in a multi-platform portfolio. Few people have thought harder about how to put great games in front of hundreds of millions of players, and Matt is now applying that thinking to Atari’s entire catalog. Last week I was back in Melbourne with members of the Atari team. It was my second visit since the acquisition, and I left even more impressed than the first time: by the talent, the creativity, and the pipeline they have coming. Crossy Road Rush lands on Apple Arcade next Thursday. Nov 5th. That’s just the start. Five months after an acquisition, it’s rare to feel this good about how complementary two teams turned out to be. Congratulations, Matt. Excited to keep building with you, Clara Reeves and the whole Hipster Whale crew. Wade Rosen Ethan Zoubek Andreas Deptolla Ted Biderman Geoffroy Châteauvieux Mike Mika Justin McCarthy Sara McManigal Erin Bowling Stephen Koehler Nerissa Stephens Ella Macintyre Daniel Piciocco CA Rob Wiley David Lowey https://lnkd.in/gDwcyh_hThe creator of Crossy Road is now leading Atari’s mobile game division | VGCThe creator of Crossy Road is now leading Atari’s mobile game division | VGC
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked thisWe’ve seen far too many layoffs and studio closures in recent years. Behind every announcement are incredibly talented people, their families, and careers built around a shared passion for creating games. It’s a difficult time for our industry, and one that calls for us to support each other. At Atari, we’re fortunate to be growing, investing in our future, and hiring. We have open positions across our studios and businesses, and we’d love to welcome more of the industry’s talented people to our team. If you’re exploring your next chapter, or know someone who is, please take a look and share our opportunities: https://lnkd.in/gbt63exF To everyone affected by recent layoffs throughout the industry, thank you for everything you’ve created and contributed. Your talent and experience matter, and there’s still so much ahead for this industry we all love. 🕹️❤️ Sara McManigal Anna Sharp Prerna Pandey Ansh Sachdeva Wade Rosen Ethan Zoubek Ted Biderman Andreas Deptolla Mike Mika Geoffroy Châteauvieux Matt Hall Justin McCarthy Aneesh Jain Women in Games International (WIGI) Jessica Tams Alex Zyngier
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked this“Moving to OTCQX is an important milestone for Atari and a practical step that gives U.S. investors real-time quotes and more convenient access to Atari shares,” said Wade Rosen, Chairman and CEO of Atari. We are thrilled to welcome Atari (Euronext Paris: ALATA; OTCQX: PONGF), an interactive entertainment company and an iconic gaming industry brand, to our #OTCQX Best Market today. Congratulations to the Atari team! Visit the company's profile on our website to learn more: https://bit.ly/4hZ0t3P Congratulations Wade Rosen Geoffroy Châteauvieux Ted Biderman #listlocaltradeglobal
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked thisTonight, I have the honor and privilege of being inducted into my law school's Hall of Fame. I'd like to share with you the acceptance speech I am planning to give because I think its message applies to us all. I hope you agree.
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked thisI was catching up with a good friend at a big studio last week, and he asked me if we had talked to his team for the Vivrato AI Adoption Report. I told him I couldn’t say. He gave me shit for holding back, and said I was being cagey. He was correct. When we set out to interview 101 senior leaders in the games industry, we promised them that nobody would ever know they spoke with us, and keeping that promise is why the results are worth reading. When we can speak freely to people that we trust, it stops being performative or built for the PR machine. These friends and colleagues told us what is happening in their pipelines, what they regret spending money on, and what they’re afraid to talk about on stage at GDC. Yesterday I shared why we built the VAIA Report. Today, I want to share how we built it and who built it with me. The method (just like game development) was cautious and slow. One conversation at a time, one on one, about an hour each, with studio heads, C-suite, production and tech directors. 44 structured questions, asked the same way every time so the answers could be compared. 101 interviews, focused in North America and Europe, on PC and console developers. Every transcript scrubbed and every data point anonymized and aggregated before it went anywhere near PowerPoint. Some of our findings: 94% of the leaders we spoke with are using AI somewhere in their pipeline, and that is true even when you remove general productivity. 97% have used it at some point, even if only to try it. Then we asked every leader how embedded AI actually is across their whole pipeline, and the median answer was 3 out of 10. To me, this gap is the headline. Almost everyone is in the pool, but very few people are in the deep end. Europe reports deeper use than North America. The biggest gaps were in code, design, art and analytics, and European leaders rated their pipelines deeper on average, 4.2 vs 3.5 out of 10. Why that gap exists is one of the questions I’m most looking forward to asking studios over the coming year. And this is a living report. We will keep measuring as things shift and evolve, and we will share what changes. None of this exists without the team that helped build it. Lewis Ward our Research Director, built the methodology and helped support us with dozens of interviews. Our team helped carry the effort with outreach and interviews, so thank you to Don Sechler, Markus Windelen, Andrea Rene, Jean-Marc Broyer, and Mark Stanley I マーク スタンリー. Thanks to Pauline Scherer for her support and feedback along the journey. Special thanks to John Kopp and Tracey McGarrigan for getting this to market and ready for primetime. I’m lucky to be working with all of you! And to the 101 leaders who gave us an hour and trusted us with their truth: thank you. You know who you are, and nobody else ever will.
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Lee Jacobson liked thisLee Jacobson liked thisFour AI models were given the same one-shot challenge: recreate Paris in 1996 entirely with code. The difference in cost and time is huge: Opus 5.5: $73.80 · 2h 56m Gemini 4 Argon: ~$2.50 · 30m DeepSeek Flash 1017: $0.34 · 46m Grok 4.7: ~$7 · 2h 07m Opus 5.5 delivered the strongest overall atmosphere, but the biggest surprise was DeepSeek. It got surprisingly close to the quality of Opus while costing 217x less. This is why looking at output quality alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Cost and generation time can completely change which model makes sense for a real project. QuadcodeAI is an all-in-one AI workspace with leading models for coding, images, video, audio, and more. You can test leading coding models side by side in QuadcodeAI. DM QuadcodeAI "BUILD" to get a promo code for 1,000 free credits.
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Art K.
Treyarch confirmed what every M&K player already knew: controller players win slightly more close-range fights in the Black Ops 7 beta. Their fix? Nerf rotational aim assist so it only kicks in when the right stick is moving toward the target. That's not a fix. That's admitting the old system was aiming for you. Rotational aim assist doesn't just slow your crosshair near an enemy. It physically rotates your aim to track a moving target - even when your thumbstick isn't pointing at them. Your opponent strafes left, your crosshair follows. No input required. No reaction time needed. A human M&K player reacts in 250-350ms. Rotational aim assist activates instantly when a target enters range. It's not bridging a gap. It's replacing a skill. And studios keep pretending these two inputs belong in the same lobby. ↳ Controller players dominate close-range because software tracks for them - not because they're better ↳ M&K players dominate long-range because precision rewards skill - not because they have an advantage ↳ Balancing weapons across both inputs is statistically impossible when one side has algorithmic assistance and the other doesn't ↳ Nerfing a gun that "overperforms" on controller doesn't fix the aim assist - it punishes M&K players who used the same gun with raw input The real problem nobody wants to say out loud: Mouse & Keyboard and Controller are not playing the same game. They haven't been for years. One is a raw input device. The other is a raw input device with a software layer doing part of the aiming. Behavioral telemetry would make this visible: ↳ Aim trajectory patterns between M&K and controller should look nothing alike - one shows human micro-corrections, the other shows algorithmic smoothing ↳ Reaction time distributions would split into two populations that shouldn't exist in the same lobby ↳ Engagement distance data could reveal whether controller players consistently take fights they mechanically shouldn't win ❌ Balancing mixed-input lobbies by nerfing weapons ✅ Admitting M&K and Controller produce fundamentally different mechanical data - and matchmaking accordingly Treyarch took a step by nerfing rotational assist. But nerfing aim assist is a band-aid on a design philosophy problem. As long as two input methods produce mechanically incompatible data, balancing them in the same lobby is guesswork. Does rotational aim assist need a massive nerf - or do M&K players just need to adapt? Let the war begin below. ♻️ Repost if you've ever died to a 0ms rotation ➕ Follow Art K. for more on Player Observability
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