Jen MacLean, co-founder and CEO of a new studio, Dragon Snacks Games, is building social role-playing experiences that resonate with younger audiences. Formerly Xbox's General Manager of Creator Partnerships, she managed top partner relationships and co-led content strategies. With a passion for gaming, she also held senior roles in game development, driving worldwide business development at AWS and serving as Executive Director for the IGDA and IGDA Foundation.

In this episode, Jen shares her journey in the gaming industry and the vision behind Dragon Snacks Games. She offers insights into designing safe, engaging games for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, exploring their unique preferences and how to capture their attention. Jen also highlights the importance of fostering clear values and principles in startups and explains how Dragon Snacks Games aims to fill critical gaps in the gaming industry.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• The unique gaming preferences of Gen Z and Gen Alpha
• How to captivate and retain a younger audience
• The importance of having a clear set of values for new startups
  

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Here’s Waldo Recruiting
• Lizzie Mintus on LinkedIn
• Jen MacLean on Linkedin
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
  

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the Here's Waldo Podcast, where we sit down with top visionaries and creatives in the video game industry. Together we'll unravel their journeys and learn more about the path they're forging ahead. Now, let's get started with the show.

Lizzie Mintus: I'm Lizzie Mintus, the founder and CEO of Here's Waldo Recruiting, a boutique recruitment firm for the game industry. And this is the Here's Waldo Podcast. In every episode, we dive deep into conversations with creatives, founders, and executives about their journey. You can expect to hear valuable lessons and get a glimpse into the future of the industry. 

This episode is brought to you by, you guessed it, Here's Waldo Recruiting. We're a boutique recruitment firm in the game industry that values quality over quantity, transparency, communication, and diversity. 

Before introducing today's guest, I want to give a thank you to a wonderful man and connector, Wallace Poulter. Thank you for connecting us. 

Today we have Jen MacLean with us. Jen is the co-founder and CEO of Dragon Snacks Games, which is a new game studio that is creating social role playing experiences. Formerly, she was the general manager of Creator Partnerships for Xbox, where her team managed Xbox's largest partner relationships. Jen also co-led content strategy for new initiatives. As a lifelong gamer, Jen has held many senior roles in game development over her career, including leading worldwide business development for small and mid sized game studios for AWS, and executive director for the IGDA, or International Game Developers Association, and the IGDA Foundation. Jen earned an MBA from the Columbia Business School and a BA from Johns Hopkins University. 

Let's get started! Thank you so much. I'm glad we could make this work and congratulations on launching your new studio 

Jen MacLean: Thanks so much. We are thrilled to pieces. I have two amazing co-founders and I've been so engaged because I've been so much on the business side in the last 10 years or so of my career to be able to really start something to kind of dig in. And to see the creation from the get go has been incredibly energizing.

Lizzie Mintus: My first question is, what made you decide that the time was right to start your own business after all these years? 

Jen MacLean: It's a great question. And there were really a few things going on. So, first and foremost, I have an amazing supportive husband and he was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. He went through a very long treatment process, but he has been cancer free for three years. He is doing amazing work on the Valorant team at Riot. And so we really felt like from a standpoint of personal stability, professional stability, we have the flexibility for me to take a little bit of a leap here. 

So with that foundation and support in place, I looked at what I see my kids doing. I have three kids, 8, 12, 19. As you can imagine, with a dad that works at Riot and a mom that worked at Xbox, gaming is a big part of our life. And I watch my 8 year old loving, loving, loving Minecraft. And I watched him play Roblox and I watched my 12-year-old play Roblox. And it's fascinating Lizzie because when she plays Roblox, she has her phone next to her and she's FaceTiming or Discording or WhatsApping her friends while she's in Roblox. 

The kids together will gang up in Dress to Impress and kind of vote for each other to game the system there. Sorry, Dress to Impress creator. It became more and more apparent to me watching the game and seeing how my 19-year-old plays games as well. She is an amazing Fortnite player and also the family champion in Valorant. 

There are needs for Gen Z and Gen Alpha that just aren't being filled. So when you look at this audience, and this audience is 41 percent of the world's population. So huge in terms of size and influence. It's fascinating to me because they have grown up as super fans. Like my 12-year-old won't tell you she likes music. She will tell you she is a Swifty. She won't tell you that she likes watching TV, but she will talk your ear off about Outer Banks, which is quite the TV show.

And so they adopt these fandoms as part of their core identity. The amount of time that you have people watching content creators, streams, videos on YouTube, TikTok about the games that they love, they want to engage with that game, with that IP, with that fandom as much as possible. And at the same time, 69 percent of Gen Z and alpha have changed social circles to feel safer. And so I look at this audience. In many ways, they have more freedom to define their identity than any other audience that has come before, but it comes at a cost. 

There's this great book called the anxious generation that talks about the impact of social media on Gen Z Gen Alpha. And so while you have that freedom to define your identity in ways that I could never have imagined, if I look back to my experiences as a 15 year old, they want that safety, they want to be nurtured. They want to be accepted for who they are. And that can be really, really hard in a lot of today's gaming experiences. 

And so when I think about what drives this audience, what we're giving them today, we're not fully meeting their needs. And as a mom, as someone who loves games, as someone who loves players, the opportunity to really craft that experience that more fully meets the needs of Gen Z and Gen Alpha right now... I was talking to an investor and I was like, I have to make this game. I have to do it. I have to make this company because I feel like there's this huge need that we're just not meeting yet. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's the story behind every great company. I had this real life need that I observed. So I'm excited to hear more about what it is that you're doing. What kinds of things are you thinking about putting in place? I know you probably can't say more about your company, but what are the baseline things that you're setting up in terms of values, processes, eventual roadmap, having done it for so many companies in the past? 

Jen MacLean: That is a great question. And the first thing I did, I started thinking about starting a studio. I wrote our values and principles document. And this is really what we're doing, how we're doing it, which is the large portion of the document and why we're doing it. Because to me, everything flows from your values and principles. 

If you don't understand how and why, it's impossible to succeed. And it really set the tone for my first conversations with my co-founders, Chris Demkoski and Michelle Menard, because it really helped all of us, first, assess whether we saw the world in similar terms, whether our values were compatible and whether we believed we could work together to build something amazing.

And so we look at things like teamwork, player focus, iteration, what that really means on a day to day basis. And we share it with every person we talk to about a role with us. We use it as a really kind of stake in the ground. Like this is what we believe. And these are the things that are non negotiable for us.

And if you think that you are a great fit for our values and principles, awesome. Let's keep talking. And if we're not for you, that's okay too. But if you decide to be part of our journey, you have to understand this is not only the what and the why, but especially the how we do it. 

Lizzie Mintus: I love that you have that from the start. So many companies as a recruiter, really just look for people, as you know, with exactly the right skills who've worked on the same game in the past, where they don't take into account the values part at all. So that's great to hear. 

And where did the name come from? How did you come up with the name? 

Jen MacLean: I wish I could take credit for the name. As we were talking about setting up the company and what we should call ourselves, Chris said, you know, totally understand if this is not a good fit. But my seven year old Russell said to me, dad, if you ever start a game studio, you have to call it Dragon Snacks. And Michelle and I were like, that's amazing. That's a great name because it brings that familiarity. There's a little bit of wit to it. 

When you think about dragon snacks, you kind of think about like the dragon eating people, maybe, which is typically what dragons seem to eat in RPGs. But if you look at how we think about dragon snacks, you actually see this dragon and a stack of books reading with cookies and a muffin and a cup of tea. And it really brings across a sense of comfort and wonder. And we love subverting the idea of a snack on his head and going from something that tends to be very conflict oriented and very forceful to something instead that is warm and comforting and cozy. It's like your mid afternoon tea and snack, except you just happen to be an awesome dragon. 

Lizzie Mintus: Of that in the seven year old. It's going to think later in life that's the coolest thing they ever did. 

Jen MacLean: Yes, he made our first fan art. It is adorable. It's fantastic. And what's really interesting because the three co-founders were all caretakers. We all have kids in Gen Z and Gen Alpha, youngest is 7, oldest is 19. And we found that our kids are very, very much part of our journey. My 12-year-old will come home every day and say, mom, show me what you did today. Show me the progress that the team made today. And it's so much fun. And it really is part of why we're building this company and this RPG and this platform, because we want to give that better connection space, that better third space to our kids.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, I like the personal meaning. 

So I want to talk a lot more about Gen Z and Gen Alpha. What would you say their habits and preferences are and how does that really differ from the prior generations? 

Jen MacLean: Yeah, it's a great question. So we talked about the need for the safe space. They also identify as creators, super, super strongly. So they see creation as part of entertainment consumption. Part of that is through games like Roblox, and especially Minecraft, where creation is just such a core part of the experience. But part of that is how they grow up watching YouTube and TikTok. 

If you ask my eight year old, he will tell you he's going to be a YouTuber when he grows up. We'll see if that holds. Mom's hoping, maybe not. But who knows? And the other thing that's really interesting to me, it's that 90 percent of Gen Z and Gen Alpha identify as game enthusiasts. So if you think about when we were growing up, we never would have said, Oh yeah, I'm a TV watcher. We would have said I'm a gamer, but we wouldn't have said I'm a TV watcher because everybody watches TV. It's just something you did. 

Well, now with Gen Z and Gen Alpha, everybody plays games. You're not going to self identify as a gamer because it's just a given, in terms of how you interact with your friends, how you socialize, how you consume entertainment. And to me, it's fascinating to see that shift. And this is something that really, the groundwork was laid for years and years ago.

I remember, gosh, 10 years ago, looking at a study done by Ninja Metrics that looked at how different player archetypes interact with games. And what they found was that there was a greater difference according to age demographic, than there was between genders at any age.

And so particularly for me, I remember kind of growing up in the games industry where people were talking about games for girls. We need to make games that are friendlier for women. And actually, that's the wrong question. Instead, we should be saying, okay, how do we make games that are friendlier for Gen Z, Gen Alpha that meet their unique needs? How do we keep Gen X and Millennials engaged? How do we meet the needs of different gamers at different ages, because that turns out to be a lot more relevant than gender, for example. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. Those are some of my follow up questions. Thank you. You're very insightful. 

So what tips do you have for companies who are just starting out like you of how they can incorporate insights from what Gen Z and Gen Alpha like into their development process?

Jen MacLean: Yeah, I think first and foremost you cannot take audience attention for granted. And so I remember I'm in a game dev Slack and someone was posting about how frustrated they were because their game has great reviews and a great Steam player score. And it's not selling. And I was like, well, what did you do to market it? They didn't do anything. And there's so many great games that are out now that you can't assume that great reviews are going to be enough to drive an audience. 

At the same time, you also need to think about games as competing, not even with other games, but other forms of entertainment. So you have players who are consuming multiple forms of media simultaneously. I go back to my 12-year-old playing Roblox with her phone right next to her, and often she will have her iPad showing an episode of Outer Banks while she's doing that as well. 

It's off the charts, but it's very much how this audience consumes media. They don't just use one single platform. They don't do one activity at a time, and you have to really build that into how you reach them. They have also been trained on short form video. So if you are not going to get to the point in your marketing in the first 30 seconds, you're going to have a problem because if you think about the content they're consuming, it is super, super compressed. And that's a really key difference. It's funny because I kind of grew up reading.

I do not want to watch a video. Give me the transcript. I really want to read it instead because I can read so much more quickly than I watch. I am so not like Gen Z and Gen Alpha. That way, and a lot of it is really understanding. Hey, that's great for me, but I'm not our audience and we need to really focus on how our audience consumes entertainment, where our audience is online, how they decide what they want to play, and how they decide how they want to be entertained.

Because again, this is the first generation really where gaming is just a part of life. They're not choosing to say, I'm going to play a game right now. They're saying, I'm going to play Roblox while I'm FaceTiming with my friend and I've got Outer Banks in the background. So how do you make sure that your entertainment is top of mind for them?

What are you doing to get the majority of their focus? And how are you accommodating all of the other things they want to do as well? 

Lizzie Mintus: What is the answer to that question? How do you think about if they're going to consume short form content, how do you captivate their attention in short form content?

Jen MacLean: I heard David Gardner give a great presentation at Gamescom. And one of the things that he said is for London Venture Partners, one of their key metrics is time to first laugh. So what are you building into your game so that you have something funny or surprising or interesting or exciting? And one of the leaders of the studio that made Arrowhead, the studio that made Helldivers 2, also reinforced this at Dice Europe this year, where she talked about how, at first, the game design team was really focusing on helping players avoid being killed, and she's like, no! People are going to get killed as part of the game. We should be making it as funny as possible. Instead of avoiding the pain, make the pain enjoyable. And I thought that was so fascinating because she's really kind of nailed the feelings I think of Gen Z, Gen Alpha. 

It's not about avoiding the pain. It's about making it entertainment. It's about making it hilarious. It's about making it surprising or exciting or interesting. Again, I'm going to, poor Outer Banks, I'm going to talk about Outer Banks again. That show is ridiculous. I have lost track of the number of characters who have died and come back to life. And that's great because it has people talking. It has all of the seventh and eighth graders at my daughter's middle school talking about, Oh, did you see what happened with big John and John B and JJ and this and that? And it's not that it is like particularly deep content, but it's super engaging. It is fast paced and it can be consumed in small bursts.

And so when you think about, especially for a marketing campaign, how you're going to reach this audience. Small bursts- super engaging, super entertaining, surprising, get them talking because they will do a far better job of evangelizing your content than you ever could. 

Lizzie Mintus: And then what about if you have an existing game or if you want to appeal to a broad audience and you're trying to appeal to the millennial, but you're also trying to appeal to the seventh grader. How do you balance that? 

Jen MacLean: So this is my opinion, I don't think you can. I think you need to know who your player is. And there is... I'm not going to be able to attribute it. This is not my idea, but somebody had the quote that, if everyone is your player, no one is your player. 

Lizzie Mintus: This is the same. I mean, if you're not serving everybody. Who are you serving and what do they want?

Jen MacLean: Yeah exactly. So what we expect to see is that kids will bring their parents into the games that we create, because more and more gaming is an activity shared with kids and parents. But our audience is Gen Z and Gen Alpha. It's the kids. And you're trying to go more broadly, I think really dilutes our understanding of what our player needs are and how we're going to fill them.

Lizzie Mintus: Makes sense. I like the focus. 

In terms of partnerships, transmedia, how do you feel like that will evolve with Gen Z and Gen Alpha? 

Jen MacLean: Yeah, one of the amazing things about my experiences over the last five years, first at Amazon and the most recently at Xbox was that I got to engage with some of the most amazing thought leaders in the industry.

And so Andrea Hope Lane, who's the SVP of Brand for EA Sports was talking about this generation, kind of how they've grown up with and how that gets her thinking about making super exciting small bits of content. And it was fascinating, Lizzie, because a lot of what we're doing as an industry more and more is empowering players and creators to be our voice to be our marketers.

So if you think about the rise of streamers of content creators and how powerful they are in terms of building your audience and building that word of mouth now. Viral marketing, being able to invite people to play a game with you. To me, if you are making a game and you are not thinking about what would cause one player to tell somebody else about the game, you're missing out. And it gets back to the story earlier about this game had great player reviews, great critical reviews, no sales because they hadn't thought about how they were empowering players to share the story of the game and to drive the audience and to drive word of mouth.

Lizzie Mintus: It seems like streamers are such a big deal these days. At what point do you think it makes sense to engage with a streamer and figure out what they would really have interest in. And how do you even identify the right streamer for you? 

Jen MacLean: Yeah. And it really gets back to what you want and what the streamer wants. So when I was leading partnerships for Xbox, I would always go into a conversation saying, okay, what does my partner want out of this conversation, out of this negotiation, out of this meeting? What do I want out of it? And so if you think about a streamer, first and foremost, they want traffic. That's how they make their living, right?

So part of the question is, what can you do with them today that will drive traffic for them? Is it traffic today? Is it traffic tomorrow? Is this traffic six months, 12 months down the line? That is also going to impact who you want to work with and the value that you are bringing to them, the value that you are offering them.

And at the same time, it's not just about traditional game streamers anymore. So what are you doing to attract as many influencers as possible? What are you doing to really engage with that community? How are you using Discord? How are you using Reddit? How are you using YouTube? How are you using TikTok? Where are the places where your community is living and how are you engaging them? How are you getting their feedback early? How are you getting their feedback often? 

And then as you think about go to market, who is going to be your voice to other players. And I think that's where you've got streamers and keeping in mind that fundamentally streamers care about traffic. What are you building into the game that helps drive that? Is it that hilarious moment when you get killed in Helldivers 2? Is it a surprise and delight moment in how you're crafting a recipe? Is it some other like, wow, I can't believe they just made that moment in Valorant? 

If you look at the games that are most popular right now, they've got that surprise and delight. And I think that is so important. No matter what genre you're in, having that surprise and delight moment, or as David Gardner said, what's your first laugh? That has to be a metric you're thinking about. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, and a lot faster. So do you think things that have a long storyline are kind of dying off and won't necessarily be the future? Do you feel like there's still the audience? I mean, we've talked a lot about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, but what about everybody else? 

Jen MacLean: You know, I don't think it's that a long storyline hinders play, and when I look at some of the great games of this year, with the nominations for the Game Awards just coming out yesterday, lots of chatter about it. I'm looking at some of the Game of the Year nominations, Velatro, which nails replayability. Oh my goodness, it nails it so much. The Elden Ring, DLC. Talk about a long storyline. Boy, that's the DLC on top of the long storyline. And my personal favorite metaphor, re fantasio, I have so many hundreds of hours invested into the Persona franchise and I am adoring metaphor re fantasio.

So it's not the length of time, and if you look at the amount of time people play Minecraft, or Roblox, or Fortnite, or Valorant, it's instead how fast to fun. And this is what I think is super interesting when you think about the impact of subscription services on games and game consumption.

When you don't have that initial purchase, whether it's $20 or $50 or $70, if you don't have fun right away, you are bouncing out of the game super fast because you have no set cost and you have no incentive to stick it out on the hope that it will eventually be fun instead of finding something else that's fun immediately. And often when I would talk to people about maximizing the value of the subscription service, it really came down to three things and reimagining your PC or console game as a free to play game. 

So first of all, what's your first time user experience like? Is the first hour amazing? The first hour should be the best hour of your game because otherwise, if you're on a game subscription service, you're going to lose a lot of interest. Then how do you support viral marketing? How do you encourage people to talk about your game? I think High on Life by Squanch did this so well. Love that game or hate that game, and most people have one strong opinion one way or the other. Wow, did they get people talking about the game? 

And it really helped elevate the game when it launched on Steam.. And I think a lot of that was because it launched in game pass day and date and then thinking about how you monetize your game on an ongoing basis. Because you could have tens of millions of the most dedicated, most interested, highest value gamers coming to your game, if you do a game pass or PS plus deal, what are you going to do with them once they're playing the game? How do you keep them engaged? And how do you think about monetizing them moving forward? 

And so I think in the PC and console space, especially as game subscription services continue to gain traction, there's a real opportunity to take lessons from the free to play mobile space and look at how you apply them to get the broadest audience, to keep them engaged, and especially to make sure that you're monetizing them.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, for games that are really successful, obviously this is a huge ongoing challenge. So what strategies do you have for keeping your players engaged once you have those dedicated players that are really interested? How do you keep them engaged and monetize as well in a way that doesn't offend them so you can continue running a business?

Jen MacLean: It's a great question. If there were a surefire answer, I think the industry would look very, very different right now. I can tell you some of the things that I have seen, and some of the broader lessons that we're applying at Dragon Snacks. 

One is people will consume content way more quickly than you think they will. The other is that you have to get players' choices. So if a player feels like if I don't spend $5, I can't do this and I'm not going to have fun- that's an instant turn off. You should give them a choice. And whether that's by making your PSM cosmetics, making them consumables, making premium services that can simplify but aren't required, give your player the choice and give your player agency. 

If you think about the fundamental principle of a great game being making interesting choices, that should apply to post sale monetization as well. And it shouldn't be a, Oh, I have to pay this. It should be, Oh, this is really exciting. I would like to apply this new outfit, or I would really like to have that weapon. Or I would love to have that $99 amount, for example. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Kind of like your kid. 

Jen MacLean: Exactly. 

Lizzie Mintus: A lot like that. Any other advice? I know you've, you're thinking a lot about content strategy probably right now and you helped Xbox on some self content strategy creation. What else should people think about? Do you have a framework that you really like to use around this or what is your thought process?

Jen MacLean: I'm going to go back to the needs of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. And fundamentally, they want to play with who they want to play with on the device that they want to play with. They don't want to feel like they have walls. So if I'm playing on an Xbox and you're playing on a PlayStation, and our friend Wallace is playing on a PC, Gen Z and Gen Alpha expect the three of us to be able to play together. And they have very little patience for artificial walls that are inserted that break up that experience. 

And so when you think about what they really value, the ubiquity of being able to play any time on any platform with anyone you want, also deep personalization- I want my experience with my love of persona and metaphor to feel different than you might want your experience to feel. And I know it's going to feel different than my eight year old wants his experience to feel. And that's going to feel different than my 19-year-old. 

Making sure that you are giving players the opportunity and the tools to really customize their personal experience, and then thinking about how you use AI to deeply understand what players want and to give it to them before they can even ask. That's what I get super, super excited about Lizzie. 

When you think about why people play games. I believe fundamentally it's because they want some sort of emotional engagement. Maybe they are blowing off steam with some friends and dropping into Black Ops 6 and killing people. Maybe they want to create something magical in Minecraft. Maybe they want the hero fantasy with a good touch of familial angst of God of War. Maybe they want the charming narrative of Stardew Valley. They all want something different. And there is an emotional engagement with each of those different types of experiences that is unique and that is different.

And so for me, when I think about the power of AI, part of it is understanding what sort of emotional engagement the player wants at that specific moment. I can tell you the emotional experience I want on a Thursday night after a long week of work and the kids have been put to bed finally is very, very different than the engagement that I want on a Saturday afternoon where I'm sitting down in front of my big screen TV for hours and really going deep in a complicated game. Well if you were to look at my play patterns across every platform, across every instance of time, and map them to day of the week, time of day, maybe weather, season, all of those things, you would start to see a really interesting picture of emotional needs.

And so for me, when I think about where the industry could go, I get most excited about us having that really deep understanding of player emotional needs and then being able to fill those, even if players can't quite articulate what those needs are. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. And how would you go about discerning those? 

Jen MacLean: I think a lot of it is just looking at large play patterns over time. So again, if you look at what I am playing on Thursday night, it is very different than Saturday afternoon. The platform is different, the game is different, the play time is different, the input is different, the emotional challenges and rewards are different. And so if you think about doing that on an individual basis, but then also on a larger audience basis, and there are some tools that are coming out that are starting to do this that are really fascinating- I think that's when you start to be able to create a deeply individualized and deeply personalized experience. 

And you already see stuff like that on commerce platforms. I would love for us to see it on game platforms. 

Lizzie Mintus: That's true. Amazon recommends products and that is the exact thing that I want! Instagram ads, you know that my friend bought this and we have similar tastes. You know me better than I know myself. It's scary, but it's helpful. Yeah, that's an exciting thing to look forward to. 

So when you were at AWS, you collaborated with many different business functions to help people launch great games. What are some of the most common challenges that you saw across the board that people were facing? Maybe start there, then tell me about the solution. 

Jen MacLean: That's a great question. First and foremost, if I could give, if I could wave a magic wand and have every game studio in the industry do this, I would start with building a secure infrastructure. Because we had some studios who were hacked, and whose work had been held for ransom. And that's heartbreaking. It's just heartbreaking. 

Lizzie Mintus: Wow. Now with AI, I have a woman in my business group who runs a cyber security firm and she was sharing what AI now enables people to do. So a great thought for all businesses as well.

Jen MacLean: I mean, just simple steps like two factor authentication, right? Because I can promise you someone in your company is going to be clicking on a very sophisticated phishing email because they are so good these days. So something simple like two factor authentication is at least that much more of a barrier. Thinking about leveraging cloud infrastructure over on prem infrastructure, that's also really important. 

When you work with Amazon or Microsoft or Google, they build in such rigorous security practices. They have to, when you look at the size of data that they host and also the value of data that they host, the healthcare data, the defense data, the government data. And so being able to work with your cloud provider and really saying, Hey, look, we're going to design for security first, as opposed to security as an afterthought is super, super important. And it's a great, easy way at the start to save yourself a lot of pain and suffering at the end. 

The other thing that I would tell people is ask for help. And by that, I mean, there are so many programs run by platforms run by service providers that really want to help people succeed. So if you look at Microsoft for startups, for example, or AWS for startups or GCP for startups. You don't just get cloud credits, you get discounts, you get advice, you get connections to people, you get templates, you get so much. 

And I feel like, often people either aren't aware or aren't comfortable asking and I really, really want people to ask because knowing people at all of those organizations, they are all amazing and they want to help people succeed. Fundamentally, they only succeed when their customers succeed.

I also look at programs like iD at Xbox and the indie stuff that PlayStation is doing, right? They are really, really great people and they are really great programs. And they want to make sure that people succeed on their platform. So I think my first advice is just ask for help. It's such an amazing community. There are so many resources out there. And ask early and ask often, which sounds maybe a little bit scary. I think asking for help for ourselves can always be a little bit intimidating, but Lizzie, so many people in this community want to help others succeed.

And you're a great example of that, right? Some of the things that you do to support the game community in Seattle and more broadly, you do that because you know that you succeed when the community succeeds. And I think that that's true of so many people in this industry. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, people helped me so much when I started my business. I just reached out. Everyone's like, Oh, do you want to grab coffee? Do you want to grab lunch? Who could I connect you to? What can I do? So I love to get that back. You feel good. And yeah, that's really important. 

Just have a few more questions. So you have worked in M&A. We didn't even get into your not game contest prior world. And then you're an advisor for Bitcraft, which is the I think everyone who's a listener knows, but there's a gaming VC, a wonderful one, but in both endeavors, what kinds of things do you look for to ensure that the investment is viable, they have product market fit, and like we talked about, more importantly, the consumers are going to discover, in addition to product market fit. What factors do you think that you look for that predict success? 

Jen MacLean: It's a great question. And I think part of the answer depends on how far along the team is. So are they looking for early investment or late investment? Are they looking for a publishing deal or investment? And what are the needs of the team and also why?

But fundamentally, it comes down to a few things. What's the problem that they're trying to solve? What's the opportunity that solving this problem would create? And why is this team the right team to do it? And if you think about all of the great games that have kind of come out, there's really components of all three of those things. You know, what's the problem? What's the opportunity? Why this team? 

And I think having an answer to that and having a really clear and crisp answer is super important. So we are heads down on our pre seed funding race right now. But for us, the problem and the opportunity that we see is really delivering a great experience for Gen Z and Gen Alpha that includes creation, a chosen community, and an aspirational narrative. No one is doing those three things. And so if we do them well, we could potentially reach 41 percent of the 3 billion gamers globally. And that is an amazing total addressable market. 

In terms of why us, well, you've got Michelle, who started her career at Zynga, where she honed social game design mechanics, went to Firaxis, where she worked as a writer and designer on Civ V, combining with Nemco, who most recently delivered Monopoly Go for Scopely. And then my experience running partnerships and co-leading next gen content strategy for X FACTS. Like, wow, we have some insights. 

And we also live it day to day with our kids. And we feel so passionate and so motivated about solving this in a way that is great. And that is helpful for the players as well as creating a great sustainable business. If you can't answer those three questions, and if you can't answer them as part of your pitch, then it's a good sign that you need to go back and refine that if you're looking for investment. And really, if you're looking at how to go beyond just a single game release, where you think, wow, I'll be successful if I just ship the game, you have to think much more broadly now.

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah, that is what investors would like. Congrats on having your pitch dialed in. I mean, you've been on all sides of the table. 

Jen MacLean: And I have amazing advisors and a ton of people who have been so generous with their time and expertise. 

Lizzie Mintus: Oh, anyone you want to give a shout out to? 

Jen MacLean: Wow, I feel like this would be an award speech where I would be afraid of forgetting somebody. 

Lizzie Mintus: Okay. Thank you to all. 

Jen MacLean: Yes. Thank you to all. We are so lucky to have the support of so many great people along the way.

Lizzie Mintus: I have one last question. If I'm a listener, and I really want to get more educated about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and I do not have children that are that age, where can I go to find out more? What papers should I read? Who should I talk to? Podcast videos? What resources should I consume? 

Jen MacLean: Great question. The Anxious Generation, I would recommend. I would also look at some of the studies that IDG has done. New Zoo has done some great work here. Aldora has done some great work here. I love Game Discover Co. It's actually on the screen right next to me. I'm in their Discord all the time, just kind of tracking what they're sharing in terms of audience insights and industry insights. But also, I would look more broadly at the content that audience is consuming outside of games. 

So Outer Banks, watch Outer Banks on Netflix.We have in our Slack, our channel, what we're reading and a lot of that is what Gen Z and Gen Alpha are reading. For me, I go into Amazon, like the young adult section. And I'm like, okay, what's really popping? And what is popping to the level of becoming a cultural phenomenon. 

So a Court of Thorns and Roses is a great example, right? Like, wow, that is a fandom. They are super, super passionate. And so that's something where I'm like, yeah, I want to read this. I want to understand why it resonates so deeply with our target audience. And I want to understand how that's changed over time.

So I think of the young adult books that I read and that my 19-year-old has read, now that my 12-year-old is reading, not necessarily act hard because she's not reading that. It's not quite appropriate for a 12-year-old, but I'm really thinking about evolution and what that can tell me in terms of driving insights.

And also going to the fandoms, watching the Tiktoks, watching Booktok, watching some of the other great content creators out there. I spent a lot of time on the cozy Reddit and the cozy games Reddit just to see what people are talking about. Thinking that you might not know all the answers and you want to learn more, I think is a gift. 

And when I was at Amazon, like if you've been at Amazon, you know that they lean heavily on leadership principles. For me, the one that I always thought was the best was to learn and be curious. And go into a conversation assuming that maybe you don't know it all and that the other person can teach you something and can get you thinking about something in a different way. If you do that with every person, if you do that with every bit of entertainment, I think that can be a real gift. 

Lizzie Mintus: Yeah. Curiosity. I love that. We've been talking to Jen McLean, the co-founder and CEO of Dragon Snacks Games. Jen, where can people go to invest in you or work with you, learn more about you or just chat?

Jen MacLean: The best way to find me is on LinkedIn. Jen McLean, M A C L E A N. And we'd be really glad to connect with people there. 

Lizzie Mintus: Thank you. 

Jen MacLean: Thanks so much, Lizzie.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. To catch all the latest from Here's Waldo, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes. We'll see you next time.