Leon Xiao is an Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong. After doing his PhD in loot boxes, he's released papers charting the loot box regulation landscape, and measuring compliance. Coverage of his work has been picked up by mainstream media such as the BBC and
September 22, 2025
Ejnar Håkonsen has studied the light and dark sides of player manipulation. He’s designed matchmaking and pay-to-win systems himself, and he’s theorycrafted in pay-to-win games with top-ranking whale guilds, to understand the strategies they use. Years ago, he designed a multiplayer system that used manipulative practices for positive
August 20, 2025
Sometimes our worlds collide in unexpected ways. Like many folks from the games industry, I've had to pivot away from games work to pay the bills – and since 2016, one of those new upskilling directions has been search engine optimisation (SEO). One of the most influential figures in
April 11, 2025