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Julie Belzanne

@juliebelzanne.bsky.social
72 followers 40 following 38 posts

CEO of @hushcrasher.bsky.social, a research-driven intelligence firm dedicated to the video game market: We measure. We predict. We optimize. Newsletter: newsletter.hushcrasher.com/ Tools: hushcrasher.com/tools

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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Engineers will ALWAYS token-max AI. It’s game theory 101: You can't threaten staff with AI displacement AND ask them to save IT budgets. If job survival means out-producing your peer, you'll burn $2k/mo on Claude (e.g., #Microsoft news). => Management need to design better HR incentives instead.
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Wanna know what each decision actually costs your game? Going multi: +21% budget Going 3D instead of 2D: +47% Doubling the team: +70% (biggest predictor of budget) Doubling the % of managers: +32% (coordination tax) All else equal. Full breakdown: newsletter.hushcrasher.com/i/197014720/...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Why video games cost so much to make? Ok dev costs have 📈. But it's like saying “patient has a fever.” It's a symptom. What we want to know is WHY? Take a 2015 game and a 2025 one, same genre, same ambition: does that game really cost more to make today? newsletter.hushcrasher.com/p/why-video-...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
I’ll say something you’re not used to hear: It does NOT cost more to make games today. We just make bigger ones. Hear me out. I'm not gonna pretend budgets haven't risen, of course they have. We talked about it in our previous article (newsletter.hushcrasher.com/p/did-games-...). 1/4
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Between 2020-2024, there were a lot of cool salary-sharing initiatives in the VG industry. But they haven't been active since then. With the job market being… what it is, that felt like the worst possible timing to lose this info! So I aggregated all historic data (5000 entries) in this sheet:
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
The industry spent $27 billion making PC games in 2025. That’s 5x more than 10 years ago! That's 67% of what the ENTIRE film and series industry spent. Just PC. No consoles, no mobile. Full article (breakdown per scope and genre, forecasts) 👉 hushcrasher.substack.com/p/did-games-...
hushcrasher.substack.com
Did games really get more costly to make?
By how much, since when, and for whom? We have the receipts.
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
"Dev costs have skyrocketed." What does that actually mean? By how much? Since when? The bigger the scope, the higher the rise: x2.5 for solodevs, x3 for AAA in 10 years ($100M ➡️ $300M). @hushcrasher.bsky.social full analysis: newsletter.hushcrasher.com/p/did-games-...
newsletter.hushcrasher.com
Did games really get more costly to make?
By how much, since when, and for whom? We have the receipts.
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Next article will be about how much did dev costs *really* increase. We hear all time they've skyrocketed, but by HOW MUCH? did it hit every studio, every scope, every genre? and by how muuuch? It was all so vague, we wanted to know! Hopefully, the answer next week 👀 +bonus, dev cost 2027 forecast
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
We found about the same ($309M median for AAA titles) using a machine learning model to estimate all games budgets a few months ago. Super comforting to see that our data/model match Jason Schreier's sources! 🤓 more:https://open.substack.com/pub/hushcrasher/p/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-video
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Devs/publishers, stop trusting Steam recommendations to set your game regional prices. They haven't been updated since 2022. And it’s actively COSTING you sales. Good news is, we fixed it! We detail how in this article: open.substack.com/pub/hushcras...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Everyone loves talking about video games sales, but when it comes to budgets, the conversation suddenly goes quiet 🫥 Game budgets are hard to get, so we found another way. (Data science 🤫) Come see what we've learned: open.substack.com/pub/hushcras...
open.substack.com
How much does it cost to make a video game?
We built a model to estimate the budget of 100,000 games. Here's what we found.
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
The first article of our newsletter is out! @antoine.mayerowitz.io and I spent a ton of time on it to bring you some in-depth analysis. We went as deep as we possibly could on the topic of how to best classify different game scopes haha Go check it out! :) open.substack.com/pub/hushcras...
open.substack.com
By the way, what are AA?
Instead of fuzzy labels like 'indie' and 'AA', we propose a new data-driven system to classify video games based on their actual production scope. This new framework reveals the real economic and crea...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Future historians will love this! I was doing some investigative work and discovered that on Wayback Machine, you can search specifically within Donald Trump's tweets. @waybackmachine.bsky.social you're the best 👏
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 24/08/2025
Quick question: Does the 'Hot dogs or Legs?' meme still ring a bell? I want to use it as a hook* for an article, but I'm worried the joke—'haha, it's so hard to tell the difference, right?'—will be lost on people. *It'd be like: "Remember this meme? Here's a new one for you: 'AA or AAA?'"
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
It's so refreshing. I braced myself for a story of burnout, bad management, etc. Turns out, they were just having a BLAST. Seeing people stick to a pace that works for them, even when everything pushes them to be under pressure: 👌 @jasonschreier.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
🌈 𝟐,𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐖𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 🌈 A big thanks to all of you! Seeing new people add the game to their wishlist every day really means something to the team 🥹 Road to 3,000 now! Wishlist: store.steampowered.com/app/2720730/... Thanks again @yogscast.com for the spotlight with your @tinyteamsfest.bsky.social!
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Reposted by Julie Belzanne
Future Suit Games @futuresuitgames.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Hello #indiegames enjoyers!! We're hosting our FIRST community event tomorrow! Come relax and make a friend?!!? Games we're playing: @nimblegames.bsky.social UMIGAME @butterbythefish.com‬ Flickshot Rogues @juliebelzanne.bsky.social Our Journey: The Silent Voice discord.gg/vu4AYpN3?eve...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
We have been selected by @tinyteamsfest.bsky.social! Support indie games and try our card-based guessing adventure game 🫵 If you enjoy Codenames and It Takes Two, you should like it. It's a fun 2P co-op journey, it's got a chill vibe, demo's out! Try it ✨ store.steampowered.com/app/2720730?...
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Day5 - I went deeper into my python text-based deckbuilder prototype Over 1700 lines of code... Gotta optimize that 🤣😭 I'll get my 1st playtester to try it now! #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiegame #gameprototype
Laptop screen with code
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Day4 - I built a v1 text-based proto that runs in the terminal In Python as it's what I know best Funnier than the paper version but still not right > some future UX are obvious now > I dont want to wait for the UI - it has to be fun, even in text mode #gamedev #indiegame #gamedevelopment
Laptop screen with some Python code on it
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Day 3 - Prototyping with real stuff It didn't help me find out if the game would be fun to play, but it did let me see: - what features to add to spice things up - overly complex mechanics - and that balancing will be CRUCIAL 🤹‍♀️ #gamedevelopment #gamedev #indiegame #godotengine
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Day2 - Today, I learned how to : - create sprite sheets - create a card, move it around, instantiate, create a card slot (guess what genre I want to build 🙈) Thanks Barry's Development Hell for the great Youtube tutorial! That's some baby steps #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiegame #deckbuilder
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Day2 - Today, I learned how to : - create sprite sheets - create a card, move it around, instantiate, create a card slot (guess what genre I want to build 🙈) Thanks Barry's Development Hell for the great Youtube tutorial! That's some baby steps #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiegame #deckbuilder
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
If you know, you know #GodotEngine #GODOT #firstday #gamedev #gamedevelopment
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
2 days ago, I wrote the worst reddit post on r/gamedev +10k views but so many downvotes + mods finally removed it I was told “okay chatgpt” multiple times (😭) I think (not even sure) it's because I used too many Linkedin codes My new challenge: understand Reddit's etiquette I'll keep you posted
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
Today I'm launching Seedbomb on Product Hunt! Show it some love 🧡 Seedbomb is a tool to help game developers and publishers Discover & Reach perfect streamers for their niche (= to boost their sales!) All support is welcome! Upvote and give feedback! www.producthunt.com/posts/seedbo...
producthunt.com
Seedbomb - Discover & Reach Perfect Streamers To Boost Your Game Sales | Product Hunt
Boost your game's marketing with Seedbomb. Find and contact relevant Twitch streamers effortlessly. Select game tags and download emails list instantly. Filter by language, average views and more.…
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 01/05/2025
Big streamers? Hit or miss. Smaller streamers? Hit. Video games industry is so so competitive (+40 every day) Yet, Twitch is still untapped: high potential ROI & low marketing cost The era of micro streamers is upon us 💎 www.gamedeveloper.com/marketing/th... #indiedev #twitchmarketing #gamedev
gamedeveloper.com
How Balatro publisher Playstack delivered a marketing masterclass
A carefully curated 'Wheel of Attention' became Balatro's best friend.
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
I spent 10 hours writing my Linkedin post to announce my new product It was totally worth it I got 21 likes... and a valuable lesson: never spend THAT much time on a post again! Don't get me wrong, it's okay :) But can we all agree it wasn't worth 10H of work? #linkedin #launch #marketing
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
[When sending Steam keys] Big streamers = a lottery 🎰 ; Small streamers = a strategy 🎯 Big ones are swamped, expensive, their broad audience is not highly targeted niche players. Small ones are a GOLDMINE for indie devs But they are hard to find 🕵️‍♀️ seedbomb.ing/database can help you find them
seedbomb.ing
Seedbomb: Grow Your Game on Twitch | Get access to 11,000+ streamers
Boost your game's marketing with Seedbomb. Find and contact relevant Twitch streamers effortlessly. Select game tags and download emails list instantly. Filter by language, average views and more.…
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Julie Belzanne @juliebelzanne.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Just finished building your 1st SaaS be like . . . . Now what?
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