Dear Playbook,
Today, I want to tell your origin story, how chose your name and what it means to me.
From Marketing to Gaming: A New World
When I transitioned from marketing to the gaming industry, it felt like stepping into chaos. Suddenly, I was a freshly hired LiveOps Specialist, surrounded by unfamiliar terms—KPIs, segmentation, retention strategies. Everything was new, and not always clear. I quickly realized I needed to level up to match my more experienced colleagues.
Since then, for years, my daily routine looked like this:
- Following industry podcasts on Spotify, following blogs and newsletters on my RSS reader, following “industry voices” on Linkedin.
- Saving anything that seemed interesting and listening whenever I could: cooking, cleaning the house, commuting, walking the dog, or running. (listening to podcasts’ episodes is simple but for for articles and newsletters my RSS reader has a handy text-to-speech feature )
- Using speech-to-text to take notes on insights I found valuable.
- Spending a few minutes on weekends refining and organizing everything in Notion.
At some point, I had built a small personal library of knowledge. And then it hit me—why was I keeping it to myself? It was foolish not to share it.
The First Attempt: GameBestiary
So, I decided to put my insights online.
My first attempt was GameBestiary.com—a site about how to “pet, grow, and groom games.” The concept was fun, but my execution was flawed. I aimed too high, trying to produce large, in-depth articles, often splitting them into multiple parts. There was no AI to help back then, and my self-taught English made it even harder. After a few months, GameBestiary was abandoned.
But not the note-taking. My library kept growing.
AI tools emerged, helping tremendously with content refinement.
My English improved over time as well.
I wondered if I’d face pointed fingers for abandoning another pet project. But then I realized—nobody would care. And even if abandoned, the project could still remain available.
It was time for a second attempt.
Why “Playbook”?
One of my first encounters with industry jargon happened during an All-Hands meeting. A senior LiveOps manager was presenting recent changes and casually said:
“… so this practice will now join our Playbook.”
A Playbook? That sounded exactly like what I needed—a structured guide, a collection of best practices. I had been devouring every article and podcast I could find on LiveOps, but truly valuable content was scarce. (Most of it was—and still is—PR fluff with little real value.)
So, after the meeting, I approached the speaker and asked:
“Hey, can you share the Playbook with me?”
He looked at me, confused.
“What Playbook?”
“The one you mentioned in the meeting! You said this practice is going into the Playbook.”
He laughed.
“Oh, no, there’s no actual Playbook. That’s just a figure of speech—we just mean we’ll keep this practice in mind.”
That was one of those moments where being a non-native English speaker hit me hard. But it wasn’t just about language—I was new to the industry and didn’t realize Playbook was just an abstract term people threw around.
Yet, over the years, I kept hearing it:
“This is our Playbook.”
“We’ll add this to our Playbook.”
But there was no actual Playbook. No structured website, no widely accessible Google Drive folder, no book. As I later learned some companies had internal playbooks, but nothing open and available to the broader industry.
The idea sat in the back of my mind for years:
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a real Playbook? A place where anyone could learn about LiveOps, monetization, and other disciplines? A Wikipedia for live games, but with practical, insightful content—free of PR fluff?
And so, I knew the word Playbook had to be in the name.
Why Not “LiveOps- Product- Slav- Playbook”?
- Over time I might shift disciplines—or even industries (SaaS, app development, who knows?).
- Other experts would be less likely to contribute to a blog named after me.
- If it ever evolved into a consultancy, a team effort, or something bigger, having my name attached to it would limit its potential.
- Product Playbook—the domain was available (OMG!), but it didn’t feel unique or memorable enough.
Why “Dear Playbook”?
A while back, I took a copywriting course, and one lesson stood out:
Memorable names matter.
A generic name like Product Playbook wasn’t enough (even thought domain was free). I needed something that stuck.
Then, I made a connection:
Playbook → Diary.
We’ve all seen classic diary entries start with “Dear Diary…”, as if the writer is confiding in a trusted friend. It reminded me of a childhood TV show, Gossip Girl, where the narrator closed every episode like a diary entry, signing off with:
“Hugs and kisses, your Gossip Girl.”
And that’s when it clicked.
Dear Playbook would be a diary—but for the gaming industry. Each piece of content would begin with Dear Playbook, setting a personal, engaging tone in an industry often too serious and analytical.
I could even imagine people mentioning it on podcasts, laughing about the name in a good way.
And that’s how Dear Playbook was born.
Hugs and Kisses,
Your Slav Senkiv