Patrick McGrath
About
I studied finance. Ended up in gaming because the F2P business model fascinated me.
Imagine it’s 2010 and someone’s telling you they make more money by giving something away for free than if you’d sold it. All because it’s designed around our psychological biases.
Fifteen years later I’m still pulling on that thread. Eight games crossed $100M in lifetime revenue, three crossed $1B. June’s Journey, Plants vs. Zombies, CSR Racing, and others you’ve probably played. I stayed because the same cognitive biases driving a player to buy a virtual sword also drive a trader to hold a losing position, a founder to over-hire, and a user to trust an AI answer they didn’t verify.
The patterns are everywhere. I just picked the industry with the fastest feedback loops.
These days I split my time between product work and building AI systems. I got tired of re-teaching the same frameworks to every new AI tool I used, so I built Alexandria, a system of 170 specialized agents organized into 22 teams for writing, research, and analysis. It started as a productivity hack. It turned into an obsession with how humans and AI actually think differently.
I still play competitive FPS games. Halo and Call of Duty tournaments back in the day, extraction shooters now. Honestly, half my game theory writing comes from getting betrayed at extraction points.
What you’ll find here
Product strategy from someone who’s shipped at scale and screwed up at scale. Behavioral economics applied to decisions people actually make. Crypto analysis where I tell you what I hold before I tell you what I think. AI and agentic systems from a builder, not a pundit. Gaming industry analysis from someone who plays the games.
I publish annual predictions with a public scorecard. I write about the expensive mistakes, not just the wins. One cost us over $1M. That story’s coming.
If you’re the kind of person who sees the same cognitive bias in a game, a trade, and an AI prompt, you’ll like it here.
Want to talk product strategy, agentic AI, or behavioral economics? patrick@pm-notebook.com