2022 Gaming Deals Review & Naavik’s Highlights Awards - The Metacast by Naavik

[Music] I don't know where to go next though is it I know yeah it is a safe space yeah you can do it okay um cool [Music] jingle bell jingle bell jingle bell rock Jingle Bells hi friends welcome to the metacast Roundtable by navic and today is a winter holiday special we're going to be reviewing the year in deals Anton garadesky is here with us today and also just discussing more informally all the highlights that we took away from 2022 so grab a cozy drink get cozied up and I hope you enjoy this more informal episode so joining us in this Christmas special co-founder of navic Anthony pecorella

co-founder of level up labs and Navi Consultants has take a bit of a deep breath Matt Diane lead product manager at EA and writer at navic and Anton gordeski co-founder of invest game that part is partners with navic and also head of Industry relations at my games hello hello hello everyone hey guys did anyone bring some Jingle Bells or something uh no Jingle Bells but uh Anthony told us he had some props all right that's for later okay okay okay I have a new sweet shot uh that's a company switch does that count as a as a prop for Christmas this is okay so my studio is called industrial toys you can see it here and then we've got tanks and soldiers and the studio logo we're working on Battlefield mobile if you didn't know so that's very on brand for us uh this is our ugly holiday sweater awesome

well what what does it look like for the listeners mine is probably uglier oh yeah yeah okay this is this is exclusive content for the YouTube audience so I'm gonna try and translate for the podcast audience here so okay we've got a green and red and white ugly holiday sweater uh we've got like fans uh you can look up the industrial toys logo online it's kind of like a A reticle or a crosshairs that's kind of like going across in rows we've got tanks we've got snowflakes we've got soldiers we've got the actual name of the studio you can't really see it on camera but there's like Jets down here there's a helicopter it's very detailed and very festive uh man you guys oh um mine is not as detailed as mattes but I'm glad I can finally wear this thing after like one year of it just like lying around in my cupboard but I got

um so it's like a yeah it's I guess the American flag color so red red white and blue and uh I got some Santa Clauses and I think yeah these are reindeers but they look like snowmen with like antlers but reindeers and then some Christmas trees and oh and then I got the snowman also under the reindeers yeah perfect yep so yeah thank you um thank you the metacas for uh letting me wear this dress once a year once a year okay so once a year my my brother-in-laws are going to be like really happy so they gave me this and we also promised everyone was going to have a beverage for the Cozy beverage intro what what did everyone bring I'm actually drinking water

because I'm in the office and as I have said previously to mind you I'm not really sure what we're allowed to drink alcohol but I promise once we're done and I get home I'll bring something for you guys talk to me and a very small mug so I can just like pour a little bit and it's always the right temperature and doesn't like cool off so um so I want to I want to go through this again you have tea okay and a small cup value refill over time to maintain perfect temperature yes yeah um yeah the cup is I don't know just a couple ounces um sort of a shot glass with a handle um um it's a very European coffee mug is yeah I guess it's probably supposed to be an espresso among um I have I have a very American coffee mug it's messy [Music] yeah basically basically yeah it's a little bit early where I am it's like 8

45 in the morning excuse me so I'm not drinking right now I am having iced coffee but in a giant Marvel Avengers coffee mug is it warm here um I mean it's relative it's like it's probably like 50s Fahrenheit six maybe low 60s so it's it's cold by Los Angeles standards but it's not really that cold but yeah it seems like I'm the only one who brought like some Light alcohol to the party unless like you know unless Anton has like vodka fill in that water bottle but you never know you never know you might get to know over the course of this hour if I you know if I uh sign off in the middle of the podcast sorry oh yeah I know I got this um it's called like a Radler so it's like a beer um with um with like a lemon flavor in it and I

really like love these bottles because when you open them then they make this like popping sound but sometimes the bottles don't make the popping sound so I so I'm gonna like you know flip the coin now and let's see if it's podcast magic will work very fancy okay very fancy [Laughter] another reason uh uh I'm not having alcohol tonight um at least on the podcast because uh yesterday we had a Fireside gathering at the company and I was one of the hosts for that we got to we got to celebrate a little bit afterwards it's only Wednesday come on

we're here what are you drinking I brought an alcohol alcohol zero stout beer no one is excited about my beverage okay let's move on I've never tried I've never tried zero alcohol style though yeah that's also new to me never heard of that um well more interesting than my alcohol zero beer so let's start by looking at the year in deals so invest game that was co-founded by Anton around mid-February next year is going to release the free report that you can download and review all of the details of 2022 in terms of deals M A investment and so yeah we're going to have a sneak peek today Anton well do you have any leading insights in terms of number and value of the deals were they higher than previous years were they lower yeah actually

um the the there will be a sneak peek because I've asked the guys to check the database and we already know the number of deals in the deal count for the fourth quarter uh of 2022 which as Maria has said the actual report will be out sometime in the middle of February right the third quarter of the year was the first one with negative growth metrics in the blockchain related Investments even though the total number of deals continue to grow the total uh deal value was actually down uh in the third quarter and is again down in the fourth quarter so as I have just said uh it's a downward trend for pretty much every segment we don't see currently any any upward Trends both in the deal count and in the in the deal value so all these micro macro economic instability and Rising interest rates and uh other you know factors are all

influencing the industry as a whole as we all know and the deal deal part of the industry as well the one other the one other interesting Trend uh that might likely play out in 2023 and which is where you know VCS might um feel good about you know performing their duty of deploying the capital is probably going to be in the AI space so you know after one like crypto gaming blockchain gaming hype uh then you know into the next one uh with aif but yeah let's see I mean um I mean it's still like a space I'm like looking into personally and you know just trying to see like what are like the different gaming Solutions actually kind of getting built up because uh probably in the AI space is also where you know these more picks and shovel layers for the gaming industry um that would be just be a better fit and like more solutions might be there and that's also where like VCS generally prefer to kind of put their bets uh

versus you know more content focused uh companies um so so yeah let's see let's see if there's like a AI hype gonna happen in 2020. has everybody else's social media like um you know has any has everybody else been seeing their social media flooded with this new AI I have a very good friend that is a machine learning data scientist he's absolutely amazing and we actually caught up for breakfast the other day and he was telling me all about how yeah we shouldn't really trust fully chat gbt and how he's managed to trick it and it gives it it does provide false information if you push for it if it it will never fill the Gap by saying I don't know it will always fill the Gap with something so yeah it's just interesting to see how that plays out

I'm not I I'm not VC I I'm not too close to it and so I was just wondering just because VCS have said okay I have this pot of money that I want to invest into blockchain if we see a continue a continued down one training blockchain if we don't see games reaching the market next year that brings success and I don't know re-inspire that segment could VCS not decide to reallocate those funds to invest in something else yep I think I think they could uh they could definitely reallocate but um I also feel like some VCS just have very strong thesis behind you know web free gaming and um and the and the LPS that they kind of cater to with that are also kind of bought into that thesis to a good extent so um even if like uh games don't release next year which I think might not really happen they'll probably be like a good chunk of new web 3 games kind of coming out next year

even if they don't release or if the games that I release are actually bad um I guess it just also depends on the VC's long-term thesis for you know web3 gaming and whether they continue to like invest in either the companies that they're already invested in extending the number of rounds or finding new companies that are still in line with their thesis so that also very much depends upon you know the the terms of those deals that they have entered into so it's not that easy I guess to just you know take the money uh you know write off the money and uh just drop the projects they have invested in and uh as for AI I've recently read an article by Ben Thompson I believe uh who was um experimenting with uh was it chat GPT right uh which was uh making the home assignment for his

daughter or something like that and it uh so he asked to write an essay and uh it wrote a perfectly good essay in terms of the you know of the form of the text but which was completely wrong in terms of the you know of the very idea behind the the topic so that was a fun experiment and I've also recently um heard a funny joke and I hope no no art no gaming artists will be offended by that but the biggest fear uh of you know of those people working with art in the gaming industry should not be the fact that AI can actually draw and create but that they never miss a deadline yeah that's uh that that's uh that's a real risk you're not gonna find anyone about missing deadlines I am this is a slight aside but

um in um film a lot of times before the uh the composers had a chance to write the music the director will have um some like stand-in music they use that's um you know roughly the the tone that they want and they often kind of like fall in love with that music and end up telling the composer just make something like that um I remember I was reading something with Danny Elfman he hates when that happens um so just the other day my girlfriend was asked by her boss to write um part of a paper and he came in and he said um that he had put a prompt into chat deep TPT got it out and he gave it to her and said use this and and write something like this so like he was using chat gbt to give assignments so I mean yeah we're very much in that getting to that point where it's at least starting to come down from above to structure Things based on whatever the AI has said that does sound like you know a new toy for investors like blockchain used to be

back in 2021 maybe yeah 21 yeah 21 yeah and I'm not saying that the technology is bad or something but um you know everybody is always looking for the next big thing uh to get out of the deal with you know with multiples so that's that's the nature you know of venture and uh I should probably also add that there's a peculiar Trend we see which is when huge uh strategic investors are buying medium and smaller Studios sometimes people with experience working there are leaving the studios sometime after the acquisition due to several factors and one thing they do is they trying to you know do something on their own and maybe create a gaming studio or you know do something else with the with the experience they've got while working back there and

thus they uh there are the VC funds with us which are sitting on huge amounts of dry powder right as we have previously discussed and so thus more M A's are leading to more uh private Investments which will which is something that will also take probably placed in 2023. anyway long story shot yeah generally optimistic about 2023 things are still moving up into the right I think maybe a little bit slower but generally optimistic so so on that note of optimistic uh thank you Anton so much for sharing all those insights again mid-February the report will be live for you to download and we move on to I think I'm going to coin it as our informal metacast award ceremony where we're all going to bring yeah we're all going to bring the first ever or good highlight of the year are negative highlight of the Year well

we're deeming a unicorn award which we'll have to figure out by what people bring what it actually means and also a game of the year award okay nice everyone ready yes Manu you are so excited that you should definitely take the first good highlight of 2020. oh okay so what oh so are we are we not starting with like uh game game of the year or we start with the best highlights do you want to start with the game of the year we can if you want yeah let's start with Game of the Year okay okay let's do it all right so um do we have any like Awards music no we can do a drum roll song all right so my game of the year um it's a it's a it's a PC console title uh

it's called overcooked all you can eat uh okay first of all like how many how many of you guys know this game yeah I know that you know it okay to their wife yeah nice overcooked all you can eat is I believe it's the second part right of the of the franchise yep uh so that was overcooked one overcooked two and then overcooked all you can eat which is like a combination of one or two so all the levels are in it and it's um it's like um um it's basically like a you know like a time management uh game where uh you are a chef in your um in your different restaurants which are the different levels and yeah basically you have to like you know Service uh you know your customers orders uh as fast as possible the faster you serve them um the more points that you get uh but the reason it is uh my game of the year is because this is the only game that I can authentically have fun with with my wife like we both players together and

we're both like slightly competitive uh people so you know uh we're always playing like you know uh uh one-on-one games on this and it is super fun it it's like the time to flow state is the shortest you guys in this game for me so you guys screaming at each other sometimes for you know missing the missing the recipe or something like that no that's exactly why we don't play the co-op co-op mode all right because we met each other all the time so we're always playing like what I want so wow [Laughter] it's boring so I never heard that PVP is healthier for couples than you know co-ops this is very interesting yeah yeah the Different Strokes or different folks but um but yeah it yeah this game I'm I'm

still like really shocked that you know there's no like mobile equivalent of this game it is it is really so fun and I could you know I could see like uh like uh uh you know like a PVP version of this existing on mobile and people just like going head to head and stuff but um but yeah anyway overcooked all you can eat that's my game of the year just like a small side note before we go to the next game of the year but um I also do know couples who like really enjoy co-op mode uh but we we don't hang out with those couples [Laughter] Bethany what is your game of the year all right um I actually I have a few I I guess I cheated a little bit but um so the I've got three um so one of them is um power wash simulator um I talked about my love for this game in an earlier podcast and

um there's just something so like Zen and peaceful about just spraying paint off of things with a power washer um and I've sunk a lot of hours into very slowly cleaning the playground uh and um yeah I think it was you know that type of game is something that we all could use in this year and I think that's part of the reason it resonated so well but um that was probably my my PC game of the year um for any view into a very narrow small uh um audience of super fans um my idol game of the year um is anti-matter Dimensions the reality update um this animator Dimensions is a game that was back in like 2018 and um was fantastic and then they've been working on an update for the last four years and just launched it and uh you know if you want to get into Super nerdy number optimization like it's got months and months of content uh and they just did a really nice job with it so I

wanted to call that out uh and then my last one um is I couldn't not do a board game um so I'm gonna go with they did a really nice so frostpunk is one of my favorite PC games um they did a really nice job with it uh including building like a uh it's it's incredibly hard but it's it's beautiful it takes up the whole table it's um it's like a worker worker placement or it's yeah it's a work replacement um and and more worker placement depth um yeah like one of the first things you need to do is like pass the law that allows you to use child labor and then you start sending kids out to dig in the snow and then they come back with frostbite and it's a very dark it's from it's from the makers it's from

the makers of this war of mine right I believe it is from the sorry the board game the makers of the board game of this war of mine okay cool okay if you had to pick one out of those three which one would you pick or are they all like equal um I mean I'd probably give it to power wash simulator that's just oh something that was kind of brand new yeah so I'll go with that does it take does it take long to to you know to fully play the first Punk board game I mean there are games which take like four hours and sometimes I play for several days yeah this is a three to four hour game yeah all right yeah I once played this war of mine board game for seven hours it depends how much the group likes to discuss decisions because decisions could mean life or death yeah the longest I played is uh three three and a half hours when yeah oh then don't

play Twilight Imperium okay another 12 12 hour game all right Matt what what did you ring for us today you all have much more patience with board games than I do I don't have time for that uh my my game of the year was a little game called all right yeah sorry no no no no no no shots yeah you just like I'm just saying keyboard game enthusiastically yeah I like four games to be clear I just wanna I just wanna be clear like I just don't have the patience to like sit around guys all right [Music] there's like clear objectives they need to meet and let's have a shot I have a shot yeah I don't know where to go next though is it yeah it is a safe space yeah we

love you come on you can do it okay um cool well with that out of the way my game of the year was a little game called tunic um I wrote a Twitter Thread about this game months ago um I you know I don't I don't think it was like the best game of the year but it was my personal game of the year because I discovered it at a time where I really needed it um my my fiance at the time now wife had covid I was taking care of her and then I got covered and so I had a lot of time to just like play games and be sick and um this game is if you haven't played it it's very cute it's very um it's kind of like a isometric camera um low poly very kind of cutesy you play a fox in this kind of like woodsy um ruined world and it's very much like

classic Zelda games uh in my opinion draws a lot of inspiration from those type of games uh and what really got me me is that it has this feature where it has like a game manual kind of like you would get in the old physical cartridge games and you can flip through it and it's all in this like game language so it's not translated you have to kind of understand the messages through the images and it's slowly revealed over time so you collect different pages of the manual in the game world and you're slowly filling in the information that you have and so as you pick up these game Pages you learn about different abilities that your character can can do in the game or different areas of the game or how to solve different puzzles and it's just very reminiscent of the old days of like classic NES Super Nintendo gaming where you're looking at the manual for any hint uh for the problem that you're stuck with and I don't know it just like really kind of checked a Nostalgia box

for me and and it was a game I needed at that time in my life so I also listened to a podcast with the creator of the game uh I think it was um Academy of interactive Arts and Sciences did a podcast with the Creator it was really fascinating to hear his take on how he approached developing the game so highly recommend it um it was on Game Pass for a while I don't know if it's still there but I would definitely encourage you all to check it out if you have not played it I think it's on PlayStation now so I definitely have to play it that sounds great nice if you still value my opinion after my hot takes on board games you know this is this would be my recommendation oh I'm just checking out the gameplay on YouTube right now and reading the comments and everybody is so appreciative of this game and apparently um very positive reviews and theme yeah the fact that not a single word of this game isn't a language anybody can comprehend yet we all still manage to understand says a lot yeah absolutely

definitely looks nice okay then that I don't know Anton did you done next did you have time to prepare a game of the year sure sure I'll just be short but I I did have time it's come on we're talking about games right I'm a very Casual Gamer um unfortunately and I I'm not the person to you know to even try Alden ring for example because I know for sure that I will beat him to hell and I don't have unfortunately any personal time to you know to just sit and so being a Casual Gamer uh I I I'm not going to surprise anyone my game of the year is the game I currently play it's God of War Ragnarok uh on PlayStation 5

and uh I'm a big fan of the franchise I'm a big fan of you know creators I'm a big thing fan of the that relationship Vibe uh the upbringing process of of uh of a child of a teen and I really like how uh address is now a team and how he pisses off everybody and uh just like teens do in real life um so of course the second part of the of the you know of the new franchise God of War is has some Marvel Vibes like everybody is there everybody is always constantly helping you and you know it's like Avengers Assemble kind of stuff but I still love it and it's amazing it's an amazing game it's a strong pick yeah for game of the year yeah yeah I mean I I again I'm not gonna surprise anyone it's not that uh I I actually try to make

time to play some not that AAA video games I've I've played um straight and I've also played this uh this Cult of the Lamb uh game which is also great but I just I I I'm a completionist type of gamer you know who has to complete every single side quest and find every single uh chest in the game and that's exactly what I do you gotta war and that's exactly the reason why every one of my friends has already finished god of war and I'm still playing playing it even though it's uh the end of the year and the game was out on November 9th and I bought it on the release and I still haven't finished it because first I don't really have time and second I'm trying to complete everything there is there but yeah it just it's so good I'm just you play it for three four five hours and you're just walking around the the all the nine worlds and

it's my nightmare game I strongly considered it I um I've I have gotten so annoyed with atreus that like until they put out a shut up atreus patch I don't know if I can play it anyway um well so the problem is yeah I mean legitimately so they've um they've gone so far like you you'll start a puzzle and then atreus will just tell you the answer so like it takes away like much of the puzzle yeah I understand like they were trying to make it okay accessible and the accessibility options in the game are incredible I've never seen a game like just able to cater to whatever kind of challenges you have um but yeah they don't have a hint config no I I work for them to add it um and I don't know how like there's so many spoken lines of dialogue of these hints like maybe it'd be really hard to go back and tag them all or something I'm not sure but um it's it's a very common complaint that I see and and really the only complaint I have about the whole game

but I feel like it takes away a large part of the enjoyment of just being able to enjoy those puzzles yeah they're literally telling you in like in a minute if you do not uh if you did not succeed in you know solving a puzzle everybody every Sidekick is like just do this and go there yeah it makes me feel dumb like yeah I'm sorry yeah exactly yeah I think it was Uncharted that has some kind of hidden system if I'm not wrong I'm surprised they missed that okay which is a board game uh it's ISS Vanguard sorry Matt it's a board game so can you play it can you play it in one day how long have I played it uh it's a legacy narrative Co-op game so it takes quite a lot of sessions to get through in total we've played about 12 hours of it I think

oh okay how long is one session so it's divided into two Loops you have the ship management and then you have the planets or Planetary Exploration and in the ship management Imagine The Meta of an idol an idle RPG game where you get characters you upgrade them you upgrade your ship you do all these things you produce stuff and you resolve drama and then you have the actual exploration which is when you land on a planet and you're discovering it doing fights and so each part of those sessions takes about sorry the exploration takes about two and two hours and the ship management is around a half an hour what what what what do you like about it it's just been such a long time since I've played a really well-balanced Co-op game since gloomhaven I haven't found a game where everyone has to be really playing as a group and tactically and leaning into their characters uh

expertise and then the balancing it just goes down to the last round and just makes it an exciting play where you have to get everything right in the order and what you're doing to get off the planet it's just very satisfying and a bit of an adrenaline rush to be honest that sounds fantastic yes really good and then the story is just beautiful I love space operas and this has all the ticks of a really good Space Opera my my one criticism of frost Punk is that it's really just a one player game like they have co-op but it's um there's not much like asymmetry the different characters aren't really different um so you get some of that the co-op of like kind of arguing back and forth about what you should do but less of the roles that I like to see in co-op games so that that sounds fantastic and now I'm gonna have to go find it that's really good honestly I highly highly recommend it and then I I'm looking

forward to falling back in love with console next year there was no game released this year for console that made me go wow and I'm just I realize and I've come to peace I'm just tired of the known formula of open world lots of side quests you have to grind it there's um there's not a lot of gameplay Discovery throughout the 80 hours I have to play so I get bored fairly quickly looking forward to people doing exciting new kinds of games and then the games that are really interesting like Elden ring and return all they're just too hard I don't have the patience to just sit there for hours trying to defeat one thing I want to be productive in my sessions yeah that's exactly what completion is the completion it means when it comes to different types of Gamers uh I mean there are PVP Gamers and completion types and some other types there are many types but uh what

what what completionists uh gives you is that you feel productive take off those uh side quests it's not that much because it's pretty productive I guess yeah different kinds of products you describe yourself as a casual player I definitely was not expecting God of War as your game of the year I was expecting okay I mean casual as in not gonna spend 100 hours on a single Elden ring boss like some of my friends do when when I saw them playing Elden ring and they got beaten up every single time for just entering a certain location I was like really so when are you when do you expect to finish it next year okay we have to get through these more quickly or else we're gonna run out of time yeah next avoid or not we need more vodka um

The Good the good high like is that the one we want to go with next or the Unicorn Manu you're choosing oh unicorn should be like at the end I think that's like the big reveal okay then the good uh my best friend doesn't like board games okay I'll I'll keep this quick since you know everyone has opinions right now a little bit okay A little bit of inside baseball for the listeners we have a notes document right and so normally when I prep for the podcast I put all my notes in the document my friends here on the podcast with me on the round table did not put their Selections in the document so everyone knows what I'm going to say but I have no idea what everyone else is going to say uh so anyways I didn't I didn't check the knowledge document so I also don't know what you're gonna say so everything is like new to me okay cool well you'll appreciate this money because my good highlight for 2022 was Elden ring and from software uh so we've already talked about it a little bit I know it's not everyone's cup of tea but

to me this game is just like an incredible achievement um you know I've been playing Dark Souls franchise for a long time now um and the way that they've been able to build up this you know cult following into and finally break through to a mass Market with a game that as we've talked about is brutally difficult it does not hold your hand at all there's no instructions there's no hints there's no tutorials it's like go figure it out and die a bunch of times and keep coming back and like that's supposed to be fun and so like just the it's like an incredible achievement in my opinion um so just just a quick number here as of last month November um Elden ring was at 17 and a half million units sold uh and that is more than Dark Souls 3 and Securo combined so huge success for this company uh you know premium box product it's not a live service or anything and I think they've

only recently put in their like multiplayer Arena like Coliseum update I haven't played it yet I actually never finished Eldon ring like I put easily 120 hours into it and never finish the story I was too busy like doing all the side quests I'm kind of like Anton I like to do like complete everything um but uh anyways it's brutally difficult it's Unapologetic and it was a massive mainstream success in spite of all those things so that is my highlight of 2022 so shout out to film software to be honest with from software I'm so excited about onward core six I don't know anything about that game but it's I know from software so I'm like I'm on board it's uh it's a 10 year after 10 year pause I believe it's a new part of a franchise and the last one was PlayStation 3. um so I I haven't played a single game of that IP but I'm I'm really excited after the game awards trailer looks

amazing and apparently they've said that it's not going to be that hard as the souls like Yay games are from software and also one more thing about what Matt has said uh I mean when you're trying to complete everything on the map and when Eldon ring does not give a single um I'm trying to be polite here but uh when Eldon ring doesn't give you a single tip of where to go and how to finish the the quest this is another reason why I'm not playing this game even the map is not accurate like yeah it's like this is what the map is supposed to be but through like narrative events like this bridge is no longer existing or like this Castle is ruined or whatever like it's not an accurate map either wow I need to kick atreus out of God of War and into Elden ring yeah Matt did you finish Elden ring I never finished it um I I was probably 120 130 hours in and

I got sidetracked like trying to do all the side quests and things like that I never finished the main storyline I always intended to go back I will go back one day I'll do a different build um but no I didn't finish it Anthony what was your best highlight uh my highlight was the steam deck I think it really surprised everyone there was a lot of hesitation the very early versions had a lot of bugs in them when it came out in early this year but at this point it sold over a million units um it may be more than that but that's the number that we seem seem pretty comfortable quoting um you know very positive reviews all over the price tag I mean you're getting it's not a high-end gaming computer but it's it's a gaming computer for 399 dollars it uh the tech behind it their proton compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux is pretty amazing

and a huge win for Linux fans um you know this as much as the steam box just didn't work I think valve actually got it right here they um they have the software to really make it work it's now you're not limited to just Linux games you get almost the whole library at least of the the modern ones um they uh they've apparently been paying their open source developers who are working on it so it's good to see them kind of like feeding back into the open source Community uh it's a very open system um which is also really nice to see so uh you know anyone can put their software on it you can run it actually has a full Linux desktop just running in it too you can just push a button and bounce over to Linux you can install Windows on it Lars to say who's been on a couple of the podcasts traveled a while back and just took a steam deck and installed Windows on it and used it as his PC while he was traveling so I think it's just it's fantastic Hardware

it's really good software um and it's sold well so far and you know largely limited by just production you know difficulties um so you know I'm really excited to see where that goes and in particular to see if third-party manufacturers start to build their own versions of it because then we could get a lot more Innovation I don't think valve is looking to make money on the steam deck as much as just you know get steam into more and more hands so you know they don't need to win on the hardware side they're it's in their best interest to do like Android like Google did and open it up and just get as many Fantastic devices on it so that's that's my good of the year nice and also looks pretty good I mean I've um I had so Thomas who's a part of our Consulting team um he really wanted the steam deck and but he's sitting in Australia and they don't really ship that so I so he

shipped one to me and then I had to like kind of like ship it to him and I had to like open the box when I got it so I saw it and it looks pretty slick um and yeah now I have a little bit of steam deck formal uh I might just like purchase one but but yeah and the dock works well as well it's like very much like a Nintendo switch so I use that as my gaming on my computer or on my um TV um so I can't reach my gaming computer with it and uh I mean it's still a little early but it works I'm getting fomo too the only reason um [Laughter] you don't really like have to care about fomo because uh I have switch and I I've never I haven't used switching in the last couple of months so when you get steam deck you're probably gonna you're probably gonna use that for a month or so if you're like me and then it's gonna be you know not used probably probably but

I was supposed to I was supposed to be using a Nintendo switch uh on on the plane and uh well you know uh using the train or whatever and I do not even do that now Anton this is me this is meant to be the positive section we have to be positive here I'm just I'm just trying vodka and that bottle that he has man he's actually drinking water without affordability like just getting a 300 gaming computer that you can hook up to a monitor is also something that's pretty much impossible even if you're building your own off of Newegg like it's so um I I don't use it for portability as much as just having it as a useful computer and carry around I'll put where I want you what is your best highlight of the year uh so my best of great way to do is is probably a name that has come up very often now at least in the past month uh

and it's it's Marvel snap so um the reason so okay one disclaimer I actually don't really enjoy the game uh it's not it's not like it's not like a very fun game for me but the reason it's my best 2022 is because I kind of find it to be a game that will like push the free to play mobile industry in the right directions uh going forward so um I kind of see like if there were like three big trends that I feel will kind of play out over you know the next three to four years uh they would be uh so games or mobile free to play games with very high production values than just an increasing um increasing amount of Ip infusion in in mobile games and like there are just you know idfa and like marketing related reasons uh for all of that but also just you know IPS want to be in games now the

IPS that don't even have games uh their own and the third is being cross-platform from the get-go so yeah so high production values increase IP infusion and kind of being cross-platform from the get-go I feel these three trends all culminate in Marvel snap really really well and um other developers kind of looking too you know uh kind of built for 2023 2024 2025 uh I think Marvel snap is like one of these games that you know said to that bar for a lot of these uh more higher end maybe more on the AAA Mobile free to play side of uh developers um gentian impact had like a similar um um impact when it kind of came out um and you know people like it really opened up uh I think the Western developers eyes and Minds towards um how much of quality can be packed

onto a mobile device uh and you know and people and basically like I felt you know personally a lot of the western developers were just like asleep at the wheel on that regard and then you know uh uh now called just kind of showed the world the technical Marvel with that so so yeah I wouldn't like go into you know the wise behind any of these Trends and all too much uh just because yeah we want to keep it short also but um but yeah that would be my best of 2022. okay Anton how about you I'm gonna be um I'm gonna be short and I'm just gonna say that the best the best thing that has happened uh to me in terms of the of the market in terms of the industries that um the company I work for has successfully navigated all the all the things we had to deal with in 2022 and the the you know the new role the new uh the new direction that we have taken

as a as a family as a team of uh 2000 plus people and the way that uh I believe we're looking into 2023 with a little bit more optimism than we then we had during all this year is is probably the best thing that has happened to all of us all right Maria oh uh yes so my best highlight of the year is that cozy games are becoming a thing in a previous episode I oh yeah Matt is also lifting his arms up in cheers I already went through a bit of a long description as to why I'm very excited about this so I'll I won't go through it again anyway who doesn't want a cozy game to feel good and I think something that excites me a lot is that I believe it would be a great genre for VR because I think VR with a headset High action fast-paced games it can be difficult to adapt that

kind of platform and so who doesn't want to be immersed exploring a forest and petting Tales of lots of cute little animals like signing me up for that I I I will like to know how it's going to be monetized and how it could potentially explore a new way to monetize games because free to play monetization is definitely not cozy uh I'm the reason I'm so excited is because I considered putting unpacking as one of my either best of or game of the year but as actually it came out in 2021 um so did not qualify but yeah big fan of that that take Maria is is Tunic also like a cozy game or or not I haven't played the Cozy game ish like um it's it's very it's not like um super stressful but there is like combat and things like that so I don't know if I'd call it exactly a cozy game if you could pet the Fox's tail I'd say yes but you can't so

okay now we go to the negative part so this is a roller coaster we go from positive we go to negative and then we're going to have the finale of the Unicorn so starting off who wants to kick off the bad news who wants to be the downer I can go first since you guys are already like on the opposite side of me here mine will be very quick um uh to be clear but um uh so I actually wrote about this back in August and my topic for worst of 2022 is gaming layoffs so back in August I predicted that we would see more gaming layoffs and sadly that has come to pass so it's maybe good news for startups that are looking for talent or people who want to go start up their own Venture uh I would encourage impacted workers to do so if they're in a you know financial situation to do that but um yeah that was a bummer and that was my worst of 2022. yeah like slightly related um we kind of recognized the same on the newsletter side of it so we just

um we made like the job board uh free uh so anyone listening and they want to like you know get their job featured on the newsletter um you know just check out check out the newsletter check out the job board and post over there yeah oh that's awesome man yeah yeah I think this year made me go from Oh I thought games was quite stable in terms of layoffs it was more secure but actually these Corrections happen across the board okay next next bad highlight thanks for kicking it off Matt menu yeah um so it's gonna be yeah so it's a game again uh and um and it's a mobile for you to play one I think my worst of 2022 is probably X hero and the reason I find it to be the worst of 2022 because um it makes a lot of money

but it also represents like everything that I feel is wrong with mobile free to play and you know that's not really great um and um yeah the the the things that I kind of find that it um or the The Vibes that it puts out towards the industry is uh you can make a lot of money by you know almost like duping players uh with a marketing strategy uh like that and also like just you know this like really crash beaten switch that happens in that game um so yeah I guess uh I mean another like you know uh get too too much into the details of it uh we did talk about it in a previous podcast but um but yeah it makes a lot of money and to me at least it uh from a marketing strategy standpoint from a game design standpoint and this is more like a you

know it's a personal take I um it's not no real objective with you to this but for me at least it uh you know just represents how I wouldn't want the mobile free to play Space to evolve in 2023 uh and Beyond so yeah you don't want to save the Doge you weren't you weren't a fan of savory I have you seen [Music] the him is this no longer saving a doge it's no longer saving a doge it's now saving a really horrifying scary face yeah is that they did the app icon change right and it's just like this yeah that yeah a crazy story looking woman yeah it's not even cute anymore but yeah anyway yeah it's not even cute anymore no more Doge no why does okay I'll go to the next five I would want to see like more Deutsche and mobile for you to play also in 2023 so

no more doge is another point for everything that's around but yeah I support more dose games yeah um okay my bad highlight of the year are the crypto pump and dumps and the collapse of Terra Luna and FTX I think it really hurt the perception of blockchain even further because it wasn't great starting off apart from a small segment of people in the world a lot of people lost quilaw money and so you know us always really harsh that you couldn't fully prevent that and I think FTX brought crypto to a widow awareness of people and Gamers that aren't always keeping up with the bleeding edge and now I think that's not the great first forward into bringing that wider awareness you know my mom talks to me about FTX that's how she got into knowing about crypto and following that that market I think that will just hurt mainstream adoption further I hope

it recovers and I hope it's just you know a small slump but yeah it's really unfortunate yeah um yeah I was saying yeah both both the FTX collapse and the Terra Luna thing kind of hitting back to back has like really um from this like Mass adoption perspective it's it's really like taking crypto more broadly a few steps uh back and uh you know like your mom uh is kind of bringing it up with you um even in my friend Circle you know it's it's only negativity around crypto versus you know what the mood used to be uh back in 2021 and people were actually excited about you know walking through all the UI ux headaches of setting up a wallet and you know they were willing to do that um Anton what is your bad highlight of 2022 yeah again I'm gonna be super short on this one so basically the worst thing that has happened is the Eastern European part of the market

and of the industry and the of the whole professional uh Community has been very much divided uh since the beginning of the year and the worst part for me was just seeing you know people who used to work together and communicate on the gaming events uh and sharing the knowledge and the expertise we're discussing some other stuff right which which had pretty much no connection to the to the market to the industry will we all love I guess it's still happening not as intensive as it used to be or maybe I just isolated myself from that I don't know but uh uh the the beginning in the middle of the year was all about that and everybody had to and uh everybody had to deal with the consequences uh instead of you know just making great games experimenting with the genres and whatnot and with the you know monetization model whatever and everybody just had to deal with the

consequences and save the business uh and try to you know save the the people that work for the company uh you know in all kinds you know you know terms of the word so yeah that would be the worst spot I just I just hope that 2023 would be the way better year for the industry and for the people working there yeah I hope so too thank you a lot for sharing that Anthony last bad highlight before I move on back to happiness all right um so uh I mean there's almost certainly some recency bias in this and that it was just a couple days ago um but uh epic games was fined uh 520 million dollars by the FTC um and it was split between about half of that was for their in-store in-game store in the refund system so the complaints apparently the um they at least according to the

plaintiff um or the FTC they ignored over a million user complaints about um like invertent purchases and things not working it was very easy to make unauthorized purchases with a single button tap um you know and the variety of things that they just didn't really address until this past year when I think you know it's certainly too late um and then the other half was for child privacy and safety um they uh early on employees apparently had requested that voice chat be opt-in and they decided not to do that which led to a lot of um harassment of young you know kids under the age of 13 um or at least them having to be exposed to that um they were asking for information from less than 13 year olds they didn't always comply with requests to delete accounts and information um so I mean that's that's bad um at the same time you can see it as good move in that the FTC is cracking down on it and you know making sure that

companies like this is going to be an important precedent and kind of example um a half a billion dollars is not a slap on the wrist even for uh epic um and so I mean hopefully other companies will start taking some of these issues more seriously but um and and somewhat to I mean I don't know if I want to give Epic credit for it but you know they they accepted the settlement and the release that I saw um was not them like they didn't deny it as much as you said that they accepted it because they want to um move forward and be you know some of the best customer experience so it feels like they at least have somewhat admitted to it and are working like within the last year I've made a lot of changes to try to address it um but uh yeah it's uh you know one of our one of the biggest in the industry um having some pretty significant problems with privacy and safety yeah hopefully the solutions that they develop will become part of the platform as well so that other game devs can

integrate with the solutions all right now we reached the Unicorn Awards nice finally the unicorns oh I still don't quite know I still don't quite know what this genre is so yeah we'll we'll see what each of us picked and that will influence next year it's kind of like um it's kind of like you know better than the best also like you know just something that blew your mind completely in over 2022 yeah at least for me it was like that but I should probably go first then because mine wasn't as as amazing well I interpret it more as like a grab bag like pick is something that you want to give an award for um but I didn't go for the just amazingness um so I'll start it off and you guys can ramp up from there um so uh I I picked um best new genre

and um went with uh I don't know if we want to call him a horde map or a horde survival or but the vampire survivors is the game that really kind of brought it into um light I was I was a little surprised doing some research um Happy's survivor.io would um actually predates um vampire survivors and a magic survival is a game that was from 2000 19 that both of those games are very very similar to so um interesting much to my surprise vampire survivors did not invent that genre but they did have a tremendous amount of success and um you know polished a lot of it and have continued to live service it and provide new content and we've seen I always go live it was in December 2021 um and you know really started picking up in 2022. um yeah and they've estimated to have somewhere between two and five million sales 98 positive on Steam 86 metacrit grading

um and then I was just looking for other games in the genre and all of these are Early Access and either very positive or overwhelming positive on Steam runic Survivor brotato Army of Ruin Rogue genesia um Bounty of one Crimson Dawn 20 minutes till dawn like these are all directly inspired by that game um and so it's a really a new genre that plays well on PC it plays well on mobile um survivor.io I think they're happy has had some pretty good success with um so uh that was my kind of grab bag award was best new genre that's super interesting to know that uh it like happy did I always thought happy copy vampire survivors but it doesn't that doesn't seem to be the case we can check the data on it but um I was looking at sensor Tower and it looked like they their earliest versions were from 2020 like in test markets it may have changed a lot since then um so don't quote me as much on that one but magic survival definitely was from 2019 and predated

both of those all right Anton do you have a unicorn um I'm not sure whether this can be actually described as the Unicorn award but um I was thinking about two things uh the first one is the game that I have already mentioned today which is color of the lamp and this is a unicorn because I would uh I would describe the Unicorn uh the Unicorn here as the game because uh on one hand it's a it's a great game with with great visuals and the very great ideas behind it like in terms of the gameplay in terms of you know the the setting right I mean if you haven't played it it's basically about a small um lamp who was sacrificed in the forest by some evil forces and uh the devil resurrects him to create a cult of all the cartoonish uh

animals living in the forest like rabbits and foxes and whatnot and so you have to they're basically two two things you can do in the game with the first one being uh handling your Camp your cult you have to build stuff you have to maintain stuff you have to take care of the cult members you have to bury them if they die or you have to you know clean up after them you have to feed them and uh they're maybe Heretics and you have to deal with Heretics as well you may take them to prison it's a very fun game it's a very fun game uh Matt I promise I didn't look at the notes what is your unicorn of the year yeah okay okay sure uh so my my unicorn award um initially I was gonna put Elder ring here but I put that as my best stuff so I went with one that I thought was a huge overachievement and that is Wordle

um so Wordle came out of nowhere and then suddenly it was everywhere and everyone was playing it and uh it just was like insanely popular and insanely simple um you know really simple word that's a good one it was uh it was acquired at the height of its popularity by New York Times for quote um the low seven figures so a nice exit for the Creator and uh by the way the the guy who created it his name is Josh Wardle he was the same developer or product manager as Reddit place which I think is a really interesting sort of social experiment that I've written about in the past for novik definitely check that out if you're not familiar with it and so I'll just leave you with um sort of uh he's done like a few like uh of these games right he kind of has I think of like creating these like super uh concise like game experiences but they're always viral right yeah I I uh there are other examples I didn't didn't write them down but um there are

definitely others and I think he he created this if I'm not mistaken like for his partner uh like they like to do puzzles together and this was just something he kind of threw together for the two of them to play which I think is really really sweet um yeah so just to kind of like give you all and give listeners like uh a taste of like the cultural impact that this game had I was looking at an article that had a list of the spin-off games that were inspired by Wordle and I'm sure you all have seen some but by this point they're it's like a huge list but some of the highlights for me there's one called worldl which is you guessed the country from a silhouette there's hurdle where you're guessing a song from a snippet uh there's word Dolly which is Wordle plus Dolly you're guessing the prompt from a dolly generated image there was a purdle which is named after jakobirdel who's an NBA player so you're guessing NBA players shout out to my fellow NBA nerds there's hexadecordal which is 16 words and there's about like

50 other ones too so uh there's you just Google it like Wordle spin-offs there's so many of them um so shout out to Wordle uh Matt what's your NBA team uh that's an easy one my NBA team is the Boston Celtics the greatest sports franchise and North American professional sporting history with 17 championships you can see lots of memorabilia behind me Celtics memorabilia so I'm outing myself to the entire novik audience I'm a Celtics fan even though I live in Los Angeles yeah you live in the lane why why not Lakers because the Lakers I mean come on there's first of all there are no lakes in Los Angeles let me be clear there are no lakes in Los Angeles all right they they you know they adopted the Minneapolis Lakers championships for their own my wife is a Lakers fan by the way so she's probably the seafood or like shaking her head but um anyways I I'm not shy about this as you can tell yeah clearly yeah when's the last time that they won a championship

the Celtics or the Lakers yeah the Celtics uh I believe it was 2008 2007 2008. oh that's that's been but they were in the finals last year and they kind of blew it but um hopefully this year okay we'll go to mine I will leave mania's unicorn to the last because he's clearly the most excited member of this round table with these awards no okay yes yes you're gonna be rapping up the show okay my unicorn was Crafton because it's been a really long time since I've fallen in love with a company that and what they're building and I remember just doing the research and then I stayed up until like 2 A.M because I wanted to keep going down the rabbit hole so they're just making so many cool games and I want to play them all I know that Kalisto protocol has some issues with it and I would love to play it but I heard that's actually really scary and so I can't

um but yeah maybe one day I'll grow strong enough outside the trailer of that and then I stopped myself from downloading it but yeah well like all about how they're trying to become and build the groundwork of going across platform and being a multi-ip house and how they're investing all a lot in Tech adjacent Industries also exploring hyper realistic humans and all that they're doing in terms of pubg liveops and rent crossover it's just so exciting and I can't wait to play a dark fantasy RPGs I think Fantasy games can be just a bit too happy so I'm really looking forward to getting into that ah crafting I was just gonna say I think it's going to be a big year for crafting I wrote about them for novic digest recently and I think Callisto protocol maybe like didn't do that well I haven't looked at the numbers I think like it's a good game but like from a sales perspective I don't think it's like blowing anyone away and as you point out Maria they need to develop

other IPS like they can't rely on pubg forever um especially when the biggest pubg game is split with 10 cent and so they're not really capturing all the profits that they could be otherwise um so I think it's a really interesting company and they may get I'm this I have no data to support this but my sort of hunch is that they may get more involved in blockchain than they already are and try and you know snatch up some companies there but I think it'll be a big year for crafting coming up it's crucial whether it goes well or not we'll see but it's important that they get it right I think they made a partnership with Solana do you think FTX could potentially hurt their investment that they're getting into I couldn't find too many details about it it's possible I don't know the details of it either but I do do know that they had some sort of deal with Solana Labs um yeah I don't know all this a lot of games are kind of in a weaker position because of FTX

all right I'm on you wrap us up like a little present okay all right this is a this is a happy Utica no Anton unicorn but this one is called uh or not call but my Unicorno 2022 is actually uh stumble guys um because I think I think the story of Istanbul guys is really like a story it's a two and a half year story actually until they you know sold to uh scopely uh but it's really a story of a team that you know recognized an opportunity very quickly um and then kind of rose to that occasion and then kind of made the most of that opportunity uh over two and a half years and we saw the Pinnacle of that once they got kind of uh when they're sold to scopely so yeah so like some interesting highlights about this game um so yeah I guess we have previously also like you know talked about uh you know when they launched um and um and

you know um when fall guys launched that was kind of the part just that six week production timeline very quickly after launching Fall Guys was kind of the part that um that's the recognizing the opportunity part and this was pretty interesting just because of you know um they immediately kind of filling a gap on the store uh where uh everyone was kind of searching for Fall Guys mobile but you know we're basically landing on stumble guys um one very interesting thing that uh I kind of found in our research was if you actually check the APK of uh of uh of stumble guys the original name of the game was actually fall buddies uh so the APK actually says like fall buddies dot you know whatever APK code um but but yeah and and also like another interesting thing is this whole scopely acquisition uh part of things this is actually not something new to that team they've actually first of all this is a team that's been working

together for a very long time but they've done it twice already in the past so they sold um mobile and then like eventually sold also boom carts to fingersoft in 2021 and then this whole like you know stumble guys and then the scopely thing so it was just like interesting to kind of uh go through their story and see like you know the small four to six person team have just see so much of success because you know um they recognize an opportunity they Rose to the occasion work super hard and kept improving the game and eventually you know sold it to scopely so um in stark contrast to you know everything like x0 which is everything that is wrong with them will help you to play I kind of like just salute the stumble gas team uh quite a bit even though okay sure it's a copy of all guys but still yes about that recognition of the market and and jumping onto it quickly going

quick to Market yeah wow I didn't realize I had done it before that's yeah that's very interesting it's being a hard-hitting team that knows each other very well curious to get to know them yep and then almost feels like a you know like an internal strategy of uh there's build a game and then yeah and sell it and then build the next one okay we're going to wrap up this was our longest Round Table ever because it's a holiday special and yeah does anyone have any last words before we close up the Santa shop thanks for listening appreciate it happened Celtics yeah no no I'm I'm always appreciative of the people that listen to the podcast and and care about what we have to say and read the newsletter and I'm just like I'm I'm always appreciative of that so thank you for listening thank you for reading yep definitely and yeah I mean 2022 like really went by so fast and uh but yeah

really looking forward to 2023 um yeah I'll be becoming a dad in March so I'll probably not be around on the podcast for for some time but congrats um yeah thank you uh but yeah looking forward to 2023 for you know uh more than work reasons also so yeah and just to highlight what Matt said always very appreciative everyone who listens I know we can't get to know each other always you know it's this whole content creation online but if you were ever in conferences and around and you want to meet send a message to any of us as always good to get to know each other even though you do mostly listening and we do we do the talking like to turn the tables around so yeah have a good holiday everyone if you are going to celebrate Christmas have a good Christmas and we'll pick up again I believe in the second week of January because we're going to take a little break all right thank you happy

Holidays happy holidays cheers bye everyone happy Hanukkah I know it's Hanukkah right now yes happy Hanukkah big Hanukkah Feast coming up in the Dion household very soon so thank you enjoy all the holidays everyone see you next year foreign [Music]