2023 Half-year Review

foreign [Music] gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a full sun current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novik's growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and advisory services for more information visit www.navic.com now let's jump into the episode hello everyone welcome to another Novak Roundtable I'm your host Devin Becker and with me I have great panelists as always especially the ever Lively Aaron Bush co-founder of novik Anil desk Gupta also very Lively co-founder of FirstLight games and Jonathan anastas CEO of clash TV how are you guys doing enjoying your summer I'm trapped with a six-year-old up in Big Sur so this is a

welcome Escape joins the podcast because you've done that before not this podcast but uh in early covid he was famous for the the naked Zoom bomb nice surprise guest well uh well maybe maybe that'll be a surprise for the YouTube audience here that that's watching there just a visual gag only cool well uh rather than do kind of the usual news updates it was a little bit of a slow Newsweek so we actually want to switch things up this time and just uh do a little bit of a half year review talk about some things you know that have gone in the past this year and some things we're looking forward to in the future uh just overall kind of thoughts about how things are going where they could go for the rest of the year since we're at about the halfway mark so I figured we just kind of kick things off with uh just favorite game of the year so far uh for whoever wants to uh put their hand up on that one yeah well I was gonna say you guys surely must know what I'm gonna answer for this one um but if you haven't it's Street

Fighter 6 that is of course my favorite game but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by just how good it was I always chose another Capcom game which was President even before remake which is another great game but Street Fighter I've been playing them as a kid so you know I've given you this story before I have not only if I worked on that game bios that kind of used to skip school to play the game so I have high expectations what the game should have but I think that Capcom really nailed it this time around the last time that they released them a street fight it was really poor they had sort of lots of issues on launch this time around they've done some amazing things they're really good and I think something that I've noticed is very interesting is that this game has very strong word of mouth I think it's very well deserved as well I saw on Twitch just over the weekend they were saying some Japanese vtuber event and it was actually the number one most streamed game on all of twitch including you know your regular mobas and things like this so that was pretty interesting I think it's starting to resonate with audience which it may not have in the past fabito I think the things that I really like about it one it's a really well produced package so it's not just the

fighting game mechanics that's to be honest with you what I care about the most but actually now there's this kind of world tour mode which I think is long overdue trying to make this kind of game genre more accessible to new people it's a lot of fun grinding making your own character texting Chun-Li like you dreamed of being as a kid and all this kind of stuff that's pretty funny um but obviously for me actually was more interesting than that is they've got this idea called the battle Hub and what it is I don't know if you've seen this but it's kind of like a virtual metaverse thing of all these arcade machines so you walk in and there's all these people sitting by the machines playing now for me that was literally my life I used to go to this place called the trocodiro in central London where they had all these machines it used to be a Sega World actually before that and you'd go down you'd see someone playing your favorite game in my case it was third strike you'd put your money on the machine you'll be like okay me and you Jonathan we're going let's throw it down right now and then you would make friends and enemies this way and the fact that they've done it it one one is that Nostalgia trip which I think is so powerful but I really just like the social way of doing it like it's much

easier you know you could just facilitate it with a button that custom finds you a game and you can still do that in the game but this idea of you going around I think it really shows you what's special about sort of such games of that I guess it's the same as having a lan Cafe but it's almost like having a lan Cafe virtually even though you're already playing an online game and I think this is a feature that you might see in a lot of other games going forward I kind of thought it was genius so there's so many things I could say about it there isn't really much negative I could say about it at all to be honest with you I think it's really well deserved I think it set the gold standard to what fighting game genre can be and I'm interested to see what other competitors do to see because I think you know it's really good to have strong competition like Mortal Kombat one I've seen they've just done their own stress tests I'm curious to see if they can reach such a high bar um because that's what I think it's going to do I think the overall quality of all fighting games new tech and I think the same I think if they were planning on releasing it they might be like whoa whoa whoa we need like three to six months more development just ahead the standard so that's my favorite game of the year so far I think it's it's really great Street Fighter six by Capcom well you always got multi versus

uh hopefully coming back to in 2024 we'll see Jonathan you ready to go with yours sure my answer is as equally predictable I anticipate which is Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2. um my reason really and I think it also ties to one of the big trends of the year and the trends in the industry for a long time is it's familiar right like I've been playing Call of Duty for more than a decade it executes what it does really well it doesn't try to be anything more than it really is One reviewer called it the Fast and Furious of video games and I can't argue with that right which is like sometimes it's a seven sometimes it's a nine but it's always exactly what you expect it to be and at my life stage like I frankly don't have time to learn right and like get good at something and by the way not that I'm good at Call of Duty but I'm not terrible if I tried to pick up a new IP at this point I would be terrible so the ability to plug into

a world that I'm familiar with in a world that I know executed by AAA studio is like exactly how gaming fits into my life now and without sort of tipping our hand too much to the next question I do think and Neil's answer and my answer is indicative of why the video game charts looks like they look these days right in preparation of this episode I looked at like what are the top selling games per year up to the year to this point every single one of the top ten is an extension a franchise a sequel a remake zero of the top ten our new IP right because we discover is hard the learning new gameplay mechanics is hard dropping into the Familiar of executed well is easy that said my runner-up well it's the same thing I also love Street Fighter six you know I I have the same childhood experiences and I love all that Nostalgia but yet it also makes it very 2023 so while I probably you know that's been five percent of my gaming time it's been a very enjoyable five percent of my

gaming time and it's made me super excited for Evo this summer maybe they could do like a virtual one uh with the battle Hub or something like that as well like a side Evo thing uh I was actually thinking about it I'm not really expecting that they must be doing that because that could be really cool for games as well real metaverse right yeah yeah yeah where people actually go into the game yeah yeah well I mean it's interesting the timing of that because like uh covid really hurt that sort of scene in Japan like the the local arcade scene and to the point where like Sega moved their building out of the main area there where they had it and stuff like that so maybe it's like timing wise just kind of needed to have like this virtual version of that sort of in person get together thing I don't know maybe we gotta have a novice battle as well there's enough fans here oh we have to we have to stream it for charity or something that would be fun Aaron you got something yeah so so my game might be predictable to the broader gaming audience but it's actually

somewhat unpredictable if you know me and it is Zelda tears of the Kingdom which I my guess is it's probably gonna win game of the year um unless something crazy happens um but um what's interesting and one of my most opposed gaming views is that I actually did not really like breath of the wild um that much um I couldn't really stand the weapons breaking like every five seconds which just drove me crazy in that game I thought some of the like main puzzle points like the main like campaign parts of the game they were just kind of boring and kind of just like complex and puzzly and not actually as much fun as other people thought and a lot of people praise the open world of the last game but personally like it was just too meandery for me like I don't want to spend 50 the pointless hours just Meandering like I got other things to do in life you know um and so it was surprising to me to put

tears of the Kingdom um number one despite not loving the first game and maybe to some degree I'm a changed gamer but this new version seems to have taken the best of the last game which won game of the year in 2017 and made it better so like the main plot lines and destinations of this game come across as a bit more linear um and adventurey and not just like big mechanical puzzles although there definitely is that um you get they added all sorts of new abilities that uh just allow you to do more things as a character they added crafting of like being able to like build all sorts of crazy Contraptions which honestly like the more you get into it like it's Genius Like game design in my opinion of how all of these pieces like work together um in in this game on the switch where people are just creating anything and everything of all sorts of complexity

that just CR like do all sorts of wild things in the game um and it's all it's really fun I'm normally not the kind of person that wants to put like hours into crafting but um you know it's easy and fun enough just to like throw things together and you know figure out how to hack the little shrines and figure out how to just move faster through all sorts of things and I've been enjoying that um and even with the whole breaking weapons thing which I hated there's there's like new mechanics there with fusing and repairs that just make me feel better and so I feel like this is a game that like really is even though the last one won game of the year this game is even better um and so it's definitely gonna serve the people who enjoyed the last game really well but I think it it did a good job of like you know making it more enjoyable for other people as well so it makes sense to me that this game performed even bigger and better than the last one obviously there's more switches out now

so maybe it shouldn't be too too surprising but um but yeah that was that was my favorite game of the year so far uh my my backup was Resident Evil 4 remake so Capcom is showing up really strong um in this showing perhaps it's no surprise that you know there's a company are firing on all cylinders and you know stocks hitting new highs and all of those things too um but uh good year for games so far how about you Devin yeah I mean I've definitely noticing the trend here of like uh part of the reason it's all these franchises right is them actually building what people wanted and like actually iterating and improving instead of just being like eh we're good enough right like it sounds like everyone kind of made that mistake like Street Fighter 5 before there's been some dead Call of Duties maybe breath of the wild didn't do everything it wanted to do like everyone just got a chance to like it's funny too because we have the delay from kova do you think like actually the games because we've had a lot of games kind of Come Out Half Baked too so it's surprising that there's so many that were actually really well refined also come out so I mean that's

that's just not nice to hear I guess uh my my picks is not really like a franchise but I also kind of like stuck between a game that didn't actually come out this year in a game that's not out yet so uh but my answer was either gonna be Marvel snap which like I don't know I can't really count it because it it didn't come out this year but like I still feel like it's it's still kind of my go-to like uh all these other games you know I try out it's fun for like a little bit but kind of end up back on my phone at some point every you know time I'm just sitting around idle I'm almost that but the other the other pick I had was uh X defiant which uh I've been actually enjoying more through each of the tests uh because I think I've played two or three of the kind of different tests that they've run uh and I think it's actually it started reminding me of one game that I did miss quite a bit which was Ghost Recon Phantoms and actually took a lot of elements from that and kind of put that into this including the characters and so there's I don't know reminded me of what I was kind of missing from that and I imagine I I almost wonder if there's some of the that team on there uh I don't know how well it'll do honestly as a game just

because like it's kind of a crowded genre and stuff like that and I don't know especially with Ubisoft but I think it's it's fun and I had a good time with it I hope comes out well but uh yeah there hasn't been a lot of I'm not I'm not usually one for playing lots of narrative long games and and uh play through the street fighter it looked really cool I just haven't got a chance to get into it yet but maybe that'll be on my next list but see I keep meaning to load it onto steam deck so that I'll actually like play it uh because on computer I'm too busy working or doing other stuff so uh definitely be interested in that because uh it seems like I obviously it's on your guys list for a reason and uh I suck at fighting games but it looks fun so definitely definitely a an interesting year so far for some of these games so uh the next thing we got diverse answers but yeah diverse answers and I don't know about you guys but but the uh the backlog is a little depressing it's um you know halfway through the year and I think there's more games from this half that I still

haven't played that I really want to play that I've been able to and it's like the the the wave of games is not slowing down the second half of the of the year is just as strong and great yet brutal so gonna have to make some tough prioritization decisions um but I think it was interesting I think this is well what's interesting is I can't really think of like a real high profile Phillips so far I know that that Golem game is like very meme worthy but that was never expected to do because but I'll be honest I didn't even hear about that game until I I saw people mocking it so it wasn't on my radar maybe that's a bit harsh at Jonathan's life I guess where people can play it kind of for free-ish so maybe maybe that's it's uh it's Mitch now but I don't know I just thought I thought I'd throw that one out there at least it's an interesting observation though think you're right less flops which is

which is great good to see like I said especially after kovid like delayed everything figured we'd see a lot more of those like we did see some more delays on some games though like just delayed longer instead so as far as Trends then when we're on the topic any Trends this year you guys are seeing that that maybe come up frequently in the game industry like uh you you want to start this one uh Jonathan the main Trend that I would call out this year is going to be very familiar to navic listeners which is this is the year of the trans media multi-billion dollar gaming franchise right this is the year of the game becomes hit TV show this is the year of the game becomes hit movie this is the year of the hit movie becomes game etc etc etc right we already have three billionaires on the charts list I think this year all multi-platform IP I think it goes to some other Trends which I had hinted at before which is gaining

awareness and gaining traction is increasingly difficult in our short attention span world and so multi-platform known IP win right people are taking fewer risks because the cost of development as such everybody's swinging for the fences and that's led us into a relatively closed ecosystem very hard to break in but for those people inside the ecosystem it has never been more lucrative and that's the top trend for me this year in gaming nice I know but you know mine's going to be I think the theme of a few answers actually that we talk about for me the trend has got to be AI in gaming right because every single startup it's the new buzzword it's replaced blockchain you have to have it as part of your company portfolio or Manifesto if you don't you're not one of the cool kids no one wants to listen to you you're not hip anymore so that's been utterly dominated I feel by that you see it in use all the time there's a lot of places I go to even on social media where it's like you're banned from posting about AI

because it's just like we get it here's some other cool thing that someone has figured out or put in gaming um so I think that's really big but I think that's going to tie into the next question you ask I will save some of my thoughts I think for that but without a doubt I feel like this has been the year of AI and gaming what's your AI strategy well here's gonna be my question for you beyond somebody's AI strategy have you seen an interesting execution of it yet in the marketplace or is it still too early right because everyone talks about the earlier stuff it's just like smarter NPCs Etc which is like super low hanging fruit Beyond talk and Beyond strategies anybody here see examples in the marketplace where they're like oh I see how this can be big well not really I guess I mean maybe to be a bit of a spoiler and Devin can tell me off but if I had to ask the answer what is my most overhyped thing in gaming right now it would be the same answer which is AI right I definitely think that if you're a games maker it's certainly eye-opening and it is exciting it's exciting because all of a sudden a smaller team could make a bigger game that they didn't

previously think was possible and that's great that means that the cost to make games is cheaper so people can be more creative they can take bigger risks it isn't such a closed shot but that's actually good for the industry and good if you're a gamer as well I think why is it over hyped or why do I not think that these things will pass is what you've just been asking there Jonathan one I haven't really seen anyone utilize it in games in a way that makes me think oh wow because right now all people are using for is like production pipelines and to speed it up it's to make that jpeg image that you use in a 2d card game in a gacha event 60 by a thousand times faster and cheaper than you did before so that's not really like a good thing and it's not something that's like amazing where it's like some free-form Grand Theft Auto 7 thing where every single character's got some Dynamics and you know it's the one true game that you can play which is where I feel it could get to um but where I think that like you know it why I feel like is really overhyped as I think it's more in a kind of commercial terms right it's like yes sure if you can do things to make more

content or even an extreme case of being able to make you know more games that are sort of like free form and it's not really what the designer necessarily intended but it could go somewhere more kind of systemic design that's cool but it's like the thing about making games and there's a reason why the same people keep making great games over and over again which is one of the previous question why is the Zelda even better than the last one why is Call of Duty even better than last one why is Street Fighter 6 a return to four because it turns out having years of experience and being able to curate and experience and understand what makes a flow is way more important than Brute Force machine learning and just seeing what pops out the other end even though there is some use to it so I really feel that there's sort of two things where people are getting kind of like you know over hyping this one is the fact that how do you even commercialize of it right it's like all of this end product isn't that difficult and you know there's quality over quantity just because you can create you know 90 000

NPCs using machine learning is not as good as having one NPC that's really amazing that you remember forever that you know you play that game for um and yeah number two I guess you know why I feel so for hype is that yeah we haven't yet seen that application in games but I I will say that I feel that someone will probably utilize it I would love to see for example a genre or something that hasn't even existed before and really redefines what games can be because I was thinking about this the other day with some of the people here in the studio when's the last time you sort of played something that hadn't been done before and it like really sort of blew your mind as to what it could be maybe extraction shoots maybe I'm not being a bit generous there you know battle royale's maybe Auto Battlers things like this where you know it hasn't been done before and all of a sudden it can create like a paradigm but I'll stop my rambling because I've actually been very cheeky and answer two questions at once then so I actually had a follow-up question for you you sort of mentioned the two ways it can go right you sort of said like okay you can give smaller nimbler places a chance to do an opportunity because

it's cheaper I also sort of see sort of the other end of the spectrum like game bloat right like the moat becomes like like it's interesting AI can either go to the biggest IP where it's just like as if there isn't enough content for our 60 or 70 dollars we're gonna give that much more versus you can also say hey the entry level has gone down and somebody Nimble can come in and break into something and do something left do you do you sort of weight the chances that both of those things happening equally or if you're going to make a bet do you see like more doors opening or do you see sort of more game bloat for the people who are already sort of spending the most money I actually think it opens more doors than blow I I do appreciate your point about what you're saying and you know if you make a package that's just sort of so amazing that how does anyone else compete because the new Call of Duty has absolutely everything but the thing is is I feel that those really big titles they're already in a position where anyone who is already gonna buy it will already buy it it's already like one of those three games that everyone buys every year so yes whilst you can

improve so somewhere it's not kind of like dramatic or dynamic whereas me personally something that I absolutely love about gaming is that you can always get these hits out of absolutely nowhere that sometimes don't even make sense and like Among Us I remember being such a huge one during covid where you looked at it and you're like how is this game like getting so many people playing and then going wrong it's really fun right it's essentially werewolf in Virtual form right but it's like you know there was no Rhyme or Reason you could get all of us sitting around for ages doing all this analytical forecasting and working out where the next big thing in gaming is and no one saw that coming and that's what I love and so that's why I think it is going to do it because I think this barrier to entry is huge right the more shots basically the more darts that you can throw at the dartboard someone's gonna hit the bullseye even if it's not the one that you think about it and that's kind of what you need is that sometimes the games industry needs these mad hipsters trying this mental stuff that no one else would ever come up with

and that's going to be the next kind of like you know five to ten Years of Gaming so look maybe it's just summer romantic you can probably even tell in my voice that I kind of see myself being more on that side and even though a lot of the time I too have won the corporate suit and done that side of gaming for me I don't know about you but I really love it when I play something that not only is really great but it's something that I haven't even seen before because it's like you know it just makes you think oh wow this is sort of a creative digital medium and there's all this amazing stuff that you can try it doesn't just all have to be loot boxes and battle passes and you know web transit three transactions etc etc so that would be my answer there but I mean yeah I could very easily be wrong no but I I agree with you if I go back to the music analog right it was like all of a sudden the moat of meaning half a million dollars or a million dollars to make a record went away and you got both of these things right you've got bloat and you also got you know Billy eilish could make a record with her brother in her basement and it you know tops the charts where literally there was a moat that prevented that

right so I I have the same Romanticism that you do that this this opens doors and creates opportunities and Big Ideas are no longer going to be limited to subpar production because of budget is is the potential Aaron all right well I can I can go ahead I don't wanna to break up the the party there um it's an interesting conversation but I I actually did not pick AI as my topic I thought about it but I was like ah I feel like it's the year of AI being headlines but it still is more more Sizzle than steak right now um and so um you know what I decided to go with instead is really just like the return to austerity like the age of corporate Fitness I feel like has like officially come into full swing and it's had big impacts across so many companies around the world um across various Industries but the games industry definitely more than most um so far in 2023 and obviously the past

couple years 2020 2021 I guess you could say the market was very out of whack money was unsustainably cheap growth projections were too high and many teams were just chasing too many projects with too many people and you know when the economy shifted a bunch of companies had to reshift um too money became more expensive you know taking on debt getting Venture financing um working through your economics of new new projects just became harder and so when companies had to go back and you know you know re-forecast their budgets rethink through their road maps um it met some hard decisions had to be made and you know many teams and projects had to be streamlined and this has this has been going on probably a bit before 2023 but I think 2023 is like when it really has solidified that like yeah this was a thing everyone is starting to capitulate to like sadly you know austerity measures need to be taken we've seen some of the biggest companies

like Xbox EA Ubisoft you know start to to make streamlining measures but also we've just seen it on the complete other end of the barbell too with with startups the world of web 3 is so much more conservative than it was a couple years ago Esports is completely resetting how it views you know how value is created and just like how valuable these companies even are and therefore you know how they need to be staffed and what their focuses are um and just when Venture company everyone Venture financing Titans 2 companies uh just in general have to be smarter about limiting their burn rates um and and making sure that they're taking proactive measures to um to be profitable maybe sooner than they they wanted or to at least you know um you know make sure that they survive over at whatever period of time before they can raise money in and around

that's maybe that maybe will take place further away than they thought and so the the age of efficiency of austerity whatever you want to call it I think it's just had really profound Ripple effects um that in the end is going to make this industry stronger the companies are going to come out you know 2023-2024 as just better companies on average than they were two years ago and even the startups coming in like you're seeing when money Titans really only like the best Founders who really have um everything together are going to be the ones to kind of pull off um you know not even just raising the money but like performing well with it and so just the the quality bar of of talent and people creating new things Rises as well so that that's sort of my my top reflection of of the year is just kind of the return to austerity do you think then as a follow-up to that that uh we start to see like maybe some leaner game releases or maybe like longer Dev Cycles where they're trying

to like make sure that they they do it right with the teams they have left and like you know that that we the company slimmed down and started looking at their budget more carefully and stuff like what effect does that have on like the next couple years of games then I think the answer is yes and no um I think that we the games industry has always seen lean teams come out and and make games that can have various degrees of success and some of it comes from like the modding communities some of it comes from just seed stage teams um and some of it you know some might be teams that had bigger fundraising Ambitions that didn't quite get what they wanted or had to rethink and now we're just taking a different approach all of that is true but at the same time we still see these Mega fundraises that happen for for new games teams that maybe are you know X League of Legends X OverWatch I don't know um that uh you know are coming in and raising just crazy amounts of money

because the fact is even though funding has tightening there still is a tremendous amount of venture financing and just Venture Capital um on the sidelines in the games industry that is going to proven teams that I I think some of them probably do not need to have raised as much money as they as they have and maybe we'll see a slight step back from that compared to what we've seen over the past couple years but as long as the the capital is there and it's looking to get deployed I think we'll still see that as well so I think we'll see uh more of both honestly cool well hopefully that uh turns out good right like it's one of those one of those things where it's uh for our all our health right just have to just have to suffer through it hopefully the people that that get laid off and stuff like that are able to then find good new opportunities as a result of like not having like the easy thing that maybe they were coasting with not not that any job in games is ever like easier coasting but there are you know people that maybe needed a kick in the pants uh that might go start their own thing now

in the um the Game Dev world where what is that yeah I was gonna say that's an interesting question right like in each one of the big Tech rollbacks of the last couple decades right it's always been like it forces starter dumb to some point right it forces entrepreneurial ship and there's been some case made that despite the pain you get a new wave of Founders and you get a new wave of startups in downtime despite the fact that it's hard for money to raise so I I again like the optimism in your point which is like hey there's you know there's a there's a lot less money floating around and there's more people on the sidelines but I think it's also going to force a bunch of people with big ideas to maybe take a swing where like their corporate job was just comfortable enough where they didn't do it and so you know I I don't wish Riff on anybody I don't wish downsizing on anybody I've experienced both and it's not always it's not fun but opportunity has often come out of it well I look forward to some some hopefully some some huge unexpected like to to Nils Point

really unexpected swings out of nowhere that's like oh we didn't see that game coming at all you know people making their dream game or their dream ideas you're saying Jonathan where they're like let me just you know what Now's the Time to just go out and do it like well you know I don't have that security that job anymore like I'm just gonna make it now and then take the risk and hopefully we see the fruits there right you never know like sometimes it just doesn't hit and uh with all the the franchise uh stuff you guys were hitting on earlier there's obviously some competition from the big players to worry about but we've always got you know devolver kind of Publishers and stuff like that willing to kind of take weird very strange risks and putting stuff out there and you almost made me want to change my answer uh for the question as well to like layoffs and trying to form unions that's kind of the trends so a lot of fun as a trend yeah yeah that was a pretty big Trend that I think doesn't really get talked about a lot that I did uh notice quite a bit right like some of them worked some of them didn't some of them were just talked about a lot whether that be for like QA people or uh

different levels of game development uh it seemed to be like a Hot Topic not just not just in games right it was like across a lot of Industries people trained for me like the constant battles with Amazon trying to form that are not and that sort of thing but it seems like you know labor stuff in general especially around what happened with minimum wage increases or like coveted stuff and savings payments like labor in general I think is kind of like a a Hot Topic that has been for a little while that affects games as well as like you know you see writers strikes in Hollywood and everyone will seem to be asking for a raise over the last like six months or longer where every job was like yo we need more money and there was strikes constantly in every like uh field it seemed like so games were definitely not uh immune for that especially with you know how much people are crunched and stuff like that in this industry where people probably do deserve more than they're paid a lot of the time for the amount of work put in for some of these games and I could see why there's pressure then to form unions to try and put some like pressure on

actually increasing that my original idea is going to be AI but I should have known that would have been everyone else but you know it was was probably one of the biggest Trends I I do think there's a potential for it in games but like as you guys point out it's it's a little bit uh short to start with right but that's you know that's how web3 was you know like where it's like you know random ideas and like some stuff sticks sometimes stuff doesn't but I do think uh we may realize at some point that trying to use AI stuff in games isn't too different than procedural generation and that we're like oh I guess procedural generation was actually easier to get to do what we wanted to instead of trying to convince some semi-sentient AI to do what we want you know stuff like that where where it may not work out just as well as we hoped but I think there's opportunity there so so Devin I think that's a great point I think labor and unions has been a huge part of the conversation across technology across gaming I think it's a nuanced and kind of bifurcated conversation where I think it's very easy to Rally public support behind the

15 Amazon warehouse worker the 12 an hour bereft uh you know the 12 an hour fast food worker I think there's a ton of public support and I think there's a as there should be you know even like the 15 an hour game tester I think where it gets difficult and uh somebody much smarter than I coined this phase this phrase about the last writer strike which is like nobody has any heart for the rich versus the very rich right which is where I think if you go at the higher end of this right when you talk about the writer strike or Game Dev Studios where you know if you have a hit game those mid-level devs bonuses are incredible right like one percent income that uh you know with the writer strike with you know the median I'm not anti-wga but like with a median writer making three hundred thousand dollars a year it's a little bit tougher to have you know public empathy with the American median salary at about 70 000 you know for a picket line full of guys making three four hundred thousand dollars a year right so it's it's

definitely become a trend but I you know but it's taking places across all sectors of the economy that I think are going to have greater and harder chances to Garner public support depending on where they land yeah I was just going to say that I thought my answer was sobering but if your trend of the year is unionization depressing and and just shows that like something is wrong or just broken somewhere um like capitalism has failed and in some way to like take care of people um or you know it's just telling of political climates and things like that but I was actually gonna just kind of segue that to my my answer for the next question which is what is over hyped which uh my answer is just sort of like it's a top down take which is just like the growth profile of the industry I feel like might be a little overrated um right now at least in develop markets and so if you look at the history of games

there have been two main sources of growth one has been the addition of new platforms that were fortunately very additive to each other uh console is additive to PC Mobile was additive to both of those and then second those platforms Grew From infancy to maturity and so right now I would argue that not only are PC console and mobile all now in their mature phases um and with mobile it's even you know falling a few percent this year um but that there isn't a clear next platform that's going to drive growth anytime soon AR VR slow ways away and like web3 AI ugc there's some interesting stuff in there but none of that really is like the next big like platform new platform that's going to like unlock the just like Gamers who haven't really been Gamers before at as tremendous of a scale like the next billion Gamers right I would guess at least not soon um but the reason I say that is that

what's interesting is when the growth profile of the industry slows which I feel like is something that maybe hasn't been talked enough about because everybody's so used to the charts that just go straight up and to the right um and I don't think you can just necessarily extrapolate what you've seen before even though there still are exciting corners of the market and you can still come out and make new things that do well and all of that um but to me what's going to be interesting to see is that if we kind of shift from a blue more of a blue ocean to more of a a red ocean where what is new is you know more complementary or just unlocks the market to new people versus it actually being more competitive than it has been even though it always has been competitive to some degree just because more games more funding it's all kind of fighting for the same Gamers and the same the same wallet share like what are the Ripple effects

um of that and how do companies respond like where do startups look but also just when Industries and companies shift from growing the pie to having to compete for just slices of what is roughly the same pie you start to see more of that clashing and I would put something like unionization and just kind of like labor movements and such like those become much more prevalent in those those red oceans not the blue the blue Oceans Where companies are trying to find new ways to create growth and profitability when it's not coming from just the same natural Tailwinds they're trying to you know cut costs get fancy in other ways and so to me like what has been overhyped maybe is that growth trajectory but the Ripple effects of what that could mean for the next few years um is going to be interesting to see in my view am I to bearish on

saying that the growth of the industry maybe slowing slowing down more than people expect could be over High needs to be said at some point I think uh if you don't say it like uh it just it goes kind of unsaid everyone knows but no one wants to admit it no one wants to be the first to be like yeah maybe it won't go up forever uh but uh we don't want to think about that now tends to be the trend uh as you see with each of these like uh hype waves but I feel like we've had like a stack of hype waves where like AI was overlapped on metaverse and web3 and it's like like we can't even go like three months without like a new one starting and I feel like that's just like compressing even crazier and then you throw that on top of what Aaron's saying of like uh which should be leaner times and it's like well do we just see all these like waves like calm down then because there's not hype money to throw around because everyone's having to like tighten their belts and it was like maybe we should just go back to the things that worked like let's just go fund agriculture again or something like

some way of like turning get back a little bit uh but also giving an opportunity for people to be building stuff sort of in secret where like the next big hype wave just comes out of nowhere because it wasn't like this big publicized type wave since there wasn't money throwing around everywhere at the time be interested to see I don't know so the interesting thing about gaming in these hype waves is gaming actually becomes this catch-all that always manages to fit most of them into it right like if you go down like metaverse fits into gaming right you know work from home and like more time online fits into gaming AI fits into gaming right like and so yes well Gaming's been on this great height wave it manages to survive with a little left of the Peaks and valleys of these vertical specific stuff right like crypto specifically is far more bearish than gaming right but blockchains like this in gaming metaverse vertically terrible you know the idea of metaverse and gaming or gaming is metaphor still has some heat

so so gaming suffers from the hype Cycles but also survives from the hype Cycles because it is such an inclusive world that like manages to work in all this technology so gaming seems to be at least from a valuation perspective doing better than any of these vertical type stuff right it seems to like get some of the rub off from these pipes and keeps Rising but it doesn't have the massive reset in terms of my number one overhyped thing I'm with Anil it's AI it's AI it's AI like you know I'm watching a lot of Twitter which is like you know I see a lot of like a company that uses AI is not an AI company a company that builds something on the top of somebody else's AI is not an AI company right and it's like I have not seen a deck in gaming or any other category that's crossed my desk that hasn't like put AI front and center and you sort of get as you're out of you know out raising money a bit of fomo right like you feel like it's got to be in there and it makes sense in places

like you know I'll be transparent I'm not raising money right now and I've had to figure out some ways to work AI into my pitch and I've done it in ways that make endemic sense like taking a company like WSC that takes human editors for like sports highlights and you know now ai makes those clips right and that's natural and logical but again that's use of somebody else's AI so that's an efficiency story I'm not going to go out and say that I'm an AI company but it is ludicrous and even if you look at what happened to Nvidia right like wow like did that company deserve that kind of valuation increase like that's not gonna end well so he you know seems hugely obvious ai's been my number one hype category well we're on the next one right because I too is saying over hyped with AI are we going to talk about what's underhyped now oh yeah I guess I I misinterpreted the topic and I was I picked games that like specific games that were that I thought were overhyped rather than a broad topic well give us yours what's your right behind the game then yeah so I like I I wanted to just

be a little like counter uh the trend right now and say insane battle bit remastered which I actually think is a decent game I just haven't played it a lot yet but uh or I was gonna throw out dabla four just because you know like it's it's hot okay right it's like okay but I don't think anyone's like dude it's like the most amazing Diablo ever like I think people are just like well this is better than playing Diablo 3 for another 10 years so yeah yeah I guess I think I think a lot of people might go back to just 2R again like shortly after this to be honest but I was also gonna throw out star field just because I know bethesda's track record is just like disappointment City like they uh they they make to the buggiest releases I think of of any company so that should be fun to watch that one but uh but that was my very short over hype list but I guess not as broad as you guys so I guess yeah we could get into what's under hype then if you're making us feel better and they'll yeah make us feel better about something okay okay well my under Heights I think

it's a bit Niche but I was gonna say I feel the steam deck is actually really underhyped and I feel not only that but the kind of concept of high power handheld gaming in general um I mean if you've seen like the Rogue uh Asus Ally which is like another kind of imposter to the crown so a little bit of research because that is quite a hard take to kind of do it so Steve esteem deck has sold now three million units that's maybe not that exciting to get out of bed for sort of thing but if you compare that let's say to PS Vita um lifetime sales that only got to 15 million so you already kind of you know one-fifth of the way there and working your way up but the reason why I feel it's kind of being slept on is because if you think about it it's actually going get a steam deck it's pretty difficult right you can't just walk into Walmart and pick one off the shelves and buy at the end of the thing you have to sort of really be into it and go in and if you look on the steam cells no matter what new game comes out the new game is only ever number two in terms of like top sellers it's the steam deck is number one which shows that there is this kind of repeated demand and it's kind of word of mouth is going out there

and I have one myself and it's funny when I first got one I just kind of thought oh it's a cool thing kind of boys toy to sort of show off but actually it's pretty cool it's pretty good it's funny you mentioned you know Street Fighter Dave and that's actually a good thing you can take it with you can play some games against people at work whatever take it back fits into your pocket you can plug it in I think there's something there um is it going to be like a massively industry defining thing I think it's a little bit early to be making bold statements like that but I think we've talked about it quite a few times on this very corner and I think a lot of us were kind of like well you know this will probably be the one that they test the waters with and see where it'll go but if I had to compare this to any other Hardware product that valve has made I feel like this one's a Goa this one's gonna see Steam deck 2 Steam deck three it may take quite a few iterations before it gets there but if you compare that to like their VR headset the controller they try to make some of the various other things they did those I think are pretty much dead right maybe they might make some more just for the sakes of it this I think is going somewhere so underrated I think steam

deck and I think one reason why it's underrated two is I feel like cross-platform gaming is really becoming like a big thing now like I think now that we've got the tech to really support it people are more interested I think also the way that I kind of um habits change of being able to play a game in different ways during the day in different forms right it's like when you've got to look after your kid you can be playing your game when you're in Steam deck while you're presenting you're looking after them when they go to sleep you can plug it on the TV and get serious you can you know pretend you're doing work like I am doing right now and have my steam deck no no I am generally on the on the call but you could do things that way so yeah for me underrated steam deck almost sound like you're pitching for a stadia for a minute there as well towards the end which was like what people got excited about like oh I got a few minutes here I can do it on the TV or on on my phone here or whatever like uh definitely something but I I one thing I think doesn't get mentioned enough with the with the steam deck stuff is that goes back to the what they did with the controller that I just want to briefly kind of touch on because I think just everyone moves past it is the haptic trackpad stuff that they did I

think is phenomenal for bringing Mouse based games into a handheld like no one else has like people will do you know thumb sticks and things like that but I think people are kind of sleeping on the fact that they found a way to like somewhat bring over PC Centric games that are off the mouse and keyboard in a way that like feels As Natural as they could make it in a way like no one else has right like that goes back to the controller that kind of pioneered that stuff but obviously like the controller and the link and all that stuff didn't make it as you put it I wasn't there finest technology but it absolutely was a necessary stepping stone and I think uh yeah you're definitely right I I've played like I I wouldn't say I've played like a hardcore RTS on the steam deck I think that might be a bit pasty probably would have to plug it into a monitor of mouse and keyboard but I have played some kind of Forex games using it and the touch screen and that but you know in some ways it's actually easier to play on that than the PC even which is kind of crazy and those games are very well suited because like especially if you're on the Go and all of a sudden you do have to do something you can't be fully immersed in the game so I think

you're right it's all out there but that's not something that I immediately thought yeah definitely something but you also reminded me of like another thing which was that that idea of like uh being able to switch over to like a handheld for something that you normally play on PC and I definitely felt like this was uh one area where valve like kind of controlling it for the most part uh is is a little trouble somewhere like uh I Diablo 3 was ported to switch eventually right and and I enjoyed playing it there because I didn't really have to like sit at my computer or something that's kind of grindy but then I'm like oh Diablo 4 like I could make it work on the steam deck but I've I've put battle that on there before and like it causes its own new problems and I've had to like factory restore my steam deck over it and stuff and I'm just like can't be bothered but it makes you think about all those times that like games were like uh we're not going to be on Steam we're going to be like on EA Origin and then eventually came back to Steven it's like you're kind of glad for a little bit of a monopoly there in one respect when it comes to developing for that platform because it's like games that maybe just don't come to switch or don't come to uh other consoles because

like it's more of a PC Centric game anyways uh Aaron you want to go with your uh under hyped yeah you ready for me to blow your minds oh um I think what might be most underhyped right now is Ubisoft which uh for anyone who has listened how much have they paid them how much have they paid him I'm probably blowing ubisoft's mod by saying this because over the past uh you know a couple of years on the podcast and in our our newsletter digest too I mean I feel like we've done a pretty good job of just chronicling some of the the struggles that Ubisoft has faced right and there's been a lot big delays big game under performances struggling live Ops bad Acquisitions culture problems that weird deal with tencent and of course just like the bloat of what Ubisoft is they still have like 20 000 employees which is several thousand more than EA Activision

take two and so like something is out of whack there um but here's the thing as a result of all of that ubisoft's stock and I'll just take a kind of of a financial view right now it's just been absolutely demolished right like its price right now is roughly where it was in the year 2000. so that's how far um of a step back this company has taken just like in terms of like public market performance and it's not like Ubisoft is sitting still or just like or rolled over and so the team has a bunch of great franchises the company has been cutting projects to better refocus some of its efforts um after the last showcase which we discussed a couple weeks ago um the pipeline that the company has is actually looking better than I thought the new Star Wars Outlaws game kind of came out of nowhere but actually it might move the needle for them and even something like Avatar looks better than

I thought it would and then of course the new Assassin's Creed game is about to come out in a quarter or so and they're you know like really thinking about how to expand that franchise both to mobile with tencent and also just whatever that platform uh that Infinity platform is going to be which I think could provide them a better chance to increase and or just like improve live Ops on some of these like biggest franchises and so I think there's opportunity there and they are focused on it over the past few months ubisoft's employee account has fallen by about a thousand um and I think you know I mentioned kind of the the Ubisoft or the Assassin's Creed related live Ops stuff but I think like there are little signs here and there to say that they are trying to like just be a lot better at live off so they were at like the 2016 era where the division like lost all of its users pretty quickly or even like the 2019 era where like Ghost Recon breakpoint just

like should have been a hit but um didn't have good post-launch content and therefore wasn't so I think they've learned and are moving on from that and when I mix all of this up what I see is a company that sure is not in a great spot but is actually starting to take steps towards improving its focus its bloat and its live Ops abilities all around its best franchises and that's happening while the company's valuation has fallen from what was like seven to eight time sales to now what is 1.5 time sales and sales using sales is not the best measure evaluation this is a company that's been burning money lately but um I think that I am gonna call roughly bottom here technically bottom a bit earlier this year but I'm calling a market bottom because I just think there's too much pessimism baked in if anything works and if anything does work and move in a better Direction like a game that they release performing really

well um or them taking some austerity measure or spending something off or like anything I think Ubisoft could be a coiled spring where people just stop being so crazy pessimistic about it and they're serious about taking steps the last thing I'll say is that um remember our discussion about Capcom last time I guess it was about a month ago and we were like wow this company went from a decade ago went from a long stretch of both critical and financial underperformance and then management made hard decisions like relocating talent and development shutting down Studios refocusing on their top brands and it set the company up for a much bigger and better and positive trajectory for a decade I think there's a chance Ubisoft could be the next Capcom from from that sense um and the company is making steps by

only thing to say really is that I wish the company was making leaps and I wrote a novice digest piece about this lately like if they go from making steps to making leads like this this company could be the next Capcom in terms of going from extreme pessimism and long streaks of underperformance to actually um having some big wins and starting to outperform everyone's expectations and driving great results so anyways long long-winded answer there but I wanted to wanted to make sure I back that up well since it's more of a spicy take but it will be soft there you go I'm going to be a little bit similar to Aaron instead of going from like under hyped undervalued I actually believed that the death of Esports has been called prematurely and my postulate for that is super huge Global super engaged audiences that aren't dissipating they aren't going away the punishment in this space has been twofold it's been valuation which

some of the other Trends we're talking about today I've been I've been taking care of itself and monetization I don't think we've hit bottom yet because I think we've got a couple quarters left before interest rates start coming back down I think we've got a couple tough quarters of raise for these companies that need to go back and get money and I think we've got another couple quarters of tough advertising with sponsorship being about 80 of the revenue however at least in North America 2024 is an election year that always brings ad spend back in a massive way 2024 is an Olympics year you know Paris is open to Esports for the Olympics that's always a big brand spend year I think valuations would have hit bottom I don't know if anybody followed this but in early covid Kevin Lyman who was the founder of Warped Tour went in and bought all these distressed live music venues I like the bottom of copen it was an Arbitrage Supply right and I think there's a huge opportunity to go raise a grip of cash buy all the stuff on the bottom like Q3 Q4 this year strip Out inefficiencies

roll it all up and make a ton of money in 2024 in Esports that's my hot take we I just want to put a quick shout out to uh one of our our great hosts of the Pod Alex she recently conducted an interview with the Evil Geniuses CEO Nicole Lapointe Jameson and it was really good um because Evil Geniuses um Nicole she came from private equity and jumped into Esports sort of like from the standpoint of Evil Geniuses being a distressed asset which I guess kind of to your point Jonathan like in many ways you can view a lot of Esports today as a distressed asset and she did a really great job of walking through like her mindset of like what really are like the challenges today like what's not as much as people think and like why is there a path towards something that looks distressed having um more of a like a long-term path out if you're willing to take the long-term

view so um I thought that was that was an incredible interview Alex did a good job um on on that one so so check that that out if you haven't I will that's my drive home that's my drive home thank you I just hope they could figure out the business model because I feel like uh the the approach to Esports that was being taken before was probably not the best idea in a lot of ways but you know maybe there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes as you as you kind of pointing out Aaron where people are like oh yeah yeah maybe that didn't work maybe we could actually figure out a way to make this work now and adjust our expectations accordingly in terms of how we're making money how we're spending money maybe not being so kind of crazy uh and just writing a bubble and actually trying to build sound businesses as you you mentioned earlier about you know this these periods where people kind of have to go back to making more Sound business decisions although I felt like you know that was maybe something we were thinking after 2000 but I feel like we never really escaped the.com bubble like it just kind of you know deflated a lot and then just kind

of built back up again and so we never really got a good period of like really people tightening things and figuring them out we've just kind of met him riding that Tech wave since so I don't know maybe now is that time maybe now it's not maybe we just are like six months from the next hype bubble somehow uh that we just didn't even see coming yeah and remember the Publishers don't want this to die right like Esports started basically as a marketing tool for this IP right and then everybody got greedy and you know you've seen means sort of give back on like the really egregious economics on the publisher side to allow this category to survive and to your point Aaron about treating it like a distress acid and going in like uh like a PE person and going in and like renegotiating all your debt and renegotiating all your deals right it's like it's going to take people from that sector to go in and renegotiate everything right and and again Publishers and the flywheel have to exist Publishers want this stuff to be successful right the audience is there the audience isn't going away unlike

we're reading about so many other categories where the audience has bought the audience is fake like I don't think anybody's ever said the Esports audience is fake right so if you have a real engaged audience of a hard to reach valuable demographic supported by like transmedia IP of which Publishers make billions of dollars on there's too much skin in the game to let this ecosystem die it's kind of funny because you have some games that were like just spending like crazy trying to make it happen when maybe it wasn't going to like even blizzard just really be pushing OverWatch probably farther much farther than it should have gone and then you have games where like like smash where they didn't even want it to be a competitive thing like they were actively against it and yet it still survives right like these reluctant ones and it just goes to show that like you can't just make something in esport you can design it for an esport like Rainbow Six Siege like I know they specifically were like hey we want this to be an esport but it was really like difficult to even try and force that sort of thing and it had to have been a good game to like even work uh and obviously like you

know fighting games is and they'll you know put are like in a position where there's a lot of competition from the established ones but I don't like sky's the limit on potential new Esports games that maybe don't even see it coming so last but not least everyone what are you looking forward to uh or looking like kind of tracking for the rest of the year anticipating like stalking your prey in the markets here for for the rest of the for the next six months I guess for this uh Aaron you want to go first yeah I can start we can take this one more more rapid fire as we close up I I have two quick ones the first one is boring and it's just the Microsoft Activision deal which is crazy that we still don't have an answer I'm so tired of talking about this but like it probably will be the most important decision made in the second half of 2023 and either way whatever happens it's gonna have big Ripple effects if the deal gets blocked um then my guess is that honestly Microsoft will probably rethink Xbox and their position in gaming and that could have big Ripple effects at some point

um if the deal goes through I think we'll start to see what really is the impact of scaling the subscription model and having more competition for that in the console business and a lot of the that conversation will pick up in the second half of 2023. For Better or Worse because I don't know if all of it is really actually going to be great for the industry but but we'll see when we get there based on what happens so that's one the second one I I want to say is just I think it's important to keep an eye on those who have a lot of capital to deploy and in particular I just sort of want to call out one 10 cent which has been mighty quiet lately so far in 2023 but I know they're not just trying to sit idle and it wouldn't surprise me at some point maybe in 2023 I don't know the exact timing they start coming out with some bigger moves especially to start expanding in more ways globally um and then second I just have a feeling that um Savvy games group they're just getting started they just bought scopely but they have so much Capital

um to deploy that I don't know what's going to happen in 2023 but like those are probably the big two um that maybe we don't think about enough uh at least because they're not hitting the headlines as much as other companies making lots of games but um I think I think those could make some big moves and shake up the industry and uh lastly quick plug I'm actually going to be um recording and Publishing an interview at the 70 games CEO Brian ward in July so stay tuned for that really excited to see that we can dig into there to get some more perspective on what that um what that massive company in the making is going to turn out to be nice plug there gotta get that in looking forward to that then I'm sure it'll be good based off of your prediction Jonathan what you're gonna be keeping an eye on I'm gonna Echo where Aaron was on his last Point watch Mina watch the Saudis

watch the qataris scopely was the beginning while it's outside of the scope of this podcast you saw the live deal right you saw the guitars just bought a piece of the ownership group of the Washington Capitals the ownership cap table of gaming is going to look very different by the end of Q4 especially if money in the west stays tight well that should be easy to track right we just look at one big region track everything that happens there no problem Anil what you got for me it's a game and that game is star filled by Bethesda it's been so long since you know the great Todd bestowed us of a game um maybe it's more you know more with curiosity more than anything but I think it's great right you know like no one does open world MMOs you know quite well you know single player MMOs quite like they do in a brand new setting as well for Bethesda 2 I'm quite a Sci-Fi fan I don't think anyone has really execute my mind there may be Mass Effect so maybe I'm being a bit unfair to say

no one's really exiting sci-fi but I'm really intrigued to see what they could do um the sales numbers of Skyrim were absolutely astonishing you know we had so many memes brought out of it so many years they've had to kind of do so I'm really looking forward to that I think it'll make a big impact about how big an impact I'm curious too um yeah I'm looking forward to that that's the the big release I feel of this year still to come and then given that as we said there haven't been too many flops so far I'm hoping that this one won't flop either and it'll be a good one that we enjoyed just keep your your expectations in check it's just no man's Sky too right yeah I I do think it'll be interesting to see if if the modding support is there right because the modding stuff has been a big part of Bethesda games especially going to Skyrim towards the end but they never did a Sci-Fi game for the there to be sci-fi assets and and things you could do like it's always been kind of fantasy so like having a new playground I think for modders alone will be like a pretty cool thing if they can make it you know super duplicate yeah I mean I guess it was the Fallout series now that I think about it there was I guess the closest thing there was

kitshi 50 stuff mixed with sci-fi elements yeah should be good I fingers crossed they can release a game that mostly works so well anyways thanks guys definitely stuff to be looking forward to uh I just throw mine in real quick but we don't need to talk about it which is just I'm going to be looking at web 3 stuff like please God someone release a game that's good uh this year so I don't have to wait to 2024 uh fingers crossed on that I do I do definitely want to see what uh what Mr Gay bladens got cooking up if he can manage to kick digital degaku out if I could even say it this year would be fantastic just just to see if it's the world changing you know like the web 3 equivalent of Starfield that he's uh that he's hoping it will be so we'll see what is your most what's your most anticipated web 3 game is it that one or is it uh another one what should we be looking for I mean I'd love it to be shrapnel like I just don't know if that's gonna come out this year like realistically I think you know some of

these high quality ones yeah the extraction I mean I've lost Royale reloaded is clearly I don't know why this is even a discussion right right well what I'm I I wasn't talking about mobile obviously like if we go on mobile it's got to be Blast for hell no no question anyways uh lots of good discussions today lots of predictions I think and then hype or not hype I think uh should be a very spicy next six months uh maybe not in a good way maybe maybe in a bad way we'll see I think we've had a little bit of optimism and a little bit of pessimism today mixed together so hopefully at least you know half of us are right on something and hopefully on the positive side but we're not placing bets today on this no no money involved so we'll just have to see but anyways thanks everyone for for tuning in thank you guys panelists for for bringing some interesting spicy takes some different takes and some overlapping takes I think we definitely see where the trends are uh in in

people's answers but uh yeah great conversation and thanks everyone for tuning in again make sure to uh to hit us up the mailbag uh podcastnavic.com if you got any feedback uh if you have thoughts about even these topics if you want to share your uh picks for these feel free to as well and uh of course you know you can do that in YouTube comments a thing awesome you know that sort of Engagement as well if you enjoy that sort of thing but uh anyways we will see you all next week and have a great weekend until then if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast navic dot Co or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novik has to offer make sure to check out our website www.navic.com there you can sign up for the number one games industry newsletter navic digest or contact us to learn about our wide-ranging Consulting and

advisory Services again that is www.navic.com thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode