Disney x Fortnite / Heroes of Mavia Launch / WB Live Service Stumbles

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Capital making it by far the largest fund focused on gaming and interactive technology Light speed's Team combines deep expertise in gaming with a global multi-stage investment platform and a culture that truly puts Founders first selected Investments include epic games snap and stability AI as well as game designers and producers who led the creation of titles like fortnite Call of Duty League of Legends valerant Starcraft 2 and many more for more information simply go to gaming. lsvp docomo everyone welcome to another novic round table I'm your host Devon Becker and today we have solo enil unfortunately Jonathan suffering a bit from the uh the flooding in SoCal so we uh send our our best wishes down to SoCal especially for him and everyone else down there suffering from some of the strangest weather we've had you know they get wildfires they get rain uh unfortunately not at the same same time

it seems so maybe maybe not the greatest time for them but uh you know best wishes to everyone out there that hopefully everything subsides but we do have a nil at least we managed to capture someone from across the ocean at least so hey hey we got a we got a lot of good topics today too but how are you doing first I'm good yeah like you said I think the year has started pretty interestingly for games so um yeah looking forward to diving in and talking some stuff yeah I I definitely find that uh even even with the layoffs and everything else we're not short of interesting topics uh we've got quite a few today um I think kind of the top one that we were going to dive right into here is uh Disney dropping 1.5 billion into epic and I think that's kind of kind of steals the show I think a little bit if you want to dig into that one n sure well what a huge uh you know announcement that is Disney have been you know almost fascinatingly absent from video games for such a long time and everyone wondered why why are they doing this with all of the IP they have are they making their own sters how are they going to do that well clearly this is really taken from the Lego school of

video games right who did something similar so I think it's really worth referencing that Lego put a one billion investment themselves into epic a while ago and what came out of that was the Lego survival mode that is a separate game mode in fornite that you can play that's been extremely successful I believe they're really pleased with how well that's done so now Disney are going to Trump that by investing 1.5 billion prices go up that's the cost of not doing your business early so that's what's going to happen so look I think there's so much to talk about first and foremost it really is like Disney back with a bang in video games that's a huge investment to put in secondly though the strategy in terms of how to do that so this investment implies you know that they're going to be not making their own games per se but use modes in the game and you know I think what this really signals is is fortnite essentially now not even a video game per se but it is say it well I I didn't want to use that word but I'm glad that you did because to be fair I think this more than

anything else I think the Lego one was certainly going some way towards doing that but now that you've got different IPS multiple IPS in the same game plus the fortnite IP itself is so strong it really does sort of feel like that and I'd be interested to see what you think of this actually Devon because I actually say that this worries me a little bit because it does sort of feel a bit like this is now almost becoming a bit too much of a juggernaut that can't be stopped um this is now moving in my opinion away from gaming even though it is games and more into Tik Tok Facebook you know that kind of territory in terms of what it is it's going to become a ubiquitous part of gen Z and below's time on the internet and that's how they're going to capture them and I get it I think that is super smart from Disney I thought it was smart from Lego 2 that whenever you launch your own product even if you got the exact same team to build it you're not guaranteed to get the users the users are so hard to get that is why we've seen so much consolidation in the industry this one you're basically guaranteed to do it I would say that you know epic themselves

have done such a brilliant job in the past of some of their tie-ins like I remember some of the Avengers tie-ins they did in the earli seasons of fortnite so it makes a lot of sense I wouldn't have been surprised if that partnership has been going strong so well what are we going to see from it that is very interesting so the Lego was actually more of a kind of survival type mode right it was more Minecraft you could say more Arc than it was fortnite um of course they could have just gone pure fortnite mode so what a Disney planning we really don't know it's just pure speculation in terms of what to do it um of course Disney they have quite a lot of IP on their hands would you believe de I know that might shock you but I heard of some of it I think yeah yeah some some star sci-fi thing Skywalkers yeah yeah apparently some comic book IPS and even some Mickey Mouse car although he's now actually public domain so actually Ste will yeah I probably won't see in in anytime soon yeah so so so what does it it mean very interesting um so yeah I mean it's it's huge absolutely huge um I wonder how

many more are going to go into it you know why they I I will say this I think from Disney this is a and actually from Lego it wasn't too surprising a move because they're companies that essentially they need a video game play but it feels like both of those companies have kind of been burnt in the past by trying to do their own thing from scratch probably because of their own culture and the fact that their industry is slightly different um you know as we know making movies is very different to making video games I don't know if we should be thankful or uh disappointed by that because I would mention it before but we're like in a previous discussion but we're actually like starting to close some of the the the gap on that which is uh part of the reason that that movies can do the sort of breaking apart and coming back is is partially du the unionization and what's been a big theme over the last couple years unation so you know maybe we're moving that direction but that's that's a a whole separate side topic but I just want to mention that that's an interesting one I had don't ignore that you know I had a boss once who thought that that could be the future of games development I'm not going to say who that was I mean it was quite an

interesting topic I always feel that with games you know you need to build that experience over years so it's hard to kind of do that but perhaps not if you've got something like this where the tools are kind of already there so that's interesting to see um yeah I guess what I'm saying is that I feel that like for companies like this that need to have a video games play but don't have the exper experience the time to really get into that this presents like a new opportunity and could work out for both parties and that's certainly what it feels like it is it feels like that's the future of fortnite and maybe even epic so I think everyone's super curious I would be extremely surprised if this wasn't a big success I feel like after Lego in my opinion as well the Disney IPS are way stronger than the Lego IP and even though I think we do have to say that in recent years the Disney IPS have been lacking somewhat like it's it's a fact that their movies have not been performing in the box office as well as they have been um to be honest if you this feels like a good move to recharge it because it's tackling into something that's more of so um that's my thoughts

how about yourself yeah yeah I I think that the whole approach is totally I mean obviously they a big part of the reason they did this and they said something about that in the announcement as well is that uh their experience with fortnite has been very positive like they've obviously done a lot of crossover IPA I think they did Star Wars and Marvel stuff um it's it's been very successful for them uh in in in approaching the audience it's like it's a good target audience for them right where it's not overly young like obviously Disney had you know a lot of times skewed very young now they're kind of hitting sort of that middle audience which is a good Target for a lot of that IP that Star Wars and and Marvel IP so it makes sense to like take advantage of that and also you've got Disney who tried to do some stuff before like similar to Lego like I've talked before about how Lego did like Lego worlds and they also had like the the like a Creator program like they had a lot of attempts before and you you can't forget about Disney Infinity uh also trying to be a sort of like I mean there's a little more Skylanders but also mixed with a little bit of Minecraft like it was all over the place but it did it was their sort of experiment in this sort of world of like you know the IP crossover

kind of ideas and obviously they haven't really laid out what they're going to do with this but they mentioned persistent world so that's why I'm kind of curious what that means like does that mean more towards MMO sort of thing or does that mean persistent world is in like Minecraft right because those are both persistent worlds but like in a different kind of fashion and obviously the Minecraft side's a little bit easier to imagine with uh the roots of fortnite being basically a Minecraft game originally and then obviously the Lego one being also very kind of uh in that that wheelhouse but you know they might want to do something different what I find interesting about the whole approach is contrasting with Roblox so Roblox because it kind of was popping off during the sort of metaverse craze you had a lot of people coming in to do experiences for their brand and I think that's a very different thing uh that to me screams adver games more than anything else like or or like virtual malls or like second life experiences that they used to have where it was like that sort of like let's just get our experience in there and some of those were pretty successful I remember the Sonic one being pretty good and like there's been you know a number of of good ones but at the same time like it

is still leaning a bit more towards the Aver game side whereas you take something like the Lego thing and that's like a game game and I think fortnite having mechanics built in that could be built upon even if you don't go the exact same direction like there's mechanics already the players know how to use those mechanics the controls already built it's wellb built it's already crossplatform multiple control types things like that it all works very well why not build off that now I don't know because Disney didn't really want to lean super hard at seemed like into the Minecraft sandbox kind of world in infinity and they seemed to kind of pull out of that probably a little prematurely but obviously the sales weren't there uh outside of collectors it didn't really like take off the way say like amiibos did kind of over time for Nintendo but it was like sort of their dipping their toe into that world uh and but again that wasn't that wasn't necessarily first party developed either that was you know they tend to to farm stuff out to different developers so I do Wonder in this case too is is epic developing the experience for them or is it like another Studio or is like a multi-art thing where like epic's doing

part of it uh to help facilitate it but another studio is also like doing a lot of the the content I mean it's hard to say like Disney tends to not build a lot of their own content and they haven't for a long time they they tend to to part that stuff out and you know mix results right and You' you've seen like we we tend to forget there actually has been like a lot of Disney games they' just been like a lot of mobile games that are tons of cross ones you know like all and then the whole mirrorverse thing that they're pushing I could I could even see them pushing like say the mirrorverse in this right like to kind of build up that world I've seen that IP start to grow a bit uh and so there's you know angles there but then you've got weird stuff like Disney speed storm I think is coming out like finally hitting like 1.0 or whatever and so you know they they've tried stuff and I I still see like Lion King and Aladdin on sale re like on Steam like recently for you know the old classics that they did you know well back in the day obviously I don't think they developed those in housee but uh you know it's it's gonna be interesting to see what they do with this because as you said the Lego one was a big success for them and I think this just builds off of that and

fortnite is obviously hitting like the right Mark like they're not skewing as young as Roblox so it's like not as tricky for them to deal with I think it's like a an audience that's a bit more like gamer Centric and able to like get into it but the fact that they've got all these different platforms support I think helps for them and even if they have to go off the stores you know like they're they're willing to make it work on those platforms and they fought hard for crossplatform like don't forget like they they pushed Sony heavily into that territory and they they fought for that and they they're fighting for a lot of App Store stuff so it's like if anyone's going to kind of become the metaverse or take over become this IP platform like at least it's someone who's fighting for a lot of like B like beneficial things for for developers like like actually things that that benefit developers that will eventually benefit consumers uh and dumping tons of money to so you know if Disney's dumping money into them and they're dumping that into legal battles that may benefit us cool like Disney's now actually doing something useful with their legal battles rather than just trying to extend copyright you know for

Infinity so it's kind of nice I think it's it's a good thing but I am curious though like if you had any more information on exactly how Disney invested because I did see something about a minority stake so I'm curious like how they're actually involved like what the financial deal was what level of like influence or control they might have over fortnite or epic or anything like that um obviously this a huge cash injection for for epic but I I would imagine it's very similar to how Lego did it themselves so when they made that deal Sony also I don't know if you no this are also involved both of those made $1 billion Investments and it was for minority Stakes I believe 2 to 3% at the time um I reckon it's probably for the same amount because probably the valuation of Epic has gone up since then so yeah it doesn't mean you're a majority control but it means you always have access to full information right your first to know what's going on get email well essentially yes essentially yes and it's going to allow you because that's the thing is like the Curious Thing with fortnite if you compare it to your Roblox anal is that these game

modes sit on the front screen at the moment there's not so many modes that you can choose from but what happens when there's a hundred different game modes that you can choose from now all of a sudden those companies are battling with one another so I suppose that having a minority stake means now actually you're always going to be part of the the the Big Kahuna so to speak and you'll get it there just before we round this section off I mean I think it's it's high time like when I see the success of the Spider-Man games on PlayStation I'm not actually 100% sure who owns the Spider-Man exactly I think parts of it owned by Parts shifting from Sony anyway my point is that's been very successful and I've just always thought why are Disney leaving so much money on the table I cannot believe during the whole MCU especially the Avengers endgame phase that like any sort of half competent video game even probably a not competent video game would absolutely have cleaned up um and yeah more importantly is to connect with that audience which it just feels like a massive waste well now they've solved it so well not yet but we F to going to

yeah and I'll be interested too to see if they uh like the big question I have whenever these IPS get involved is the fortnite creator mode If eventually some of that bleeds into there like I that can become again essentially a Disney Infinity kind of thing or you know like a Lego thing those both kind of suit that idea as we've seen you know experiments with that in the past I don't know though Disney tends to be pretty tight about controller IP so I feel like Lego is much more likely but Lego is also like it's IP is actually somewhat vanilla a lot of the times as opposed to a lot of the IP they bring in but they do have other ones like Ninjago and some of their sort of like first party IP I believe that you know they've built up over time although like like I said a lot of their success has been off of other people's IPS in there so it's like forite is becoming this big mishmash ball of Ip and so it's like which parts of that will make it into creative mode so that we can hopefully leverage some of that like I don't think we're gonna be able to just make like a Disney IP basic like full-on fortnite Creator mode game anytime soon but they

could take advantage of allowing some of that like I I believe when the Sonic thing happened in Roblox there was like a bit of access to using some of the Sonic IP for games I think some people made some like Sonic games and things like that so it would be a bit of Goodwill for Disney to like allow a little bit of it so like you guys could do something or they could just be be kind of funny and just put uh Winnie The Poon steam but Willie and just be like here you can have at it with these two just so we don't have to worry about copyright but yeah yeah we'll see I I mean it's a it's a big topic and it also like I think uh could lean eventually potentially into web 3 uh aspects I mean obviously fortnite hasn't said anything about trying to do anything web 3 or anything like that but they've been at least epic has been fairly friendly to web 3 in terms of allowing stuff on the store actually like making policy changes to help support it and then you've got Disney a lot of people you know don't don't know this is going on but Disney actually just is like launching right now in the middle of all this a web three project on Dapper uh Dapper or sorry flow from Dapper Labs uh and I actually just got like an invite to like the Early Access I mean I it's

probably not exclusive or anything uh for like their their app on iOS for pin trading is what it is uh because they actually started taking pin trading away from the theme parks for some reason uh but they are like doing it via web 3 now which is interesting it's it's interesting that they're dabbling still in that and it doesn't seem like you obviously that's happening right now still while Iger had taken back over so they seem to be pretty friendly uh towards fleece experimenting there and I don't know again that could be very interesting if uh if fortnite or epic starts to go more in that direction that actually swings over to another web three topic uh that we actually have we have a couple of them surprisingly today uh despite the the fact that it's kind of cooled down which is again related sort of to IP and financing around mythical and Phoenix uh you know something that was uh a hot topic was a year or two ago at least uh because it was one of the bigger fundraises that we'd seen around web 3 which was $150 million to company called Phoenix that

had essentially broken off from mythical Labs uh who are still you know doing good stuff with NFL Rivals which I'm sure will be very interesting with the Super Bowl coming up here any day now so that that should be like a big this will be basically a big distraction off their plate for that as they have now settled between the two because to catch everyone up on what happened essentially a lot of the the three of the executives from mythical games were out essentially doing some f and this some of this is uh you know so purported I don't I don't really know how much uh fact there is on here but basically the executives were supposed to be out fundraising for mythical labs and somehow made some deals uh with Cipher capital and some others to essentially fundraise for their own project instead uh which is what the lawsuit was about uh and then went off and suddenly quit and I think it was like less than a month later they announced Phoenix which of course you know supposed to be like the Phoenix coming out other they spelled it with an F uh and that was their big project and they announced they like raised 150 million this was a big deal and they

were going to act as both like a publisher and a developer which I imagine the publisher part was probably because they didn't have like games ready to go or anything but like wanted to start doing stuff and like after that you know big whole thing happened they just kind of went quiet for a while and uh there was the lawsuit announced from from mythical that like Hey we're suing them over that they were basically diverting our fundraising to them when they were still employed here no no no and uh they've now settled but it's it sounds like basically this is a little late for Phoenix as they apparently never raised the 150 million which I'm assuming is probably because of the lawsuit but uh no details from from the case on that as they've settled and I imagine probably haven't announced a lot publicly in related to that but at this point it sounds like Phoenix is basically done uh one of the three Executives the CEO of the company is already gone and I can't imagine the other two are there still so I think at this point it's kind of a someone put out the fire essentially mythical games

kind of won that one we don't know what the terms were but I can't imagine you know they got 150 million out of it right there if those never raised probably not a lot to win out of the settlement so unfortunate circumstance but for mythical Labs it sounds like probably a decent outcome well it's kind of outrageous the whole thing I mean that really implies that as you say they were employed by mythical and fundraising for another entity and you know uh circumventing that money to that new entity and if there was any proof of that then you know no wonder they were probably in legal hot water and decided Well it's just better to to move on with it and accept that it never happened rather than fight it out of an expensive lawsuit and lawyers win again but um in this case you know if that definit if it happened that way you have to say that you know mythical world within their rights to do that I mean that that is kind of a gross uh you know what's the word but negligence would they been that like you know sabotage almost Espionage in terms of a company I'm not really I

guess things like this do happen all the time in more traditional Industries but that's really quite outrageous for that to happen in games in I mean we don't know the full details right like I don't want to I don't want to overly assume but it certainly did look at least from the public perspective a little dodgy and uh and obviously did not work out as he said the one month is the big giveaway like if if it was 6 months or a year you would still basically assume that that was the case but you would assume that gardening leave Andor non-competes were put in place so they would you think noncompete would have stopped them from doing that but yeah well maybe that's what they thought that that was that that wasn't the case and that's why they were confident maybe they spotted that in their contracts for example anyway I don't think we'll get a Netflix docu series fortunately but the details come out some but hopefully again like I said it wasn't huge distraction for mythical games because they've obviously been trying to play off the success of NFL Rivals trying to get Nitro Nation World Tour going um they're trying to like pivot BL go block party over to mobile eventually uh I saw

another game on their site that I couldn't even read the name of because the the art but they look like they have another one in the works um they're they're kind of weird about making sure they promote their new stuff across all their Pages for some reason but uh yeah they definitely are doing quite a bit so hopefully this is a case where now they can maybe accelerate a little bit more especially post Super Bowl developing I mean I say this is you know obviously we're both web 3 fans here so we do want to see some success in NFL Rivals is one of the few that I would say was a mobile success like it actually you know whether or not long term is uh as far as like actually landing on the store like getting promoted by Apple pulling in money uh I mean we can't say that they're making profit because we don't know how much they're spending but it's still like one of the better like success stories I think we've seen so it's good I mean obviously it's it's American Centric so I'm sorry uh you guys don't you don't get it but uh you'll get your own I'm sure at some point right it's settled now so I think we can move on from that thankfully sure sure well let's keep keep in a web 3

world then move on to our next topic so another really interesting topic this to discuss this week is the heroes of mavia worldwide launch so Heroes of mavia is another web 3 game web 3 mobile game it is essentially Clash of Clans but with web three elements added to it what's interesting about this is this is I guess the Renaissance party for for web 3 gaming this is the first one that I think has really made quite a big impact I would say and we're both in the web 3 world and I can say that it has been the Talk of the Town in the last week or so so their game had been in development for a while but they actually listed their token uh at the same time and um you know a lot of people thought gaming tokens were dead well mayia certainly disagrees with you as the time of speaking they have a market cap of a billion um their token already went up by kind of 25% I think what's impressive is they had over a million downloads in three days they were using quite an Innovative um sort of acquisition Campaign which is almost play to airdrop is is how you would call it right so

we've had kind of play and earn we've had play I don't know if that's much of of pivot I think aird dropping and earning is kind of the same thing well maybe but I mean here their their response was that you download the game and play to be eligible for the air drop and the reason why I bring this up is that's what's given them a million installs in three days like you know no matter how you want to cut it really one of the fundamental issues in games I would say in the last two to three years has been scaling and attracting audiences to your product and that's not just in Mobile that's across everywhere that is the reason why coming back to our first topic of the show why have Disney invested in in fortnite rather than making their own game because they realize that that is how you get the audience everything else is a risk so in order to achieve that that is still quite impressive however we want to to cut it um and so far it has I would say that it's considered within the web 3 space as being a very successful launch in terms of the token and people are quite bullish on it compared to things have gone before I think what's worth giving kind of like

um relevance to this as well is that there has been a bit of a Renaissance in web 3 and gaming tokens over the last four to five months shrapnel listed their token at the end of last year and that really surprised people of how successful it is shrapnel's like an extraction shooter Style game um it's looks note they have uh some play tests going on this week I think so you could probably find some videos of people playing online there there you go there you go well it'll be interesting to see I'm sure they will launch big some point this year um and although it's more of a platform the immutable X token has also gone up quite a lot recently too so that's there's three separate cases of things doing it and it seems that after years of building and surviving the the bare Market that now some of these games are releasing and starting to put in some performance in terms of um you know just to give some more kind of context the game is quite derivative I would say I don't hope it doesn't come across as unfair but it is very much Clash of Clans and I think if you look at the game review scores it was currently sitting about 3.4 when I last looked at it and sort the two biggest complaints or One issues with kind of the servers

it may be getting hammered by a lot of people playing which I guess have a million downloads in three days is that's what they call a good problem I think well unless it does unfortunately say that they haven't built their architecture properly but I don't want to speculate I just I guess I don't know if you remember this Deon but Simpsons Tapped Out was a thing many years ago oh I remember it quite well yeah yeah they they had to pull that and re re architect it and it took six months to do so so those things do go on and it has happened at least it was appropriately named yeah or drive Club do you remember that on Playstation another similar one that unfortunately the architecture wouldn't support it so it failed even though it was quite AME let's be honest what what game what Big Game launch doesn't fall apart almost immediately I mean we just had the the whole thing with a Suicide Squad their Early Access follow day one so yeah it's it's part for the course at this point we can cut them some slack yeah the other one I guess was unfinished features there's a lot of kind of coming soones mentioned in the game you know I think you know one of the the big things here is they're literally going up against one of the biggest games in

gaming history but certainly over the last decade you know Clash of Clans has literally got what now 12 years worth of content on there so you know if you're a player and you've spent six years in Clash of Clans are you going to leave that game for a new one maybe maybe not I would probably tend on not but you know that's well if you think about it like so the the big thing right is the sunk cost is like the reason not to leave right but but if you're talking about a web 3 game and the web 3 game does offer the ability to potentially take what you have and leave now you're like oh hey I have Sun cost in Clash CL but I'm not going to syn have a sun cost in this game because I could take it out and like self justify why it's okay to do it a second time maybe I'm just saying the possibility well that's exactly but perhaps you should work for maybe you're in scry studios but look I want to say firsty for someone in the space congratulations to them I think regardless it's still a pretty good game you know it's going to grow and get better over time and it's showing well I mean here's the questions of why we wanted to bring it up is this the start of a new wave of web three games this year in my opinion I think it will be I

think you're going to see much better quality stuff coming out this year I also think with the sheer number of games maybe not necessarily this year but that we're in development that one surely is going to break out and be pretty successful and that may even make many of them so you know I think the space has definitely evolved a lot but now that this quality has been increased are we going to see this kind of New Wave I suspect we probably are uh Bitcoin is harving in April will that lead to a crypto Bull Run I don't I think I saw some notifications earlier about it hitting 45k again so I I don't think I don't think Bull Run I'll be honest but at the same time like it's not it's not all all sad times so I I would agree I I feel with two Wars literally going on on the planet right now I don't think that's good for going to lead to a ball run so that's maybe something outside of its control but we'll see um who knows do we do we think the game can sustain its performance I think that's an interesting one because what tends to happen with a lot of the web 3 games is that they come out with a strong start I can remember the game the in Arena from

a few years ago but it can't really maintain it because not enough people doing and you know people are aping in to buy the token it's going up too quickly too soon and then it crashes and then it's all dead one thing I'll say is a game that is based on Clash of Clans is going to have a lot of progression and a lot of meta to keep people there for a long time the least it has a lot to look at from what supercell's done and copy if they want to or make adjustments if they feel like hey that was uh not the right direction or the players you know being like hey we actually want more of this type of game like they do have some opportunity to like steer it a little bit of a different direction potentially exactly they do say that the maybe a token is going to be used for governance and making decisions so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out and you know you kind of already touched upon it I mean one of the questions I wanted to ask was you know what impact does the web 3 element have in terms of interest and reception and you know you made quite a good argument there that that could be a reason that you think well okay hold on if I go into this game and then it turns out I don't like it I can actually get something back from it or I

can play the game around the game if I come into it and you know that's always been one of the things that we people have said could be the reason why web 3 gaming takes off and it becomes a thing um it's certainly possible you certainly see that kind of evidence in behavior in other non-traditional games and markets um so we see that and I think you know perhaps the best way to describe this is this might not be something that's gone completely nuclear like power world which we'll come to in a moment just to give an up on that which is you know that's why I feel this year has already started in pretty interesting way I would say look we're only what six weeks into the new year we've already had Disney dropping 1.5 billion in making a fortnite game mode we've had a game come out absolutely nowhere to to be the new darling of of web 3 web all streamers worldwide it's not the only one too we had other big success stories like lethal company and stuff like that some of these smaller ones so you never know year and now we have this the Renaissance of web 3 so I think that's already quite a lot interesting things here to see and yeah what I would say is

I feel that like this game's probably got a strong enough start now that it may give it a platform to see if that model going forward so you know if we conceptually think about it a game where the players have genuine power to decide what comes next and ownership over it you know you're certainly pulling a face and perhaps that face is is is is right to be pulled but it's an interesting model stroke you know hypothesis for can you make a game and sustain it that way uh my personal opinion is I think that that could be a very successful model I think that what I see I think over the last couple of years is that games these days are really growing from word of mouth I would say that that's known for about the last five to six years that that's the biggest way to pull in new people is that you know one of your friends is playing it so you want to play it with them well if there are games where you feel that then you have ownership over it and those those sneaky devs are actually listening to you and doing what you want and doing things that are in favor of the player base does that actually lead to an overall more profitable game which was kind of flew in the face of what was previous

logic in sort of yester year and I feel with the games industry getting more and more competitive that perhaps that is the way to go because it means that you know you have something genuine and that connection is going to be the thing that keeps you in the game I mean there are so many games that you know the truth is is that if no video games came out from now to the rest of your life you still wouldn't have enough time to play all of the video games that are out there and I'm sure that everyone no matter how much of a gamer you are you've missed out on some absolute incredible titles it's just the way that it is so all I'm saying is I I wouldn't Ru this kind of thing out I think that so far it's done it in quite a nice way you know there's no sort of like power progression there it seems fairly Fair the way that they've done it I mean obviously clash clans is a power progression game so maybe it's not going to quite work in that s and that would be my question for them actually like how you you kind of make that work in such a setting but like I said I think it's really interesting one that definitely a lot of the industry will look at perhaps it's a false start or Perhaps it is another big you know checkpoint on the way to seeing

some kind of new tech and disruption in the games industry well I think you touched on the most important topic I think going forward for web 3 mobile which is does this work for user acquisition right that's yeah if it succeeds and because because of the web three part you're going to see more people do it like that's just how Mobile Works it's a lot of Xerox machines out there they see something that works everyone starts doing it because well like it makes business sense to do that when it's especially a lot of business people running these mobile game companies when you're so analytics data driven so numbers driven like it if you see that work you're going to try and do I mean we saw what th and Arena did that you mentioned earlier like that had a pretty big impact on people being very excited about that but we didn't really see a lot of mobile Hits come out after that which was surprising because uh I mean I don't want to integrate mobile development but it's certainly a little bit easier I think than say like trying to develop for consoles or potentially even PC you had these potentially big AAA games coming out stuff it's like well why why isn't everyone just tagging into Mobile obviously there was a lot of

uncertainty around the app stores and I think that contributed to the slowness of this and like this idea of this Renaissance it might just be a delayed hey we had to wait till we know what the policies were before we could truly commit and then successes like NFL Rivals helps show like okay there's some some path here I would be curious to see the actual details because I haven't dived into the implementation just yet especially with a lot of the coming soones on there of the implementation of web 3 because it's it's still a tricky space and I think as that gets fleshed out that will help determine how much this becomes a bigger movement or if it's just hey like a nice note you know and then maybe six months from now we get another one maybe not uh but I I think there are plenty of mobile games that struggle with user acquisition that would look at opportunities like hey if we just did some air drops here could we suddenly be like I mean I think to something like blur right was a good example of like oh how can you compete with open see let's just you know get people super excited over airdrops and that worked out quite well for them and

you know whether it's sustainable or not doesn't really matter uh for them at the end like and I don't mean that as a pump and dump rug gun I think I just mean like it sometimes they they could get enough of a flywheel or just sometimes hey it's successful enough no business lasts forever and if they can last a year and do really well off that and then it crashes in Birds that's certainly not the worst business to run uh obviously another that's something I'm quite curious on because Perhaps Perhaps mayia is already a success it's hard to say but the amount of of volume of the token that's already been traded I don't know if they're Market making with their token which means reinvesting it to to kind of maintain the price but it is possible as you say given how much it cost to make a mobile game that they might already be Roi positive in which case it would be a success they can obviously I hope they do maintain it and keep the kind of community going but as you say like in the past before live service games were a thing how did the games used to work is you'd set a budget and if it meet your targets then you you green light the sequel and if it it doesn't you move on to the next right how much how much money did I have left over after that game to do something

else pretty much yeah or or a DLC maybe if you're lucky like we think we can squeeze a little more out of this the expansion pack model as well as the I used to be in yester year so yeah we we'll see how it goes and um yeah I think you're right I think that would be a prediction I would make is I feel that maybe not this year but I think what this year will really flesh out what will be then allowed with kind of web three and mass market and we'll start to see that more next year because I feel that like this year will give us the answers and then the legislation will be made so that it rolls out unfortunately it still takes a bit of time but this is still a great first start I think for doing that like as so just so people know it's not currently working in the game and not at least what I could find but supposedly they will have the ability to buy the web 3 assets inside the game using Marketplace using some kind of proxy part currency um that's what they say yeah maybe going with the kind of the stepping route or something like that yeah and that's the thing is that like there are a lot of like hoop to jump through with mobile development for web 3 but I think there's also a lot of solutions to things that are that are

relatively feasible even if they're not fun to implement and I think uh as we see more demonstrations of that like you know the stepping example I mentioned with their sort of like side currency to try and make apple happy and things like that like I think in these situations if you manage to you know uh pay the uh the troll under the bridge their their fee uh you could pass as much as you need to and like that's what it comes down to as long as you're like legal and making sure or Google get their cut I think we'll see a lot more uh stuff be okay and I think one of the things you know that may contribute to uh more of these things if it's successful right where it's like you people see as success they will try and do more of it is like the tooling has improved over time like there's more uh Frameworks and sdks and tools and stuff to where it's it's more doable in a shorter time frame than it used to be and so like you know as I mentioned earlier Heroes maavia is not like a new game like it didn't come out of nowhere they announced it a long time ago ago and that is one of the things too you have to consider is that they had an invested player base a long time

ago simar to like a Kickstarter or something where they're invested in it but maybe even more financially than like a Kickstarter where you just kind of have bought something ahead of time this is really like investing in the game and and it's not just tokens I believe there was land in this game as well like I'm works and things like that yeah I thought just before we move on to the next topic is I actually think that that is in my opinion the thing that I've noticed with the sort of breakout games recently is they do tend to have this kind of Grassroots into phenomenon type Journey so they have like an early version and some True Believers that stick with them for a while they're kind of building sort of like in the spare time secretly undercover but they're always making the quality of the game or the fundamental gameplay look really good and then at some point it crosses a threshold where actually is good and then they go big and then it sustains because it's good so yeah maybe it is like a Kickstarter Plus+ but it is interesting because I what I'm saying is I I feel like that is proving to be a

bit of a consistent way of being successful um and you know in the industry right now where it's big bets that you're making on and people generally trying to play it safe rather than scared maybe that's that that's the way that you get around well that's the thing too is like a lot of the big companies you know they're trying to make games they're either trying to capitalize on IP or they're trying to like do a bunch of soft launch testing on some idea that may be a clone or maybe like an iteration of something and then just doing a whole bunch of analytics stuff and then pumping for scale once they figure it out but it's not really like community building and I think web 3 whe whether you like it or not has actually changed that quite a bit like they've really shifted people's mentality around community building on Discord especially uh I mean I think discord's probably been the biggest beneficiary of web 3 uh that doesn't get talked about often enough it's just they get gaming in general I would say I feel you know it's yeah and so it's it's one of the situations where like the community building was just kind of ignored for a long time mobile was very not social didn't have a lot of social

aspect to it uh Reddit was kind of the closest thing we had to communities around mobile games maybe occasional forums but forums kind of slowly died off in favor of stuff like Reddit and so I think we're in a position now where Community Building should be maybe a little more considered earlier on people like working with community building stuff up instead of this idea of like we just always have to rely on IP if you're going to build new IP it can't always just be off of well I'm going to have a huge marketing campaign and shove this in everyone's face and that's going to build the IP like I think that model can work is a little expensive now I think that's the big problem is it's do you think it can work I'm not sure it can it can it can it's it's just it's really expensive and a failure is a is a big failure uh but even like with huge IP it could still fail like we like you said even Disney has been struggling with their Marvel IP and other things a lot uh even with successful IP so no Surefire bets but I I mean speaking of like the the groundw of like Community sort of buildups uh and games obviously

you we mentioned earli power world continues to do quite well with some big numbers coming out I mean we talked about it like early on and it's still still growing well that's what I just wanted to point out we don't need to do like a big update on this but it's now hit 19 million players so you know with these games that kind of come out of nowhere I think recent examples would include full guys would include among us but these games didn't really sustain Pro to 19 million players is pretty impressive I would say and I think because it's based on kind of survival mechanics and sort of Arc style gameplay I would suspect that whilst it may not sustain that amount of players it will probably keep a lot of players for a long time so I think this is now a big success and um yeah A lot's been spoken about it but I am very curious now to see what happens of this because kind of going back to our kind of recurring theme today of people not necessarily taking risks with new kind of mechanics and things like that well if you already owned an existing IP or I don't know just to put it out there if you were Disney you know well we've just seen

that Pokemon with guns Works does Disney characters with guns look I I don't know I mean we got Disney speed storm so we can see them racing and then we've got them fighting in like mirer stuff so like feel like they're edging that way you never know I could see I think if you made a power world game with Disney IP I that's the thing is it's like if Disney did like Disney stuff with guns like there's no way that wouldn't sell like it's just a matter whether or not they want to protect the brand enough to not like do that but I think there's no way that doesn't sell like it's just going to they don't have to be guns right they can be super soas that shoot foam or whatever I like mean people hitting each other with frying pans and stuff in games like obviously there's some level of weapons that like they consider are okay to use or even in like the Infinity games I mentioned earlier like there's still combat so I don't know so that that is I'm sure this was discussed last week but that would be my prediction is that which major IP is going to take their mechanics and do their version of it first surely Pokemon have already green lit their own version to do it seeing as the game is literally

proven what's them to do um but look congratulations to them and I always say that I think it's great in the games industry how no matter of of how Corporate it sometimes feels in recent years and how Consolidated it gets that in games something random like this can happen anytime anywhere out of nowhere and when it does it always puts a smile on my face I mean you obviously hope it's going to be you but even if it's not you I just think that it's like the soul of video games there something special about it that doesn't really Exist Elsewhere like I feel like even in movies these days it's rare that you get like a movie that comes out of nowhere like you used to occasionally have things like maybe um Blair Witch Project or saw or maybe parasite to some degree but that was quite hyped up in in career for example um but you they they never really become sort of like massive successes right they just become more Indie Darlings even if they're Roi positive but in video games it still appears that you can kind of come out of nowhere and do gang busters gate another one I would say although you know that wasog they've been pretty successful

before that like that yeah that's why I'm putting on asterisk over but even but even then the amount that they did is still incredibly impressive right I don't think anyone would have ever predicted that them to do that well so yeah very nice story good to see that happening and then yeah who's who's gonna copy power world first I guess is take I think you're right on that the very least uh people will try it's just a question of whether someone with like strong IP will do it I think is that's where it's uh I think the the question mark is like will someone actually risk their IP to do it but I think there's some IP that are a lot looser or more sense of humor than others I honestly don't I can't see like game freak or or Nintendo doing it but at the same time you know like they have you know you've got a mooba Pokemon unite like where they're willing to fight each other there obviously like if you think about it Pokemon's entirely based around combat so it's not like I mean I had a Pokemon Snap I guess uh so it's not it's not I guess too too farfetched uh but but we'll see it's uh it's definitely nice to see as you said

though like uh there was a pretty interesting story and and we touched on it before but you know just the whole story around their game development the struggles they went through and the risks and stuff like I'm not saying go out and copy that it was probably uh you know a hair away from like being just complete failure no one ever heard about but I'm sure they did some community building and stuff like that as we were just talking about I think built that up but it is interesting to see like that particular genre uh have some staying power like you know we talk about like how long will this last it's like well even you know stuff like valheim lasted quite a while um if I think most of the games that have like had some early success in that genre tend to stick around I mean you look at stuff like Arc uh has stuck around quite a long time and even like you still see some of the smaller ones like the forest into the Suns of the forest and stuff like that as long as they have some unique hook they tend to stick around for like a longer yeah those games I feel from a meta kind of view and a design standpoint I think they're well suited to that that that's the like my previous examples that I gave like full guys and

Among Us what they had was it was so easy to get into and you could understand it really quickly but there wasn't really that much to retain you these type of games they're very sticky Loops you know you're playing there's that progression it's like how with power W it's like how many powers can you get I mean that's literally got to collect them all with Pokemon right got to catch them all so I think that alone makes it like a sticky game and it's easy enough to kind of keep the content treadmill going so yeah I think this is one that like I say I I don't think it will maintain those numbers I mean in terms of CCU but I feel this will be here for a while and and it won't just be a Fed yeah and I think it's also worth noting like they very quickly seem to make a deal with Microsoft for Xbox Live and that that must have been like less than a week of deal making like they were probably on the phone like 247 making that work uh and so that's a big I think coup for Microsoft to pull that off and like pull them over as quick as possible uh you know make that huge deal I remember seeing something like in the Indie movie like wasn't there like some big thing with uh you know Super Meat

Boy and like that whole thing where like trying to negotiate a deal to be in the part of their Indie thing like that was a big like back and forth I feel like it was like that kind of scenario uh with just these these sort of frantic phone calls to try and make it in that window and I think uh obviously that that helped you know we talk about the 19 million and that was 12 million on PC which of course like it's it's been dominating steam it's like right now just below Counter Strike 2 but it was like above it at one point even was like thep game on Steam period and getting above valves games is never easy like that's a rare feat uh it usually like down in the Hall of Fame of like Peak Gamers at that point but uh they did manage to pull it off and they're still right like I said uh checked earlier today still just below Counterstrike to uh so they did obviously quite well on PC but like Xbox seven million of that and that obviously I don't I don't know if that counts people just playing on Game Pass but if it doesn't like then I mean yeah maybe they they cannibalize some sales for Game Pass players like that were just like hey I'll play it on Game Pass but I think because even with

that weak delay everyone jumped on it already like by by the time it came out on Game Pass like a week later everyone already probably owned it at that point uh that was gonna play it or at least tried it out there and uh my point around that though is like even if they don't sell anymore I gotta imagine the deal they have with Microsoft is still going to continue to bring them money around the Game Pass version so even like non-con continuu sales will still help them succeed if that to be a game that's played on Game Pass because if it's still played a lot on Game Pass Microsoft will obviously want to keep it on Game Pass because that helps keep people around on the subscription because it's a subscription therefore anything that keeps people playing is a positive for that subscription so that's like a a very positive situation for them because it's a type of game where you do invest in your server or your world and you build it up and like people have a sunk cost like we were talking about earlier so it's it's a very interesting situation for them to be in where I think they could suain a good amount of income for a while at the very least to actually consider what

they want to do next whether that's a power world 2 or or treat this more like a live service ongoing thing for a long time like they definitely have a lot of opportunities and options at this point so uh it is good as you said to see and hopefully they they spend the money wisely and don't go do a bunch of dumb stuff with it but uh in terms of live service stuff there was one last thing we wanted to touch on which is not like a a news topic of itself necessarily but it is related to a game that was just released which is uh we talked a little bit about this before in a couple different ways which was around live service games like uh people um like maybe shying off them even a little bit and then also we've heard from people jumping on them like it's kind of been back and forth and WB uh Warner Brothers was one of the companies that was like suddenly very bullish on it and it seems like every every article I saw on that was mentioning that in a way that they almost like felt like they missed the boat on doing that with with Hogwarts Legacy like they were like darn it if only I'd done that with Hogwarts Legacy I'd be rich now like that kind of like almost regret around that it seemed to be the the context for that announcement to me like not not in so many words but

like a subtext and so they've been trying to make that shift to live service games uh I mean they know that uh they had games slated for 2024 that aren't going to make that so like the two games that they have announced uh I believe won't be life service games at least the Wonder Woman game supposedly will not be single player and then the Harry Potter Quidditch game quidditch Champions I believe it's called Uh doesn't seem like it will be uh I don't think they've specifically said it will not be but that is one that is multiplayer but bringing it back to the games that have come out uh the reason I bring this up is is I want to kind of question whether or not this is a strategy that they've been executing well on and whether it's been a good idea for them to be as maybe overly enthusiastic as they have been about it again we don't know what they're what they have planned for past 2024 but the two games that have kind of come out like sort of in this strategy have been Mortal Kombat 1 which was really Mortal Kombat 12 for for those of you who don't know their their insane numbering system or in Justice three 12 what can you do

right yeah yeah exactly so uh so there was that which was which shifted a lot of stuff from Mortal Kombat 11's like design into like live service most meaning like they kind of PEC mailed it out they stretched out some of the content like in terms of characters like took a lot of them out of the main game and stretched them out they did a lot of modifications to the game to support a life service model which hasn't gone down uh 100% great and I'll get into the detail of that but uh the other one being The Suicide Squad game which just came out uh and the big thing around that was that was from the developers of the AR Arkham Asylum series of Batman games that was very highly regarded that sort of Trilogy uh that ended it was it 2015 Arkham night I believe came out and so it's been a while uh since they released one of those and it was a big deal and also like Kevin Connor's passing was like a big point of contention with it we won't get into that but that's unfortunate Kevin Conroy definitely one of the best but but uh it it definitely was a big shift for them into life service because they they've

been developing the single player games uh obviously M combat Mortal Kombat wasn't single player but it wasn't truly live service this one was like shifting from single player to live service looter shooter was like Destiny or something like that sort of model where it's very grind heavy uh the story kind of like sort of ends before really the live service starts and then it's like artificially stretched out past then and for games that are built around their story and their immersion and that sort of single player experience to be kind of warped into this different Co-op shooter experience uh it hasn't seemed like it's worked out great and I mean it's it's a little early to be 100% on that but I do think if we look at the numbers around these games and sort of the the responses stuff like that it is looking like they could be maybe putting the cart before the horse when it comes to converting at least established franchises into this model and that's what I worry about because WB is more than happy to constantly be their chest about their IP and their their franchises so I would expect that that

is where they will plan to use this stuff so I mean first off I just get your take on sort of Mortal Kombat being a street fighter you know fighter fan in general I'm sure you have lots of opinions on that but also anything you have to say about suicide squad I haven't had a chance to play it but uh definitely well it seems like kind of growing pains for for WB of their live service strategy which is not surprising um it's funny how you see so many companies kind of pulling out from it I think it's one of those things that you have to have conviction for because if you're going to do it you're not going to solve it immediately you've got to kind of stick the course and you know for as successful as fortnite has been remember that game was in development for around seven years and didn't exactly have a smooth start a huge pivot yeah yeah well they they changed the game let's be honest if it wasn't for pubg I think the game would have failed but they spotted that and managed to kind of change and put that game mode in so that's what I mean about are you going to stick with something or not I I do think what's a bit weird with with WB though is that there are some of the games they choose to be live service is it the right pick like certainly of Suicide Squad I mean that was kind of

one of the big of well you're kind of yeah your reaction here for those on the video you can see is is very sort of similar but you know as you say for a studio that was so known for making these great single player games even though they did kind of move more to open world over time you know is that the sort of you know with characters and the story can you really sustain that as a live service it doesn't seem like a good fit I know they had some technical problems you've also got a studio that doesn't have experience in building those games so if you put that all together would you expect that to be a super smooth Smash Hit right out of the park I probably wouldn't would be just my you know not knowing anything but just 50 foot view of things Mortal Kombat I think is an interesting one um it's funny because you asked me you know what do I think of it in terms of being like a fighting game and I've always said that like as weird as this sounds it's um I don't really consider it a traditional fighting game per se I don't think that's a bad thing I've always felt that it has more of a kind of casual flavor to it rather than an arcade view so people I know who play

that game they are more from the Casual standpoint they get enjoyment through playing the game for the story for the characters I would ask like which Mortal Kombat you're talking about that starts with though because I I don't I don't think that applies like one and two maybe like you feel like that starts yeah so I would say I I think it was for whichever the first series was that didn't come out in the arcade I personally do remember playing Mortal Kombat 3 and ultimate 3 in the arcade so I think when you're an arcade game you're still by definition competitive because you're literally putting your quarters in and you're saying I'm better than you or you're better than me de and let's play and let's have a best of three kind of thing when you've gone to console then you you're realizing you got like a different demographic and you know the series has always essentially had the gimmick to sell it which is fatalities you know I don't know if you've seen But in Mortal Kombat one they have extra fatalities that you can buy as DLC right so they're looking to monetize what is the gimmick of the game that is that is a great examp example I would say like of the live servicing of that yeah well but I guess my point is

is that the right way to live service it right so I I I will say that a lot of fighting games it has surprised me that more fighting games haven't gone down the live service route like um I've always been shocked actually that neither Street Fighter nor Tekken tried it because I feel like if you were to do the League of Legends model where you start with two Champions or two characters and then you can try out or then buy the other characters outright that how many more people would you reach and in my opinion I think you would reach a ridiculous amount but you have the whole issue of like competitive landscape when it comes to paying for a characters has always been a huge point of contention though well but you could grind to get those characters too right so it could be that like if you're just a free-to-play player if you played a game every day for two years you'll actually end up with eight characters but if you wanted the whole 36 you have to pay for them as you said like obviously League of Legends like has their own model around that sort of thing that that does show that like competitive landscape can still have yeah yeah yeah character rotation things I get your point but I mean all I say is

that I feel that like especially with those games the reason it surprised me is the one thing that they've proven over the years is they have incredible gameplay that people will stick around and they want to play it over and over again so if you've got something as sticky as that what your barrier to entry is is getting people to try it in the first place if it's free and there's no commitment people are way way more likely to try it so I think from that sense it it can make a lot of sense as you say with Mortal Kombat the live servicification as you I don't know if that's a word but we're making it a word now yeah but if if if you're going to do that if you already have an initial upfront cost then you know are people going to stick around now to be fair I do know that in Mortal Kombat the people who play that game they're not so interested in the online play they're more interested in the other kind of modes where they have like a kind of towers mode or Conquest mode and things like this that are essentially kind of grind the RPG mechanics I don't know if you've ever played the Mortal Kombat mobile games but they're not fighting G onot one that came out recently I played a bit of that one as well as the street fighter one which were both very

different takes for sure yeah because they're not really fighting games they look like them but they're not right they're RPGs in Disguise so you can kind of go there so yeah I mean I what I know is that I feel that players feel that Mortal Kombat one was rushed it didn't feel like a finished game when it came out live service game you don't have to release it completed right well but perhaps philosophy yeah I I I would say even a lot of games have got that wrong like Street figh got it wrong with Street Fighter 52 which is that if the game comes out and it's not as good as the previous one um you're you're starting off in a bad sense yeah you probably should should finish that first before putting that up yeah well it's it's notable that both Street Fighter 6 and Tekken a which has just come out recently both of those had extremely strong launches because the opinion especially from the hardcore players is that on day one they were very well-rounded that they had like a lot of content and good gameplay Street figh 6 having amazing net code and that kind of got him off over there so because you know as we're saying here this MK has

not really sold so much whereas the previous one got great sales it hit 15 million it's still the highest selling fighting game out of all of them even though I've said that it's not really a fighting game it's more of a kind of single player game but with this one if they've already on the D the decline it's hard to see them picking up and so I fear for that franchise a little bit and perhaps if you are going to plan live service it's still important that the base product is good enough to retain player interest so they want to kind of keep there um it's a difficult one to say um what I can see is that yeah they still obviously a bit far away I mean you know WB also had multiverses right which is the game you really like get you after that next one in the in the volley but it's like it's a relaunch rather than a first launch so unless you consider that that beta was actually a beta but of course like if you could if you could spend money and buy season passes and stuff let's be honest that's not a beta well what I would say saying which I would guess would worry me is well what have they learned because none of these games seemingly had a good smooth launch

that's the big test right is is if they come out and they've learned a lot they actually had a chance to try it out but they were free and I think that's a big difference is multiv versus wasn't coming out it was it was a platform fighting game so more similar to smash BRS and that like but it was also still a fighting game and it you know had characters you could buy and things like that sort of what you're talking about but it also was free to begin with and I think you know was hugely successful it used IP as well you definitely flexed Warner's IP quite a bit as well as you know I still see to this day like pretty much every day on the subed there's people talking about what character should come in so being like a cross IP thing was clearly a big win for them but it is going to be a big question because there is like no information on what's changing with the relaunch and there's like these weird sort of like uh promotions that came out in McDonald's and like Germany that may have just been like delayed promotion deals that weren't even relevant yet but supposedly it's launching some time early this year so like that maybe like next month or whatever A lot of people speculating that it was meant to kind of like wait till the Suicide Squad Squad stuff was

done and then follow up but you know it is important to bring up to see like did they learn from that because their big problem was around monetization and retention were like very difficult for a Smash Brother Style game because like that's difficult to but we still have games like bralla that are managing to survive so clearly it's there's some model that works and that also has dipped into cross IP and stuff so it's just a question of like yeah if did they learn anything and if they do that would be valuable learning I think for WB in general so like they they pretty much took like a year off that game which can't have been cheap uh to be spending on that I doubt they like scaled the team down to retrofit it either a lot so they probably were working very hard on it like expensive so hopefully it's a case where like they were essentially investing in here's how live service should work uh obviously we'll find out you know when it comes back out it was free so obviously you could try it when it comes back out unless for some reason they pivot it to to paid but that is a big difference is both uh Mortal Kombat and Suicide Squad were paid at front games meant to continue to monetize you

after that and the big complaint I see in any review of them is like even the positive reviews are like this game's too expensive bu clearly The Upfront price is a big part of of that hurting the games and obviously like you need go back to the original Mortal Kombat you had to pay quarters to to play every practically every fight you did like you know was always pay to play but this that you know shift the mentality around buying up front and then continuing to milk for money I don't know if it always works great but I think you know their older model wasn't so bad like so I was a pretty lapsed Mortal Kombat player and hadn't really played one much since like three probably but 11 brought me back in because of the DLC which was you know RoboCop Terminator uh I think it was Rambo like I was just like dude I'm gonna play as RoboCop Terminator like I don't care I I bought the game like a two different systems because of that I bought the full like complete editions so that I got the DLC with it uh like they brought me back in but if that was like a live service model and I was

having to buy that game and then like do some weird grinding stuff or like all this other stuff to get it like that wouldn't have sold me the same way that that did and that brought me in as a Mortal Kombat player to the point where I was like actually excited to see what one would do and then they kind of like dropped the ball in my opinion with that it's interesting to see like that upfront cost as well seems to not be helping uh retention obviously it helped their initial profit right the way they supposedly sold 3 million cost but they haven't said anything since that and that's the part that makes me suspicious they they announced that when they hit the 3 million which was like very early on and then have been dead silence since I couldn't find any numbers after that and that was you know quite a while ago it was September I think was when they when it launched and they you know I think they announced those numbers I think like maybe a month or so after and they were like just to give steam numbers as an example they were like 14k average players like that's the average not the peak right and they're all the way down now to one of the lowest of all the fighting games like what was it uh 1.7 which is that is below games that have been out since 2021 like what was

it uh Guilty Gear strive which you know still has some life in it that's that's hitting Evo again for the third time it's like it's it's got some life in it but it's a 2021 game and that never had big numbers but it still managed to hold in the thousands on average players and it's like 1.9 right now and you've also got like 1.9 for like uh what was it Grand blue Fantasy Versus which is rising which is I mean I'm sure like the offici Autos have been all over that but like that's not a game a lot of people have heard of and if that's hurting worse than a huge franchise on its 12th game that's not a good sign for a live service like the whole point of live service is that retention obviously we don't have numbers for console these are console Centric games more so to be fair like the numbers would be better on Xbox or PS5 uh or maybe not switch the reviews on switch tend to be very negative uh in terms of performance and stuff so I don't know I mean I did buy 11 on switch so I can't I can't speak to that no but you you you still still have a point that's those them charts do tend to be indicative because if we compare that to 11 11 still had quite a strong

base even years after 11 almost has more than than one does right now 11 I think was 1.7 or like 1.5 like it's it's actually close they shouldn't be neck and neck like yeah I mean I know Battlefield 4 for example was one of those kind of games that would that would hang around right but this is this is not like this is supposed to be a pass the torch franchise not a go backwards franchise exactly so this I I I just think this is a an indicator that maybe WB needs to like calm their excitement for a minute and like if these games that they're working on now aren't coming out this year take a breath and think about their strategy so they're not just like excited about the next Harry Potter thing they can slam lme service onto and make sure that it makes because like even Harry Potter is that like really a good fit like for Harry Potter to become a live service game for the same reason was Suicide Squad a good fit I mean maybe if you have the right developer who knows how to do that correctly and and this is nothing against Rock Steady because they are fantastic developers like they they make a great game uh so like I still see a lot of positive reviews and it right now it's still at very positive on Steam with like about 84% positive last I

checked um so there's there's still people a lot of people enjoy the game play but like I said even the positive reviews that are part of that 84% are like this game's too expensive buy it on sale like it's not enough for them to refund it but they wouldn't buy it again you know kind of thing so it's this is a difficult position to be in where you're charging full price for these games and and you looking at like uh Street Fighter 6 is still doing better Tekken 8 which just came out as doing better and these are games that aren't like as you said leaning super hard in lean into life service but they are you know doing DLC right they're they're doing more like what you would expect from these games which is let's release a solid game and then continue to expand on it not let's release a rushed game and then Pac mail it out so that people have to wait you know a month between each thing and and get quote unquote excited about it uh it's clearly not seeming to work from in my opinion obviously Suicide Squad is a little early to be sure but I do see them already like starting to tank in terms of number of players and it's it's fairly low number of players

for that type of game that's a co-op uh multiplayer game which means you you you know you're expected to be at least more than one person so the number of players matters even more than you know like a One V one fighting game would for example so it's it's not looking great obviously Multiverse is like struggled and and may or may not be able to come back I really hope it does as a fan of that game just because it was a fun game I liked it and uh and it was free and there's no reason not to jump in and have a good time as long as you wanted to and like it wasn't overly monetized it wasn't stringing you along with stuff if you wanted characters you get them like they weren't crazy it just didn't have the retention that's and that's the problem I see with a lot of the stuff when we talk about people backing away from live service games is retention is not an easy thing to do and it and it's hard to do it without skewing the game in negative ways uh you could do it positive ways it's just not easy right it's not easy lift so I I feel like we'll have to wait to see the other IP that they you know that they have that they've mentioned that I I do think you know obviously DC outside of just Suicide Squad uh the Wonder Woman game

like I said is not t to be like this it's about be open world uh whatever and surprisingly I know this was from like a developer like I'm surprised it's still doing cool stuff like monolith which goes way back to like blood and Sho and stuff but uh cool to see they're still around doing stuff and I they're a good developer so I do expect if they were to do something that they would also be able to do well but I don't think that's going live of service but there's also Harry Potters I mentioned and of Thrones is one they've they've teased a couple times that I could see them kind of going more in that direction uh and you know they didn't mention I don't know if they have still deals around Lord of the Rings but that was what monolith had done previously to this was the the shadows of mortar uh games which were quite good so I don't know we we'll have to see but obviously like there's a lot of different directions you can go with any given IP so there could be something very appropriate in DC that makes sense for live service and just have the right developer and I don't know think think about it correctly because I hate to see them them them screw this up with good IP uh and especially with

franchises you know going back to the 12th game now and as as a side note I just happen to catch a uh a really great documentary on Midway that includes a lot of like the early stuff Mortal Combat on on YouTube called insertcoin I think it was sure but I do recommend anyone who's curious about uh the early Midway people and their mentality just it's a f I think it's a fun watch I think it's if you want to see how Mortal Kombat developed originally I I think that's a great one it's just on YouTube so I you just watch it for free but uh definitely recommend checking that out if you're if you're interested in sort of the early roots of like the people just doing crazy stuff and not thinking about it from life service but still thinking about monetization which was interesting like they're very much like how they're doing the sales of the you know it's quarter by quarter and I don't mean a fiscal quarter I mean a literal quarter 25 cents at a time was their mentality at that point and so it's a very interesting I think contrast to looking at uh and in context for something like Mortal Kombat 1 so we'll

have to see obviously like Tekken 8 for examples you know is pretty new Multiverse hasn't come back out yet Street Fighter 6 may or may not have a long lifespan it has you know dipped a bit uh in terms of player base um so you know we'll see I don't I'm not ruling Mortal Kombat one out yet but I I do expect that they're going to have to work to earn uh things back a little bit the the the you know the scores on Metacritic are not great the the reviews are at mixed on Steam uh while suicide squad has had a better start I do expect that that will also potentially suffer a similar fate if they don't find some way to pick that up so just word wise if you're doing live service games like think it through a little think it through yeah I I would also say take your time I think it's interested you mention the multiverses well just to put it out there I mean of course I get it that portfolio slates are planned years in advance with Revenue targets so it's easy for me to say this but if if I was someone like a Sony or something similar I think rather than committing to having all my games live service right away I

would choose one kind of smaller IP Andor gaming studio and use it as a testing ground and really just work it out so that you can fail five six seven times if need be until you really learn what you need to do and then once you've got one that is a success then you look to kind of bridge it out I suppose to be fair to Sony who've bought Bungie they probably think that because they have uh the destiny IP now in there they're stable that they've already got that but yeah for example in WB I think just if you make your entire slate like that it's um and you haven't had one success yeah it just feels like you're making the same mistake in different ways multiple times rather than solving the core issue like one way to learn yeah yeah I suppose so more expensive way to learn but yeah like I say it's I just want to say that's a very easy thing for me to say in point a critical I get how it works in these big or organizations but my experience is is that the amount of times I think we've discussed it many times on this show or off air that to get a live service game

working it's like fundamental shift in the way that everything is done um it's not just the case of the game quality and things like that I mean it's interesting how earlier you mentioned how you felt making mobile games was easier than console and PC but I feel now yes I was going to say that I feel in in the the space year 2024 which is now where we live that's not so the case may maybe from like the pure Artistry and visuals required I'm talking about the technical aspects yeah yeah but if you include the overall package I think you'll find that there's different problems that are just as complex in different way there you go well I I'll end this with one final thought obviously WB needs to just bring Harry Potter over to fortnite it's not the worst idea obviously that that's that's the solution but with a with a two billion investment because they'll have to increase yeah you got to step it up come on you can't just match if you want Priority Access or you know they can bring DC or I'm not sure if DC ever had a fortnite crossover I don't recall but

where's the DC versus Marvel you know fight in fortnite there we go anyways yeah that's that's the final thought there I think uh we actually ended up uh with with quite a bit to discuss on these topics and I think as you said like a lot of interesting stuff happening this year and definitely keep your ear to the ground because uh there's just a lot of people trying to work out a lot of interesting problems I think that's that's worth highlighting is that it's not easy money but there's a lot of money to go around it seems so definitely got to figure that out but we'll help you figure it out as well you know with trying to bring the insights we can from the news and uh you know interesting things going on but I want to thank of course you listener and Anil for managing to make it uh thankfully no no floods over there although I'm sure it rains plenty it is raining right now actually at least you're on an island sefer yeah so but uh but yeah thanks everyone for for tuning in and uh I think we may or may not catch you guys next week I think we're still trying to figure out the schedule for uh the next holiday week but just stay tuned and uh

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