Fireside Chat: Where next for mobile?

[Music] [Music] now I'm gonna do something we did in London which is really cool future gazing continue that kind of theme the fireside chat with with two kind of visionaries the games industry who've successfully successfully done that successfully gaze and made themselves in the right place at the right time and made some smart decisions over the last sort of a couple of decades so to my right I have Christian seekest Rama as he's been ahead of the game I've known for 15 years I think that a long time I need with more yeah funny okay well you're older the co-founder of Mac space which Evan came to glue back in 2001 and in the earliest days of mobile games business you didn't

sleep hiring staff you you had the first massively multiplayer game with a multiplayer game in your house could and then after after to go you went on to further social gaming company Playfish which plays massive trails in the free to play social gaming space sold that business to EA which serves the EVP EVP for a few years then you founded a ok fine of initial capital which you've invested some money and some small struggling studios like super sale and stuff like that quite well didn't it and currently you're serving a CEO of see people make a corporate the forefront of mobile eSports that's interest that's Christian Matt I don't know as well so it's a pleasure to meet you I was I was equally blown away by you by your your profile so hypotheses started at a well and you

at GM of online gaming and devoted to the roles as well on that except your own investment in starting partnership again have some successful exits and you went on to work in eSports as a CEO and president of major league gaming correct and and then that became that the biggest competitive video gaming league in the world co-op Activision and then you also NCEA this seems to be the stop but you interviewed me I think just for you by Austin and you're working on massive IPS like notes field Republic and Mass Effect's and finally conquer and then moved into you as a CSP ps-strategy operations VA Mobile obviously working a whole load of amazing kind of titles they're like FIFA mobile Madden since it stands out came over to Zynga where you're the CEO incredible so these guys basically have been plus of almost 20 years been around

the game space making waves and anything's happen so a300s tobacco the my Eagle how these wings clipped so the weekend so that's a family thing yesterday in Finland so sorry about that I think we've got to license that's that's that's more than enough and just ask each of you which you believe was the you know the one or two most significant tipping points the last sort of five kind of ten years in gaming and mobile gaming especially what things can you point to go that was the for me the most significant piece in the last five years in our industry has been the explosion of social and the centrality of social as a part of the experience sure so I think you made the point that there are other more obvious answers app stores and the free-to-play model and

Google and Apple things but at the end of the day the thing that took hold of this business and exploded it was the the building gaming experiences around connected play sure which is what led to explosive viral growth and deeper engagement which is what led to the possibility of deeper monetization actually led to the possibility of investing more money to acquire players which led to the greater growth and the kind of the explosion ultimately so for me that was the thing was the cool yeah would you kind of care without would you sucess I actually think social has been huge and it's in particular I think it's really playing out on mobile in a huge way I think he has done for a long time there are some others though that I think are worth calling out and it always feels like to me anyway like the mobile games industry is kind of super stagnant at any one time you think like this top ten has been this top ten forever until it then suddenly it isn't and then you have these really weird kind of I guess they are so the pressure is the build in the industry and then suddenly everything changes and I think

one of the one of the really interesting bits has been how the growth of the industry really has been in fits and starts you had the big mid core gaming if you're like explosion where titles like whether it's clash of clans or game of war really drove a massive growth spurt in the industry and we're now right at the midst of a of another big growth spurt if you like through perhaps convergence and perhaps more core oriented titles where perhaps we finally are at that place where as we all know in our hearts gamers are gamers regardless of whatever platform they end up playing on yes mobile has brought in a very large amount of perhaps more casual players because it's a you don't have to buy that device just for gaming but equally those of us who enjoy playing games perhaps have the same hopes and desires from our gameplay and mobile as we are seeing on other platforms and I think in particular over the past year what we've seen in the convergence with of course Pumped you in fortnight but but perhaps more importantly if you look in China and in asia-pacific where this trend has been

going on for several more years you've actually seen really several billion dollar franchise is being built off the back of scratching if you like the core gaming itch on on on mobile so it is really fun how many different simultaneous trends are happening in the industry right now ranging from this if you like the technical things of what are what's becoming possible whether it's virtual reality or other things and gamer culture in terms of what we are expecting what do we expect other people play how to gamers experience games from content creation to content enjoyment and play and all of that stuff that's quite a lot of those we can dive a little bit deeper into some of those those trends it's just one other conquest just to set the scene I guess is for a while people will be predicting the end of the relentless growth of the mobile games industry what's maturing it's gonna slow down and then kind of every year it doesn't noticeably appears not to so you know how much growth did you see sort of left in the mark is is is there you know as I say fortnight and

pub G seemed to bring a whole new kind of gameplay that wasn't really happening mobile I've got you know another 300 million or whatever followers have come in from nowhere did you see this still you know explosive growth or we kind of a need you see kind of a plateau happening at some point well I don't think that many of us would be here if we saw the other market but I do think it is important that at any one time I think all of us are correct in saying that this particular phenomena that we're seeing right now will probably plateau right that is probably true no matter which one you ever look at which particular game which particular phenomenon it's probably true in music movies TV series or whatever you talk about and the cool thing about mobile is that because the amount of devices is increasing so rapidly and the capability is increasing so rapidly that you can layer trends on top of trends on top of trends to see the kind of aggregate like tens of percent percentage points of annual growth that we've seen for the

past ten years going and I don't know that we are seeing a slowdown in that particular thing just said I'm not seeing that we are say seeing a wearable or some other kind of hardware like would replace the personal screen right now I know I would agree with that all right there's sort of a more mechanical answer to the question and the more philosophical one the on the mechanical side you know you've got places like India with you know billion for population and 28% smartphone penetration so there's sort of nowhere and you've got 5g coming and a whole series of other things which the Christians point those will revolutionize the platform I also think to some extent we're in a place which is we're in kind of a post platform world right so what you're really saying you're saying there's this explosion of cross-platform experiences and we what you're saying is when new experiences are constantly coming onto the platform we're in this world where if you freeze time and look at your phone and think I was is the market

can be driven by how many of this device is sold in the next six months I just I think you're narrowing your focus way too much yeah okay Asian parts of Asia and and we'll be talking about we've got a panel coming up talking at a specific big Asian markets in a little bit but clearly so China and other major Asian markets have been a big part of the kind of growth in terms of the figures at least in the last few years again is that it's not that will keep predicting that you know China's going to run out of steam in terms of constant constant explosions you so I think do we see that Asia is going to still be leading the way for the next couple of years in terms of kind of trends and also pure numbers you know Asia that could be India and Southeast Asia not necessary China and also some of the approach second question in terms of your approach are you crazy not to be operating there in Asia at the moment she do you know is it insane I'm always surprised by how few people from the western China joy for instance which is seems like it's the

biggest game show in the world and there's not you know a lot of people still don't go to it which is crazy to me I don't know so yeah I guess it's China and rest of Asia not going to be the growth for the rest if the next five years say oh well I don't know if it'll be for the next five years there's certainly been a there certainly has been a trend where the Asian game players in Asian culture as being a little bit ahead of where the West has been yeah you have been able to peer look at what's going on in Asia and then wait a little while and you've seen some of those core experiences come in a different way having said that I'm not sure there's anything fundamentally different about the way what is driving growth in either location competition social deep engagement around these experiences is is just as prevalent here as it is there in terms of being involved in Asia I think there are just there are challenges or structural issues a lot of folks have have been

unsuccessful Western companies in trying for many many years for all kinds of reasons and have been burned and so very I think there is a little bit of just a sense of wine be careful for a lot of companies which doesn't mean you shouldn't be there but it means you really have to know what you're doing so if you don't want to just kind of show up in Shanghai and look around say hey how do I I'm happy with that I think people are people everywhere and we are all entertained by similar things that said popular culture does express itself differently in different places I think we have different movie top tens we have different music top tens and we end up having actually a relatively different game top dance it was interesting there was a time perhaps sometime in the mid kind of mid core explosion time when you actually did see brief global convergence in top 10 super so yeah kind of right but when you look at it now and you look at the China top 10 and you will not recognize a title from there on

say the u.s. top 10 yeah right now which is it's interesting and of course it is it is the I then it's dominated entirely by by tension and Eddie's and I do think that there are many many things going on there right there's on the one hand yes perhaps there are some cultural affinity things perhaps maybe the mobile first generation is a little kind of ahead perhaps in parts of parts of Asian and in the West there is also the industry structure is really different and there's some amazing companies putting in incredible amounts of investment and R&D into into like frankly just larger production value things and you're seeing coming out of the West right now and it is really interesting I think a lot of us are thinking a lot about when will there be total convergence when it's the first one of these big titles out of the say China that will actually crossover and become very large in the West I don't know that we've seen that yet and I don't know when we will see that equally is there gonna be the other thing if they say gonna be like a big title out of the West that will truly crossover and and and do well well that was that was what Lucas said you know daisies that was his vision that the things I hate the one global smash here

you know I once had a conversation with one of the senior executives one of the big Chinese came and come to said to me you know what we used to do is we we'd go around making investments and partnerships with Western game companies let me come in and extend them what to do yeah here's how you have to change your game yeah so it'll work in East what we realize is that every time we did that we were wrong we gave them the wrong advice in it it never worked so now we just say I don't know just let's try it right people might love it you know the legends doing other things are doing well we don't and so there's one of these things where I think we used to think that we could bolt one on to the other and Transplant it and you know they'd come back and say well if you just make the art style different everyone just it turns out there's a little bit more subtlety to it I think the longer that you are in this industry the less you genuinely know the less of any of those rules of thumb we'll just do this and it'll work you believe I think we're gonna come and talk later panel I saw skip had a few of it one

other big trend which I note something obviously is ingo very folks who makes a lot of sense very focus on is the sort of messenger chat html5 you know sort of games and that's obviously got incredible potential so did you think right now they can take on monetization there's a lot of experimentation there's a lot of kind of game launches this is this from your perspective the hot space that people should get into always you know well no I think people already you know the promise of of new platforms of another platform where viral growth is sort of more explosive and can still happen that this sort of more mechanical purchasing of installs and calculation ml TV is a little bit different because it's it's sort of it's a little bit it's

a kind of a new platform a little more naive platform or it still sort of works the way viral problems used to work yeah that idea is super super exciting I think for gaming companies in general now this platform is not it's not incredibly mature and there's a long way for it to go but as the has the sort of the rise of these new platforms happen and there is a kind of a hyper casual experience which seems are really well suited to them that sort of intersection is something that's really interesting to us and it is a little bit as a company in our DNA this idea that you've got billions of people there on a platform they want to play games together we're not quite sure how it's gonna work but let's get in there and start making games and figuring it out so we've done 20 or 25 games in that space where it's the the growth is starting to really be meaningful serving the millions of players and so it's it's something that's really encouraging is this a place that small studios can can comply

again so the problems are mobile now is its compete is hard I mean like this talk about Chinese investment Westham is that there's so much money's kind of going to this beautiful experience it is well in the the platform changes I might have given you a different answer to that six months ago then I would do what happens the platform changes and a lot of it will depend on how in in and how it develops I think in the the answer is probably gonna be both like as like it usually is so you've got super super hyper casual games that you you know two guys could make in a you know in three weeks you know maybe it cost you ten or twelve thousand dollars to make and and those games are at the top of the charts such as they are often in the you know on face right now having said that there are also deeper experiences we have a words with friends game there's from there are other games that are that have deeper meta games on top that are also relatively successful and so you're I think you're gonna see both of them happen but right now it's just so early

that it's kind of a time to get in there and mess around okay what I would do that is if you do believe in the post platform perhaps the world which we're gamers of gamers and you expect these gaming phenomena to happen across multiple platform Bufferin making those is pretty hard right I mean both in terms of having a multi-platform engine that can perform across all of these different platforms as well as the share production value that goes into them so from an entrepreneurial perspective I think it is you know as ever the core of the industry ends up being very difficult to compete as a new company if you haven't invested a decade in a game engine and if you haven't you just haven't don't have the resources to build the full production values out of it but there is so much innovation out in the fringes where some of these companies perhaps don't aren't investing whether it is messenger games or whether it is something that's a little bit more esoteric ol or immature like perhaps VR and other spaces where you probably won't make millions on day one but there may be ways of a-lying yourself with some of these platform holders to try out something new and who

knows whenever there's a new platform there's always an opportunity for for for new companies to really show the way and innovate and then break out okay skipping some trendin and something that you're very very engaged in eSports is super hot right now it's very kind excited about it as professional teams as big sponsorships as mobile eSports seems to be you know very much the the kind of vanguard of leading mobile eSports so where do you see body sports within the wide eSports scene on where we're at right now in terms of of eSports is it is it is it is it still a couple of years from when it's really happening or was it we we they're well I think so I mean it's great to see eSports as a whole really really catapult into cup into popular consciousness also as you know as madness I mean obviously built it for a for a long time this has been like a thing that's been happening for the past 15 20 years right so it's just being take longer than you'd hope it's really

taking the world by storm has really been I think a concerted effort both by certain publishers who really wanted to tell the stories around it as well as you know frankly it's just growing just big enough to pass the tipping point of popular awareness and the kids who grew up with rather watching computer games than watching live sports perhaps or watching both are becoming journalists and actually starting to write about it which is helpful so I think as a phenomenon it's really big I do think though that it is a and to answer a question for mobile yes it started like you know we had more than a hundred thousand concurrence watching our World Championships total views over 20 million I think which has been you know pretty cool but it's still incredibly early days and I think sometimes we get to laser focused on the competitive element of watching play in fact I think that the really big story is the sheer amount of growth in people creating content and watching gameplay content in general some of that is sports some of that is watching the absolute best players play and learning from it but there's a whole much frankly

you know at least as large if not much larger category of just basic and if you want to call it lifestyle game show entertainment content just like if you define television just by people watching sports it's and say hey is that sports television thing growing yes it is but television is much larger than just sport and I think what we are seeing is this massive sort of growth in content creation and content content watching if you like for more levels and lots of sponsors and folks getting involved at lots of different levels and I think that is the like that's a bigger more important story than purely eSports now we're proud of the growth of all the pro teams and all of the sponsors and all of the partnerships that we built up in overtime big partnership with Alibaba recently and with the ESPE here in the West with razor with with a whole bunch of sponsors around different events and leagues and we're excited about the growth at the same time what we are really excited about is all of our players engaging much more with watching content and creating content themselves

I would agree with that I think he when we start majorly gaming in English 2002 or something like that the one thing we were more convinced of than anything was that people watching video games and watching shows about video games was going to become the sort of dominant form of media for this next generation and it really it has become that thing and it's incredibly exciting in terms of the the development of kind of sports viewership who that is associated with gaming it's um it's a little bit of the Wild West right now and that's part you know again naively in the you know when we began we thought hey you know what what you're really gonna need is some kind of sanctioning body and some kind of league in order to in order to really draw mass audiences ultimately right there has to be some word and organizing principle what's happened in the years since this Christian points out is that it's really

been more about owning the only actual property and owning the game and then and that has become the sort of organizing principle and then it becomes owning teams on other things in it it gets complex but that happened that happens in almost the development every sport it begins while Wes and then there's enough money and viewership around that folks ultimately get around a table and figure out a way to organize it in such a way that you will maximize the focus of viewership so that you can maximize revenue and yeah I think it's a good point like I think more about eSports it's early but truthfully eSports is early as a whole and I think we're gonna see a lot of growth but also a lot of evolution in structure and format over the next five years so very much into the future message games obviously as well we've got we've got a sister sister event going on next door the blockchain space maybe we don't recycle recently blockchain games up is not to jump on the bandwagon but there's

a lot of talk at GC and there's been a lot of chat when we've been kind of a searching is a lot you know why consider proper games people that they're interested in this and they're doing doing things there's a number of people are dismissive as well what's your do you see it what's your few one on blockchain technology and and and and kind of crypto currencies in game is it something has a place is it going to be a new kind of kind of platform paradigm or is it just more augmenting what we've already kind of got or do you have a view so I'm really curious whenever Pocket Gamer sets up a new event or on something's gonna mean to something right I mean that stuff's gonna be big one way or the other someone's gonna make it big you know I'm fascinated by this idea of centralization versus decentralization I mean both frankly in consumer internet society as well as in computer games if you run like a game like art Idol vainglory which has an economy and has all of those things and it is entirely centralized in that you know we handle the databases - who owns what exactly there is no real role for block chaining

that what could we implement it sure we could but it wouldn't really change the consumer experience at all the big question is and you know as we you know I heard from Phillip earlier in a virtual world you're if you know if anyone who's made games for the past 20 years would think about making one of those things you would make it centralized - right you would create a central database saying who owns what and then if you to transact then you know the database changes some lines and says okay now you own it you don't and that's it no need for work chain however the really interesting thing is is the world moving to a place where there is some demand for decentralization is there a demand for this idea that you know what no it's no longer okay to have a central database that does all that I want to hold on to my thing where the you know I want my entry in the ledger that proves that I own my digital sunglasses and having multiple identities and all that stuff it's a pretty big change if that happens so again you know I'm fascinated by it I think it is one of those things that

requires a pretty big sea change in the mindset but then again everything in computer games is driven by titles like you could only say like yeah this core thing is gonna happen this core thing is gonna happen and then boom you have like on our Kings in China or you have you know a fortnight in the in the West in a way that really breaks through and yeah it's always obvious when you look at it afterwards but you could have equally made the argument for the longest time why would people play core games and this little platform right so in a similar way it's really easy to make the argument there's no role for blockchain because you know what everything is centralized why would you G centralize stuff until someone's gonna come up with that experience where you just go like wow that that is why you need to decentralized stuff so that's why like I wouldn't write it off I don't see it I don't know how do I wouldn't be able to advise that young entrepreneur say that's how yeah I mean what we had a company All Hands a couple days ago and one of the folks who we work with stood up and sort of was very worked up about and said how come we aren't you know doing more and blotchy and how come we weren't billing blockchain games and I honestly I that's

similar response which is I don't even know what that means you know what is the consumer experience that you're describing that we're missing I mean it just is a kind of thing that people say but I'm never exactly sure what they mean I guess we could take Bitcoin or something that's probably not what they mean because I didn't say you know but but it I haven't I'm not quite yet clear on what the we've been so guilty as a game industry for the longest time of holding them to tech and go I'm gonna make 3d games I'm gonna make like you know location-based games or whatever new tech comes around and we're gonna make that without really to your point describing what is the consumer journey I'm trying to empower here like what is what is the thing that I will love doing myself that this tech is going to enable and I think it may well come but you know I don't know that I've said it yet go in another room so you could we could go back fair enough on the first on another kind of random

rent and the technology to come out out there we just had Google i/o kind of last week and and obviously they were making big waves and got attention with their kind of artificial intelligence people will be talking about kind machine learning about kind of a I've pursuit or generating experiences and levels and whatever there's that suited to where do you see I guess that you know those sort of technology the AI and some machine learning technology fitting in the games business is that going to be transformative we keep too busy doing other things I will tell you that we and I think other folks like us in the world are investing really heavily and in AI and those kinds of technologies and they are going to enable some you know to the point about consumer experience as a writer you have to look at it through the lens of the consumer experience and the promise of AI is that when we understand what

players wha will be able to deliver them could have precisely the experience they want at the moment they want it and will be able to show them something else they might be interested in at the moment they're open to being interested in it and that will customize and anticipate experiences in a way that is revolutionary that's the idea of AI and I do think that that the technology has come sufficiently far made it's something that we were talking about back EDA you know whatever five now years ago whatever it's taken a little bit of a while for us to get there but I do think the technology sufficiently developed the that that promise is is a pretty is pretty real at this point yeah I think I would expand that there I think that helping craft great experiences is is one role for AI and of course offers and the cross Prabhu's and all of that stuff but there's a whole different side of AI which is also in the generative end like especially for

in our world for core games it's pretty interesting like how the amount of manual work that goes into texturing an environment the amount of manual work that goes into crafting say a lot of moving actors and their walks and working cycles and their animations and all of that kind of stuff it is interesting to see over time what role in the creation process ai is going to be able to make and then and perhaps augmenting the human creation process and making it more efficient and faster as opposed to anything else but I think those are things that we're gonna see over the next five to ten years in terms of changes how computer games are not just played and experience but also how they're made okay that's cool I've got plenty more questions I'm gonna I'm going put up for a question a second floors got gonna kind of do we've I've just I was just in I was at the belly games conference on Tuesday this week it's a lot of shows that's got the studios they all had this representative there they're all taking games kind of very seriously the moment um when brands when you're doing grounds

were critical you know it was it was all about in those days and on the feature phone or getting our deck it's all about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and whatever and it feels like that's went away a little bit for a while our brands like Hollywood brands or game existing have a pivotal success in mobile at the moment or is that changing is that they came back into power it feels a little bit like things like you know Marvel killing it number games at the moment so where'd you see brands and kind of IPs yeah I think IP matters a lot it's always mattered in computer games he will always continue to matter I think the question is how is IP made and what is the strongest like what is biggest staying power as IP and I do think that there is a like I would say when it comes to say DC Comics or Marvel this is IP that's been created for decades if you like and and that's it's very strong and if you create a strong product on top of it you probably can get some distribution advantage from it and an engagement advantage because you can you

have can fulfill the fantasy of being the Hulk or being you know being some other IP that you identify with I would say this though I think the world of distribution is evolving a little bit and when you look at say the spectacular success of for tonight for example being a thing that really has grown through content creators and grown through the schoolyards if you like and and classrooms and and all sorts of things this the the IP feel like effect of that is in terms of IP building is really reliant on the fact that it works on any platform you're able to there's very strong content creation capability for that for the for the game and you ultimately have an experience that itself is obviously incredibly fun so I think the IP will always matter I do think that compared to a few years ago where perhaps we were in a world where I felt like distribution was incredibly narrow and anything that could give you a tiny slight advantage in the hey arbitrage like say holding an IP license was sort of pretty critical in some ways I think that hopefully the

world is moving to a point where provided that the IP is great however you're building it from whichever angle you're building it you're actually able to perhaps step into a much more much bigger of a media footprint through content creators that perhaps you were previously yeah I would agree and I would also say that you know intellectual property is useful to your point both as a as a means to acquire players because folks are familiar with it means which means it's easier to explain to them what it is which means they're more likely to install the game and but it's also really interesting as a creator because it provides a world already made world free to create within and so there is a I mean maybe a less understood advantage when you sit down at your not staring at a blank sheet of paper you're in you're being invited into a world and figuring out how to create within it that creates speed to market advantages also I'd also agree with question that there has been a over the last five years or real kind of a change which is effectively means that B

or B plus or even a minus intellectual property has become kind of which is to say you need the best intellectual property to cut through think yeah you really need something that really resonates which has be there been around for years and has some real meaningful cultural currency or something which is just the biggest thing right now sort of tier 2 tier 3 stuff is probably not as helpful as it you know as it once was yeah but at the same time that it's also always been true that is its oddity which is while that's been true for less few years in the match three genre and shooter genres in strategy games the most successful properties have not been associated with thing they've been new IP and so it's always been true that IP is incredibly important and it's also been true that if you get it right you can break through with something it's just really hard to do and it's hard to predict and I think we sort of still

have that parallel parallel yeah maybe one thing that there is that these days as game all games evolve all the time and in order to keep the community engaged and in order to frankly just learn from all of the things that you're seeing the community do and build the game further in some ways games need to build IP more rapidly than almost any other form of media so even when you license to work together with an IP you need to choose to together create all the time right and that's a it's frankly can be a challenge if you hold an IP that has been the same for the past 50 years you need to figure out how do you work together with the IP holder to extend it okay I've got two more questions BOM good ask give some of the opportunity to throw a question I have got two incredibly experienced people here this is engagement this is till the morning fine I'm okay I'm happy asking questions so we talked about number different kind of kind of trends there's a hundred more I'd like to go into but is it anything we haven't talked about that you think is is is kind of really selling at the moment we haven't like talks about narrative based games or social casino or you know games

based on kind of a lecture or there's a number of things we just haven't kind of cupboards is there anything else you see is really exciting right now that people people should be looking at tell your secret it's these battle royale games I actually think that the thing that I am really passionate about I'm really excited about right now actually is the the whole cross-platform thing that's happening right now and beginning to understand to what degree like one game doesn't always make a trend like we saw Pokemon go last summer and which was incredible and still is incredible and and did a lot of things but perhaps did not herald the beginning of location-based games you know dominating the charts and of course people are looking at something for tonight and thinking about hey is this the Pokemon go moment for you know for core games is this truly the clash of clans moment for midcourt games and I think we don't obviously know yet but it is really

really really fun to see how if you monitor community forums and things how people are shifting their expectations of what mobile games should be like and what they should expect from them and in particular this notion that that that no longer accepting this fact that hey this game why does it run on this device but not on this other device and I think I'm pretty in particular if you think that the majority of fortnight's revenue I believe these days actually is from mobile and not from the console and PC where I grew up it goes to create a whole set of interesting economics around if you make a title these days can you really afford for it not to be across all platforms and what does that mean for the tech and for the production processor for who you should be like as a game company and to me those are really interesting drivers of economics and industry dynamics overall so extreme it just said that I can make a lot of games available to play the mobile app and presumably be some sort of guide by type system but I find that that's quite interesting I would totally agree we think a lot about that as well this yeah we are kind of in this post approaching

a post platform world and opposed john rowe world i don't know that the ways we thought about games core midcourt casual i I don't even know I'm not sure I understand what those mean anymore right so if you have a floors with friends player who 70% of whom come back to play every week and will play five or six times a day is that a casual player or a hardcore player you know I don't know don't know what it tells me another by the same token I think this idea that you know just because we've been around a while we think about platforms you know the next generation of game players don't think about platforms they just think about experiences and how they arrive into their world is just not as important to them as it was to us yeah and I think York your keynote at the start I don't think we've ever been at a time in the industry where it feels like there's so much opportunity and potential and change and I think that that's really exciting for the industry as a whole and I think that over the

next five to ten years I do think it's a different category a different style of company that ultimately will go ahead and become the sort of if you like the EA or the the Activision's of the obvious of this world because it's just the experience is that we can and will be creating as an industry will be so different and I think the success factors end up being being so different it'll be really fun to see what emerges and what combinations of companies and/or individual companies and abre thing up and ultimately really capitalizing on that opportunity positive very positive put me and there's a lot of opportunity there I think that's the thing you've got to find your nation that there was a lot of Nicias he couldn't leave mind is there a danger is there a key danger didn't finish tree right now that you know the games just feeling pretty sorry happy self at the moment is there something we should be kind of careful offers either saturation or just anything you see looming up that you should kind of watch out for i think we as an industry have always had a turn see and it's true of

most entertainment businesses to kind of fall back on old ideas and not to innovate enough its sequels ation is not just a creature of the games versus creature of the movie business and the book business and every entertainment business ever and there's a reason for that because you know as rational folks you'd like to when you begin something you'd like to have some sense that it's going to be successful before you begin and that makes me feel better about investing the time of lots of people and money and other things and so as a result we mostly spend too much time thinking about how we can ape what else we're seeing in the marketplace and and the guts probably true of every industry but i think we like to think a lot about that because if you're not careful you you will not find that you will not find that next thing and there's a lot of failure in in innovation but you've got to be committed to it I actually think that this is a time of incredible

opportunity in general but yeah I say this I mean we're gonna see obviously a global or L games coming out and that'll be awesome and fun to watch that thing play out like a meta Battle Royale if you like see who's lost being in that category but no I would actually things are getting more expensive if you're like at the core having to make a larger production value things but there's more opportunity at the fringes making new things so I'm just looking forward to seeing all the only innovation other fantastic questions or even questions or not say thank you so much for time it's amazing lots of insight big round repose please call Phil Marquez [Applause] [Music] [Music]