GDC 2025 Recap: Industry Insights & Market Trends

All right, welcome everybody. Today we are talking GDC key lessons learned. Maybe we talk rumors, although I think some of them are kind of sensitive. So maybe maybe not. Uh also just your take on on just the state of GDC because there's been a lot of controversial takes on that one. I think with us today we have Eric Crest, a principal at Gossamer Consulting. best known though I think for being the most interesting host on the Deconstructor Fund podcast. Brett Novaki of Liquid and Grit. You also took a little bit of a different approach GDC. We can talk about that. And Solomon Victor Ruiz, senior director global gaming at Clevertap, who also thanks by the way, thanks for sponsoring my dinner. We can talk about that as well. and also running uh what I think is one of the best events at GDC, the product times live ops symposium. Let me pause and let let me hear your takes

like GDC this year people some people are saying it's down 50%. I didn't see that. I still saw at least a lot of execs. I do know a lot of people have had their GDC trips canceled if you're more like midlevel but uh what was your overall take on GDC this year guys? I think the consensus that I heard was like it was like down like 20% let's say. Yeah. Like roughly around that. Yeah. Um in terms of attendance. One defense in my fair city of San Francisco looked a [ __ ] ton better. Dude, like the billionaire mayor, he must have shuffled the Titanic and moved people around because I there were hardly any homeless people around that I could see, you know? I mean, they must have pushed him to different parts of the city or put them up in some hotel like maybe it's on the Treasure Island or something. I don't [ __ ] know. But the city was much cleaner. I was far less embarrassed about my wonderful city. If you didn't know, I'm a fourth generation San Franciscan, so I'm very very biased. Um, but as the prior two years, uh, the Union Square was like absolutely closed

for business. It was kind of like frightening how many stores are gone from that. Um, as the reason for poor attendance, I mean, I kept hearing things about like, oh, if things are bad in the US, things are like [ __ ] like 10 times worse in Europe. So, I imagine that Europe was kind of like underrepresented this time because I do remember the first year we were back, dude, you could not even walk around without seeing another European. Like, it was crazy how many Europeans came out after COVID like as the first like big conference and they're just dying to get out of the office. But, I just didn't see that as much this year. So, yeah. to to me like I and I don't want to get political, but it it did sound like some of my European friends said that they were kind of advised, don't go to the US, you know, screw those American bastards, kind of thing. Although all the Canadians showed up like Adam Teler was there, you know, like that those are the people that we should be pissed off the most. They were hedging they were hedging trash. That's

right. Yeah. Just in case. It could be political. You're right. Absolutely could be political. I mean, he's not making any friends out there. But anyway, I I it was it was very subdued, I would say, overall for attendance. Yeah. I mean, there was probably about six or seven out of 10 people I pinged if to meet at GDC said they weren't going. I think a few people kind of ended up going last minute. I just heard of somebody got stuck on the way home. But I thought it was a little subdued, but I actually like that it felt a little bit easier in a way. And maybe that's because we got a cool spot at Foco and I sat there for two days straight. But it felt like the people I wanted to see were there more or less. Not everybody, uh, but there were there were pretty high level people. And the other vibe that I had and I don't I don't know if this was again just this year was it felt more exclusive event specific you were kind of invited places

and you get to check in and meet smaller groups and I I think that works well. The only thing I would say that doesn't work well that I didn't like dinners. Like stop stop with the dinners. I don't want to sit next to two people for two hours. Like that just like doesn't work. Especially if you land on like if you're sitting next to Crest for two hour. Oh, sorry. Just No, just kidding. No. Uh, no. I mean, Mr. Anti Mr. Antisocial, dude. Getting No, I was super social. I I was I was out and about. I'm I saved all my social for this week. Chris, you would have been so proud of me. I I was out till like after the Doof event, I was out. I went to Scopley's event till like 10:45. Dude, I closed it down. They actually had to kick me out of the Scopely event. They were like, "Get, hey, like, scoot out, you know, get out of here." I'll I'll tell you just one anecdote at the Scopely event. The first time in my life, and this is going to be shocking to everyone who knows me, the

first time in my life that someone actually walked away after I started talking to them about I was like ranting like a madman. It was late at night. I was just going crazy. I'm not even going to repeat what I said, but this person who I've known forever basically just walked away from me. He's like, "I can't put up I can't do this anymore." Sorry. It was really funny. Does this happen to you, Crest? Because I felt like it happened to me and I and I know we're like we're like the uh uh you know Henry and Mishka were like our our cousins or or like our great great grandparents. But um I felt like my social like skills, not skills, but my ability to kind of like hold in that like my truth just just started to decline. Like right around 4:30 after meetings from 9:00 to 4:30, it was just like the bluntest Brett came out. I was like, you know, and afterwards I was like, "Wow, those meetings went great till about 4:30." And I mean, they they've been fine, but man, like by 5:36 I was just like, is that that I wake up grouchy, dude. Yeah. Well, but does it get worse? I mean, after Yeah, it got Yeah, it got worse.

Definitely got worse after that long dinner. Yeah. Two hour. On the positive, I'll say I felt very energized at the end. I could have gone a couple more days. Every day I stayed out really late. I was sitting with a bunch of people. Felt the same way. All the conversations I had were really great. 10:45 is not late, Brett. 10:45 is scary, man. I almost turned it the night of our event, I was out till like 3:00 a.m. And so, um, I'm not fourth generation like you, Chris, but I am a native San Franciscan and I'm fiercely romantic about San Francisco. I love San Francisco, so when people start bashing it, I get really uh defensive and and challenge them and stuff. I did see a little funkiness pro. That was probably on me. It was the night of our event and so I didn't eat until I didn't eat at our event at all because I was so busy running around and running the event. So we had to eat late at the melt and uh one of my colleagues who just moved here from out of the country had a weird experience with a kind of violent

uh street person vibe and I had to like kind of bark at the guy to get him to back off. It was a very uh not to be dramatic but that did happen. Uh it was a very San Francis like late night San Francisco experience that kind of you know we're not all the way back you know shout out to J you know to Daniel Lry. I I got high hopes for him but uh yeah we had a little a bit of an experience like that late at night. Uh I think it it was Wednesday night the night of our event. Um you know I've been in the space not as long as all you gentlemen. So this is I think my fifth GDC. Um so for me like the the the footprint just in terms of humanity was it was noticeably smaller. Uh we were super busy which I think is a good sign for us. We were just backtoback meetings at our suite all day and and of course our event which I think was dope. Um but yeah like I you you kind of judge GDC by the pulse of what's going on in the W. I stayed in the W. So I commandeered the you know the hotel suite which was funny because you know you got to clean it up early in the morning so it doesn't look like a

human was in there right uh for meetings and stuff. But yeah I feel like there were periods at the W that were really quiet more quiet than they should have been. the people that I know that hit the floor. Obviously, the floor is much smaller. I don't think Unity was there, although I feel like to your point, Brett, uh, excuse me, JK, uh, everybody was doing kind of exclusive events like buying out hotels and bars and things like that. Definitely noticeably smaller. Um, but yeah, a couple of couple of my first blush experiences and an experience with a rowdy SF street person. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. The last thing I'll say, I I think I was the only one that went to the floor and the floor was noticeably less populated with with co companies. Like it was actually not well attended from a company perspective. I think that's the thing that it sounds like that the continuing trend is that more people are not going to the conference itself. Like I stopped going a couple of years ago because I went five straight years and average one and a half sessions per event and it just

wasn't financially worthwhile and the some of the people who I know who got, you know, kind of conference passes just wound up not going at all. Uh a lot of the the kind of younger folks I talked to just mentioned just how expensive it is to go to GDC. So I I do think that I don't know. I'm a little bit worried about GDC being long-term viable, but yeah, attendance was probably down. I I think you're probably closer to right in terms of 20% uh Eric and um a lot of private events. I also think there was a little bit of a tale of two cities on the events. So Solomon, good job for getting a lot of attendance at your event. Uh you know, I I think that you you got to have a draw because there were some events I went to where it was really empty and even when you know I I mean I I think like you guys do I was talking to Mishka. He mentioned you guys did like seven events, right? But at least he said that your events were well attended. So, good job on that. But like, yeah, some of these other guys,

woo, it was like empty. So, that was kind of crazy. Yeah. I mean, I I have to every one of our events was well attended. Even the breakfast, which was was pretty well attended. Um, yeah. But the but the dinner was really nice. Even though I You're sour on dinner, but I thought the dinner Brett was sour on the dinner. Um, I thought the actual dinner was really good. I think the biggest the most bougie event was the Goldman one, Lightseed and Goldman where all the senior executives were there. That's actually a shocking amount of senior executives at GDC in my opinion. Like they all used to go to E3, but GDC was not really well attended by execs, particularly the big publishers, but there were some just ballers out there, you know, like going to this this thing Mishka went. I didn't get to go because I wouldn't get an invite from Lightseed. Yeah, there's I think that's like the Drake Star dinner run by Michael Mezer. But yeah, it's like CEOs um you know I you know guys like Tim Sweeney, guys like that were there. I saw some pictures. It was amazing. And I I agree.

I wonder if um the topheaviness this year has anything to do with the fact that like a lot of the rank and file folks didn't come this year because um I was going to mention that earlier. I do a ton of outreach for our event, probably more than I should. Um but it's good, right? you get like a representative sample size of what's going on in the market. So many people got back to me and were like, "Hey, we're not going to make it this year." A lot of people from Europe, it's just because of the, you know, it's obviously more expensive folks from here. Um, so maybe that has something to do with it. I feel like there was a there was a lot of BD folks, right? Uh, and not to knock BD folks because I'm a GTM person, but a lot of BD folks people made the conscious decision send revenue generating folks and maybe same thing for executives because it's just, you know, it was just cost prohibitive this year. Yeah, that's what I felt. And I'm not so sour on the dinners, Chris. I just ended up sitting next to people like no like s next to Henry Loen Bells and like a guy that person you sat next to doesn't I mean he's a super nice guy. This other guy sat next to but it was like it was like one of those like plant a tree every dollar you you you spend in

AP packages. I mean like what am I going to talk to this guy for two hours about? Super awesome guy by the way. I'm a big fan. But I mean yeah walk it back. Walk it back. Let's let's No, but the other one was I said I was at Centers Towers VIP dinner which was awesome by the way and I think what Solomon I felt that too was everyone that I probably 95% of the people I bumped into were decision makers. So when I did go up to them like the conversation was right to the point which was really awesome. For example, the DOF dinner, I could go up to head of games Tik Tok or BDX solo. Like, everyone was interested in meeting the other person if you walked up to him, which was I was awesome. And I don't know how you do it, but if you then have everyone sit down like the censored hour dinner, I was sitting next to a guy who was just bombed and and like really obnoxious and s other side was great. Like I sat next to a buddy who was great and we had an awesome time, but it's like I mean I

think you just you almost have to play musical chairs. You sit for 30 minutes and then you That's exactly it. You got you got to move around the table. Yeah. Well, I mean it was It feels unnatural. It feels odd, but you got I did eventually. Yeah. Thanks for the tip, Solomon, on on BD. I appreciate that. You're welcome. Moving on. Uh I just All right. So, so maybe we we uh kind of round up and give you give you our hot take and then we react to it and we can kind of move on. Um I I can start uh talking I think one of the things you me you guys mentioned is uh this uh this issue of not having everyone go to GDC. I think that is basically an extension of this notion of the age of efficiency, right? And it does sound like uh there will be from what I've been hearing continued layoffs. Uh this is the first time I've heard like the amount of times I heard 996 at this conference was more than any event I've ever been to. So

there does seem to be this this uh this focus on costs on efficiency and uh I am hearing unfortunately about more studio closures coming up. There are uh I guess I won't talk about the specific rumors, but uh certainly a lot of rumors about certain high-profile game studios that uh to were characterized to me as essentially Walking Dead and maybe they have a year or two of runway left, but like they're they're being characterized as as um is it's it's basically grim times. And so kind of like the the theme we heard from last year and the year before of survive to 25 is more like survive to 26 27 now. What do you guys think? Did you guys hear something similar or what were your take? What are your uh reactions to that? Look right now the three or four big games that have happened the last couple years particularly on mobile have all been Chinese, right? And they are like killing people, right? I was I

heard something about like they have like 600 CI people that are multiple teams competing for insights for particular games like you know at these big studios and like we can't compete against that and so I think that that is a huge challenge right so you know last war and and those type of games you know like it's impossible like it's really hard so I think there's definitely risk across all these things that were funded during the dot times which didn't make sense to begin with frankly um you know investing in these big teams, big games, ex Blizzard, exiot like none of that shit's working out. So yeah, we're just going to start seeing continued um you know carnage from those investments that were not appropriate to begin with, right? And I was talking about that on the podcast back then. So it was nothing new here. So, uh, we saw one team, uh, LOD, I think, just closed doors. Uh, the I mean, they made a free-to-play MOA extraction. Like, what do you think is going to happen, you know? Like, that

doesn't even make sense. Like, no one plays MOBAs, right? Um, except for League of Legends, but, you know, that market's already saturated. So, I don't know. Yeah, it's going to be a tough market for a while. and and and you know Netis we hearing continued rumors about Netty's pulling back uh all their investments in the west and focusing on building in the east because Americans are lazy and they don't work hard enough. Not as much on the big publisher side. I think I my views I concur with all you guys. I think um less on the efficiency side or actually more on the efficiency side. I think like now we're like in the I was talking to you about this JK yesterday. I feel like now we're in the kind of like in the age of austerity. Um particularly if you're like midsize, you know, because we we have a good footprint in the kind of mid-market. And I feel like anywhere where there are and I'm not going to pitch our stuff, but anywhere there are um studio executives who have like built internally before and kind of know the

pitfalls around that and are less riskaverse and want to work with a third party provider for tooling. um we tend to do really good and so lots of those folks were in investor meetings most of GDC and again anecdotal but numerous folks came to me and said that they had meetings with with VCs that just went nowhere because the VCs basically said you know as of Monday we've decided to just freeze deploying any collateral uh any capital rather um and so folks had like they sat through meetings and just said you know based on the market as of Monday we're we're sitting tight on our powder. We're not deploying capital. Uh and they went through like the meeting and to you know basically to go through the you know find out all the metrics all these kinds of things and only to like reveals reveal this at the very end of the meeting. And I had numerous folks tell me this which I thought was just kind of brutal right it gave me kind of a a forbo you know a foroding sense of where we are in the market. Hopefully, it's a darkest before the dawn type of

thing. But yeah, I think it's tough, right? Especially if you're 30, 40 deep and everyone's working three, four jobs. Like I already I feel like a lot of these folks um I don't know, JK, you may feel different. I feel like they already are on the 996 model. I know us on the provider side chasing, you know, game makers around the block. We are right. So, um, that was kind of crazy for me to hear that like, you know, up to the moment there were there were VCs kind of, um, putting the kibos on, you know, on making any investments and taking meetings just to take them out of courtesy, but then not really going anywhere. Yeah, I I think the austerity point is right. I think that there are some studios who raise a lot of money and it should be good for you guys at Clevertap, right? Because does it make sense to build a game plus build a lot of tech infrastructure and data infrastructure or do you just get focus on the game, get that right and then at scale come back and fill in the the other parts that that makes a lot more sense especially in today's day and age.

So uh it should be good for you guys. I think the other thing to your point on austerity the other thing that I've been been hearing uh from a number of like the bigger studios and publishers and and from companies that are being being evaluated for M&A is like uh what what are the heads in the US like okay you've got 10 marketing heads in San Francisco you got these 40 guys in LA why so a lot of question marks about heads in the US about cost structure and I my understanding is I would say do not be surprised if there's a little bit of um offshoring of labor from the US so it may not be that some of these studios go out of business or run out of cash, but I do think that to the point on austerity, you're going to start to see a a little bit of recalibration in terms of staffing and people. And I do fully expect to see fewer people in California

in in particular, but also in the US in shift shifting some of those heads uh to uh to other other places globally. Uh, one other thing really we have that we have that risk for AI too, right? That was the rhetoric I heard which is America, California, I mean they're going to get the most displaced by AI is expensive jobs in California that that are AI is doing very well. So that was another theme. Yeah, I went on the positive side was is that and maybe this is just a little bit hunch. Uh I gota believe that the the one theme was like gray monetization and you know direct to consumer stores and then even dark you know darker than than that. uh is that the I my hunch is that platforms Apple, Google are are going to do something soon and and not because you know they're really care about the

like the developer, but it's not in their best interest for the large players to get larger because they know that's going to become the movie industry where there's going to be very little innovation. it's going to be, you know, Marvel movies over and over again. And the larger those companies are, the more leverage those companies have over Apple and Google and other things, which is what we saw on Facebook as well. Once Zinga got a certain size, once Facebook somewhat used Zinga to grow, they reversed the trajectory of Zinga so that it would shrink because they wouldn't have to talk to Zinga as directly. So, I'm a I'm I'm generally optimistic on the industry, but that's something that I think we may see in the next nine months is some some type of change on those platforms that are beneficial mostly for smaller developers. I know Chris, you're going to you're going to fire off on this, but I mean, if you're Apple and Google right now, why why wouldn't you be incentivizing smaller

developers to get more percentage of the market and reduce the um the power the controlling power of larger developers? I I don't think they give a [ __ ] at all, honestly. None of them. I don't think Google I mean, I love Google. I think they are good, but Apple's, you know, evil incarnate, right? They don't give a [ __ ] about publishers. Talked to some people that over time and time again. They keep actually destroying this industry at uh the revision of the store [ __ ] requiring metal. Like they don't give a [ __ ] They have their own things. They don't they No, no. They're not some benevolent dictator that's going to like give out peanuts for like small developers to be successful. They care about the bottom line about driving revenue. And if it's if they have to if they have to partner with less people to do so, they're happy to do it. You know, like that that's that's not a very practical Well, I'm not saying that they're altruistic and that they're going to do it. I think they're balancing the risk of legislation with

the risk of like stagnant platform and Okay. No, that's a different argument. No, no, no. See that? See, Brett, you and I agree on this one. That's that's a better argument. There's no benevolence on the platforms at all. Like, they're out for their own bottom line. No, I completely agree with that. I'm just saying they're going IDFA were worried about the consumer backlash on on the platform, which I I thought was there was some reasonable thought behind that, right? Like at that time consumers are getting pretty pretty annoyed with all of the tracking that Facebook was doing, right? So there they they released that. I think there was some argument about that and then they reduced that. They they did crush the platform with that. Then the other risk they're getting is regulatory risk, right? Like the the DMA and and all this other stuff. That's a that's the number one risk I gota imagine for Apple at this point, right? Like they probably spend tons and tons of time worried about that. And then the third risk is the developer. So like

once they check the consumer box when they start feeling better about the legislation box, which I got to imagine they are right now because of who's in office, right? like they might not be pro of that, but like it went down and now they're they're third on the list is large developers and having a a more healthy ecosystem. And again, not because they care about like the small developer making great games, right? Let me this is we're going off tangent here. Let me just simplify it. In my view anyway, I don't think they gave a [ __ ] about the customer's privacy at all. I think it was a marketing message that they sold to the customer who didn't even give a [ __ ] about privacy at all at the time. What I think it was was a response to regulatory risk of the Europeans as well as North America and that's why they did a lot of this privacy thing. So what I've heard specifically is that there are privacy hawks within Apple and then there are other people on the other side and the privacy hawks want privacy at all costs whether it's removes fingerprinting IDFA all that stuff. But the other people that are were worried about regulation

are like look we're getting sued by every you know country in the free world right now. we can't be doing privacy right now because we're going to just get more attention. So until the p until these issues are resolved then they'll go after privacy again ultimately because they all feel like we should be as private as possible. I don't think it was consumer-driven. I think it's all regulatory driven to protect their businesses. So that's kind of my my going. But anyway, back to GDC. Yeah. So any other takes from from you guys or learnings? I I' I've got a few but what do you guys think? I mean, I think the big thing for me that I wanted to get across was that like there seems to be no money left for gaming at all out there, right? You know, A16Z had their speedrun again this year and there were literally like two or three gaming companies in the speedrun, right? It's like a $600 million fund that gaming fund that doesn't invest in gaming anymore. It's crazy. I mean, it's like such a bait and switch. And I don't want to be sound like an idiot here. I

totally agree with their strategy. I'm not suggesting what they're doing is a bad idea. I'm just saying like that it is a total bait and switch, right? And so if A16Z is out and there have been the dumb money for for years now, right? That's scary. That's really scary. Um, so instead what we're hearing a lot of UA financing stuff like there was announcement a PVX tilting point even transcend now has a fund for UA spending like some of these private like um you know uh what do you call it like uh slate financing stuff is going on. So there's some alternatives out there but from a VC perspective it feels like DOA man it feels like over right from a VC perspective and that that is a little bit scary. There's a lot of people left high and dry. You know, all these Blizzard and Riot and these big studios that that got all this funding are going to be left high and dry and and have to use what they have left in order to fund their development. So, is a bit scary. I I think I directionally agree with you,

Eric. I the the conversation I had with some of the investors at the conference, they like some were putting on the happy face and saying, "Oh, no, there's a lot of investments. We're still going to invest." But I I I don't know if they actually will. Uh when I talk to other folks that are not investors, they they're they more agree with you, Eric. I I think that maybe the other nuance here, though, is that I'm also hearing that some investments are being made and investors are waiting for recaps, right? Just waiting for some of these studios to um to run lower on their cash balance and then to do deals at highly discounted terms. and and it sounds like you know word on the street is that that's that's starting to happen now. I disagree with that. Generally agree that like the folks that are in that mode of executing, the folks that have more of the kind of um holding company model uh who have a strong sense of M&A and you know have the folks who come from the M&A world, those folks are executing

right now. We see it in our business. So uh again anecdotally, but we we see it. Okay. Maybe maybe I could give a take that's positive since this I I don't want I don't want us to be too gloom gloom gloom and doom, but a lot of the folks I talked to about Unity or from Unity do seem to be pretty positive. Apparently, there's a lot of good news coming in terms both on the ad side and the engine side. I don't know if you guys are hearing similar things, but uh it seems like the morale within Unity is pretty high. Now, I still think that there's issues in the company and I I raised some of these issues with some of the folks I talked to about like for example, I I know there's some folks at Unity where and you know I not not to necessarily push a hardcore culture, but it does not seem like they are hardcore. There's some folks I know who have multiple jobs, not just a unity job, things like

that. That hasn't changed. And uh some of the folks I talked to agreed that they're not necessarily hardcore. there's still some politics around why you see multiple initiatives on things that don't get centralized or have a more holistic vision in terms of the product at least on the engine side. But uh I would say the the general feeling though was just more positive and improvements are happening and coming. I I I've heard the same thing on the positive side. It looks like the new tool is actually working at least in in in the early testing. Um, but I mean the question really know is whether they can scale profitably because they basically looks like they're abandoning Iron Source and using this new tool. Um, so that it's kind of at the expense of Iron Source to some degree. Um, and it's going to cost them quite a amount of money to get people to move over to Unity from Apploven um, in particular. and and so the question is really whether or not they have the ability to

scale and compete directly against app and Facebook and Google and that that's TBD but the early the early feedback has been relatively positive on what they're working on. So I might have jumped the gun at the podcast on that one but uh but we'll see you know we'll see what they can pull off. What about AI? So, you mentioned AI, Brett. I I I do think that was probably the the biggest theme of the conference, but the thing that kind of surprised me is that, you know, I am an AI maximalist, but it did seem like there's still a lot. It seems like it's 50/50. Like some people are of the opinion that AI is not going to have any significant impact on gaming. Where is it? Show me where there's improvement from AI. and the other half are cautiously optimistic and I'm probably on the extreme edge of like thinking that AI is going to have a massive impact on gaming. It's just not here

yet, right? Like and so a lot of a lot of the excitement for AI is more is still more admittedly potential rather than actual impact. But uh I what are you guys hearing in terms of like AI as a trend and would you agree that was the biggest trend of GDC or the biggest kind of theme that was being discussed during GDC? I heard both sides some some people saying you know the end is near. San Francisco housing prices is going to tank because AI is going to replace all the jobs and that kind of stuff. And then I mean I I just met with someone this morning who basically said AI is not doing anything for them other than remedial tasks of proofing emails and summarizing long documents and stuff like that. And I I am bullish on AI, but I I mean I have seen enough of these. We're desperate for the next thing that people

forget the the progress curve really slows down when you get to that high end. I mean, we've been talking about VR for I don't how many 35 years, 30 years. I mean, it's been here for a long time and we're not using it for much yet. Um, and there's a bunch of technologies like that. So, I still think we have a decent way to go. But I do think the the nice thing of it is, and it is for us, is it it is just making like remedial stuff go down to like next to nothing, which is freeing up time for other more valuable stuff, which is great, but it's not replacing anything that we do that like we sell or that anyone finds extremely valuable. Yeah, I that's kind of echoes my original and continues to be my thoughts on AI is that like I think it's raising the bar across all studios. Not maybe not equally per se, but that tools are being creating efficiencies that weren't there before. But no one's really articulated to me a real competitive

advantage um or use case with the exception of like creating lots of different ads, you know, which actually does seem material in terms of testing AB testing ads. you can use AI to um create insane um campaigns. Um I did finally get a good pitch from uh Nico. I don't know who everyone knows Nico from Bitcraft, but to be clear like this guy was pontificating on blockchain for the last five years, dude. I mean, it was like religious for this guy like in terms of what blockchain was going to do for gaming and how it was going to revolutionize things in gaming. Nico. Okay. Yes. And now he's not doing anything with blockchain. You know, he's like going straight for AI, right? But I will give him credit. His pitch was pretty impressive in terms of what they're trying to accomplish with AI. And it is like a b almost a new genre of games. And I would if if you're interested, I would really reach out and and get the pitch from him directly because I'm not going to do it justice.

But it was really like the first AI gaming pitch that I can say sounds like super compelling if they could pull it off. Can they pull it off? I have my doubts, but like you know it was pretty impressive. So we'll see. So he's doing like a new startup that's like a AI native startup type thing. Yeah. Okay, cool. Um maybe one other thing also that I was hearing about actually uh three different people mentioned including Mishka was this notion of two GDC's. Uh I actually think there's even more than that because uh something else that a friend of mine mentioned to me is like just how disconnected some of the communities at GDC are. So for example, like a lot of the really really like smart Chinese game developers, they know each other, they hang together, they don't really interact a lot with some of the Western developers, yet they have so many insights. I would say that's um that's also potentially true of the

Koreans. Like I I used to be invited to the to the secret Korean GDC dinners years ago. They stopped inviting me for some reason. But like uh uh you know I I do think that there are some communities which do seem like kind of siloed and uh hopefully one of the things I'm trying to work on is to try to tap into some of those communities a little bit more and to and to bridge some of those communities with some of the western gamedev communities. But I I do feel like that there are, you know, siloed communities that ideally we would be able to benefit from some of their insights and kind kind of lessons learned from those guys as well. But it does seem right now it's it's way too siloed. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think unfortunately there's a decent amount of like people just trying to take during GDC, you know, and so unfortunately if you don't kind of protect yourself from those interactions, you get sucked into them or you get sucked into them and you're

sitting there for a while or you do and then you have to kind of be rude and and walk away or whatever. And so I think that's why you start seeing these like exclusive invite only protected events. And to our earlier point about GDC, hopefully they can monetize that because they're the ones that are really creating the value of everyone coming to San Francisco at once. And I think if they can kind of facilitate those type of meetings or whatever, that'd be great because that's what most people are getting all the value from is just having everyone go to one place at one time and with it would be a shame if if that stops. I mean, a lot of conferences have. Um, but I think that's kind of what you're seeing because I had a couple of those interactions. We were talking about that yesterday, uh, JK Solomon, where you're just like stuck in this meeting with someone and it's just like god awful, you know, and you're just like, god, this is this is really really painful. Um, but 99% of my interactions were

awesome. So, I will say, yeah, we we need to be pretty guarded about the folks we let into our events. um you you do get you you do get what we've affectionately called I don't know how affectionate it is but on the on the GTM side for many many years the plate lickers um that just add no value and are just coming to kind of extract and you kind of like identify those folks and know who they are. It's funny though they still a lot of them still find a way to like manage a way in to the thing you know so that's always a funny thing. Um, but yeah, I I think that like this event, this GDC in particular was all about these ex exclusive events and and I think folks did a good job. Uh, yeah. Yeah, obviously I think we we did our thing. Um, you know, we work really hard on that. Um, Fateless, you know, shout out to God Forge and Sham over at Fateless. Um, the folks at Stash Apps Flyer had a really cool event. That was a great way to kind of blow off steam

after our thing Wednesday night. They kind of they made Wednesday night the big night. I feel like Wednesday night, you know, this year was like Well, that was the thing, too, that everyone was saying Wednesday was way too packed. Everyone Yeah. Yeah. There was there's the meme of the guy with the girl and it's like Monday, Tuesday, and then like every vendor and the new girl is Wednesday kind of thing. It was that was funny. Um, and you know, I just feel like we had to do it. Initially, people were paranoid about it, but um, you know, I I feel like we we we're trying to put on an event that like can can hold its own, right? And so I feel like if you got something to say, if you could bring community together, if you could bring good people out, um you got to do it Wednesday now because th by here's another thing. By Thursday it felt like it had died. And I remember that wasn't the case last year. Going back to the point about attendance, Thursday was was pretty was pretty quiet. The W was struggling as of Thursday. Like Wednesday was the big the big party night. That's when I got past 10:30, Solomon. So it was a big that was a big night. Good work, man. Good work. You You missed You missed Murder She

Wrote, dude. I did. Yeah. In terms of events, like breakfast events, I don't know. I I kind of feel like as an opportunity for next year, I think like a like a casual small 9 through 11 p.m. event would be better. I don't know. What What do you guys think? Well, we did that table at Fogo for Liquid and Grit and it was awesome. And I'm thinking next year what we'll do is we'll get two or three tables and then what we'll have is and I'm going against what I said originally, but we'll have basically you can reserve a seat and then it'll sort of be like meet other people that are interesting with like restrictions, right? we're not going to have like a bunch of people you don't want to meet with and then you can get great steak and sit down and and have something to eat which is nice too because then you don't have to wait in line because that's what that's what

people were doing. They were they were meeting with me and then they would come back around lunchtime, grab some food and then it ended up being just like a communal table which was awesome. Yeah. So I totally hosed my my event with with no this year in terms of not not like like the people in tenants were great but the panel I kind of I kind of screwed up a little bit. So I definitely want to fix that for next year. What what happened for it was just like we we got shifted venue and then there there's a bunch of little small things that that kind of screwed it up. But like last year a lot of people love the the panels that we ran. Um but this year, uh yeah, I I just Yeah. Yeah. I I It could have been better. Could have been better. I don't I don't think it was that bad. I think it was cool. Um Okay. You was just the f I was, you know, I was on the final p I moderated the final panel and then by the time the first panel was up, people really wanted to network and talk and that's it. Yeah. You can't like it's just a hard thing to avoid in general at these events. Um then everyone was standing and then the food problem.

Yeah, it was. Yeah. But I'm looking forward to doing a much better event next year. It was good, man. Um, also, shout out to Fortis Games. They put on a really good event. Um, they kicked off Monday and I mean, just the pedigree of all the folks over there and like the throughine of all the people um that they're connected to, it was I thought that was really cool. That was the, you know, that's the only the first and only place I saw Brett because we got so busy. So, it was cool to see him there. Um, and always fun to to hang out with a client, you know, in that in that capacity. So, yeah. I think you're on to something with Fogo to Chiao. Fogo to Chiao, right? Yeah, good call. Yeah. Well, I want some tables to be open next year, but it's hard to catch me. It's a short window, right? It's like 2 o'clock to six. And and Chris, I did see you at our event. You like I didn't get a chance to chat with you, but I saw you I saw you prowling. Yeah. I mean, the anecdote I really wanted to share was I didn't even know you're going to be on this podcast was that I actually sought out your

event because Bing Gordon was speaking and what I was looking for is kind of like a positive take on the industry because Bing is like, you know, a luminary, right? He's been there for a long time and I said this on my iPods guys too but like and Bing got out there and he started doing his thing and I don't know if everyone's ever said Bing on a pod in in its talk like he talks in circles for for an hour like and it's impossible to follow for most people I anybody right but you get these like little like nuggets of really in insightful things that stick with you the whole time your whole life almost like this is the way this guy talks he was like that at EA Okay. But anyway, he was doing his thing and he started talking about like the, you know, how tough the industry has had it over the PS1 to PS2 era, the 28 2008 downturn. And he's like, I'm like, oh my god, he's going to actually say something great about this industry. And then he spent the last 10 minutes saying stuff like, well, if you are really good at live ops and product management, maybe you should

think about taking those learnings to other game other things besides gaming apps. and he's like healthc care financial services and all I'm like no no no that's not what we wanted to hear there being you know like that was his final takeaway message is like leverage your knowledge and bring it to [ __ ] he spent like 10 minutes talking about Dolingo and I was like why is he and then I saw I saw Bob me later that night and I was like Bob you know Bing Gordon talks a lot about Dolingo he's like oh he's on the board I was like oh that that explains of course of course but like this is not the message I wanted to hear right like This is exactly the opposite message I wanted to hear at a game conference, you know, is them talking about dual lingo, you know, but I get his point. I get his point is not invalid. I'm just saying like it was it was a little bit disappointing, but he uh he did talk and and we talked about this a little before the call, you know, for our pod. Um the reason that we get Bing is because just Bing's tenure, right, in the market. He's seen I think like that his general stance is like he's seen someone who's seen multiple

cyclical events hit games. And so, you know, that's the kind of macro story and I think a lot of people who who don't know him and don't don't know his background might not catch that, right? Um, but you know, you obviously all you fine gentlemen know. So, that's the kind of story there I think is like the market will come back. Bing's been, you know, I've been through multiple down cycles. The first GDC, there were less people there that were in this room today. I think you said that at our last talk, you did it again. You know, I think it's important for some people to say. Um and and then the other piece is like I think pro you know PMs in general um maybe they need to hear that right like maybe you know maybe there are gigs that PMs could take to wait out the storm and then you know come back to gaming when things get a little bit better because they are right that was that was that was not his message his message is maybe there's opportunities outside of gaming for game dev wasn't element isn't that this like not to be a jerk because I did really love his talk last year and I was all over the LinkedIn saying there. But

wasn't that the exact same thing he said last year? Yeah. But I mean, um, he's he went way longer this year. He said a whole lot of other things. He did. Okay. Cuz last year that was the poem like I liked it, but yeah, you're right. He went at the end was like, "Why doesn't game companies build like exercise apps and stuff like that?" Um, sorry. One of his main well, there's two takeaway points that he came up with that I was actually Yeah, it was impressive. Well, not impressive. It just got me thinking was one, you should be using AI every day. Like if you want to stay contemporary. If you're not using AI doing every day with for doing something, then you're doing it wrong. Right. Great, great point. And the second point was that um that there's a whole community of people in business outside of gaming that don't know what live ops is, that don't know how to re-engage and keep c customers coming back, right? they can use our expertise to help improve what they do from an app perspective. And he even brought the example of like even a even

a Fitbot or something like that like those type of apps where you pay for a subscription and you do nothing to try to retain that customer over the the length of the subscription. what we should be doing is live ops to keep keeping them engaged, gamifying it so that they want to come back and they want to keep paying and they and then obviously you know uh you know microtransactions and all that other stuff that that those are the two things that I took away like okay yeah he's obviously thinking about this stuff you know and like he's definitely has something to share but again outside of gaming right like that that was like the message so and I do think maybe it was like a point it was like a preient point that was okay to repeat because last year it wasn't as pron announced like we've seen it even more this year, right? Just all of these games from a wide range of industries, you know, adopting kind of, you know, classic core loop and progression mechanics. So, I was okay with it. Bing's always awesome. He's he's like uh he's we like to call him Yoda, you know, he's just like he's full of wisdom. Um and you know, we're lucky to we're lucky to have a relationship with him. Shout out Bing.

All right. Should we uh any any final message from folks as we wrap things up here? outlook on GDC. I'm I'm worried about GDC. I don't want it to turn into E3 personally, but I it's not it's not looking great in my opinion. I mean, it's the only it's the only one left, right, in the West really that matters, you know, like Yeah. I'm hoping it doesn't get Yeah. Is it going to turn virtual or so? I I hope not. Yeah. But like Yeah. Just the number of people not going to the conference and like paying for stuff. Uh I I'm a little I'm a little concerned. How much is the pass? I don't know even know. But I talked to some young guys and they were they were just saying I remember what they were saying. I think it was three grand something like that. Yeah. So they're made if they made 25,000 people. They made 775 million. I mean I I I they may have to transition it to something. I don't I don't I hope

it doesn't end like that. It's not a bad payday. I mean, $75 million. I feel like they should be able to make a profit. Yeah, right. I mean, just think, but yeah. All right. Well, I guess uh I guess that's it, guys. Uh hope you guys who are listening had a good GDC or learned a few things about what's going on. Sounds like there's some mixed views. I'm I'm personally, just to end on a on a final note, I'm very optimistic. I've never been more optimistic about games in this year, but may maybe I'm in the minority. Uh I see a lot of opportunities and hopefully you guys do too. So with that, thanks for sticking with us and we will catch you next time. Thanks guys. [Music]

[Music]