GDC Vibes / data.ai x Sensor Tower / Epic Announcements / US v. Apple

[Music] welcome to the novic gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and AD advisory services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu an edge tooling for matchmaking crossplatform accounts server optimization live Ops management player progression and Community engagement rally here is the One-Stop shop to

streamline your development processes increase speed to Market and optimize your post-launch live Services rally here Powers games that have been played by over 200 million Gamers worldwide across PC console and mobile including Smite paladins Rogue company and many others rally here's Founders were also among the first to embrace crossplatform free to play games meaning the rally here solution incorporates over a decade of hardw experience and learnings in Live service games R here's partnership approach to customer relationships makes them a trusted and experienced co-pilot to help your team as you develop and operate your live service games so do you want to know how rally here can help you with your live service game if so simply head over to Rally here.g to learn more and schedule a demo again that is Rally here.g so with that let's jump into the episode hello everyone welcome to

another novic round table I'm your host Devon Becker and of course two wonderful guests who you've seen a lot on this podcast uh Aaron and Dave uh we have a little bit of an announcement here from Aaron about the podcast yeah um jumping right into it so um this is the final round table episode of the novic gaming podcast at least for now um it's bittersweet to to share in part because this segment is what started it all right like uh this today is our 138th Round Table episode I believe and the first one we published which was our first episode ever was on May 21st 2021 so we've been going strong with these round taes for nearly three years now um and by the way guys quick quick trivia um do you remember what the first round table episode was about I don't even or or if you weren't even paying attention

then I'm just curious like when did you start paying attention it's kind of interesting uh I probably started listening oh wow year and a half or two years ago so it wasn't right from the very beginning I caught caught on later on uh still an OG yeah yeah still still early dat uh yeah I know I was a big fan which is what pushed me to kind of reach out to see uh if I could hop on and uh for me this is actually one year as of uh as of this month so it's been it's been a lot of fun well congrats and I'm I'm sorry at the same time but it's been it's been a great year with you Dave anyways Devin do you remember I you know I don't remember what the topics were there was a lot of like just kind of I think General news stuff at the time I I actually I mean my involvement throughout all the novic stuff I've been doing since 2021 was from actually the crypto corner but it's still like the podcast and stuff in general like got me to reach out to you guys which is why I always encourage everyone to reach out

whe there's anything you to contact AIC about because like it started a lot of us you know a lot of collaborations we've had together since and I think uh having an Outreach like this is is fantastic and I'm glad there's a lot of other ones still going on you know part which I'll still be involved with h so I think uh plenty to go but I 138 episodes and a good long time I think uh yeah I think I think people got their money's worth on this one I hope I hope so um but anyways that first episode it was about app loven's IP and spending a lot of time digging into the Apple versus epic case where they like unveiled a bunch of that hasn't left yet yeah it's the topic that is still giving even today you know these these topics are coming full circle still circles at least Microsoft acquisition finally finished that was that was one I was I wasn't sure if we were G to make it to the end of the round table for that one yeah we got we got that one under our belt but but anyways we've we've had a great run and and really I just have so many people to

thank for it um first of all Nico who's now at bit craft he helped Kickstart the whole podcast he did the initial planning the hosting the editing the thumbnailing pretty much everything on on day one which was incredible and we have a team for all of those parts now but major props to to Nico for being a great bootstrapping partner three years ago and then plus of course Maria and now Devon as as host these past couple of years um they've been amazing to work with too and obviously we have so many amazing panelists for over the past three years more more than I could could name right now but um sincerely to to all of you who are tuning in thank you to all of you for for making this segment possible over the years you you taught me a lot and I know you taught thousands of other people a tremendous amount about our ever evolving industry too so why are we making this change um in short our interview VI generally

perform better and managing a big crew of rotating panelists has more logistical challenges than it may seem so um we're really just going to refocus and double down on what our listeners are engaging in the most right now um but that said we're still going to experiment with new segments I'm still going to bring a bunch of these panelists back at times and you'll probably see several emerge elsewhere in novic ecosystem like is writers for novic digest maybe even Consultants with us um even um Devin here today you know he just published his first interview um with us a couple of weeks ago so make sure to to check that out if you haven't already it was a great conversation but but anyway we'll continue to learn and adapt and we'd love your feedback so so really my my one request from from the grand finale of these round taes is just for your feedback um if you have suggest questions or ideas for new segments that

you'd like to see us try on the the podcast let us know um send us a note to podcast nov. or you can just send me a message on LinkedIn or whatever is easier um or hey even if you just want to shoot a note of appreciation that I can pass along to the team um that'd be cool too so it would just be great to to hear your thoughts but all that said we're still going strong still thinking big can't wait to serve you for many years to come and whatever forms that that may may take and thanks as always for for tuning in um but with that I'll hand it back over to Devin to Kickstart the actual conversation and discussion for today I thing like I said is a before to is the conversation continues in the digest and the other interviews and who knows what else in the future because we had no idea certainly this would be 138 episodes of this idea you know when it started back in 2021 so that being said though the other

elephant in the room that I think we're all uh still recovering from at this point GDC uh I mean both of you were there I was there as well I uh who who wants to just share their initial thoughts first Dave I think you're you're ready to go with some exciting anecdotes hopefully they're exciting we'll see um yeah I know I very much enjoyed the show I was there uh Wednesday through Friday so the main portion I wasn't there for any of the uh the earlier uh portion so um I spent my time uh certainly walking a lot uh I think my record was over uh 177,000 steps uh that was Thursday so a lot of visiting of the various halls and all the hotels around because uh it seemed even if you have a a GDC pass you're G be spending a lot of time in the hotels rather than inside the Halls themselves um one of the things that was really interesting for me is that that the large number of brand new game companies that were there promoting them

themselves um and uh you know looking for you know funding if they can helping uh get the word out about you know who they are what types of games they're doing um I think you know the last time I saw this number of new companies coming out and really pushing themselves uh was probably back when when crypto gaming really started to kick off um but I do want to point out I my own opinion uh these are actually companies uh this time around are filled with people that have made games before they know how to make games and uh and that's their primary focus is just trying to create uh fantastic games rather than uh potentially taking advantage of a of a trend at a particular time um I saw some really fantastic stuff uh stuff from you know people that are uh you know fairly new to the industry through to people that have been in the industry for decades um had an opportunity for

example to see Bill Roper's uh new new game uh from Legacy uh so Bill rer of course being uh old school blizzard um and uh has you know has done a number of companies uh since then but uh you know he was out there showing off his game you know just as much as everybody else was looking to see what they what he can do with uh in terms of finding funding and getting you know excitement built around what he's trying to do in his company uh um there was certainly a large number of job Seekers there uh the recruiters were certainly busy um and uh yeah to be expected with the amount of uh layups that have happened in the last little while um but one of the things I found really good about being at GDC it was a very supportive atmosphere so you know people that had jobs were taking people that were looking for jobs out for lunch you know there was a lot of introductions happening of hey you know you talk to this person because I think they're

looking for something or they're looking for people to help support their game um and I would say it it certainly had a high hug Factor there was a lot of a lot of really good supporting feelings around the show and I think that really does say something for our industry where um you know there certainly are some challenges inside of our industry but there are also some really good people inside looking to help everyone as much as possible um I didn't find one really big theme for the show uh AI was certainly there there were a number of companies that were showing off you know tools to try and help production development faster uh there's been a you know a bit of a pickup on the web 3 side of things because uh bit you know Bitcoin uh valuation going up um but there wasn't one over you know dominant theme I found throughout the show um except for me maybe one theme and that

was austerity and there was only one booth that I would say was there of uh sort of that E3 level of Booth where it's you know big Booth you know obviously big spend uh and and that was epic and uh considering epic makes epic money these days I'm sure they can afford to put that booth in there without much of a problem 10 cent was close you know they spent certainly some on their boost but uh on the most part it was uh they were definitely it definitely showed that companies were looking to keep their cost down uh nettis for example um you know I don't think they have much in the way of games to show right now but they just had a small booth and their focus was entirely on recruiting looking on how they can uh build up uh their staff so um I was interesting E3 or uh GDC wasn't as uh populated it has been in the past but uh I think there certainly was um a little bit of uptick in some ways um but yeah a lot of walking a lot of walking how about you guys what did you guys see a

lot of walking a lot of overcrowded hotel lobbies um it was my first GDC and so I was just um you know figuring out figuring out how the game is played and I realized the game is basically just played in hotel lobbies which you know cool um but you know very overpacked hotel lobbies and then you gota you got to walk elsewhere anyways have walking meetings or or whatever which you know is fine um but uh but really I mean beyond that I mean it was just great to to see people um saw probably a dozen or so um novic people um who you know are you know podcast friends are our writing friends Consulting friends um and was great to to see them around the event and to bring them together for for a lunch that we had which was nice to meet so many people in person for the first time uh but even beyond that just amazing to meet so many people in person

um for the first time in many cases that you know we've been interfacing with for quite a while now and then of course meeting new new people as well so um so yeah I mean at least for me it was pretty productive but but tiring but you know uh what I've noticed and there's no shortage of like these LinkedIn posts of like here's what I noticed at GDC and I'm just like oh at this point like please stop please stop writing those I'm so tired of them um but what I've noticed is just that like everyone's perception is different uh because of you know the different bubbles or the the different areas that people are are focused on um and so I think it really there is a lot going on that feels different um depending on on on where you are but from my point of view I I definitely did sense like a a tension where like on one side like it's just the Fallout from this age of efficiency

that we're in where obviously the past couple of years have been difficult for layoffs Dave talked about that well um and you could definitely feel that around the event where people are trying to figure out um what's next um and then on the other side you know compared to events a year ago even a year ago there it was a lot about like oh we're in a recession prepare for a recession like everything is going down um and today you know there still is some of that hardship um but there are like more zones of optimism and there isn't necessarily like a new blue ocean right that stacks on top of the industry to expand the industry in a big way um but there are like these areas of innovation and AI is you know the big one ugc is the other big buzzword really those two areas I've kind of noticed are like the biggest um convergence trends that people are

excited about web 3 is you know would be like the the third one um and you know in those zones people are excited they're building cool new things um but there still is that tension there of like well these Technologies make the industry more efficient they democratize game development um like it's cool but like it it doesn't necessarily like solve the the some of the other issues that other people have been been feeling so so anyways I come out of it um feeling excited in some ways but also feeling feeling a bit stressed or or bad for for a bunch of other people as well um and it'll be interesting to see over the next year or two kind of how the tone shifts at at these events um and you know what are the things people are excited about or whether this overhang that we feel whether that's going to continue to link for longer longer than we would hope and

expect well I think on the plus side is like we know we looking at all these people you know currently out of work or trying to start new Studios or things like that but this is an industry that does I think value experience I mean we always talk about formly from this company forly from that company it like matters right it's it's an industry where it's hard to start without like actually getting a a a bunch of experience you know the the classic like starting out as a QA working your way up things like that like experience especially as like an old school game developer in this industry I think is valuable to like a lot of people that that value that and so I think a lot of these people that that have that that maybe had been in it for a while and then are now essentially getting a little bit of a break uh you know maybe maybe just to kind of recollect to rethink things but I don't doubt that if they want to they will land on their feet because that experience is valuable because like if you're going to be hiring again and you're trying to you know trying to build up a team team that who are you going to look to pick up all

these people that you know do good work I me I remember like throughout the whole web 3 thing like how often it was like people with actual game development experience was like the most exciting thing ever and it's like hey if web 3 comes back then guess who who needs jobs so it seems like you know one of these things where like I I obviously am not in the position so it's a little bit different for me but I do see that there's this isn't sure where there could be potentially Silver Linings as long as we don't have our Atari Moment Like This is still something that will turn around and it may just mean things are shifted around but this is not the first time in the game industry that like we've kind of had to go through these ups and downs and I think it's great that that gdc's like that you know these people a lot of these people have been going for a long time I talked to someone who'd been to like think it was like uh somewhere close to 20 of them that he' been to and it's just there's a lot of old school people and there's a lot of you know post-mortems and looking backwards and looking forwards I think that's why it's such a cool event for that sort of thing even if it's a little bit of a job fair at times as we we joke being the you know the but like that's

actually great because a lot of these people know each other it is an industry where a lot of people know each other and I think that you know taking each other out to lunch all that that's great to hear that that still thing that that sort of thing still happens I was personally a bit more in the web 3 Circle so I was uh maybe a little insulated from that some to some extent but the funny thing is I we see those ups and downs like every six months in web 3 where the sky is falling and then everything's going to be great and the sky is falling again so I feel like I see that just const instantly but the funny thing is in a similar way the one thing I noticed is I I can I could count on seeing the same people every year still excited about it still building still doing the the cool things still talking about like oh you seen this like this is going on I have this cool Tech over here like everyone's still excited about it even with those ups and downs and I think that like as a microcosm is interesting to see as its own like miname industry and I find like like the the hotel lobby thing he put it I found kind of funny because you know in between meetings I was like why go do

whatever I just will go to the hotel lobby and sit there and I will run into like five people between like like in a half an hour between the meeting that I know or or want to know like it's and you don't have to go do anything you just sit in the lobby and I think that's that's a really cool part about GDC is that the event cool and everything but like the stuff going on around it because everyone's doing stuff having events parties get togethers lunches brunches breakfasts like it it's a it's a very Lively event in that sense and I think it's it's cool like I've gone the last few years especially around the web 3 and that scene just never seems to die out despite everyone saying oh it's going to be dead this year and it's like it's never dead it seems like even if it's just in hotel lobbies it never seems to go in I think um that as a theme takeaway for me for jdc regardless of what seems to be going in the macro I think is uh it's it's heartening like I think it's it's great like uh Dave said the big hug Factor so I think I'm looking forward to when we're like I remember that when there was like all those things going on and like now everyone got too many jobs going here

you know in and hopefully a year or less but I do I do think it was interesting to see web 3 like on a hey there's money to be made again kind of comeback which is kind of the western style of things uh doesn't surprise me um but it does seem like obviously it's scaled down to a smaller set of participants that are like Hey we're the ones who are kind of survivors from the first waves uh and we kind of know maybe we know what we're doing now so uh I'm looking forward to that like a lot of that stuff along with the new studio you mentioned like down the road jelling into something that maybe it's not like we get an immediate you know thing going on but that being said there still was a ton of announcements at GDC like you can't go GDC without tons of things happening and like there was a couple Stand Out ones you guys want to cover those yeah um so a bunch happened um I we don't have to talk about these a ton but I mean for one probably like the big deal that broke uh was sensor Tower acquiring data do AI which uh surprised a lot of people um because

data. a is the the business that had raised much more money and presumably was the the larger business and so um you know not going to speculate on what exactly happened you know within data. and censor Tower to to make this deal happen and of course data. has been our data partner for for quite a while now they've been great to work with but um but yeah this is going to have some ripple effect across the the the industry um you know when two leading platform companies combine um and on in one sense it potentially brings the best of Two Worlds together into like you know more robust feature sets bringing great talent together um Etc and I imagine that in some sense you know this combined entity will create features that serve the games industry better um

over time um but on the other hand It's just tough when things like this happen like I think it was reported and I don't know how how true this is but that you know already with data. we've seen about half of the company um be be laid off which is extremely difficult um to to go through um and so I I hope everyone on that team is able to to find find their their footing um and we'll of course learn more about where this is all going to go over over time um so we'll probably we we might talk about it later do some interview or or something um and uh about this deal at some point in in the future but that was really the big news to break and and beyond that I mean just to to list off a few more news items that happened and then we can kind of take this in whatever order but um you know another lawsuit against Apple dropped um this time from the US government the the doj about some of

their um practices um the epic game store announced that it'll be you know officially launching on mobile by the end of this year we got some Unreal Engine updates from Epic 2 so epic was was busy with the announcements there's probably more we could talk about too but um I'll just pause there is there any direction you guys want to take with with any of this um I think one thing actually I didn't mention around GDC that that's related to the Unreal Engine side of things is uh gdau had a nice siiz platform or a nice siiz booth at the show um so I think with unity's uh recent missteps in terms of their their pricing and so forth uh you know the the other engines have tried to step up to see what they can do to take some of that um you know unreal I think really does really does really push the the high end and uh you know I have seen the number of demos people are using the latest and greatest and they just look

good you know right out of the box uh without a lot of effort um and GTO on the other side was then you know working as best as they could to take you know maybe some of those uh uh the the games that needed you know something a little less powerful than than the Unreal Engine um and this certainly was the show for them because it was a probably that that perfect moment for them where Unity was in not the good graces of developers eyes uh number one number two there's a whole bunch of new companies started up so they didn't have Legacy issues in terms of what engines to support um and uh yeah there's a lot of different types of games being experimented with now on the Indie side but uh now that's a little tangent off you know it might have been actually you you know I'm thinking is hanging out over over gdos Booth is the hell diver to developers Arrowhead because they just finished that game on a totally

discontinued engine I got to imagine their Sho a little bit maybe maybe over to Epic smoth too but uh I just think it's kind of funny timing for them yeah um I mean for me with the the Epic stuff I mean one with the the unreal related announcements um I mean unreal as always steadily improving and you know working to keep its state of the the art um you know tier in the industry um but the stuff that was more interesting to me honestly was more around the ufn um so for example um like we saw a few months ago how they created Lego fortnite how they had their racing game and now basically they're opening up uh a ugc functionalities around those types of those games and then the tooling around them which is exciting it just like you know we continue to see like the broadening of the creative surface area that's possible and the types of games that are possible to build build on ufn and and that's a big deal but um

but yeah I mean even even beyond that like what's next for ufn and and some of what they announced like more camera control systems um so that you can you know have different Vantage points of looking at at you know a map that unlocks the creative surface area quite a bit um there's going to be more um they're working to like create more personalized um Rose like in the Discover tab of of ufn which is helpful for you know games teams making games and helping get get discovered and targeted by you know the The Gamers that actually would be more interested in those types of games um and that makes a big deal um continuing to improve you know the sandbox gameplay um you know like ingame item building just like a bunch of like these little tactical things that like really add up and I know recently they've added more like

save featur so that you can go back and resume sessions and you know like all of these like add up over time but it's like it's good to see the pace of improvement um and that you know like this is not going to like within a year be like a a switch flipping and suddenly like everything is viable um at once but it'll be you know like I've sort of talked about in some episodes like how with Roblox it really has just been like a snowball rolling down a mountain in terms of like um its capability its Network just slowly building and compounding steadily over time I think we'll see something pretty similar with ufn and the announcements from from this event um can confirm that and I think that's great and then with the epic game store launching on on mobile um um I mean one I'm glad that epic has this developer friendly ethos and that they're willing to you know push for more competition even at the expense of

their own business um in in a lot of ways it's been helpful for for the industry and I think will continue to be with this launch um I don't know how successful like a third like a new app store will be for third party game Publishers like just breaking the network effects and convincing users to use alternative app stores for games that could get easily that's going to be really hard potentially too um and not really be worth it unless you have another reason to be there and so um in epic's case there is another reason to be there which is fortnite and increasingly ufn and so really I kind of view the epic game store more as a trojan horse for bringing fortnite back um and and ufn to mobile um for the first time um which is really exciting um and seeing and how just seeing how ufn um will work on mobile and what

kinds of experiences people will build more for mobile audiences or just crossplatform audiences um and so so yeah we'll we'll see what that turns into but they're going to be launching by the end of the year and so we should hopefully learn much more in the next few months of what that will look like it definitely seems a little risky uh trying to put that much effort into a store that might not be the best fit I'm I'm really curious how that'll go because like same fre if you imagined steam just coming to mobile it it I mean it works on Steam deck because that's a little PC your hand and it's like it's just an extension essentially of your computer and your account it is going to be a little strange and that I don't think there's like a lot of mobile games on Epic store mobile like style games and and you see the the sort of fight I think on Steam over free to-play and mobile style games when they get boarded and that sort of like backlash whereas maybe epic has a

little bit more of a clean slate there because uh they don't have that that Legacy of Gamers that Ste does and they also have that like big fortnite crowd that's maybe a younger audience that's not as sort of entrenched in that battle and maybe like a lot happy iing fortnite is a free to play game so it'll be interesting to see if that that audience shakes out right because that's a hard thing to I think to do not just on top of watching a new store but also one that isn't technically a mobile first store but it will be really interesting I mean especially I gu say for web 3 that could be a big deal too because them being a web 3 friendly store on PC I'm willing to even adjust policies to help keep like things you know working well for them like that could be pretty interesting bridge over to mobile now whe that actually lands with Apple's policies everything else we'll see how all that shakes out but it is it is very interesting and I and I do wonder you know uh in terms of like uh like demographic like for ratings on games and things like that that they have to deal with uh are different right

different mentality where like epic's a bit more like Google play uh and apple is a bit closer to Nintendo uh so that'll be really interesting fit there like I can totally see it on on Android but iOS will be uh very interesting especially given the the the sort of constant battling between those two but I like you said if it's if it's coming by the end of the year I'm excited for that uh I mean U ufn still has a kind of ways to go technologically but it's of doing it very quickly compared to Roblox which took like I think at least a decade to really get rolling uh I don't think it's going to take that long for you efn they obviously have the the player base the the will from all the developers things like that so that will be a very interesting platform for mobile but I'm I'm curious how well that will run from a a hardware standpoint as unreal is not necessarily like the lightest engine to run on mobile um but I do imagine they try and Contin to optimize at least fortnite for it which is what UFM is basically using as a platform so I'm I'm pretty excited for

it honestly like uh is is cool as Roblox is from a technology standpoint I probably won't be playing it anytime soon just because it's not really my my scene as they say uh so it'd be cool to have a little bit of a better one there I think and the one thing I'd ask for out of the sensor Tower data. uh merger is if they could somehow figure out how to track ad revenue is the biggest thing missing from the business intelligence side of things from mobile there's so many games out there that you know get 80% of their revenue from ads 20% from IAP um but there's not a really good understanding of what that looks you know across the cross the industry I expect it'll become more important too I I do expect that ads will creep into more IAP style ones and you're right that's like a a big need when you're when you're trying to understand like the actual Financial Revenue system like setup of a company otherwise just guessing yeah um and then the the last

big news item um that I I mentioned is the new um Apple court case uh this time brought by the US government um and it's interesting I mean it wouldn't be a a noic gaming podcast episode without being able to talk about regulatory issues in apple right so ending on a bang here but um but anyways what's interesting about this is that it actually has nothing to do with the App Store um and most of the Grievances in the past have sort of stemmed around people's unhappiness with App Store policies obviously unhappiness around the 30% cut but then of course of all of just the rules around what's allowed um like what links you're allowed to share um Etc and and so what this case is about is several things but um to summarize it it's really about how

um it's going against apple and how they are um limiting the potential for super apps uh which are you know like apps basically like apps within apps where you can get all sorts of different functionalities um Cloud streaming um gaming apps so you know like a Xbox game pass xcloud type of of app um How uh like some issues around messaging and this is like kind of ridiculous but like you know people are upset about like the green and blue um Bubbles and how Apple like prior like makes their own messaging look differently from others like some pieces of this case like honestly are kind of ridiculous but they're throwing a lot out there maybe to see what will what will stick um uh similarly uh like interoperability with like smart watches and so like you know Apple's premise its entire existence has

been about like integration like vertical integration initially like software and Hardware just on its computers and increasingly like that integration across its hardware and how its software and its own Hardware is like a competitive Advantage but you know people are increasingly saying that as Apple has become larger it's become more anti-competitive for them to just prioritize um making things work on their own Hardware um and then you know lastly uh uh around digital wallets and I think they're like NFC teac where um uh for like apple wallet you can like make payments a certain way that doesn't interface well with like other types of phones and the wallets that they have so um it's interesting a lot of this is more about like it's attacking like what has differentiated Apple's business over a long period of time which is that integration of

hardware and software that makes it special and what makes like apple unique compared to like these other these other Hardware manufacturers and device makers right um and I was reading um an article in of straty about this and the author Ben Thompson I think he made a an interesting point and just saying that like there's so much like angst against Apple right now and that really like again this has nothing to do with the App Store but their fatal flaw was fighting so hard on policies in the past that they could have just like bent the knee a little too and changed and made people happier and then probably the anger would have gone away and they wouldn't be dealing with lawsuits like this today that are just attacking all of the other parts of their business and trying to dismantle what makes Apple unique and special and so you know where this goes I mean first of all it's going

to take years to play out right it's going to have to go through Court it'll go through appeals then I I don't I don't know I don't know the the legal system well enough to know like how many tiers and steps this will go through but a lot over many years um but what I will say is I I do think some of this is a little ridiculous but some of it I do think there's a real case like with gaming like cloud gaming apps like um that can be allowed like there's no there really is no problem in letting like xcloud be accessible on on iPhones right um so I think this case will be hit and miss probably lead to some positive change but it'll just take forever to um play out in consumer friendly ways so anyways that was a lot but that's my quick take on the latest in this never ending Saga just out of curiosity did you see some of the doj's um stuff being brought up um in relationship to some of the things that

gone through in Europe so Europe has gone through a lot of those things where there you know Europe now allows things for uh cloud gaming um alternative payment plans um you know a lot of the things I think that are starting to come up through uh lawsuits uh more in North America versus uh what has gone on in Europe do you see that more of just catching up and trying to sort of make sure it's a a level Playfield across around the world uh maybe to some degree um but I do think some of this is a bit different from from that too um but yeah I mean from like Apple's point of view when you're getting attacked from different angles for different reasons um you know at some point it probably just makes sense to come out with a friendlier attitude towards some of this stuff and not fight tooth th nail about every detail um and of course it'll fight a lot about much of this but yeah I do think there is parts to that not just

with the EU but even in in Asia there's been like I think some of the the earliest regulatory actions like against um um I'm blanking on the term but allowing links in the app that link outward to to websites I I want to say it was like South Korea that like was the first the first mover and and well and forcing Apple to change its policies in that country and then the EU follow follow that and maybe the US will follow some of that but yeah I don't know how much of it is like countries catching up with each other as much as it is just like apple actually has overreached on some of this and everyone is kind of coming to the same realizations in their own ways over time I will say the EU probably goes too far and some of it and the EU just has a tendency to like fleece us companies with just like backwards looking like policies like they'll say like hey we just determined this is now a law but because you've

been doing this for the past 5 years we're going to fine you however many billions of dollars and that's that's ridiculous like that's absurd like shame on the EU for doing things like that but um I do think you know some of the some of the pushing there will be helpful and we'll see Ripple effects and other jurisdictions I think uh the the whole thing with the plain catchup thing is is kind of interesting in the sense thinking about like uh the EU and these other countries proving that doesn't kill Apple's business to do these things even if they're going to very maliciously comply on some of them that it's not the end of the world and that there can be pushed back on Apple to maybe play ball a little bit more as you're saying Aaron like maybe they need to not just say no no we don't want to do any of that and I think the EU and and some of these other territories become like an interesting playing field for that because uh it's not the home territory it's an area where they want to do business actively and need to like be like okay well if we want to do business here we have to actually maybe like comply with some things and not just do whatever we want you know

because it's not your home turf anymore and I think that happens a lot you know in these across these different territories where if you want to play ball you have to like actually think about okay well that's a different ecosystem I can't just say I'm the dominant thing here you got to do what like and and I think that's an important lesson for Apple in general because I wanted to push back a little bit on what you're saying about the Ridiculousness s in the culture of Apple because I think a lot of that's actually more recent than you want to think in terms of uh like a lot of it's more post Steve Jobs um so if you look back at uh you know when Apple was kind of making its comeback into the iPod era and stuff like that Apple was more than willing to play ball uh in a lot of ways to try and get its ground back meaning like not closing its ecosystem actually being a lot more open about it there was iTunes for Windows QuickTime for Windows they were willing to accommodate all kinds of people to be like hey we want you to use our product so we're going to go out of our way to make it so that you can do so because we're not this elitist company and how the tables have turned ones that

worked is kind of the opposite of what they used to be they they're very much they're an adapter company now is what I like to put it because they're more concerned with making everything their own proprietary standard now and they used to be the opposite they used to be very much about supporting standards pushing that stuff forward you remember when Safari was like oh it's cool we'll support webkit we'll contribute back too and it's like good luck using anything but Safari on a lot of their stuff now like for security reasons supposedly and they keep playing that security and privacy card to death to the point where it's it's kind of obvious that there are situations where it's not true anymore so like the example you gave about sort of allowing apps within apps it's like well you've already sandboxed apps out from your apps meaning like Apple's apps can already do more than the apps in there which is part of what this suits about clearly you know how to sandbox things and restrict activity there's no reason you can't do that for apps within apps like they already were like you know they were tried to go that direction originally by being like hey it's cool we you like support HTML 5 like Progressive web apps and all this stuff and then as soon as like they felt like all right now we can close the door on that they tried to and then kind of

had a backpedal on that in the EU and I think I don't think Apple's totally malicious but I think they're definitely at the point of looking out for their own far more than they are of looking out for meeting customers where they are uh and I think you know that's that's where they just need to be checked a little uh maybe it is a little ridiculous uh at times but I like you mentioned the bubble thing and I actually as a beeper user like witnessed a lot of that like back and forth battle over the standards of them of Apple maliciously trying to lock out people from creating interoperability where it's not like Hey we're trying to steal your your stuff we're just trying to make so your like your customers can talk to other people without this being a huge hassle and they're actively like practically dosing servers and stuff to just shut that down so I think there's definitely situations where it sounds ridiculous to look at the details and then there are situations yeah where it's probably a little bit of overreach maybe a little bit of hyperb to try and make this a bigger case but at the same time like I think this is kind of it's we need a sort of period similar to what happened with Microsoft where they

really got checked hard you know over Internet Explorer and those other things and it I don't think Microsoft's a saint now but they did scale back a lot of that sort of behavior and I think they're a much better citizen now to the point where I'm actually a lot more Pro Microsoft and I would have been a decade or two ago for sure and they're a lot more about interoperability without being embraced and extend and I think we just need to go through that same cycle with apple you get you get successful enough get a little greedy get checked a bit and then have to go okay well like let's let's find a compromise and not a malicious compromise but we'll see like you said this is going to take forever to shake out and like some of it's trickling back from these other countries some of it's just maybe people seeing what they can kind of get away with in court against Apple because it's a big Target right now that that tends to happen a lot as we've seen with the FTC especially in the US they just they like to try and pick big they they want to play these David versus Goliath kind of battles and and try and come out ahead that hasn't really actually been working great so maybe this will not even be a big deal for Apple just kind of a big cost output for them um but you

know after the epic battle as well I think at this point their their lawyers are are sitting fat and happy you know just in terms of they're getting their work uh but apple is still you know having potentially you know future money issues with stuff like scaling back you know iPhones in China and things like that it's not in a place where it's just like everything's peachy for them and I I do hope it forces like positive changes all but uh you know yeah fine um and honestly like this topic is so boring at this point like I'm just so tired of talking about regulatory stuff and like all these details are like like like we'll see I but what I do want to like double underline about this again is that like this isn't about the App Store this is about like now like the anger has like toppled over into just like attacking what makes Apple special which is like its vertical integration and like all the the features and tool sets it have to like make its own product better than than others on the

market and I do think some of that is fair for them to like to have like you know if like you're building your own ecosystem sure like make it so that it works best on your your own products that makes a lot of sense like I don't think that's necessarily bad but but yeah we'll we'll we'll see where this this all goes but let's talk about something else de please something much more Che but on the topic of mobile which is uh some information about potential for mobile spending to go down which I think is to be expected yeah so uh misplay uh which is a loyalty platform inside the mobile space uh has put together a report um and uh has made it public that 32% of mobile consumers plan on spending Less in 2024 um so it's a it's a report that's available uh in general um they do have a number of takeaways inside there now I

will note that they are a loyalty platform uh so there are some takeaways that are a little bit uh focused or skewed on that side to help kind of you know push up why people should use misplay um but definitely some interesting things that uh certainly affect everyone across the mobile uh ecosystem apparently 40 so in addition to 32% of mobile consumers in general 41% of high value Spenders which Miss play qualifies as uh people who spend $100 US uh per month on games uh plan on decreasing their spend so 41% of high Spenders plan on decreasing their spend in 2024 and 23 of those uh 23% of those planning on spending a lot less so we're now looking at a situation where you know it's not just the people that spend a few dollars per month uh pulling back in terms of how much you're spending uh but the the the individuals

that a lot of uh games uh depend on uh the soal so-called whales dolphins are the ones that are looking at pulling back their spends um they do offer some other uh insights uh based on this report uh 32% will spend on a good offer so if you are able to put something together that does seem like it's a good deal then people will go ahead pull the trigger uh uh Devin shaking his head because he's like yeah whatever this the markup to mark down time basically uh 40% will spend on more personalized um offers so if it is something that's been put together for your P you know your progression inside the game or you know what your current um momentto moment experience is like uh you'll more likely to get a spend uh and they did note that social influence helps with your top of your funnel so in terms of getting your install uh but not with the purchase side so you're definitely going to get more

people in if you're able to build that Community out but that Community is not necessarily going to um you know help with the with the spend um so I think looking at this uh you know back to my earlier question of can we start tracking ad Revenue if people are hopefully still planning on engaging inside these games uh but maybe not spending as much um do companies need to now look even more at how you increase their ad Revenue inside the games to help offset some of those uh IP spends that they're going to be missing um or is it just G to be in general you know Mobile's going to have a tough year and we're GNA be looking at uh you know more more companies uh going to have challenges um especially as you're dealing with you know UA challenges where you're trying to uh best acquire the Spenders um you know is it going to be even that much more challenging to to go up against the people that are able

to spend a lot of money acquire the best users and uh and and sure that those people are uh the ones that they're requiring are the ones they're going to continue to spend yeah I mean I I didn't read the report but I read some of the coverage of the report that you link to and um I don't know if the coverage did a very good job of of like framing things well um I mean also this uh this survey I think where the state is coming from it's like it's just like 2,000 people just us and Canada so I don't know how accurate it actually is especially you know looking globally but um also like the headline was 32% of respondents said they would spend less on inapp purchases does that mean 68% are are saying more or the same like um I I just thought the framing of that was weird so maybe you could clarify that so they didn't go too much into whether or

not that 68% would spend more for me the biggest point out of there is the 41% of high Spenders spending less and spend that that there is a you know almost 25% spending much less so as I look at what that means across the board is probably people are going to focus on either fewer games that they're going to be putting their money into um or just decreasing the the amount that they B so they did dive into uh you know um looking at breaking out individual groups uh and and taking some you know standardized characters I think one of them for example was lucky Lucy you looked at uh Social Casino play and they did break down you know how many games um uh how many games per month that they were playing was it you know how many people just played one how many people played two or three how many people played more where did they spend inside those so there certainly was a little bit more uh detail on on that

level um but it was something that across the board in terms of each of the um demographic groupings that they had there certainly was an overall uh feeling that they were going to be spending less uh over the course of the year um I I I do think that that 68% is more likely to maintain their spend rather than look at increasing their spend over that time um there certainly was a lot you know some some takeaways that hey if you've got a loyalty program in place then you know people are more likely to spend uh especially if people are able to see um you know a a a better uh end result be it's you know play inside of your games and you get a bit of a monetary return um my wife loves playing the games where you know you play uh match three you're able to engage inside

the game for a long period of time and you start earning money that goes to Awards like an Amazon gift card um and I think those are the types of loyalty programs where they say they're you know they're seeing a lot more engagement more likelihood to spend if you are going to then see a return on the other end um some of it just I think makes common sense you know put together a good offer make sure it's a a personalized offer um you know people are more likely to spend on those types of things I think that if the the intent to reduce your spend is there uh then for game companies it's going to be focusing on how do I better optimize my stores my offers uh do I look at um uh you know different ways of getting people to spend their money so offering games crossplatform being able to uh get payment inside the games outside of the the mobile

versions um and and hopefully get uh you know a better rate out of those ones instead of uh paying apples and Google's 30% you know D Sol and and and getting a a better overall percentage of revenue from from the spend um so I think you know mobile may be in for another tough year and it's going to be a lot more um of the people that really know how to optimize their stores optimize their offers put together really good live offerings that are are really going to be able successful those that have a hard time understanding how to really run live operations and how to really look at optimizing putting get really good offers they're going to have a tougher time this year I I got to laugh when it's basically like the the starts off with impulse Spenders planning to spend less like like of course they are yeah of course they they're going to do that budget next week don't worry uh that being said I do think there's a bit

of Truth to but it is kind of funny to to approach it from that way is I I'm sure like not all them are imp Spenders but I think if the takeaway is that hey the the the days of like very easy lazy sales are over I don't think that's a bad thing I think you know like you should try and make better value do a better job of selling to people when they want something and what they want I don't think those are bad things and I think this is like one of those kind of yeah like if people have less money to throw around and are maybe doing a little bit less and spending a little bit less loose with the wallet that that you should have to work for it a little bit more and I I think you know maybe we had some periods especially during covid where it was a little too easy and uh and and everyone kind of got used to that a little too comfortable um I I mean maybe this is an opportunity for AI to to claim it has a product to personalize all the sales for you things like that but I'm I'm certainly not against personalized sales being like hey here's what we think you want and I actually want it and I give you money and that sounds like a deal to me uh I

don't think this again I don't think this is a bad thing it just it does mean though that like people need to pay pay better attention I think to make sure they're making people happy with these or happy enough to like you said loyalty programs and the other thing is I do think this will increase ads uh as a monetization source I think that we've been trending that way for a while especially with hybrid casual uh kind of normalizing I think a little bit more of ads into casual away from just the IAP spend and I think the the like a lessen dependency on whales for all of your your finances I think is probably a good thing uh if the whals start cutting back and you have to start looking at how we maybe going to get the the free players to sort of justify their their presence a little bit better uh through watching some ads and things like that or just maybe provide better value so that the whales are more willing to spend like I think those are those are kind of healthy things for this ecosystem and just it's the direction we'll have to go which is fine like just do a better job of it but I do think it is gonna mean a lot more ads unfortunately which is

downside I would love to say that web 3 would save this and be like hey now you've got how because you could resell your stuff and all that but I don't think I don't think that's good hear I hear a whole chorus of crypto Bros yeah three I don't think that's going to fly but yeah I mean I I do expect to hear a bit of that more right in this situation like that that will be a a play I think uh which is not without some Merit but I think might yeah might be a little for a minority of games I don't I honestly I don't know what to make to make of this um I do think some of the data is probably valid but like the the whole other side of the spectrum here is just like is targeting going to get easier or or harder um and I I I honestly don't know like where we are in that that trough um and I think there's big questions about like what's going to happen the fingerprinting Etc um but but I mean I can imagine that like you know in the future as platforms like like Facebook and Tik Tok you know wherever they they get better at serving more

personalized ads built on their own um algorithms that that are just better than they they used to be and don't rely on you know idfa type type elements as much anymore like you can start to to Target people better than you have been able to these past couple of years and even if overall spending um on average dips a bit teams can still maybe get smarter again in in targeting I don't know enough about the that adtech landscape to comment super intelligently on on that but that but that's just what what's been going through my mind as I've been been hearing this discussion yeah I I mean I think the ad side of things in terms of the surfacing the surfacing of the ads um you know the the bringing in of the players um I think yeah ideally hopefully it does get better I think the where people are going to have trouble is once the people are in how do they

best monetize them uh through the offerings in terms of you know what what IP they're putting forward at what point um how they integrate things like incentivized ads um you know I think there are a lot of companies out there they'll just put okay we know there's a a breako here we'll just pop up an ad but how do you actually bring in the incentivized ad so you can get additional revenues compared to the the popups um and then how do you convince the people that you know what is being offered at this particular moment is a great deal and yes I should get it right now because it'll make that my experience that much better and I do think that there are companies that are really good at the sales side and and making sure it's coming out at the right time and I think they will continue to do okay I think it's the people that um treat live operations as yeah something that's like more of checkbox yes we have live operations yes we've got an ad Network built in yes we have some IP

inside there they're the ones that going to have the the biggest challenge overall yeah I said I think this is healthy for for the industry in terms of like needing to kind of rethink the stuff and it will be interesting how the l l the ad landscape sort of shakes out because I think if it's if it is like way harder to acquire users right then you might have this sort of like pingpong effect where people kind of drop out of doing it and then suddenly that actually makes it less competitive which actually might make it more affordable and this kind of like back and forth and I think in those Landscapes where you have people that can afford to to dive into it they have an opportunity then to kind of take over market share pretty like like because if everyone's like hey this is too expensive now we just can't compete anymore we're we're not going to like spend money on ads instead we're going to try and receive money from ads and make the games 4 ad supported and maybe we can try and turn around a little bit into some user acquis should maybe try and find some other ways to acquire users that are more like through viral

stuff that aren't paid ads and things like that but and then like then the people who are willing to spend for All Those ads to acquire users to the thing will kind of take over that space uh because they have the money to do so and so it's I think you have that sort of consolidation period which is what we're seeing across Tech across games across everything some of it further along than others but I think it's period where it doesn't go to zero it just goes to the winner is whoever is still willing to spend at that point and I think uh that like I said can be good for those who are willing to shift some of their business models well to making money from those ads and then not depending as much on the people scaling back it kind of like sort of balances itself out but in more of like a S Wave thing and is just kind of like a period a cyclical period thing right where we see this all the time where you get these downturns uh and then like people take over market share people consolidate and then it goes back up again right where it's it's sort of like a cleaning house of things um it's not great for everyone but it's healthy and better when it can just happen and like actually kind of adjust things but the but as adtech changes too

I think I I like Aaron I don't know enough about the current landscape to to comment on that but I think it's obvious that people were are going to continue to try and push towards improving it because there's money in doing that and I think as long as there's money doing at least in America as long as there's money in doing it people will be do doing it like or at least trying to do it right and I think with all the pushes and machine learning and Ai and things like that there's obvious like technology that could be leveraged against it well we'll see if it works I mean I don't if we get to Minority Report kind of level stuff where it's just every you look it's personalized ads at you but it's certainly going to be the case where you could throw up walls all day long like idfa but people will find ways around it because they're literally monetary incentivized to do so it just won't be everyone finding ways to do it and again this is just like I think shaking out the the people like Dave said that are just checking a box as opposed to those that are a bit more dedicated to adapting really so I I mean I feel bad for those who lose out swiftly but you know there's an AI

platform that'll solve all of that it's fine yeah yeah gbt2 will take care of it no problem we'll see but uh yeah it's it's going to be an interesting period I think uh but I think a lot of opportunity for those who are willing to kind of be like just grunt through it to uh to have some cool stuff on the other end hopefully and not hopefully Hopey not an ad dystopia I'm I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of ads but I am a big fan of ads that are IR relevant to me I I don't want to watch ads that are pointless so why not beat in the middle show me more ads but show me more ads I want to see and then everyone's happy right but hey we'll see like uh everyone's kind of f battling over that stuff right now obviously like apple especially is in kind of a a weird spot where they're kind of in the Facebook position where they've clearly said we don't really care so much about you guys this business anymore uh and there's not necessarily a new one to move to so landscape is kind of wide open to someone to kind of swoop in and do something really interesting maybe maybe that's not even a new hardware platform maybe that is things like Roblox and ufn

to kind of be like a platform within a platform uh and maybe that's sort of the next space in that so but uh uh anyways I this is a topic that I think uh could go on for some time in terms of both talking about and playing out over the next couple years unfortunately there won't be at least for the near future roundtables to discuss it but that doesn't mean you shouldn't uh send us comments about it anyways to uh to you know podcast at nov. and of course uh you know we have all of our other interviews where we'll be discussing some of the stuff I imagine with industry people uh that certainly not slowing down uh lots of cool cool topics as Aaron mentioned I I am also engaging in some of those discussions where I think some pretty interesting people and some interesting topics that I think a bit modern and forward-looking stuff so cool stuff there but and we also of course have the digest stuff is uh it may not be like shotgunning you in the face as much as it was you know not too long ago I think we've kind of found a better Pace where maybe people could read all of it uh and and definitely a lot of cool interesting topics going out there as well and I think a good spread

of those but as Aaron said like we look forward to hopefully getting some feedback on what you guys want to see because of course like that's who we're making it for so let us know and if you're just passionate about the round table finding some format that that works that you know you're gon to drive a huge huge audience to please reach out to us I don't think I don't think let's hear it let's see what you want um seriously any weird wacky ideas I'm all all for it I think I think A's waiting for someone to beg for a game show this oh I would I would love a game show give me please give me good ideas for game shows I would I would love to find ways to make that work um on the podcast let's bring the fun let's do it you heard it here like start start plugging it you know get it going at least prepare your arguments so but anyways I want to thank everyone who's uh been here especially those hitting 138 with us in terms of episodes and Dave while you may have only been a year I think you packed it in uh you know's talking about logistical I tried my best Dave was was the the man always waiting on

the bench and so I I a big thanks to Dave Aaron as well like uh everyone who's stepped up every panelist we've had especially the ones that I've interacted with super appreciate everyone who's been involved and I just want to say that out publicly to everyone like really awesome job uh I think davic does fantastic work and this is part of it and uh little little bit of sweet to see it go but also like moving forward to continued awesome stuff uh it's certainly hasn't ended or slowed down just continues to change forms so look forward to to many more hopefully years of different forms of interactions and hotel lobbies but in the meantime uh wish everyone a you know a great weekend and uh and catch you guys in other forms from now on but uh but thank you everyone if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a fstar review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus

if you want to learn more about what novic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]