Google Play vs. App Store Blockchain Policies / New Game Development Models

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by far the largest fund focused on gaming and interactive technology lightspeed's team combines deep expertise in gaming with a global multi-stage investment platform and a culture that truly puts Founders first selected Investments include epic games snap and stability AI as well as game designers and producers who led the creation of titles like fortnite Call of Duty League of Legends valorant Starcraft 2 and many more for more information simply go to gaming.lsvp.com or check out the details in the show notes and with that let's jump into the episode hi friends well welcome to another mavic Roundtable episode this is true I am not Devin if you're wondering who is this voice I'm a former host and then turn panelist and today backup host I'm Maria Gillis product director at pixion games and today we're joined by Matt Dayan founder of only scheming and contributorial navic and Felipe Mata head of Studio at

fun plus Barcelona hello hello Maria I haven't seen you in a while yeah I have disappeared but now I'm back like a Pokemon all right so today we're going to be covering Google Play and Android blockchain policy and also some Shenanigans with side loading that will be coming through in the EU and new models of game development and also our favorite topic the Activision Blizzard acquisition but maybe maybe it will be the last time that we talk about it and before we jump in I wanted to say congrats to Seb Park who's part of the crew he got a six million raise for Infinite Canvas so congrats Seb we're cheering for you and now I keep talking but I also have some news so can someone ask me what my news are or else it'll be awkward please Maria sure Maria what's your news

oh thank you for asking no I just made this way more Awkward um but I can't I don't have edit rights anymore as a vodka post so this is staying um so actually Fable worn we just announced our mint with our Launchpad partner magic Eden and you can go and check that out on our Twitter if you want to follow more details but I am so hyped that's why I've disappeared we've been working really hard in getting that through and so we're trying to just create a new culture within blockchain gaming so super super pumped about that all right yeah maybe always scheming um May cover it all right we're going maybe we'll go to the first update uh Felipe what do you have for us okay yeah yeah it's about half moon there is a new studio that was found by X Mini Clip Chief advertising officer Peter coitman I don't know if I'm pronouncing this

correctly so sorry if not so this new studio has launched its first game just five months after being established which is well quite an achievement and the game is called Victor quiz and the content of it was developed entirely by using artificial intelligence so they created a Content production pipeline combining different forms of generative Ai and also they use when possible AI to write code which resulted in more than 15 hours of content for for this game in such a short amount of time which wow is is impressive the next steps for the studio as they said is to transform the game into from a single player experience into a multiplayer game and the studio is considering AI user generated content which is I think like a Hot Topic in in the industry I think like we are going to speak about it more deeply later

and so why quite quite remarkable achievement and also probably is is supported by by the backing that the studio has been received with Angela investors from companies like space ape triple dot uh among others and mini clippings included so yeah the the use of AI in game development is is starting to become a reality and like as the founder mentioned like bit Tech is over a small Tech is where it's old is is AI small Tech I mean it's it's more it's a tool right so it's like uh they gotta be well with this is there's a big company behind but for you is like a single person can liberate on that right got it well Infinite Canvas uh Subs um Subs company that got the raise

they're also really focusing on using gen AI to support their Game Dev so well we see VC that is backing it and so yeah Matt you're gonna cover this so I think we'll we'll skip this discussion for now yeah just just uh put a pin in that because we're going to come back to that and we're going to come back to this update as well that I'm I'm about to get into here uh briefly um so another uh notable fundraise Studio announcement here is look North world and this they raised 2.25 million from London Venture partners for games in fortnite the unreal editor in fortnite um this is noteworthy because it comes from Alex seropian who was the founder of industrial toys and uh Bungie and very successful serial games entrepreneur and I just wanted to give a shout out to this team because I used to work with all of them at industrial toys um so a bunch of really smart really talented game developers and I wish them

the best in their new Endeavors here their first game is called Outlaw Corral and it's a wild west themed shooter in fortnite creative and they're talking about doing more Shooters maybe expanding into RPGs and of note for the discussion we're going to have in a little bit they said that they put this together in like six months um pretty quickly and so uh again this is on the unreal editor in fortnite so using a lot of the tools that they've built up and they view this platform as uh you know a worthy platform to build on for the future where a lot of activity is going to go so I'll be interested to see how this goes for them in your discussion of it later on are you also going to cover the usage of fortnite creative as a Game Dev platform or should I ask questions now that's why I'm wondering um I think we'll get into it a little bit um it's the the discussion in a little bit is going to be more about changing and shrinking game development timelines

and what does that mean for the industry moving forward like the quantity of games that will be released the velocity at which they'll be made where does the funding go um in an environment where games can be created in weeks or months okay I'll reserve my questions for them then all right all right so we go on to the next topic which is Google Play's blockchain policy and so I just took the opportunity to not only look at Google Play but do a review of Apple's policy I put them side by side and then I you know as a product person in Mobile I thought okay if I want to publish a single app on these two stores what do I need to do in order to meet the two policies because I said difficult thing is that at least for the other majority of features and you don't really have to be comparing the two policies side by side they're pretty much the same and so there's not this confusion lower the

entrance of blockchain uh I guess the developers will have to decide do I want to take the opportunities of some differences I have between the platforms and have two different app experiences or do we prioritize efficiency um and just develop one one app that fits the two builds so just very quickly um I have a long list but I will try to summarize so what I brought today is a tldr so that you don't have to go and read the two policies and build a table and summarize what you need to do and this I just wanted to do a disclaimer this is my personal understanding this has not been informed or confirmed by anyone in these platforms so take it with a pinch of salt and definitely go do your due diligence before you go forward with what I say so my understanding is you can't use your mechanism of your own to lock content unless that can be purchased in

app so this is an apple requirement it's uh explicitly you can sell your nfts and app as long as the payment mechanism is the app store or Google Play's payment system we can sell nfts out of apps so this is like a gray area but we see mythical doing it and so I don't think it's that gray for now you can sell the nfts out of app in your own web Marketplace but it has to follow the rule that it cannot block content within your game unless you're also selling it there and we also see games deciding to sell it both on their web platform and in games because in game they can reach more people even if you're taking the 30 cup for the platforms and then additionally there's always those rules from the platforms that you can't redirect them outside of the app but I saw an NFL Rivals they actually send an inbox message where they say hey go to our Marketplace and they directly

out link to the marketplace so I'm not sure if this is an exception or if there's something that we can actually do but we'll have to see and then the other thing that you can do is that you can only sell the nfts and app through direct purchases or where the currency that you use to to open for example a loot box of these nfts cannot be acquired through purchase because it then becomes real money gaming basically and so you know you can sell you can sell these nfts but if you put them within a loot box and you can buy the currency to then go and open the loot box you're not following the policy with an exception in Google Play as long as the value of the nfts within the loot box have a value that's described so this could be something like a minimum four four price it could be dynamically showing the value of the

marketplace of the nft it sounds like you can sell nfts in a loot box this is to be determined but this is my interpretation um well obviously you can't have like a bet or an entry requirement of an nft where you can lose it based on performance because that becomes real money gaming and I'm just going to skip to the next one like about in-app wallet integration so this was apart from the loot box this was the next one I didn't fully understand where the boundaries lie because it sounds like being able to hold your tokens with the App Store it's okay to have your storage of your virtual currency which seems to mean cryptocurrency as long as it's stored by the developer of the app and as long as

the developer is complying with local regulations of having a wallet and crypto and Google play it actually mentions that you you can allow players to purchase hold and exchange cryptocurrencies as long as again you just follow the local regulations and so I'm really curious to see how games will implement the the wallet and fungible tokens because the the regulations for non-fungible tokens are clearer is when it gets to the fungible tokens and crypto like the cryptocurrency that honestly it gets a little bit murky to understand how we can do that implementation but time will tell what do you think can I clarify something Maria yeah at the top um that Apple has explicitly said no token gating of experiences is that Google as well I searched through Google's policy and I couldn't find that I'm assuming

somewhere there's uh clause in the policy that says that you can't unlock you can't lock content behind something that you can't buy in the app I use the search functions I want to know I didn't find it but I didn't want to explicitly say it well one because it's a poor user experience anyway but second it kind of makes sense that you shouldn't do that so I didn't want to you know stay on a podcast that you can go ahead and do that seems like there's some benefit to that to me like at least that's one of the selling points of having some of these nfts is you know that like you have proof that you're a part of this you know club or this group and you uh by holding this token get access to some special experience that's at least the way it's often pitched right um so maybe a little bit limiting but I don't know like it's to me as someone who's not actively working in the space like you are like feel free to correct

me here but it sounds like the most straightforward implementation is like you can hold these assets and maybe trade them or sell them off platform but like what do you what does the nft confer to you in the game that's like you know different than a standard virtual item uh well actually in the policy of Google play it does sound like they allow player to player trading in app as long as you're not using their payment system and so there is some flexibility there on on Google play again I just want to disclaim this is my interpretation yeah um in terms of oh sorry I lost my train of thought could you repeat your question yeah yeah just like like to me like trading okay that's that's fine like there are some people who are interested in that but I think it's yeah really like not a huge use case in my opinion I'm wondering like what what are what are the other reasons why a player

might be interested in in having this nft functionality in their mobile game I disagree that it's not a big benefit to players to be able to to trade or we see it as the time that you spend in your game is also something that you own and so the time that you're putting into progressing your game progressing your characters that is something that you should own and be able to do with it whatever you want and that could be you can go and sell your progression of course as competitive games you always this is like a new um thing to keep in mind when you're designing trading of progression it's like it's not pay pay to win it's trait to win and so design games have to be designed with that in mind and then Additionally you can still do really cool things with nfts without getting content so there are other ways that you can have that you can have a skin um we are exploring

newer ways to design games with this technology I'm not prepared to State it on a podcast because I do agree that a lot of the implementations we see with blockchain gaming nowadays is okay some assets or nfts and you can go and trade them but there are newer things and just more Innovation that is waiting to to be found and designed and so these are the quote-unquote safer approaches or the more straightforward and obvious approaches but there's some underlying fun new things that you can do okay well I'm optimistic but I'll I'll wait and see what what comes out and I think that's the right that's the right perspective and sentiment that we should all take until you see a live and executed and delivering you know a fun New successful experience then you can't state that yeah this is definitely definitely going to come true so I I

appreciate and we saw someone working in the industry honestly like having people questioning that it also keeps you on your toes of yeah you have to push the boundaries and be realistic and yeah keep trying to design something new because Maria like how do you think like blockchain is enhancing the the player experience and making it more fun so if I go to a blockchain game why a blockchain game is more fun than playing the similar game we thought any blockchain element yeah so I think it's fun if with some games nowadays already available it is fun if you're more financially minded person like you find it fun to be able to master this game and that brings you some Financial value and I think that's fair that's fair for you to be that kind of player in terms of

what is like a new kind of fun I'm actually enjoying the most the community aspect and how it could potentially impact marketing by being closer and having alignment with your community I was working in you know non-blockchain mobile free-to-play games and just the environment and the connection you have with players when you're developing a new game and how you're collaborating with them is honestly really refreshing and I love it it's just a different feel and as someone working in games I think sometimes games can become they're just science they're just numbers and this is the aspect I'm loving the most about blockchain games it's like you have a deeper connection with people that makes sense so and how do you think like these policies are going to evolve because probably for me it looks like it's the the beginning and there are going to be probably many changes and

that's also a high risk for a developer of this type of game right where you based experience in current legislation and then suddenly something that you were relying on this changes and it's changed it for the math so in your case any any measures to try to reduce this risk there's also geo geo risks yeah measures that we're taking yes when you're designing a blockchain game there's like the spectrum of how far you want to dive into web it's like the web 2 web 3 and it's a sliding scale between those two and so you can mitigate risk based on how you're designing the game and how financialized your economy is um and I think like my I don't believe that the App Store policies will change dramatically to become worse because like they're fine I'm this might

be an unpopular opinion and when Google Play announced its policy I saw like a lot of people saying oh yeah this is amazing this is a game changer but after analyzing it word by word with the app stores policy and they're both fine neither of them are perfect and you know they're more restrictive in some senses between the two and so as long as they stay as they are or they improve I wouldn't consider it right now a massive risk and seeing how the app stores are clarifying in more detail while you can and cannot do in My Views that's just reducing risk over time my perception um reading some of the news was that the Google Play announcement was being perceived as like this big step forward for uh web 3 games coming to mobile do you feel like it's that much different from the Apple policies in that regard or is it relatively you know equally

restrictive I think they both have their own restrictions in different ways so in Google policy it's more flexible like the blocking content they're not explicit about that but then they're more explicit with the loot boxes and um the the wallet with the cryptocurrency about the same time they kind of mentioned that you can purchase an exchange cryptocurrency but then as you know with the app store you can only have the payment system that is the app Source payment system I'm super interested in seeing uh we actually will go into the side loading now then sure I'm very interested to see how opening up these walled Gardens will actually change I I believe that that's where an opportunity lies and also the policy changes towards loot boxes in general because there's like that also happening alongside all of this we saw that Yuki this week they announced um the the

it was a body of game studios in the UK who came together to design how do we make loot boxes more ethical and mitigate the gambling and the addiction issues that they can create and so all that's happening and so I well the Google Play the Google Play restrictions on blockchain loot boxes I'm not surprised by them I don't feel that they are too harsh because like there's whole other loot box regulation coming anyway and so if you're designing a free-to-play mobile game nowadays you already have to be thinking about that because your game is going to be out there for the next three five years and during that time that policy you know loot boxes that we designed today and the games you have today that might not be allowed in two three years I don't know Felipe if you have a thought on that well my feeling is that this aspect is moving slower than what everything related to blockchain right

so in in blockchain I see like changes like happening much more frequently so that's why I consider that more risky because like the development of your game could be longer than what takes like changes and also you mentioned like there are the Tio changes that could happen like in some years you could have some some possibilities and nothing others my feeling is that I don't know at least with loot boxes we've been discussing about it for a long time but it's still like it's not like a a common agreement on that so it feels that taking decisions on there is going to be slower and therefore maybe a bit less risky yeah I can definitely see that and in terms of the side loading so Google already allows side loading of apps but if you're trying to install them you just get really scary messages that are trying to tell you don't do this this is this is dangerous and I'm not saying that they don't make sense because they can be dangerous not going through the

the store processes and we see that the EU when when is it the enforcement at the latest will be March 2024 but Apple at least in the EU will be forced to allow side loading of apps I know that the US is trying it's not trying it's exploring potentially having a similar policy be enacted um but I don't know any details on that on when it could happen and so yeah on on Apple you'd be able to Silo and basically side load you can install an app without going through the stores which means that you also own entirely the experience of the payments or at least for now that's how it is because apple is exploring um having some kind of charge where for you to be able to be side load installed you have to pay them a fee in order for you to be a developer

that's validated at least it's a fee and not a percentage but we'll have to see I will only believe it what actually happens and we have all the details from from Apple and Facebook is also going to start exploring I'm not sure when but sideloading of apps by clicking on ads so that instead of like you click on an ad it takes you to the store and then you have to click again uninstall it removes one step of that type of user funnel that has a lot of falloff and so yeah and then it will side load the app which is interesting I am not super how do you call it I I'm not I'm not I don't have a strong conviction that this is going to be a major Game Changer unless the install flows are less scary because there are security risks and there could be if you're not Distributing on the on the stores there's discoverability issues like how do you get players to go

to your website and install them yeah I'm not I'm not super excited about this is the takeaway here that the the changes in um blockchain and nft policies and the changes in side loading approaches are related and like smaller symptoms of the larger kind of cracks in the Walled Garden that like the potentially like um players will be side loading more to access these um nft games blockchain games um players will have more ability to side load and more reasons to do so is that kind of the the thought here a side loading came before blockchain is the crack in the wall of the Walled Garden so that you know Apple's not controlling entirely what you can install within their ecosystem again Google already has that but it does come with security

risks so I I believe that as we see today with a lot of Studios doing web shops for their mobile games where players who are really engaged and want to get the most for their money in order to progress and get an advantage in game they will go through the friction of trying to see hey is there a web shop okay there is I can pay the same get more so I'm going to start making my purchase with more friction and so the side loading and apple allowing side loading that is interesting in that perspective as a blockchain game you know you have these restrictions within the stores and so if you have your app side loaded you can have the experience that you want the game to have but again it has the discoverability issues it has the security issues and so it could be difficult to gain user trust to install apps that way um and so I don't think we should disregard having a blockchain game

distributed on the stores and in any case with any policy at least you know myself working in product I think I should consider what the policies are like they've been made for a reason and so I should reflect okay if they're making this restriction why is it um should we follow uh and all of these like decisions that you have to make for your product and and your players any more questions on that let me move on sorry I feel like we're making you the spokesperson defending uh web 3 games not my intent here just oh no I hope I hope that's not how I come across because I consider myself I work in the space but as you know from my history of being on the podcast I'm sort of in the middle so I I I hope I don't sound like I'm a spokesperson of you know everything about blockchain is amazing and it has zero issues just as I'm not a spokesperson for loot boxes and saying that they have zero issues

all right Matt the discussion that we've been uh was it sneak peeking yeah we've been alluding to this um so you know as I Was preparing for the podcast I felt like it was a little bit of a little bit of a slow news week so I wanted to kind of bring up like a meta discussion related to some of these smaller headlines that we've been discussing um so just to kind of review really quickly like the the topic that Felipe brought earlier uh Half Moon they they made their game in about five months with like an AI tooling pipeline um we talked about the new studio from Alex eropian they made their game in six months with unreal editor and fortnite um not too long ago maybe a week or two we saw news from 100 thieves the Esports organization that they built their own unreal editor fortnite experience in quote just a few weeks um and so we're starting to see this shrinking of um development timelines and time to

ship a product um now I'm not saying all of these games are like AAA 100 polished finished products but we're seeing the the timeline shrink and we're also so part of that is through the use of AI part of that is through the use of these ugc platforms where a lot of the assets and tools are already established and already available and very easy to use for people who are maybe not as technical uh in training and we're starting to see some companies emerge at the intersection of AI and ugc so we talked about Seb Parks company Infinite Canvas earlier they raised six million dollars to do Ai and ugc we've seen Roblox building out their AI tools we've seen Unity building out their AI tools I'm sure there are other companies that I'm forgetting um but um where I wanted to take this discussion is that we see that pipelines are shrink our timelines are shrinking because of the um proliferation of these tools and the ease of use of them they're accessible

to a lot of uh people and companies a lot of creators so what are the implications of that shrinking timeline um on the games industry when a game can be made in weeks or months what does that mean for game creators and what does that mean for players um so you know I have a couple of quick thoughts and maybe I can get ural's reactions to that so you know I think the first thing that comes to mind is we're going to see an overall increase in content right like if you can make content faster and it's more accessible there's gonna be more of it um some of it will be good but probably a lot of it will be like mediocre or not so good um and so if that's the case we see a massive increase in quantity um what is what are the implications of that well then the power shifts again this is my hypothesis um towards Brands towards creators um people organizations that have

built-in audiences to do organic Discovery organic user acquisition just comes with their brand so 100 Thieves for example they say we're going to make an experience all the hundred thieves experience fans rather are going to come to fortnite and try out their Island in fortnite creative um but if you're not one of these Brands then Discovery and user acquisition becomes a major challenge even bigger than it is already um and you know it depends what platform you're on right if you're on one of these ugc platforms already fortnite Roblox what have you um you as a Creator are subject to their Discovery algorithms whatever those are and they may not be particularly transparent to creators and how they operate um they might change uh frequently we've seen this on you know YouTube for example like YouTube creators suddenly like lose a bunch of traffic when the search algorithm changes

um so there's some platform risk there um so so maybe I'll just pause there and those are just some of my hypotheses what do you all think are the implications when the game development timeline shrinks this drastically and the tools and ability to create whether it's AI or ugc become more accessible to a broader group of creators yeah it was curious because when when you were explaining all these I started to think on hyper casual and then like hyper casual content is easy to produce it's not because you had AI two AI tools it was because they lowered the quality and they went for simple forms and shapes right but what happened really is that the entry barrier lower a lot and like smaller teams could create experiences and as you said like then we had a lot of more like products out there in some cases

the quality decreased in others like they've been also maturing as a genre and quality has been increasing and the power shifts a little bit more from the developers to the I would say that Publishers or ad networks that were really the ones that could uh solve the discoverability problem and that's why also there are many uh hyper casual companies that were founded by people that were like working in app networks or owning a network before or even like this integration of like companies so yeah I feel like you're you're writing point with with these so I think but I think like in general probably the quality will increase so this being analogy like these developers that like lower the quality of the content uh to be able to make games quicker and now they could tap into AI

to maintain the quality of the graphics or like even take it higher right so I think like that's something that could happen and the discovery this credibility problem I think it's going to be even bigger right like I think right now is being able to scale a game is one of the main difficulties that you have because it's not like yes you you create a good game and it will take off that you need to have something that really grabs the attack attention of the players and like be able to to be efficient with UA so things are going to become much more and more difficult on that that front I I I feel like good I don't know I tend to be optimistic I think that this is going to bring better things in in the future uh it's true that like these bird of things are going to be like uh side by side with a lot of things that are unfinished that is like a just a hobby for some people that oh and now I can do

this and oh look I created a game in one week one weekend so yeah I think if both things are going to to be there at the same time yeah I think so two interesting points that you raised um one is there's an important difference between making game and scaling a game and while maybe we can apply some AI tools to the scaling problem um it's less straightforward let's say um and then the second point that you made which is like earlier in the pipeline is it's not just about uh speed to Market but it's also about quality so we have two variables which is like development time and overall quality however you want to measure that and to your point about hyper casual there are already company Studios that are at the extreme early end of um development timeline where they're already shipping prototypes weekly or

monthly and yes AI will help with that but perhaps there are diminishing returns right you could you're only going to shrink the development timeline so much I don't know that we're at a point where we're developing games in like shippable products in days or weeks just yet maybe we'll get there but there's diminishing returns but on the other variable of quality the floor gets raised right um with the availability of ready-made Assets in ugc platforms and also the increasing quality of generative AI tools of course we still have work to to do and a ways to go but like the floor for the quality bar will get raised and this is I think a really interesting point that um strauss's helnick made in in an earnings call a while ago that like you know people aren't going to just like make an AI Red Dead Redemption you know they're just gonna increase the quality bar overall for the people that

are operating that extreme end of the spectrum huge budgets long timelines AAA uh polish and scope the quality bar for those will increase as well so I think just the overall floor of quality increases kind of globally in the expectations for players will rise in turn I agree I agree with that it will be easier faster for more people to make high quality games but then the quality bar is just going to be raised and so there will be a disparity and that could also be through how are you playing the platforms augmented reality whatever comes next I have I have two points I hope I don't forget the second Point once I'm talking about the first point I do completely agree when you're saying discoverability is going to become an issue I do believe that we are in a shift we already see the growth of content creators and influencers and them just leading discoverability I think that really Taps

into where we are now as a society where there is this just general craving of more human more one-to-one connections and not just this platform or something just telling recommending you based on algorithms I think algorithm errors we're kind of done with that and now we're in a human a human discoverability algorithm error through through people and when you were mentioning about um the fortnite creative you know maybe I'm just not the audience but I think the brand of these platforms can have it's a double-edged consequence where you may be interested of oh yeah I'm gonna go to fortnite creative because I love fortnite and I love 100 thieves I want to go and play it but I don't want to go there because it's fortnite and I don't I don't enjoy personally as a player fortnite um and so it automatically just creates this barrier in my head and I don't want to go there I'd rather do something else

with my time and then oh I had a third point in terms of AI this may change with younger Generations who are growing up in this digital world and will grow up in an AI powered world but at least for me and my generation I just have this this feeling that given a choice of a game made by humans by a team like people who actually dedicated creativity and time and dedication to making the game versus a game that was mostly made by a machine even if the machines game is better I will have more enjoyment playing the game that was made by humans because they're humans that's that's how I feel like if a game came up in uh you know 80 percent of it is AI I would maybe not play it um so I feel like the team is the one that is creating the core experience and

that they are really creative that it creating that is not the AI creating that but then they need to produce content to to have players keeping playing this uh this Loop in the long run especially for free to play games so this is when I think AI is really coming in so where there is uh I don't know a puzzle game and you leverage on AI to create more levels and the the AI can learn what's uh interesting level how to make the difficult to be adjusted to the to the scale of the player that's something that like then you can enjoy more for longer right you need to wait for the developer to have the levels ready and I have more of them or whether it's like I don't know in Clash Royale like having more uh units different units with different behaviors like and creating all the assets that is needed for that so like that's where AI can really speak things things up but I think like creating the core experience is something that is still like you need

really humans to to do that yeah I like as a game developer I'm completely unware with you about the benefits that I can bring to to live Ops I'm just putting on my hat I'm completely removing myself as a game developer and just thinking as a player even in that situation where I know that certain events and content of the game for liveops is being done by AI completely I just lose the connection because when I play a game I feel connected to me who made them I feel like the I'm here for the publisher I'm here for the team it's more than just the immediate enjoyment that I'm getting from it and so this aspect that oh yeah AI is now making my liveops content I I just lose that connection with what I'm playing it just becomes a game rather than an experience that connects me with other people I think the the critical assumption

there is that the player is aware that there is some AI involved I think similar to what we've seen with some of the web 3 experiments um developers will increasingly hide obfuscate these elements the whether it's web3 or AI um so that it isn't like it's not advertised it's not apparent to the players it's just this is the game you know like um players don't question like was this game built on AWS or Azure or you know Google cloud like it just lives in the background and I sort of view that similarly to the way that um you know blockchains and AI will be integrated now if we're talking about art like sometimes right now certainly it's kind of obvious like you watch the this is kind of a silly example but you watch the intro to secret Invasion uh on Disney plus and you're like that's definitely AI 100 um you know for some people that to turn off other people don't care but I think

there are let's say gray areas where AI will definitely be used but it won't be front and center and it won't be obvious to the players how it's being used and so players just won't ask that question I I don't think I I was going to say that it is a lot of things that were impossible to do before right like having greater deal of personalization so right now when you're producing a game you need to focus on that like I don't know a person that you are going to focus your game and create the the best experience for that kind of average person right but because you cannot I don't know uh design like uh hundreds of characters that are really personalized to the experience of the players or like the light like when the play is like and like I don't know that having real choices meaningful choices right the good really create a new different experience for for your game this is something that I think with AI will be possible because you are not so limited

by the the content well I'll ask the question that I was asked about blockchain is that truly new and do players have fun in a different way because what we've been discussing here is mostly it brings a benefit to the game developer and not really to the player apart from you know more games at high quality potentially and games developed faster for the IPS they love so yeah well is this new fun and are we sure players want to have a game experience that is different and lose the common shared experience 100 a fair question um I think we touched on it maybe like an episode or two ago when I was on we talked about hidden door games and their kind of AI assisted um like narrative games and like what is the what is the core Loop like you know some of these experiences like AI dungeon for example yeah there's a lot of AI involved but it gets old really

quickly because there's no like compelling Loop or compelling reason to continue or like what do I get by getting this super personalized super customized endless experience um I'm not really sure that that's been answered yet and it's a totally fair question um and it's on developers to figure out the best way to implement it I think it's probably leaning into personalization really heavily I I'm speculating here but like it's you know how do you make an experience for the player that is um custom built for them but it still follows these uh maybe like a more hand and crafted game Loop or meta system but like the kind of moment-to-moment interactions are a little bit more personalized but again I think it's a great question I don't think it's been answered yet um it's the the big um thought behind this topic was as you say developer oriented not player oriented it's talking about getting products to Market quicker but

um I don't know the the player experience I don't know that's been proven out just yet but certainly there are a lot of people trying well I would say two things so the first one I think like the personalization doesn't need to just be cosmetic so it could be that I don't know the parameters of the game are like adapted to your style of playing so like you can really be all the time in the Flow by playing the game because like this adapted to you and I don't know like maybe five configurations that the aim has it's not like nothing suiting you because okay normally do you see heart is too hard and I need something in the middle so that's something that it could be really been adapting or I don't know even like in at the most level so I'm good playing against this boss because it's more using arrows and I'm good at that but I'm really bad in like close fights and then the the difficulty of the bosses adapt to your skills as a player right so I think that that's one way of personalization that really enhance the

the experience and when it comes to producing the games I think like AI at least like the way that that we are using and we are just scratching the surface is that it helps us to uh dedicate more time to being creative and not so many so much time to wait in to see something like how it could look like and understanding if that could work or not we we speed up that process and we are not using it to speed up production is just to speed up the creative process so you really in in less time understand if that idea goes in the right direction and or not and then that allows you to focus more time in really having experiences or improving the experience or getting a better product so I I would say in that front maybe the the results for the place is not so obvious but I think in the long term it's going to to be there yeah that makes sense I I just really challenged

the idea that players want personalization at that level I see it maybe you'll have a difficulty choice where you can choose hey adapt to my skill but word it in a nice way I just think the enjoyment of games is sharing the experience with other people and be able to have those conversations where you're like oh did you pass that level no but I went and did this and okay I'm gonna go and try and then oh no I didn't manage to do it can you jump in and help me and so it's all about Everyone's an equal food footing of the experience and this is why we see like Eldon ring it became it was more than a game it was a community experience a community race of discovering together because it was shared and so maybe I do believe like some kind of some games will be good with that level of personalization and there's a space for them I just really challenged that it is a good thing as a blanket rule because it will affect that that shared common experience but we're running we're running out of time

so you have to move on to our last favorite subject which is the Activision Blizzard acquisition I think Felipe you're leaving this one yeah yeah so did many news on on the on this front so um the end of last week I think it was like uh good news for Activision in the US and about Microsoft and Activision in the US because uh the the blocker that they had there from the FTC was reacted so it feels like that there is no uh impediment for for them to to fulfill the the merch in in the U.S and as a result of that indeed the the Activision stock raised uh anything like 10 so it was really perceived as like passing the one almost the last uh Hollow in order to get to the to the end of this uh soap opera and indeed this is

also maybe reflected by Sony finally uh signing a deal with with Microsoft to keep Call of Duty on on Playstation so that was a news earlier this this week [Music] um and it was after all these uh the court reacted the Front Range commission attempt to delay the the deal um the the details of the of this of the deal with uh between Sony and Microsoft uh haven't been shared uh I have heard rumors but it's only rumors that the deal is worse that than what was offered a year ago when all the discussions about the merger started uh saying that now the deal only includes Call of Duty whereas before it includes Call of Duty and all of Activision uh Pixar games so I guess that's the thing like when when you bet hard on one outcome and it doesn't

end that way then you need to to then change your your level of uh ambition and the other the other news related to this is that yesterday was the well this is uh the 18th just the 18th of July was the last day to to get the agreement uh for the merger done and it didn't happen of course because we are still waiting for the UK CMA to approve or at least like uh reach an agreement with Microsoft uh up some terms on how to to make the the merger not the no the risk for cloud cloud gaming so on that front uh they both announced today that Microsoft and Activision bizarre have agreed to extend their merger agreement until October 18th uh because they are still negotiating with the UK and they both

still want to make the agreement a reality they have increased the the termination fees if anybody wants to walk away from the deal and they are going to be increasing over time until September 15th if the deal hasn't finalized by then uh and also my Activision has agreed to potentially separate certain assets or Implement other low flood alternatives to complete the merger with the UK regulator so I don't know how you see it but I feel like this uh soap opera is coming finally to an end and uh the end is almost like very pretty clear at least like this is also the feedback that we see from the markets really really positive with Activision stock so any thoughts do you think like we will be speaking more about this in the podcast or is this the last entry finally I think we're gonna keep talking about it unfortunately like this it's it's been extended a few months so for

sure we're gonna have at least one more episode where it's like it's done it's finally closed the UK has signed off if that ever comes so I think you know maybe more to come but like the last piece as you pointed out Felipe is like what is the what is the specific remedy going to be for the UK Market um but to your point about the markets and the stock price um I was just looking the Activision Shares are like 92 dollars at this recording and the uh acquisition price was 95 a share I believe so certainly up from where it was not too long ago but for whatever reason still a bit of a gap there yeah I really hope the CMA will come to an agreement because it would really be a shame that everyone gets the benefits of the acquisition and then us here in the UK sad sad times yeah I I I I I believe that change will happen to be honest I don't think the CMA would want that for the UK and its

players we'll have to see I can't be sure okay I think we'll wrap up here on this uh Matt Felipe you have anything to add good uh Felipe I can't see you because of the delay but I I'm going to see we did a thumbs up all right well thank you so much for joining and thank you for having me here as a backfield host it was lovely to be back on the panel and I hope you all have a really nice day bye everyone if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast navic dot Co or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novik has to offer make sure to check out our website www.navic.com there you can sign up for the number one games industry newsletter navic digest or contact us to learn

about our wide-ranging Consulting and advisory Services again that is www.navic.com thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode