Helldivers 2, Warframe, First Descendant, and Once Human - How to Operate a PvE Shooter?

[Music] kickass liveops need kickass tools that's where heroic Labs comes in they just released a massive update to their Satori liveops platform and having done my research I can say with confidence that it's second to none in a single product you get everything you need including event capture player segmentation feature Flags remote configuration AB testing experimentation live events calendar messaging retention grafing analytics and so much more if you're serious about running live services in a game get serious about the tools you use connect with heroic labs and make some serious cheese with your liveops hey my name is Adam teler today like to talk about PVE Shooters so what's interesting is back in the fall back in October we did a recording on PVP Shooters and now in retrospect I

feel like maybe we should have waited until you know last weekend when all of these major releases came out so we might need to follow up on that podcast but I wanted to bring everybody back together again to talk about the PVE shooter bace which has been close to my heart but also had a lot of interesting learnings through 2024 a lot of big releases a lot of games coming out trying to go after more of that RPG combined with shooter mechanics so today I've got a great panel of experts here so let's do some quick intros new to the podcast here so Manu Rosier so I'm the director of market analysis at newu I started like three months ago and my background is in publishing as I worked for almost 10 years for Electronic Arts before joining newu amazing and Back Again Chris sides how you doing hey doing well yeah just a quick recap I've uh been in the industry for about 15 years nine years at EA four years at Bungie I was working on Marathon director of product over there before I went to Consulting so I've been

Consulting now for about four or five months and most of my experien is in Mobile AAA and freet toplay and premium a little bit of everything and Phil who are you who is this guy host of the number one game Economist podcast I'm back position hasn't changed still number one number one game of con okay very specific how many other game ofcos podcasts are there look it look I think it's a growing category get about the growing category PVE Shooters growing category of game econom podcast okay but let's jump right into it let's take a look at the market so let's give some context around the PVE space how does it look like overall in terms of player base and revenue TRS yeah AB absolutely you showed this slide last time where was more of a focus on PVP I would say the curves are a bit deceiving because if you look on the left you have the feeling that the PVE is rather flat in terms of Engagement but actually if you zoom in and you look in terms of personent rather than

absolute numbers the trend has been similar the only difference is probably that this space is more dependent on the new releases so you have spikes of caused by new releases but most of them usually F away quite quickly I think this is probably something like one big game in this space can make a huge difference in terms of the total Market engagement and we saw that with recent releases and so what were the recent releases in the last 12 months so we had first two and they was The Last Descendant first descendant yeah first descendant not last first be last soon that shade for the begin put away yeah no I I think this what the to Once human and I have some thought about that one because I could play in the last days we were also see in the next slide there is some cannibalization is within this segment when these big relies are being relased

and besides ma Trend which seems like it's very similar to PVP but we're see as spikes from releases what does downloads and revenue look like in this space it's pretty similar I mean some of these games like L diverse 2 is more of a like premium type of game where the release is mostly happening at launch I mean there is some live service and some extra content monetization afterwards but most of the revenue was made there and for for the other title this is something I would to dive into deeper to understand what's the revenue curve over there but usually if you're talking about a freet to-play game the revenue curve would follow the engagement curve right the more player you have playing the more Revenue you generate and also you would have Spike Whenever there is new season or a new event in the same way that if you look at Destiny for example when you see the spike in engagement for destinis when they released their last piece of of content and this is also where you would see more Revenue incoming so I would say

these are rather related and and acquisition so inst stalls are really Al totally linked to the hype of a game right you you have a lot of installs at the beginning and then it it stops very quickly there's just two other things that I think were worth sprinkling in like I looked into hell divers 2 numbers recently remember that was released in February of 2024 so this year and I saw estimates around half a billion dollars a little bit less than half a billion dollars which I thought was an interesting data point just to get a a temperature check on like okay top of the market you know premium entry price got some DLC got some MTX you know how accurate is that you know take it with a grain of salt you know with everything and the other thing that was shared on the podcast a while back way back when by Eric press was some very interesting numbers about Destiny and like what that Revenue split was in terms of DLC versus cosmetic MTX with DLC taking a really large share of Revenue again rumor from Eric so I don't know about that but I thought those were

numb yeah rumors rumors and so that I thought that was interesting temperature checks on this space just in terms of straight Revenue like it feels like premium is still pretty popular of a model for these type of games even when I think of like deep fantastic game it feels like there's something I guess I'm just curious about the premium free-to-play split if there's anything we can say about that you got the first descent is there any changes and how we should think about these two models for for the space I think this is the proof that like conton Drop are still working very well well to to engage your player and also to generate Revenue I think this game are mostly driven by that and Destiny is called free to play but the reality it's almost like gated content because you you always need to have the last expansion to really enjoy the totality of the game beside that we don't have sign that the first descendant is making a big splash but let's not forget that we also usually focus on PC and console the analyzis I can't say at this point that one formula is working better than the other I think

it's more about the quality of your game and and what you bring in the game to keep it relevant because diverse to was great at launch then at kind of a deep of Engagement and also a deep of content because they were not ready to bring additional content I think the key in all these games is is keep content coming right you need constantly to get interest from the players just like an interesting Trend that I noticed between This and like the PVP stuff we talked about last time is that these older games are still the dominant factors like Destiny is still the dominant here and all of these games are trying to enter some of them Spike I'm actually surprised to see back for blood to have these spikes there I mean I remember playing it when it launched but it did feel like it died pretty quickly I imagine if Warframe was on here you it would probably follow a similar trend of Destiny I don't think it'd be as high as Destiny but it would be kind of this just kind of straight line across the graph and so I think it's again yeah interesting the the parallels and if we talk about like live service as being hard in PvP it's impossible in PVE like

the content requirements are just so much different than in PvP titles and I think that's why we see a lot of these entrance coming in back for blood I think was premium as well I can't remember now it was so I don't know if you know this Chris but actually worked on back for blood yeah oh you did ohy not to throw so much shade at it okay well I played it for you know a day I couldn't get the right cards to get the game correct but I mean you see these games jump in and then leave again I think premium is the answer to that like once human and first ascendant are both free to play which definitely increases their install base but I don't know it feels just too scary freeto play is too scary especially in PVE good Lord in the case of like zooming in on Hell divers right we're saying hey maybe it made a half a billion dollars this year obviously an amazing launch outcome for a very small team but what do you do as hell divers right now like you've got this amazing audience but like is the model here like hey let's go and build

some enduring active player base or actually is it just let's crank out an amazing expansion every year and just make up that Revenue that way I mean my perspective is like do hell divers 3 like abandon hell divers 2 like live Services getting those players back is going to be insane like essentially make hell divers 3 as like a win back for hell divers 2 in a weird way like because in live Services it's just so insanely difficult to either get the players back to maintain the player base when new entries are coming in especially 2025 is going to be crazy with the games that are launching like that's I don't know that's my perspective I would agree with that but let's let's avoid the Le sh that two situation where the next one is coming way too quickly maybe and player feels like some content has been held from the previous one just to release to read the next one another thing I I want to to highlight in the list of title and I was personally a bit surprised is that the division two is actually quite healthy in this one and at the division 2 is the

game that suffer the most from the launch of once human and it's kind of logical because these are games it's at the border between survival games and Shooters right you are in a vast open world with other players you try to survive and having played once human is very similar to the division with the difference that you have some Base building and even more survival elements compared to the division 2 but other than that L diverse is not an open world PVE game game right and some other games are not neither so I think the element is it session based in a non-op wall or is it more of a Survivor shooter open wall I think make it also different in this segment but pushing on that like if you were Hells right now and you look at the example of a division two I don't think it would be Subs announced to division three yet I would hope that they're working on it but they've got this long period of time before building up that Sequel and they seem like they were surprised by the success of

division 2's tale and the fact that they could even add an extra year of live content after that New York expansion right like I think it was like two years after the New York expansion they were all of a sudden surprised that hey maybe we could actually run a little live service here so in the case of Hell divers like do you really just say take all resources move to Hell divers 3 abandon the current active player base and Hell divers 2 or do you find a way to like Bridge up small expansions in some way so that you can keep your active player base and then pull them over to that next one why not both I was thinking yeah I would definitely think there's a world where hell Dage 2 was supported for X time H 3 is worked on but like like I guess that's like the strategy standpoint but from the actual like you know physics of doing that with like Sony and the studio and like I don't know if they were prepared for the success it had and I'm sure there's different pressure from Sony now than there was before like to do that is

extremely complicated extremely challenging to split up the dev team that way to build it from nothing like the amount of money you're going to pour into that and how much how long it's going to take and how much your estimates are going to be way wrong when you're trying to look at release timing I just don't know like if the physics of that support the business if you're Sony though and you've seen the risks of live service that they've had right like this feels Like a Bird in Hand versus two in the bush type of right where you could lean into an existing player base a game you know that's popped off and I know the ma is relatively low as we see from this chart but that doesn't speak to all these laps players that obviously still had an amazing time with hell divers and as we've seen in other PVE games on this chart like you can still create big spikes long after the launch if you create those big re-engagement moments with expansions with enough novelty right yeah no for sure I I totally agree I think that it it's kind of its long-term kind of suffers from what made

it so good in the short term like the kind of like crazy moments that occur the heavy social aspect a lot of like clippable moments that happened on in live streaming really is what in my opinion like supported that launch in probably the first month or so and that's what led to its success but from a long-term tale perspective it doesn't seem like that type of experience actually lasts it gets a little bit repetitive you know those moments that are like crazy the first time the whole like you know what's Starship Trooper feeling does just doesn't last and so like its success that made it shortterm is actually harming its long term in my opinion and I mean you can do this within hell divers 2 as well via an expansion but I just don't think it has the marketability of a hell divers 3 but it is also work like it's practice for Sony there's no winner though there's no one who's there's no no one has won the market no one at all this is mainly looking at it from a MAO perspective right I think this AB to when and

Warframe I think Warframe warh but this is kind of the question right like when hellers came out or remember there's a lot of narratives being shared around saying hey this has been a dormant space look at Hell divers it's broken into this finally someone's able to like crack this n like everybody's going after extraction Shooters everybody's going after PVP games but this has been a blue ocean that's been like waiting but then you look at each one of these releases and you say like from at least a active player based perspective no one's been able to create a strong tail like Warframe and Destiny has so what's the right takeaway here there are a lot of PVE game play in some other games that are not really labeled as PVE right I think even in fortnite yeah you are in Battle Royale mode but but somewhere within a team I I think there are there are other games out there where they there this PVE element and they might be substitute to just games that are only PVE and where you can't play any other experience I think what's kind of ironic

is unshown s spike in engagement recently because they introduced a PVP mod maybe something that would help Al divers too would be to have a PVP mod who knows to get the engagement Oro to increase Their audience there's another game that I didn't pick up it's a Remnant from the ases also a game that I could ever look at I think with Remnant it just had that Spike from launch and then with game pass but it also had very similar engagement curves I think the thing about hunt Showdown is like it did introduce a PVP mode but in reality it was just like a big marketing moment I think that really brought players back going back to like the how do we fix this tail problem I think there's like a little bit of an existential crisis of like do taals exist anymore like is that actually a strategy to have a tail in today's market and I think I may have said this last time in the PVP one but I do think there's a world where even hell diers you know let's say it has a low da or

low ma like it can still support a decent business just from like if you just focus on like your core audience they spend well like you can still have like a little a really good business there but it's not going to be a destiny right and I think that the strategy of like how do we become this High Mau longtail game I don't even know if there's a strategy that gets you there I think there's steps you can take that increase your odds but I don't know if taals are really the thing to do anymore versus launch premium and you know get your money quick up front at least some sort of guaranteed to pay back the dev cost and potentially be profitable and then repeat that process I just don't know if tails are really here to stay anymore the one counter example I could show because I I think you're completely on the right track here is deep grock Galactic has actually grown over time in terms of concurrent users but that's really the only one I could identify that's had like this crazy growth I mean Left 4 Dead really isn't around anymore they don't pump content I mean maybe Destiny but I mean that's that's a very

there's a lot of Curves to that chart Lous chart yeah uh so it's grim and I hear you on building PVE modes into other games but if the strategy here has really been from premium it feels weird for instance to put big zombies a plank of Call of Duty and when I've seen these spin-offs if you remember Rainbow 6 Siege had a PVE FPS spin-off like quickly forgotten felt like a good ide it feels expensive to fit it into another game it doesn't feel like it survives on its own it just feels like a challenging market like I feel like you got to dump the thing get out of here as we're saying right I don't even think you do DLC when I look at this chart you know like I think you got to go to game number three or sell it up front DLC passes that's the only other thing I think is worth sell sell it up front at the point of sale the other thing is when we judge the success of a game maybe they are like there is another side of of the co is like they such a massive unexpected success and Hye that

it makes you feel that the situation right now is bad but actually it might not be that bad it just be because you compare to something that happened and and I feel like the audience is ready very quickly to jump on whatever is new and shiny and get bored very quickly but ultimately the people that are left are in some case higher than the expectation from the D poers on the business side like for sure but I mean before launching the game if they were like oh we're going to make half a billion that would be like the craziest thing ever but once you're in life service and in it and you knew what you once were that number is irrelevant like it is all relative to like the daytoday like that is painful even though you can look back and be like oh we made all this money you know so when you're actually living it it is brutal and companies aren't going to look at it that way either no no exec is going to be like oh but you overperformed here like that's really it's like no it's always what is now what is how do you make it better how do you go to what it used to be and I think that stress is like a hidden

layer to game development that we don't really talk about that has like an impact on the tale of these titles especially ones that are going to be backed by a publisher or some large company half a billion is fantastic like on the outside that sounds great and it is great but when you're in it it's like very painful because it's relative to where you were from a like team or R standpoint it almost feels like moving to a new like to a hell divers 3 or something is like healthier for the people working on the game than trying to maintain what once was of Hell divers so a little bit less of like a strategy side and more of just like as you're developing in like the feelings at those times don't the individual DLCs have good Revenue Tales like aren't you building a library of monetizable combat content as you as you build this library is there anything to be said for that I mean like yeah like the stackable kind of DLCs that come in I mean I do know that you know the backlog of Destiny I believe did very did pretty well I don't remember the actual numbers and everything but for sure you you do get

this like backlog and this tailing Revenue but I think it is heavily reliant on the ma of the day not of what it was it definitely does help and there's a tale I just don't know how substantial it is it goes back to like the Paradox model right like Paradox Grand strategy on Steam type of thing where they've done some great GDC talks where they talk about their strategy of how they try to maintain engagement in order to sell the paid dlc's and the Cadence of free DLC versus paid DLC to keep enough players so that them when they launch those paid DLCs going through and actually a lot of the games in the fighting game Space do a lot of this as well where I think you could still have a pretty viable small DLC business and Hell divers 2 lading up to that hell divers 3 because I think there's also a benefit of having an active hell divers 2 player base that you're then upselling and giving like pulling them towards hell divers 3 which can work but then again like as Sony 2 hell divers 3 do you go for the moon or

do you say hey maybe hell divers 2 was kind of an outlier we should aim for the the normal area like the median of the market rather than assume another crazy unit seller that they've seen this is only 90 days after launch right this is also very quick to see any kind of turnaround when you would invert the trend and we've probably I think working on apex I remember that it was a big Splash but then there is always a cool down period but then if you give time to the developers maybe 6 months or n9ine month after they can come back bring some new content re-engage the audience acquire new audience and then find new height in terms of Engagement so I think it's clearly and divers to the team might not have had a clear life service plan before launch and they can they see the success and then know they have more resource to work on that but maybe it needs a few months at least to come with more meaningful content than what they've produced so far I mean I

definitely think that they were probably surprised by their success I mean it feels very much not at the scale but similar story to like Apex you know they were respawn was not prepared for their life Services granted they had 50 million installs in February and so like even if they lost half or 60 or 70% they saw a pretty healthy business there as we're talking like you know releasing these little dlc's the competition right now is insane it's just every month there's something crazy so like even if L divers 2 releases a good DLC it's like it's going to be competing with like some new monster that's releasing into the market I know everybody's scared of GTA6 next year right so like all these Publishers are trying to figure out how they're going to release this title or whatever titles they're working on but I think that feeling about GTA6 actually is occurring every month within the industry we just don't really see it that way because it's not a GTA 6 but it is some big title like Wukong right like no one was afraid of that game launching and then it releases and like it's killing it and that has some on Hell divers 2 to some extent even though

they're not the same genre I do believe that like the player bases as gamers are starting just to like intertwine into multiple markets it also feels like in the market that the offering of content is growing faster than the actual population of player and because time is incompressible there's only so many times per day multiply by so many players but the offering the number of live service game that you can play right now it's I don't know 10 times 20 times more than Maybe few years ago while the audience has not grow at that level so at some point players have to make choices and they don't have space for new experience so when we look at like the PVE space here do you think that it's actually more susceptible like in my mind I'm thinking typically P PVE games demand higher hours played per player per week right like PVP games you actually don't need to play as many hours PVE games take over your life and are typically like you can see it from the engagement numbers quite high and then on top of it to Chris's point you have a higher overlap to Major premium

releases like I'm assuming the release of Wukong right the release of Space Marine 2 had a higher impact on the PVE service space than it does on fortnite it's a yeah hypothesis but I'm assuming like this space actually becomes more susceptible to those black hole moments whenever you get a big major release yeah there is probably more overlap audience because the PVE audience is more looking for a non-competitive I mean less competitive experience which is similar experience that you find in single player games so yeah that I I can see an overlap there in terms of what player are looking in in the in the game they are playing yeah so we're pretty bearish on the PVE shooter space I I'll take it another positive do podcast yeah I'm bearish on the market so yeah I'm not targeting PVE Shooters the next hell divers like moment in pvu or the next po world like moment po world yeah we should all be bearish on the tail right

like yes they can get the units but bearish on the tail I mean Marvel Rivals right now like that's what some of my thoughts looking at it I mean that's not PVE but yeah yeah again again we got into that PVP thing again I know bring it back yeah but I think just a small comment about Marvel Rivals if that game doesn't succeed in really staying in the market and having kind of this long tail I'm just wondering what PvP can achieve that because it has like a lot of qualities and if they are not successful with the polished experience that they are offering I would be very worried as as a developer of Tria PVP cam so we are in a full pessimistic death spiral right [Laughter] [Music] now this podcast is brought to you by apps flyer in today's Digital World understanding your app's Journey from Discovery to download is more than just insightful it's a enter apps fer the leader in Mobile

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but let's move forward to looking at first descended once human because we've talked about a lot about hell divers we talked a lot about the existing live services but the two big bets this year in freeo playay were first descended and once human Chris you had some time to play through first descended why do you think It ultimately didn't retain yeah so just for some context I have like I don't know 120 130 hours in the final descendant I've loved it and I was a big Warframe player obviously played a lot of Destiny I I love the grind aspect of these titles and it's next on like I've played a lot of Korean MMOs so I'm a little bit biased here but I do think that from a system standpoint economy standpoint and a gameplay standpoint it did it had a lot of really strong offerings and I think it is something that competed with Warframe that Warframe hasn't really seen in a long time and I do think that it cannibalize some of their audience early on however the tale is showing that it's doing okay but I don't think it's going to be like the next Warframe for example to have

this like 10 year lifespan and I think that a lot of this comes down to the Elder loop I think that it's initial offering there's so much to do and things are very you're progressing very fast you're doing really well it feels really good but then when you get to the Elder game there's nothing like the raids of Destiny or the dungeons of Destiny those like kind of peak things that you are working towards right now in the final desc you're essentially working towards optimization of stuff you can already do and so there's no really like working towards this next thing they did add some like 400% damage you know there like mini strikes from Destiny and so they are attempting to do some stuff there but I do think that the long-term tail is because of just the Elder loop I think something that Destiny does very well is the elder loop I mean that you know 99% of that game is the elder Loop while I think that first ascendant just hasn't really solved that area yet and I don't know if it's too late for them or not but I'm not sure and I think in general it's a pretty core game that like shouldn't really install that well in my opinion I think

it installed pretty well but it is a very core title so you imagine retention is going to be pretty weak but the players that are playing it are going to be die hards which I mean I was for many months so it just did not nail endgame Loop didn't aspirational content that's truly my thought is that in Elder Loop is just not there to sustain the taale there's just nothing on the scale of like raids and and Dungeons and Destiny I'm trying to think of another tve shooter that does it well I mean Warframe Warframe pivoted a story at one point with like the war within Quest chain and stuff um while the first descendant has story but God it sucks and it doesn't have any Elder story either so like that audience doesn't care in my opinion the other thing I'm curious about is like what why can't we lift Systems off of any RPG like what are considerations we need to take because it's a shooter specifically like is there anything that we should confine kind of like our game design analysis or any of our numbers to the shooting aspect does that change any of this I don't think it actually changes the

systemss I think there's a change on like power creep and power progression whenever you're doing these things and so I think from a progression standpoint yes but a system standpoint I mean I think there's so much stuff in the RPG space that is just not utilized in many other spaces I think there's so much opportunity to take these systems and economies and these deep in like you know ritual Loops that a lot of these RPG PV Shooters have and put it into other areas I mean this is what extraction is trying to do you know it's trying to introduce these RPG elements for a good reason in my opinion but yeah I wish that we would take a lot more of these RPG elements and just like push them into other games in unique ways like don't just slap it on top like figure out how it fits in the game but I think there's a lot of opportunity so what is like hell divers 2 doing wrong from like a systems perspective because when we look at this chart hell divers 2 is supposed to be the big one and it is in terms of Revenue but this is a linear decline basically since it it reached its peak only a couple what a week or two after launch and it's still declining like we don't even know where

the bottom is for all these games like these graphs have not stabilized except for Warhammer 40K dark tide and it was at 10% of its launch base and again different models this is a measure sex all the things we've been saying but like how do you lift that tail from a systems and economy perspective you're asking why hell divers Didn't Do It Like Hell divers didn't have the systems right like it had a very linear progression system of unlocking strategems which as soon as you've collected the most relevant ones it's done right and they've even struggled to add more to that progression track but in the end even like just a linear system of like collect enough coins to get the thing that I want level up enough so that I can actually purchase this thing is not an engaging system for progression like I think there was a false positive here in Hell divers if you look at this curve they got that huge bump at the beginning and it looks like you know pretty decent retention in that first few months but

the reality is like it just went viral and everyone was playing it and then the more of your friends that are playing it the more inflated your retention is but then as soon as that bubble starts to burst you're just going to see like this thing actually just doesn't have deep RPG systems like you compare this to Path of Exile and you've got two ends of the spectrum so is that what first of sudden should have done should they put in a Path of Exile star system I think their systems themselves are like I don't think their systems are really a problem when I worked on Galaxy of Heroes we always talked about like create a hole and fill the hole and so you create a hole and then you have players fill it in some way and I just don't think that in in like whole I mean like Destiny like oh the raid is a hole and then players need to fill that you need to like introduce systems that give them different weapons or skills or whatever to beat this raid and I just don't think that there's a lot of holes that are created in both hell divers and in final descendant and so there's nothing to fill for Players Once you fill the hole once it's like okay well the hole's full like what what do I do now there's not enough holes being created in my opinion for The Elder

retention side and then I mean hell divers yeah it it popped off it was viral a lot of friends played it together but as soon as that one friend says like hey I kind of want to play fortnite tonight instead of hell diers like it's over and I think that's kind of what what hit it is it meta collection is that the whole it's like creating ways it's creating demand it's stretching roster demand like a squad RPG hey I need the light character I need the dark character just reinterpreted for PVE Shooters is that how I should think about it yeah I mean I do think there's like the breadth and depth from the economy standpoint and I think that first descendant has really good breadth but from a utility standpoint it's very shallow like there's like three descendant that you can max out and just 100% the game but there are 20 descendants for you to work on and so like the breadth is there but the actual Utility side and using them is really low and so you kind of finish these things I think the key thing is like you never want to feel done and I think that first descendant and Hell divers both suffer from like feeling done I think Destiny does a pretty good job of not feeling done I think the question with Destiny is more like well

do I want to keep doing this stuff compared to like it being done and on your question of like breath and like giving meaning with Shooters the one thing is like the second to Second combat is not the same as a card battler or a isometric dungeon battler or an action RPG where the second to second gunfu if you're not able to have sort of low ttk enemies like having the the mob that you're shooting through that you're able to get those head shots you start to feel like you're shooting math at the stone which is what Anthem felt like at launch with just a ton of these sort of bullet sponges and so there's certain things around the design of shooters that you still need to keep that second a second as well as like how your movement feels and what your weapons are doing so the one interesting bit is like if you're designing a weapon in one of these shooters and you're trying to figure out what's the right traits and like what are the right build starting points where on something like Diablo the fun thing is when you create a build

that has chains of like hey I do this thing then this thing then this thing and then I get a huge payoff after doing that in shooters that can feel like [ __ ] like that can feel terrible of like trying to shoot that thing in the head then move the thing over so you you actually have a more limited design space in how some of those items can actually be designed otherwise it starts to feel like way more complicated than I think a lot of Shooters need that's why I think Destiny actually gets away with with fairly simple and thin weapon design where it doesn't drastically change how you play second to second but then when I watched something like division two where they tried to go kind of crazy in their endgame in terms of the design of weapons I remember one where you had to like paint enemies multiple times and then eventually come back around and you would do higher damage to it right and you're like this I'm no longer playing a game anymore like this is not fun this is not a thing so those are elements you have to watch out for Shooters versus action RPGs yeah

that's a really interesting point because first descendant has a very similar thing with its weapons with its like Legendary Weapons there's ones where it's like you shoot totems that like expand as you shoot them and if an enemy is inside the totem it takes damage over time like for sure I mean Destiny does have some kind of crazy ass Exotics but for the most part the second to second is the fuel of the weapon plus whatever your abilities and movement you're doing for sure did you use the totem weapon was the totem weapon your favorite weapon no it's not my favorite I I did it just to get like my master rank up but yeah so what about Warframe what are they doing Chris I I know you said you've been war frame they're old but they're like they're sustainers we don't have the PSU chart here but they've been sustaining or at least doing well for an extended period of time what am I chasing what's the system that's kept them alive as a smaller Studio too yeah no it's a yeah it's a good question I was talking to somebody who worked there before and their kind of analysis at the time was like I mean Warframe is a very old title it's over 10 years I'm pretty PR sure and like its growth trajectory was very similar to

like steam's growth trajectory and so like in a way they kind of grew with the steam platform which really supported that game for for a while and that that's just from like an acquisition standpoint but from a rtion standpoint I think one just massive like it's just old the old games are rising it's like look at all the look at the top titles they're all like pre 20108 like there is just how it is there the ones will come in and come out but the ones that have the tales are old and so I just think that there's a part of like these old titles that found this audience that they keep coming back because it's just like they remember it you know from eight years ago or whatever again I'm not a deep Warframe player I played it maybe 50 or 60 hours like a couple years ago and so I'm sure there's somebody who can actually give like a really good analysis of what's keeping players around but I think a big part of it is it's old honestly old player base it's a great analysis right just their old player base you're welcome what I get mod system right it is a very very different

engagement model than like a Destiny or one human and like first descendant mold swords but like I would call it the difference between like if Diablo and Destiny are pretty intertwined in terms of the way that they structure their systems Warframe is actually closer to Galaxy of Heroes closer to a collection RPG sure and like they don't have gotcha in the same way that mobile RPGs but they still have very like it's a more about fewer assets that are highly valuable that you invest a ton into in interoperability in terms of the mod system of you have a ton of theory crafting and now you're moving those mods around and making sure that you have a ton of depth in theory crafting so that you always have a reason to be upgrading every component of every mod yeah I mean the acquisition of warframes is is relatively simple and the depth is in the investment which was yeah much like Galaxy of Heroes like we essentially gave characters out because we made 95% of our engagement and revenue on the

gear so it's like here's a character like go work on it Warframe has a similar aspect to where like getting the warframes or is not that difficult but yeah the mod system everything else is very complicated very deep I don't know what Warframe does to motivate players to continue to do this with their warframes like that's the first ascendant problem is like there is no real motivator other than like pure intrinsic interest or something to play a certain descendant because you have the three metal ones that can do everything so I don't actually know how what Warframe is doing other than story I I don't really know looking at the engagement of Warframe and it's it's been rather stable at least since 2021 it has found its audience and then the audience is is still there right so it's not that much impacted by what's happening on the market it's just a certain player really enjoy the game play Loop just playing actually the game I think so in some case it's enough right you don't you don't always need to to give something fresh or new they just

like the the basic gaml and I think there is an element when you play Warframe of feeling powerful and that's probably these kind of emotions that some player really enjoy and they want to play again and again even if there's nothing really new so to break us out of this pessimistic death spiral let's close this off in terms of similative PVP shooter space let's talk about like what do we think it takes to be successful here so if you were going after the PVE space and I'm going to leave leave it open in terms of Premium free to- play go after unit sales or going after active player base but like what do you think are the key things in order to get right in order to break through and I see like at least Su stay at at like the 2 million Mound level in today's market I don't know if my answer is going to be very much different from like any other kind of game that's trying to be a successful life service but I mean I think that social is very important I think that hell ders 2 kind of early success was heavily tied to social I don't know if they planned that but the game ended up having just like Great clippable Moments a lot of really

good times with friends like very kind yeah very like left for deadish back when it was popping off and you were playing with your friends the kind of fear of the social part is that there is a leader of those social groups and when they play a different game like that's it and you have as a developer you have zero control over that so like there's this like weird risk to it but I do think having social elements is critical very deep systems I think you have to have in PVE because those players are going to burn through whatever content you release you know a million times faster than you can release it and so you need these very deep Long Systems and then you need a reason to engage in those deep systems I think early on deep systems are really fun because it's just checking boxes like you're just going forward like that feels really good for early retention but then Elder retention you need the reason to actually invest in your character or whatever may be and I think a lot of games just struggle in that area I mean again I love Destiny 2 yes I worked at Bungie but even before I just think that they've done such a good job with raids and Dungeons and their seasonal missions and all this stuff at

this point it feels a little stale and saturated I understand but when it was coming out like that was revolutionary within the life service base and I don't see a lot of games that have really copied that I don't know why so I think there is something there as well yeah I don't know that's kind of just like taking my stab at it we sound pessimistic but we're not pessimistic for the existing Shooters right I mean these are doing well the ones that are well established they are just doing well and I don't think that's mostly a bad news needer for the market I think personally you need to come with something new because if you are just going to do what other people are already doing there's no reason for for a player to switch to a new experience if if this is the same mechanics Innovation will really be key in there to look fresh I think maybe looking at what the mods Community is doing what mods are popular so many games have come out of the the moding community right maybe look at what experience in fortnite are being successful and just build on that and create your own

experience that might be a a way to success like see something that has been proven working but that doesn't have yet the polishing that players are expecting you need a Travis Scott AR on a grande event let's build upon that build the live service of just concerts exactly what were they miles massive interactive live entertainment that was a uh zero interest was that like a LinkedIn ISM that somebody made zero interest rate idea it was wild times what do you think you here I reject the premise of the question that you know you you said like 2 million Mau the market is what 10 15 so it's not that big and 2 million ma would be 20% of the market maybe a little bit less maybe 15 maybe even 10 out its lowest rate like there's no life service success here really I think there's a couple really rare examples we didn't get to talk a lot about payday I think that's another interesting example we talked about Warframe which is sustained but it feels like premium is the way to go when you talk about PVE Shooters you

should get your money up front you should sell DLC pass let it ride for six months maybe a year to fulfill those promises because I think the UPS sales upsell is probably worth it in terms of marginal cost and marginal benefit maybe spin up a team to get hell div verse three going just to concept stuff kind of get a Runway going then maybe put a skeleton team to kind of see how long you can ride this PVE tail just as long as remember you just got to be costs even if your Tam is shrinking because your ma is going down you know we talked about the fact that like just content drops can actually get some ma up which is nice like content drops in of themselves can sustain a game Destiny has done this but like can you do that with a smaller team even if you just kind of Pound The Rock I think that's very challenging ask and I think you know my poor little Sweden trying to keep this hell divers going is not the right strategy for them I think they should really think about splitting off head count but look it there's still money to be made I don't want to brush over this like live service may not be the winning strategy here or you know anything beyond a year but like hell divers is still going to pay the bills for this small sued of studio for like

the next 10 years you know they made half a billion dollars and I think this game will probably what clock out at 600 to 700 million maybe do a couple remixes with some DLC get you know get my year one addition that isn't too shabby but if you're once human if you're the first descendant I think you're looking at a pretty big L and maybe not a really big p you know those games could be real losses for the Publishers and I think about like once human and trying to now it's going over to mobile right like now it's trying to have plans of going cross platform but you've got no basis right now on your PC audience it's continuing to decline so like how much longer do you have to polish that before you start to say like maybe this should be more of a mobile first RPG and actually make sure that it can launch and retain and succeed in the mobile context because it doesn't seem like it's got the foothold it needs at least on PC like my quick sense here is I think you have to break the model I think in general people have stuck to Diablo as the peak of

Engagement and taken a lot of systems from that and actually Warframe is a great example of like you don't need those systems in order to sustain and I think the rubric like the checklist of everything you you need to get right is long and it's longer in PVE than it is in PvP so I think right now like the only Studios that can realistically go after this is an xmmo Studio that understands like all of those layers that you have to get right like Chris you're talking about like aspirational content like how do you build the right aspirational content endgame design how do you make sure that everything I collect is actually valuable and I've got enough activities that I'm cycling through to keep enough variety you've got to be able to find that type of talent and then I think you've got to break the model which actually I look more towards other games like payday like GTA which is also you know not really just a PVP service and you start to say like there's other

models here let's not just try to build the next sort of diblo live of service because even Diablo right like Diablo has that same curve of like big spike drop down in terms of pricing it's not because a game is free to play that more people will automatically play it because I mean I have some games installed on my computer that I've not even started because I know the engagement that's going to be required to play this game and to enjoy this game even if they are free so it it really more the interest will drive the engagement more than the price with maybe the limitation that really going full price $70 I don't think a lot of game should go that way but the mid price like between 30 and $50 is probably good enough and and the positive is that it already bring a lot of cash to the developers right up front instead of investing in the game acquiring the audience for free and just monetizing it afterwards or I would also be advising to go like

mid premium type of type of business model makes sense yeah I mean I would totally same do mid- premium to full premium price I feel like now premium is a marketing play it's like hey we're not free to play you know yeah we're actually premium don't worry about it like I don't know Phil is crying on the inside I I would say the re the revolution is is is yet to arrive it looks like it will not be televised or will be on Steam for PV shooter let's talk about it this is just PVE but okay in terms of my takeaways here PVE is a smaller segment it's declining at the same rate as PVP and is a far more susceptible like far more spiky based on releases and even compared to PVP it's got even more focused towards older titles where really the destiny the Warframe is yet the only ones that have been able to sustain so while I think everyone's been excited about hell divers it was very much a sort of Spike and then drop type of model everyone was

excited about Space Marine also Spike and drop model so I think it was right for things like saber to say Space Marine 2 is a great premium game get the units walk away right call by hell divers to become a premium game and launch the way that they did maybe we can argue about some residual business between these things but the right call is to start saying what's that next sequel what's that next big spike you can create and when we looked at things like recent free-to-play games the amount of things you got to get right is is very long and for something like first descendant it didn't get the aspirational content you didn't get the endgame might have got a lot of other things right but unfortunately just by not hitting those two bullets you've got a pretty dire Dau curve there sell it sell the PVE game I would say sell it sell it to a small team like do the stumble guy strategy like see if someone can breathe some life into this like we've seen a little bit more this in Mobile but like the PVE games like deep rock Galactic and PayDay and like even

the Paradox stuff it's all made by like crusty sweds who are like just live in darkness and are like appealing to this really small market like deep Ro Galactic is made by like Danes like just crusty Dan so I would say like they go after something weird sell it to someone see what they can do with it I just I wish we sold more games to see if someone else can breed life into them I think you have very little to lose right give this to Deca they've got this yeah yeah for sure let someone else take a shot at it I think still some life that you can breathe into some of these old titles I just had one one thing just thinking what about asymmetrical PVP there were some success in the past but this kind of a dormant gen right now like for example I remember playing so many hours of FL for de human versus Zombies right it was amazing and I I think we don't have that in back for blood for example everybody has been burned by evolve and what happened with evolve is kill the genre I'm just wondering if this is not something to bring back because there is a part of the audience that has never played these

kind of games I'm just wondering dead by daylight and what Friday the 13th um they've done pretty well with a very similar evolve I know I remember I was so stoked for evolve rip man dead on launch but yeah there's definitely some games I think that are doing that pretty well okay let's close it at that thanks for your time everyone and we'll talk soon bye bye everyone thank you you did it you made it to the end of the episode as a fan of the show it would help us out if you'd subscribe and leave us a review on the podcast service of your choice those stars and likes while a small action on your part mean a lot to us and help to grow the show more importantly are you a member of the deconstructor of fun slack group if you have 5 years or more of games industry experience go to deconstructor of fund.com slack and apply to join dur the games industry best professional Community fi appears always well to lend a hand or subscribe to our newsletter to get all

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