How to Disrupt the Shooter Market

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today we're talking about Shooters often synonymous with the phrase red ocean for the investing market and today we'll discuss the market the platforms the subg genres the business models the mechanics and we're trying to figure out how red really is it um are there any pockets of untapped territory across subgenres demographics geographies platforms or economic Innovation we'll be addressing PC and console and Mobile today which is a lot of information to cover as the genre actually holds meaningfully different footholds in Mobile and PC and console according to research done by us at novic the shooter genre is 5% of mobile downloads in 2022 2023 and around 6% of Global Mobile revenues and compare this with the shooter genre holding the number one spot in terms of monthly active engagement on Steam number four on console and is consistently in the top five games through streaming engagement on Twitch YouTube Facebook gaming and the like as someone who is very proud to have worked on arguably one of the greatest Shooters of our modern era OverWatch and currently lucky to be

working alongside some legendary Borderlands devs this is an episode I am absolutely excited to host all right but as always it's not just me in the studio so who are my fabulous guests today well the first representing the mobile shooter Market is Robbie John CEO and co-founder of super gaming a studio based in Southeast Asia that's building a battle royale called indis believe that you guys just closed around led by Bond damco but Robbie will elaborate you can currently check out their closed Online Beta um and I'll drop some links to the in the show notes below but welcome to the Pod Robbie thank you thank you Alex welcome hi everybody sweet and my second guest representing the PC shooter Market is Nikolai nyholm CEO and co-founder of scattershot based out of Helsinki scattershot is backed by our good friends at play and I believe it's fairly early L development but welcome to the Pod Nikolai hi Alex and um hi from Copenhagen but uh I do spend time in Helsinki as well oh okay I messed up sorry all the Nordic Blends together we're just one big happy family that's

actually true you guys are one big happy family uh which is nice um okay so let's get started because there's a ton to cover here um and before we kick off I'd love to do some formal intros so tell me about your gaming background how you came to found your company where your studio is in the development phase so like how many people when are you shipping or fundraising status if that's relevant um and also as a fun fact you have to share your favorite gun because this a shooter podcast and it can be from any game gun and not gun in the real world I don't know I think about guns in the real [Music] world first yeah I've got two guns in my background so all 3D printed not real ones uh my name is Robbie I'm the founder and CE of super gaming uh I became a mobile games developer when I officially was the first iPhone developer out of India in 2008 uh and I've been making mobile games since 2008 uh my studio super gaming we started in 2019 to to focus and specialize on

building mobile Shooters uh our last mobile shooter was played by about 75 million people called mask gun uh and we're now building this exciting game called Indus that I'd love to kind of talk about during the show uh we have 150 people we've grown a studio uh to about 150 people today uh my favorite guns uh I've always kind of lik two kinds of guns I've like I've Loved a sniper uh so the op in CS go the classic op has kind of been my favorite and you'll see my sniper back there as well uh but I also love a new weapon that we actually have inside of indis it's called the yaka uh it's actually a hybrid weapon uh in hipfire it's a shotgun but when you go into ads it becomes a sniper uh so that's kind of a dual weapon that we've actually built and I've enjoyed playing it with with it the most that's very awesome very cool oh yeah and I'm super excited you probably have a very like large reservoir of like uh ancient Indian military like inspiration to draw from which is probably very cool um all right

Nikolai yeah so um I went from being a tech entrepreneur always been Avid gamer um to that my first exposure really to to to gaming business was as a as a BC uh this was 2010 nobody was really I was a GP at an early stage Nordic fund nobody was investing into games here um and I did a series of I was involved in a series of different companies like MOJ uh with Minecraft um seriously up in Helsinki um and so actually both on the on the PC and and and uh and mobile uh side and then in 2016 I left um to found uh an Esports vertical uh Esports uh company which had both teams in the bottom tournaments on on top and a and a media product and that ultimately led me um to in let's see 2022 late 21 early 22 to found

scattershot um we're 15 people uh working uh on a competitive shooter uh it's still early but we uh we we're having uh pros play around with it um and as you mentioned we uh we raised a preed round from play Ventures uh of 2 million us uh about a year and a and a half ago so so yeah hoping to uh to get to some early play test weekends uh this uh this coming spring with uh with more uh public uh people yeah public and your favorite gun my favorite gun is the deagle um it's uh it's always been the one you know I guess in in parts because I haven't been great at uh at spray pattern control uh so so there I always know I'm I'm a little bit more level with h with the rest I uh you know I played started playing um CS back in in 99 when uh minley Gusman uh first uh first did the mod on on um on top of halflife and and I've stayed with it

it's also been the it's always been my my go-to game it's also the game uh that I I I focused on within Esports nice yeah I'm gonna throw a quick pivot in here you guys just both put in competitive Shooters like as your favorite guns basically I'm gonna say Ebony and Ivory from Devil May Cry uh because those guns got a lot of Personality or squalls gun blade from Final Fantasy uh so not competitive shooting guns just literally RPG like narrative based but they're uh they're kind of fun I've always thought that they did a bunch of there's a lot of like creativity in like soul and those um but I love I love this because you guys are one two different platforms uh mobile and PC and also two different phases of development so um you know one of you guys is actually like relatively scaled up and the other is you know just beginning the beginning their Journey so there's such a depth of experience here and this is going to be really really awesome so before we start talking about what you're building at your own specific studios in more detail I'd love

to have like a little bit of a broader I'm going to give a bit of a broader overtake of the shooter Market currently so the Juggernaut of Counter-Strike 2 just came out um apparently raking in the big bucks from opening those container things on Steam um and cod is releasing war zone mobile um War Zone on mobile valerant Rainbow 6 and the division will be coming to mobile farlight 84 by Lilith launched um in the past couple months to sort of modest success we've also watched game like Apex mobile and Battlefield mobile get canceled as well as a Litany of PC and console shooting shooter ropings 1047 splitgate ending feature development for example and very recently actually like last week um creative assemblies uh shooter hyenas uh got canceled by Sega um and meanwhile in the background you've got the big guys at Bungie just going to town on Destiny 2 and rebooting the marathon series which I actually personally admit looks like mucho mucho mucho exciting um and all of the friends at respawn epic Riot Treyarch IW Val tenson also going to town on current

incumbents and in the literature world we actually had a nice biopic of History released by John Romero um aka the Doom guy um I haven't read the book myself but it's it seems awesome the TIR is that everyone should get that it's a very active fast-moving space and it's competitive um and on mobile that's generally facing headwinds overall mobile Shooters are seeing that competitiveness and falling revenues highs of like 300 million monthlies back in January of 2023 have fallen to like the 200s in the past couple of months and all the while there's also like 35 million pre-registrations for COD war zone mobile so this is kind of a bit of the lay of the land before we dive in now I'll go back to you guys um before we start talking about those markets um could each of you guys give me a brief overview of the kind of shooter that you are building um and after we give you you give your overview we'll just do some like hot seat rapid fire questions about the game so like just one word answers um Robbie I'd love if we could uh we could start with you sure uh we're

building indis indis is an Indo futuristic Battle Royale uh we looked at games and we thought that you know there's no Indian art and culture represented in games and we wanted to represent it in what is probably the East sport of India which is Battle Royale uh that's really where we chose to kind of build a indian-made shooter uh that's been you know 350 million people player shooter in India uh and we think that that's the market that we're going after uh what we're different about is uh we spent the last two years on the road meeting players understanding what they like about a what they like about playing those various shooters that are already in the market you know that's three big Shooters uh and we learned from them uh and we incorporated all of that in our game uh while doing this public greatness got it okay so Battle Royale India mythology and IP all right so one-word answers to these questions PVP or PVE uh PVP flat or herob based so like are all the characters the same or

do they have all different abilities hybrid hybrid team based or single player team squad size three first or third sorry what four players so one plus three okay okay uh first or third person or isometric both first and third person FP okay um what would you call your subgenre description of Shooters Battle Royale still classic Battle Royale yeah yep uh art style okay we already know that one um uh but theology okay downtime or no no engine Uh custom engine custom uh platform as you said is mobile and then for you guys approximate like ttk tightness So like um fast being like valerant and then slow being like

OverWatch where are you somewhere between the two faster faster than faster than pubg uh slower than others okay got it all right cool um and then Nikolai why don't you take that same same framework there and then we'll dive into talking about um the markets yeah so I mean I think I think the the the the generation that we're really looking to address is the big generation of players who came in through the PC Battle Royal um the pubgs the the fortnites the apexes and who now want to uh you know move on to something more competitive um so it is a competitive shooter tactical shooter um we've been extremely focused of course at the up until this point in getting all of the mechanics right the movement the Gunplay uh all of such and now we're starting to add um a couple of components which we think are um core to

to Really uh addressing the Battle Royale generation which is you know the the zero downtime uh um competitive shooter uh that you're not spending most of your time being dead which is what happens uh to you as a as a novice um player stepping into both valerant or or Counterstrike um on top of that um given my history of what was it five six years in uh in Esports uh extremely focused on bringing on board uh the streamers in the community very early so we're bu we're building in functionality which allows uh the streamers to uh to build their communities and monetize their communities directly uh in game to build up the tribes to get this uh to get this feeling of of uh of community and belonging uh going directly in the game rather than having to sort of uh push that out onto to a plat form like

twitch and yeah I think that's uh that's that's that's really the the core of it so uh very focused on uh zero downtime and and and the and the community aspect where we've also signed uh four of the biggest non-english non-pe non-chinese speaking uh streamers awesome um okay and so then if uh when you die what happens then if there's if you're not downtime well so so there's a couple of uh we have a couple of things one is is actually that you can replay the last five to seven seconds um and and and try to do better and try to get a feeling of success um that's something where where people very quickly churn uh if they constantly die and then sit you know for the for the remaining uh one minute 20 of the round and and and spectate um their their their fellow players so from that they can learn from that they can get uh a success something else that we're doing are prophecies so so let's say I'm playing with Robbie and

uh I die uh and I can suddenly then start to to to do an in-game prophecy of whether uh Robbie's gonna clutch whether he's going to do um a head shot with a pistol so I'm suddenly engaged also in in Robbie's uh gameplay and and and not just uh logging off uh mentally and and checking my phone I see okay so this is your this would be your teammate right so it's a kind of a way to kind of do that sort of like twitch virality take the Stream mentality of me as an audience member of twitch being like Oh do I think xqc is going to do this and like bringing that into the game for your own teammates the prophecy is oh very cool okay all right so let's run through this Gambit um PVP or PVE PVP uh flat or herob based flat team based or single player team based Squad size two to five but uh I think well two in the sort of wingman mode uh casual uh non-stop mode and and five in the in the full-on

competitive okay uh first or third person or isometric certainly first uh we think that the the players are looking for a higher ceiling okay um subgenre description so like competitive or tactical shooter Tac shooter okay uh art style um futuristic but with uh High readability okay but like contemporary War like sci-fi ancient war slightly slightly sci-fi so um you know yeah uh downtime we already know the answer to engine uh ue5 very nice uh platform PC and console right well uh PC to start out with and and and we'll certainly look to go to console but let's let's have success on PC first makes sense um and then approximate like ttk like tightness fast medium slow uh pretty

fast okay all right people going to be dead a lot that's why you have to need the prophecies because people were spending half the game prophesizing yes okay all right um all right so this was super helpful thank you guys for uh giving an overview of your guys' the games of indis and of um it's scatter shot would be the studio and the name of the game right now all right is Athena oh Athena okay okay so a sorry I just said that earlier oh no problem um so now let's take a little bit of a double click and maybe let's let's bounce back to to Robbie here um You're Building IND this right and it actually holds an a fairly outsides grip on the shooter downloads like 23% of shooter downloads are India um freeefire being the highest and we all know how popular bgmi is in India I actually learned that is the highest average time spent per user in 2022 and it also had a d180 of 177% which is is freaking insane

because like most people are aspiring for D30 of 20 so um those are some pretty hard numbers to compete with um and you guys are in beta so a sensibly you're out there finding product Market fit what has been the attraction in in the India market like for indis and where have your players been sort of coming from well see what we what we spend a lot of time understanding is just talking to players uh and we thought that you know both free fire and bgmi have you know an equal sized audience we went and asked what the we asked the free fire user what would he really want inside of it we asked the bgmi user what they would really want inside of it uh you know so one on one side freefire is really popular because of its accessibility it really it literally runs on all kinds of Hardware but it's doesn't have a very high skill ceiling on the other side you know bgmi has a very high or a decent skill ceiling uh but it might not run on certain Hardware uh you know it might not kind of you know service the entire Market uh India is a very fragmented Android market uh you have various

low-end devices as well uh so you know if it took the best of both and combine that that's really the indust wish list to start with uh but at the same time you know when you think about it you know when you have 350 million players in India spending that amount of time downloading that many games in India uh what we learned from history and you know I would just say that you know India is a very nent gaming Market uh we think that you know what MMOs did in China Shooters did it for India in terms of building the game market and we learned from the lessons that we saw the Chinese market evolve from uh which is you know earlier you you always had foreign made games that dominated the market but then there were local games that kind of came in and dominated that market everything was built for mythology especially like you know fantasy West World Journey uh that entire that entire mythology kind of took took into something that people understood uh so when you write from you know our theme and our chosen name of Indus uh that's a chapter in every child's school book in in India and the Indian subcontinent that's 1.5 billion

people that know the story of IND this uh what we added you know apart from you know what a good shooter needs to have which is the autonomy layer the Mastery layer was really this entire layer of relatedness uh of taking a story that you've heard of which is in this uh probably don't know enough of and said that hey what if the indust valley civilization didn't really die it flew off to a distant Galaxy and you're now discovering this galaxy in the year 2500 much like what the movie Black Panther did with afro futurism that's really the Endo futurism element that indas bot inside of a game uh in the moment indas is not the first story that we wrote around the game but the moment we did that we found massive appeal um that's really what we've continued to build over the last three years uh and continue to go down that that depth in terms of saying that what do players really want you know hey do they really want the crawl game play the snake game play the low the you know uh the very low ttks surviving through it and just winning or do they want a faster game play what are all the shooter genres evolving into be extraction be looter shooter uh what would Spectators like to see how

would creators like to tell that story those are all layers that we kind of built inside of a game in this threee journey yeah so it sounds like basically that your one of your biggest value propositions is just telling a story and using an art style that's never really been seen before right I mean if I look at freef fire and I look at um uh bgmi right like bgmi like is I mean so many games look like that and um even with freef fire it's kind of it's you it's cartoonish but it's not doesn't have that kind of like special flare that you're talking about with the Indo what did you call it Indo futurism yeah um which is I think obviously like a huge so it's it's literally like an optical um value proposition on top of the fact that you're trying to figure out okay well how do I build this type of game on that runs on lows speec Hardware um to service this to like a large number of consumers um and I'll ask you about monetization later on the podcast but sure I'm wondering ing if you could tell me a little bit about how

you guys are actually doing that because sensibly right like if a free fire was like oh I just want to level up like my my Hardware I could do that is it just because those games were built so long ago and they just it's like they've so much Tech Deb they can't do it or are you guys doing something very specifically with how you're building your game that kind of offsets a lot of the headwinds that you guys are facing on like um internet connectivity Etc I I think uh you know when we kind of specifically looked at the problems inside of India uh India is obviously the cheapest internet Market in the whole world but it's also the the most congested uh and so a lot of other games and you know India only plays on a mobile network you know 92% of all game play is happening on a mobile network uh the one thing that's missing and why you're not able to enjoy playing a game even on decent hardware and and a good internet connection is latency uh so most games like a free fire like a like a pubg all of these games will require you to keep that latency under 100 150 milliseconds uh but what we noticed from just running a number of games is that

the average latency that we were seeing which would keep coming up would be about 2 250 uh so we designed our game to support that large latency to ensure that people still had the skill ceiling uh were still able to express themselves still play a great game uh without seeing that lag uh designing it for devices that don't really have a GPU uh kind of is something that we built into our engine from day zero right so we started with that advantage of knowing what our Hardware looks like before we kind of built our game and designed it continuously every part of it whether the environment is being modular the way that the game play was kind of put together all of these pieces are kind of something that we designed from zero to disrupt this entire market and so that's again obviously while you're building in proprietary engine because you felt that the engine is what's giving you the capability to do this and you're luckily avoiding the unity C fuffle so unintended huge huge Tailwind for you guys um every other shooter is building in unity so um you know you you'll be ahead of the game

soon uh okay very cool um and so I actually would love to know I know that we talked a little bit about India but there's another mobile shooter out there that's just so big um and game of peace right and I would love to get your opinions on what you think this game does really well and like what sort of things you think that if you if you look to it for any inspiration in any kind of capacity because it is just like one of the biggest shooters on mobile World correct so I think I think the one thing is you know because it kind of introduced the genre uh and it's kind of continuously updated the genre I think that's really the biggest Advantage you know first mover advantage that game of Peace pubg has always had uh and we kind of felt like you know that's really the the big reason why a lot of people play this and it's got insane metrics you know uh but I also think that you know the relatedness inside of a game of peace is very different it's not about the environment it's not about the shooter it's about all the friends that you made inside of the game that you essentially spent all of lock lockdown

talking to uh that piece makes you keep coming back keep coming back and enjoying those moments all over again replicating that and starting with that is something new uh and what we what we kind of counted on on on our side just to kind of move away from Game of piece to kind of build that piece in is to count down this whole new genre or this whole new slew of new people coming in to player game India is a very very young demographic uh you know we have about 500 million people under the age of 20 so there's always going to be new players new players new players uh and we want to kind of be that generation of players that kind of first played an Indian Indian shooter uh and kind of built around it and what we've learned from our streamers our creators is that you know while a lot of games do content updates these aren't linear these could be all over the place on one side you're playing Dragons the other side you're playing dinosaurs uh all of our content is linear it's kind of thought about from a scratch it's coming from a lore book uh and that enables our creators to tell a story to find out why this piece of gun what this character's background

is what's this piece on the map uh and that's kind of led to better people better stories better people watching uh and so so that's kind of you know doing all of these things from scratch I thought that that's really the big difference in how we kind of you know competing against something that's our first forward in this market see okay so the game of Peace strong social systems but absent is a lot of the narrative elements and the World building and so actually another dimension to the art style is the fact that you have this kind of like overlay of story um that people are also discovering which is a bit more towards like campaign right so like it's you know you're obviously building a battle royale but there's some sort of overarching story campaign that you're building in as well good okay got it very cool okay um we're gonna come back like I said before the economy piece when we talk about some of the opportunities in the shooter Market um of how to disrupt it but um let's switch um gears a bit and flip to PC um

our audience has a good sense of what's project atha is meant to be and you're building a the competitive PVP shooter so ESS sensibly you're competing with the following list Counter-Strike valerant Destiny 2 Tom Clans Rainbow Six OverWatch tarov Call of Duty Battlefield halflight fortnite and some others these are just some of the top games based by monthly active users in 2022 for PC um you're much earlier in Dev than Robbie so uh you know you explained a little bit about your plan Innovation over current incumbents you talked to the Esports piece you talked to the zero downtime State Etc but if you're telling yourself a story about where your players are coming from and who they are what games are they gonna leave for yours and why right because you know you obviously those are some some Innovations but they are maybe less tectonic than the entire Battle Royale genre as a whole which pulled away from

Team base Shooters um as a you know what I mean yeah no ABS absolutely so so I mean I think I think the the the core of this is really you know looking um you know looking what is that six seven years you know back with uh uh with Brandon player unknown uh launching uh pubg and you know we were all uh we were all fascinated even though it was extremely uh buggy uh just very very very fascinated with with with this this new uh mechanic uh of of of the shrinking Circle and I think that that that this this generation um this this brought in like a lot of new players onto PC uh who were not playing Shooters before um they're now growing up they are starting uh to look for uh higher skill ceilings you know fortnights tried it by introducing uh firstperson uh View but you know that doesn't change the core movement and and weapon mechanics

and and basically just you know gives you a poorer uh uh um a Viewpoint a poor perspective than than than the than the third person view so right now we what we can see is that there is a huge amount of of players who are moving on uh into uh more competitive uh more mature uh games they're also leaving uh fortnite uh for the sake of of of you know simply the the uh the art style um right now they have really uh two well they have three three places to go right the ones who want to stay with the battle Royals but want um more advanced mechanics they can go they go to Apex um the others they start looking at at um at the valerant and Counterstrike and bar a few countries globally uh Denmark Russia Ukraine and Brazil Counter-Strike is really seen as a boomer game game uh it's a game that my generation's been

playing um and if you look at CS2 now um that's more Counter Strike for existing Counter-Strike players you um you when you have an announcement video which or announcement blog post which talks about adaptive smokes that's certainly not about you know onboarding a a new group of of players and then we have uh we have valerant which arguably is doing a pretty successful job in uh in bringing in uh these players but there is still a lot who don't like the um the hero heavy the utility heavy uh meta uh of of valerant and that's a sweet spot that we uh that we want to sit in okay so people who would play csgo who are younger who are like I can't play that old loser Boomer game people who are like I don't want to play utility I don't want to actually like have to like Play support or any of these like character-based roles like I want to be the DPS all the time and then the other dimension you said was

um sorry the people that are leaving oh the people who are leaving fortnite who are trying to get like a more excellent and more High skill cap ceiling for Battle Royale as a game mode that's kind of looking for okay interesting um and okay in that there's obviously some challenges that you're going to have with recruiting those players and so you're I think I think I know where your questions where your answer is going to be but you're seemingly leaning on like a robust streaming Community to kind of organically grow that over time can you walk me through the process of talking to a new streamer um and telling them like hey like don't you shouldn't play csgo anymore you should play this incredibly early prototype of this game project Athena and surely you know this will help you rise to the levels of shroud so tell me about that pitch yeah well well so I mean I I think actually we're starting we're starting with some

of the big streamers rather than than than some some of the young streamers and and I think that's a luxury which uh which I have from from having been within the Esports industry uh for for for the past years and and having established uh you know the de facto uh best csgo team of all time uh asales having created the the second biggest uh tournament or or League uh blast so that has given me uh exposure to to to a bunch of these streamers who you know arguably are uh often bigger than than the game itself um absolutely and and and I think that the the you know also having operated in in in this um let's say environment where uh where the the game developers basically treat the you know the the the professional teams the league and tournament operators and not least the streamers as second rate citizens as ones who don't get to be

invited into the arena that's the the opportunity so you know if you look at if you look at the streamers today their opportunity is to monetize on Twitch um to get some uh if they're big enough to get some odd sponsorships uh here and there uh but it's it's it's a derivative of uh of what really is the uh the core game so what we're doing is that we're inviting them uh we're inviting them on board um we're giving them tools to actually manage that that Community uh we're doing simple things like um I might not want to uh matchmake with a with a bunch of of toxic Russians um but with people who who who share the similar affinity group uh as me whether that is f being a fan of astralis being a a fan of a specific streamer or being uh within the the gamer girls Copenhagen uh group The these are the people I want to play with and and and other games actually make that incredibly difficult

just to to to limit myself um to to that in infin affinity group which is really a core part of my identity so that's what we give them an opportunity uh to do then we also are introducing and and I know Robbie is doing some of the the same stuff we're we're introducing uh Cosmetics which are specific um to uh to these uh streamers and finally uh we are letting um we're letting um the tribes as we call the very big communities start to uh back each other sponsor each other as they enter into tournaments and thereby organically be growing an Esports Community from within where it's not the streamer who has to do every single piece of content but I as a uh member of Gus's tribe in Brazil I start essentially generating content and value

um to the to the community so that's the proposition we go to uh go with to the streamers got it so it's but it's very Community Driven which you know this begs to my question it sounds I don't know if you know if you've watching anything what like hundred thieves is doing like Pete Holly and um coincidentally Robbie Johnson um the CBO not Robbie John but Robbie Johnson um you know they're building like they've got streamers kind of like John Robinson John Robinson sorry John Robinson oh my goodness I'm too but anyhow the the 100 Thieves Team is obviously doing something a little bit similar where they're onboarding streamers and the sort of commercial facing Gaming Community quite early and they're actually having an impact in game design right so it's so where are your streamers playing a role in that is the game scatter shots game and the community sort of with the streamers or are they also involved in like the kinds of things they want to see happen in the

game no no I mean c certainly needless to say we're involving them uh very early on as as well but but that doesn't and and and sure there's a lot of learnings from that the same way that you know I can bring in um Pro Counter-Strike players Pro valerant players to basically um validate the mechanics that we've uh we've built um but that's that's in sort of the formative uh parts of the game I think I think the the you know really address the bringing on board their communities comes a little bit later when um when uh when we start having the play test weekends which are dedicated to uh very specific uh streamers got it okay I see so it's still a little bit more about like that's what you might that might happen in an early phase but like that the thesis of Athena is not to just have it be like a streamer created shooter Universe no well look I mean we speak with we speak with several every single week um they play it they they they they comment on it they uh they there's

certainly been a couple of Revelations on uh on uh on on that side um but I think that uh and that's an advantage that we uh we have but everybody else could could basically um I think do the do the same actually taking the hat on and and and and putting ourselves in their place also with regards to um how do I how do I actually you know grow my community within that game that's the that's the much bigger um later uh later Innovation but but I agree you know and and I think I think the the uh the stuff that they are doing at 100 thieves or I think uh potentially to be renamed uh sub studio is um is is is super interesting as well yeah okay so we spent some time talking about the what and the challenges with the what um with you know specifically building for the PC intense competitive shooter PVP market and the mobile market but I want to talk a little bit about like the opportunities and the way that um I'm going to break down this opportunity

discussion is into like into four pieces there's subg genre opportunity there's economic Innovation which is basically on the distribution side of the business model demo and Geo um and mechanics uh which is a term that I'm going to encapsulate as like what you can do which can also be interpreted as features some someone in the crowd who's like in design and production is going to be like you're using your terms the wrong way um but mechanics right uh so let's start with the subg genres of shooters there's a bunch of things going on here it's kind of hard to sort through it all but there's the Battle Royal there's T Shooters there's extraction Shooters there's PVE Shooters and some of that is also the looter shooter there's snipers there's team-based slh herob based Shooters there's your cover Shooters and those are kind of like some of the game modes or the wind condition Frameworks of Shooters and then you have who is doing the shooting so people shooting Mech shooting vehicle shooting and then you have what you're shooting at so you got zombies you could be shooting at other people um I learned that hunting is very popular I swear like fishing class and

hunting Clash are like these sleeper video games but like I don't know anybody that plays fishing Clash or hunting Clash but apparently shooting animals is also very popular so in your guys's opinion of the things that I just mentioned where do you think the biggest Gap is and this could be has nothing necessarily to do with what you guys are building this is more of just like a let's talk where the disrupt where the opportunities to disrupt the shooter Market might be within subg genres would certainly I would certainly say that that you know what what what Robbie's doing which is uh you know coincidentally I was actually born in in India as well I was born in Delhi so I have a you know deep love uh for for the subcontinent and and I think I'm you know I'm I'm basically shocked that that nobody is addressing uh one and a half billion uh players or potential players and and 500 million of them as Robbie said who are under under 20 I I think that goes for for um that goes for for the Indian subcontinent I think it goes

for Southeast Asia um and it goes for I think the last one is probably Latin America which is which is actually often forgotten as well in in this uh Global uh from In This Global Perspective and I think that that you know um to to Robbie's point also of like making certain that that you you actually work on on on lower class uh Hardware uh is is uh is the biggest thing and I think I think our industry is at large you know certainly the the generation I'm from we were always expecting better and better graphics right um we're always expecting something more realistic and you know we look at our kids what are they playing they're playing we thought Minecraft was bad but then we look at ROBLOX right and and I think the the point is and and this is where we can also see a game like battle bit do extremely well because it's not focused on the hyper realism or uh you know I have a three

and a half thousand Euro PC and and like CS2 clocks out at like 200 FPS right 210 if I'm if I'm lucky and and I think I think I think those I I I cannot really believe that we as an industry keep on uh going down that uh that rabbit hole um so I think I think you know for me if if I was to put a uh a dollar on somebody right now would be the on the approach that uh that that Robbie and and and other colleagues are also taking um I also have you know just another not to break it down in terms of the technical breakdown that you did in terms of like Battle Royale and this genre that genre I also think that what's changed with the Internet is who's making the game I thought that's really important that you actually get to talk to the developer on a day-to-day basis if you see our YouTube you'll actually see every member of our studio addressing feedback from the community and saying what he learned from the last play test and how he fixed it in the next one that's an animator an artist a

developer a network engineer a graphics programmer all of that and I thought that that's really the part that the audience is much more interested in in terms of like you know hey why did you make this decision why did you not change it understand all your frustrations going back from the years of whether it's the tick or the subti of Cs or the Nate system inside of it everything inside of it and you couldn't address that directly I do think that you know now developers are much closer to the community and that's true Community where they're actually fix where they're actually listening to what you're saying and actually fixing it actively uh I thought that that's also a dominant kind of you know thing that we're starting to see where creators not just you know people who are kind of influencing the game but actually the creators of the game themselves are listening actively to Their audience uh in in India that's never happened before there's literally no game of the size Made in India uh so we see our developers becoming massive stars uh even if they're at an airport somebody

will tap them on their shoulder and tell and ask them when the game is kind of coming up and I thought that that's really really important that was new for us uh because we' made a bunch of games before we hadn't made one of the size and scale uh but we kind of started seeing this because the moment we started talking about who's making the game and why we made those decisions we got a lot more love from our community and so that was one and I also think that you know between these genres there always be new win conditions like for example inside of indis it's not always Last Man Standing uh at some points of time U our our mystical element of our game kind called cosium spawns uh and the team that collects it wins now this suddenly breaks all rules in the last second because everybody's breaking covers somebody's staying staying in cover and saying I'll take out all those people who are trying to collect this cosium uh we we had this underlying idea which actually said that hey what if Battle Royale is like a pearl diver jumping into an ocean trying to find something precious I uh and maybe sometimes he comes back with a pearl but sometimes just comes back with various

material inside of it and if he designed a game around it not just the shrinking Circle not just last man standing but also like whoever collects something and brings it back which is you know I would say a Trope or a or a kind of genre of extraction Shooters itself um so kind of combining these elements kind of made sense for us uh and why I said we are hybrid Shooters is that we said that hey uh when you commit to a hero shooter you Sly are committing to that one shooter and building that that line of your content you're Sly ignoring 90% of the content that the developer is putting out for you uh we said that what if you could actually build your own hero you could actually jump in and decide you wanted to augment uh depending on different areas something that you kind of built up continuously inside of the game versus kind of paying for it which you which is what you would do in a free fire where you're kind of paying for power uh but you actually have these several augmentations available and you could choose how to augment your your choosen character uh people love to play the same map over and over again but what if we had destructible elements

like you know inside of indas we have this huge mountain range which actually Capt which actually traps a beast inside of Ice uh but in some cases uh you know the Beast escapes uh it changes the game that's an event inside of it but it's not a whole you see it in fortnite between Seasons you never see it in on a day that's something that we kind of bought in as a destructible environment uh that's kind of something that we thought were interesting things to kind of bring in inside of Royals we think battle Royals are 5 years old they redefined how to get started uh with playing a shooter but they've not kind of defined the end of it and we thought that that's really what one needs to build a smarter Battle Royale uh we have a game director which kind of decides where the circle goes and decides whether the game needs to be movement based loot based or engagement based all of it based on who's jumped in where have they jumped in what kind of loot they have uh I think these are all interesting ways to kind of make battle Royals better uh we continue to to kind of think about battle Royals because we thought that it's a great first game uh

you know I I learned this firsthand when I was thinking about battle Royals in 2017 uh you know the guys who actually were working on pubg kind of said this that hey I knew pubg was going to be before I shipped it because my grandmother used to watch it and she understood the game I thought that that's why they expanded the Indian market because people who were able to watch csgo uh you know still need to know the game before they can actually appreciate you know like even a clutch or even a smoke inside of it but so if you don't know the game you can't really watch it so it's like Cricket American football uh but I thought battle Royals are more like soccer literally anybody can watch it uh and everybody understands what's going on which is why they expanded that market so I I definitely do agree with nikolai's kind of observation of hey battle Royals bought a lot of people inside of it where they will go depends on who's building for it and that's really our take as well uh a lot of people came in they played a free fire they played a pubg where they go in depends on what you're making yeah and I love the idea of like flipping the script of you pointing out like who is building the games right and for you guys the community is being so ingrained in your

process um I have like so many questions around like the actual operational status of how you actually manage that but um want to make sure that we're we're staying on uh on track because uh We've we've only got like 15 minutes so otherwise I'll be running down the Gambit of like how do you train moderation for all of your employees to make sure that this and um and obviously there's a be always the friction between what the community wants and the fact that like they are not a fully trained game designer and they actually don't always know what's best and so how do you kind of manage those expectations but um since we're on the topic of demo you know uh Nikolai we talked about a little bit about subg genres whether then we kind of we're like talking about India and all those kinds of things um here's just like going back down the demo Innovation there's here are some facts right like two-thirds of shooter gameer shooter gamers are men as reported by zo newu and newu also reports that the the more core the gamer the more likely they are to play Shooters and like core gamer is basically like to me like a personality

identity it's like I'm goth or I'm a nerd it's like I'm a core gamer um and the USA and the UK are the top shooter markets um and China holds the largest most Revenue share of the mobile shooter market with the US in second and as mentioned obviously Shooters are popular in India so here's my take on some of the demo stuff um and you guys maybe can can react but like I've never heard a pitch saying I'm building a shooter for women and I'm not sure whether or not that actually is a legitimate thing or something that I just made up but I've heard that for a lot of other genres right I'm building a casual Match 3 for women or I am building like a farming SIM for women um and I've also nuts the the word shooter because it's so closely associated and concominant with the word core don't hear too much about building a casual shooter like casual casual and like in OverWatch right we kind of prided ourselves in making the game more accessible to others by having melee combat and other stuff but like I think we're really kidding ourselves if we think hearing

like overtime and watching like a giant TNT bar like go down the top of the screen is casual so we've spoken but I would actually I would actually claim that that that both I I would claim that the Battle Royal are are mostly casual Shooters um interesting okay I I and I think because I mean what we certainly see at least if we look at the data it was it it was a demographic that came in than the ones who defined themselves as hardcore Gamers and went directly to the shooters right who went to Cod or went to Counter Strike or or or or OverWatch and I think the uh I think I think your on on your perspective I actually I actually have the I actually have the female um um players um in in our pitch deck and and and close at heart you know to to give you an example is is my uh my need she's now 20 she loves Shooters right but she will never ever turn on

the mic turn the mic on never turn right you know and I mean it's it's heartbreaking uh uh for me because you know she gets she gets asked to do you know perform a sexual act or to go back to the kitchen so I think I think this is where this is one of the the the core things for to for for for us also to to um to have the Affinity groups I mentioned before the gamer girls Copenhagen that these are the people I I I matchmake uh with I think I think we're you know I think as all other parts of society which we could speak probably for hours and hours about we aren't making necessarily progress uh fast enough but I think uh I think it's just from a purely like a from a business sense it's stupid not to um and and then from a you know from a societal and moral and so forth sense it it it's obviously an obligation um so so I think I think uh no we're I I would I would hate to to see something which is

um a shooter for women but I would like to um to be a inclusive uh meaning that that you know also you're you are rewarded for doing stuff which supports your um um your team your community and um and and and and B you know make it uh make it into safe environment so I think I think these are are some of the things that we can we can do but I I think you know every time I I not every time but most of the time when I when I speak with um uh with female uh uh players who like Shooters it's not because they like something different than what the men do they just don't like the environment it's fair yeah and I think I have yeah I have probably two points to kind of talk a little bit about that in terms of how we seeing it in a different demographic uh you know India is a very young demographic uh you know obviously our women are kind of coming out now and being more assertive about it uh we've

kind of thought about this whole answer slightly differently U if you see our content inside of the game I I want to address both parts of it you said casual shooter and you said women I think both of these are different answers potentially uh but I I thought that you know what the first thing that we did was to kind of think a little bit about like you know hey what did a game like brawl star do it kind of took a mooba and made it casual you know I thought that that was a really well done kind of taught people how to play a mooba people in India don't play mobile but they play broad Stars uh we kind of did the same thing our game is called Battle Stars but it's a shooter made casual so you know isometric a lot of people are playing top down uh makes it easy people get the mechanics play from a different audience so so that's kind of something that we did now the next portion uh that we kind of also did to kind of address our core gamer like I I do agree with Nikolai also when when somebody tells me that you're making a battle royale we say yes we're making a midcore shooter mhm but the content that we did inside of it uh you know all the celebrities that we have have inside of the game uh a number one celebrity inside of it is

actually a a woman shooter a really famous real life shooter called H sidu uh you know and she kind of broke all demographics you know like an Olympic shooter that's the an Olympic shooter yeah an Olympic shooter uh world champion uh who grew up shooting guns uh playing Call of Duty uh and is a world champion of shooting like holds a Guinness record of shooting as well and she's our first celebr character inside of the game uh you know and that's kind cool so so that's kind of that's kind of something that we kind of did to kind of change the demographic to kind of think about okay uh women play and you know we have a video coming out that we shot last Friday where all of the women players in our team all all of our women developers in our team went out shooting in a shooting range uh and you know kind of learned more about guns from from her from her as part of it uh you know and that's something that I thought is also how you treat your content you don't you know over sexualize it you know which is really what you see in a lot of games uh

you know woman is not embodied in terms of a powerful character uh we kind of change that demographic instead of a game so you'll see a lot of us will actually be playing with this female character or this woman character that we have inside of the game uh because she's truly badass uh and knowing her in real life that's really something that there is also uh you know India has won more shooting gold than any other gold in the Olympics uh so that's kind of something that kind of you know is something that we thought was really a great way to kind of represent that inside of the game that's really cool um I love actually love hearing and that's why I said like it's like I'm not you know I've never heard a pitch saying I'm building a shooter for women but I actually like I don't think that's maybe the right strategy the right strategy would be like to have your game be just built and accessible to everybody but I think that those problems are still incredibly prevalent like I mean I do not turn the mic on in OverWatch you do not do that um because the minute somebody hears your voice

it's like oh like why don't you play mercy you're like well I don't want a whole left click um because that's boring like and I also like sometimes you play bad too like I I you know what I mean so it's a it's it's a very challenging environment and so it's like how can you install structure and Community from the very beginning in the organic growth of the game either in how the characters are represented right like so having this um this female sharpshooter in the game as a real life IRL person or to your point building with uh think said like Copenhagen like female like gaming Collective or whatever you had mentioned before um right from the beginning to make sure that like this kind of like standard of behavior is already installed from from the get-go um so you know really enjoyed hearing about some of those Innovations and um in in both of your guys's games um and so really quickly um before we get to our final question um would love to quick quickly touch upon the topic of economic Innovation um and there's obviously a couple standard ways that Shooters make money you you sell the Box

you like do liveops you do ads right and we all know the Fairly tectonic impact that epic games had with the release of the battle pass in within fortnite in 2018 and so how are you both planning for economic innovation in your games and figuring actually these might look quite different between the two of you um on mobile versus PC um but you know I maybe you you go first sure so um look I think the the first the the the the the the the the the most core of our belief is is that uh people are obviously less and less willing to pay for games but they're more and more willing to pay for identity right and identity is has like multiple layers the first level of identity is self-expression that's those are the skins and cosmetics that I run around with the second uh layer of of identity is Bel belonging um as I said before am I a fan of of of of astralis or Barcelona or uh the Olympics and and

shooting or a specific streamer um and then the the last part which is a little bit tricky is is is utility but utility and and you know it sounds very technical but but that is uh that is something of like what do I have access to um and what I have access to might be be uh uh you know early play test weekends and and so forth so that's that's really what that's that's really how we look at uh at monetization on on our side what we're doing um is that we're adapting sort of the the battle pass into something we call the the at least internally right now the streamer pass right so um let's say that Robbie is the the biggest streamer in in India he ditches indos and becomes a streamer for uh for Athena um and and uh and we sell a streamer passw which basically uh gives a couple of things one it gives um access to uh to to Cosmetics which are

specific to Robbie of and again of varying levels of of of Rarity I can I can then go ahead and I can flip those on a on a secondary Market Place if I if I want the second thing is this thing of being able to matchmake be on teams only with other fans of Robbie and that's our Affinity you know we believe in Robbie and and and uh and we always have something to to to talk about and get get deep about and then the last thing was was this thing that we also uh drop a certain amount of of um of of of soft currency which uh allows me to go and and back other people from within the community uh in in tournaments I can sponsor them in tournaments and I can potentially get winnings uh back and I can use those winnings to uh to go by keys to uh to to open uh loot crates so that's like a that's like the very very very basic but all of this is is is all related to the to the streamer more than

it's related to uh to the game at large of course we have Cosmetics which are uh you know of course there's going to be the aimof and and so forth um uh ASM off skin and so forth but but really the the core monetization is around my affinity group or Affinity groups um interesting yeah I don't think I've ever seen that to be obviously like Riot and a lot of and even in OverWatch right we did a lot of the over Esports like team skins and um like the Atlantic we did an Atlantic Genji Atlantic Tracer and then like a I forget like La Genji or something like that um but nothing like super super tied around the identity of the streamer themselves so hopefully you have some good ones who are very exctly and and and I and but I think also I mean I think the point is one thing is I can buy a skin that's like me buying a jersey in real life right but but the but the but you know how do make certain that I'm I'm sitting in the same bar or uh in the same section of the Arena as as the fans or I

just meet up with them you know it's the meetups it's the virtual meetups that we that we love um and and which but but where we're brought together based on the Affinity uh of of belonging to a specific group and then there's the last thing of like really then okay how do I support that group and I think I I think that I think that this the stickers the signatures and so forth that's basically that's like uh that is that that is the the the the the jersey that is the signature on the Jersey and it doesn't it doesn't it makes me feel good about having that but it doesn't really um it doesn't really until I have that Jersey I'm wearing that Jersey uh um together with other people it doesn't really have massive value so that's where we're that's where we're headed makes sense I I I want just you know double click on that and kind of add what we've actually done in experiments uh in our other game called Battle Stars where we had India's biggest YouTuber 55 million Subs um so essentially he's a he's a character

inside of the game uh the day we announced it and the game launched he broke the game essentially because we had about a million people download the game that day uh so essentially clashed all servers we had to actually you know take the game down for an hour uh get the game back up uh conversion was very very high uh what is battle pass we looked at freeto play and you know I've been in free to play for a little while and we thought that uh you know free to play you know kind of man infested itself into these patterns of people paying so people would give you a fixed amount of money every month uh I thought that everybody captured that behavior really well in a battle pass so that's really what a battle pass does it captures that behavior of people giving you a fixed amount of money every month uh today we kind of see you know what we're kind of counting on from an economics perspective India is a very large Dau Market 40% of the world's Dau comes from India especially in Battle Royal games uh but the way that we've thought about this Market is to kind of think about India is not one country it's 20 countri IES uh it's different economic State uh breaking it down to smaller smaller regions here or there uh

we kind of spent a lot of time thinking about okay what will this person pay in this part of town what why will he pay this amount of money what's kind of his identity you know in the way that I kind of said it and we realized through these experiments that we we can get a lot of people to pay a small amount of money and that's how games make money in India uh to give you you know just some random you know stats out of India uh we think that India is now growing Ina purchases at 40% year-over-year you know that's the largest growth in the world uh we're adding more new payers on Google pay than the rest of the world combined every month uh and that's combined with obviously you know the economic growth of India India is the fastest growing economy in the world uh but also the fact that you know we have this whole new generation of people who grew up with a mobile phone in their hand um that's about 10 12 years this generation of mobile of people is now in the workforce which means that they have both a dispos disposable income as well as time and they grew up playing game so

they finding the highest return of investment in terms of entertainment so it's also the demographic dividend so to say which is leading to growth uh obviously India's also simplified a number of digital payments we do 7 billion digital payments through a network called UPI uh which is the cheapest fastest Network in the world that's government owned so removing the the hurdle for people to kind of pay money uh which is we don't use credit cards would use their phone to pay money for to pay literally for a cup of tea which is like a 10-cent payment as well uh so that's kind of something that we kind of see there uh and I think that's something that you're seeing in the market today there are over 100 million payers in the Indian market you know 450 400 450 million Gamers 100 million payers a lot of this demographic was the older demographic that paid for real money games gambling betting these spots but the next generation is what's coming online we're not building for that generation which doesn't know how to play a game frankly which is why they're kind of more satisfied in kind of you know betting they know grew up playing

games we are building for this next generation of Gamers uh who have their parents paying for a lot of it or have pocket money or are now you know in in the workforce kind of paying for a lot of it and that's really what we've kind of stood by how do you how how do you how do you get people to pay figuring out the right prices but also what's the content that they paying for you know what we thought about inside of Indus is that you know if you have the maharajas kohinur uh you know that's the loot box that you would want to open uh so you have to also kind of dress it up the right way you also have to give people that gratification of doing something inside of a game that's truly Made in India of content that's truly Made in India uh and that's really the pieces that we've kind of put put in inside of the game right from YouTubers creators real life celebrities inside of it or even like what you see on my background is really the Taj uh Taj is really the Taj Mahal is India's most recognized Monument so to say but we converted him into a robot

inside of our game uh and and you know that's kind of that's kind of the character that you'll that you'll pay for as well uh now these are things that we've kind of done slightly differently we think that you know battle passes in India like all the three four large Shooters in India which make over a hundred million dollars I think 50 60% of their revenue does come from a battle bu uh you know it still kind of hits I would say 10 to 15 cents upow you know the best games probably have 40 Cent upow but you know AR PPU would be about5 to7 uh that's kind of the market that you want to kind of think a little bit about which is not very far away when you think about the scale of India from other markets uh so we definitely you know we're not the Japan or the Saudi Arabia in terms of AR ppus but at the scale that we're at we think that that's probably the largest gaming opportunity in the world yeah I mean a 10 to 15 cent RP does is for for the size of India is fantastic um if you can get it there and I think it's really interesting providing that commentary um because I

as I mentioned last week we did an episode on the India blue gaming ocean with um s seal from lumai fund and abasha from Studio SRA and we were talking about I was like why is there such a predection for betting in RMG in India and it's basically the conclusion was this was the first type of game they were introduced to so when Indians think about what's it like to play video games it's like in their mind this is what games are just like how for maybe in the US and the West like you don't pay yeah you don't an arcade might have been the first thing that you were introduced to so it's really interesting that there's this shift between your older generation and the younger generation being willing to spend and monetize more like a typical Western gamer maybe so I think I think you know that's also a generation gap right you know a generation of people that grew up without PCS the mobile phone was their first piece inside of it now they were watching television they watching Cricket so they knew a lot more about it for them being able to you know place a bet on fantasy was much more easier than actually

playing a FIFA or or actually playing a real game uh so that's one generation of people who also got access to a mobile phone had disposable incomes had credit cards very early I thought that's a that's it's sort of like the the the football manager versus FIFA for US who were gaming in the 90s right exactly so that's really what we see as fantasy sport but that's really one section of the market the other section that that that's probably the tip of the iceberg as far as you know and I think that market is trying to constantly call itself gaming uh whereas it actually is not gaming it's probably I gaming so we we are forced to kind of call ourselves a video game company uh to distinguish ourselves from all real money kind of companies uh we kind of call ourselves a video game company yeah and this also helps you maybe avoid some of the the gaming the gaming tax the regulatory tax from the government the tax is very clear like for people on the outside there's a little bit of gray area in terms of what's real money tax and what's not inside of India everybody knows that cash based outcomes uh you know there there's the tax you guys are

not cash based outcomes there's no 28% extra tax inside of it right right right yeah that's actually very consistent um because I think from the West we see all this stuff we're like oh my gosh everybody there is confused and even in the episode we did last week they were like not it's pretty clear everybody knows what's RMG and what's not so um very cool thank you for sharing those those thoughts it's really interesting how you guys have begun like your um sort of like the analysis around the economic Innovation with the with the tests and um trying to figure out you know what people want to buy and what they're interested in buying and kind of habituating that that behavior with inside your game um I want to move on to our final like quick question um as this has been super awesome discussion uh and uh but we're we're running over the the the hour here but some of the you know I was looking at newu the other day and there's top mechanics and Shooters right according to newu the first one is shooting um which is very useful analysis and the second top mechanic is combat so after

that it starts to get a little more interesting like levels and Maps character customization classes faction races character progression vehicular control randomized loot temporary powerups um but you know one of the cool things about Shooters they have been the Forefront from a lot of the physical innovation in games or in game design so like push forward combat in Doom physics game physics based gameplay in Quake um the movement and games like Titanfall um and like or like X-ray killcam and like Sniper Elite and there's like so so so many more right um so final question for the both of you if in Athena or in indis you had a generation of games utilizing one feature or mechanic from the game that you're building what would it be and why okay but but but we're we're we're we're doing mechanics very wide wide very wide just yeah very wide so so exactly and and I can't put I can't put one word on on on this mechanic but but like what I what I what I truly hope here is that and this is something I

speak to other game developers about a lot is that that you know really understanding and and you know Robbie spoke about it too with regards to to uh um uh to sharing the the content with the community uh bringing in the YouTubers and so forth is is understanding that that that that that that you know that the content creators whether that's a streamer Pro Player Pro Team tournament organizer the people who who operate in the periphery and who are really holding the legacy of of many of these games that they're really core to it they're not a marketing mechanism they're core to the game itself um and I think that there's so many people who who still say oh yeah yeah we are Community Driven we are such and such driven but still don't still basically treat the streamer or pro team or League or whoever else uh the person who just uploads a video on on YouTube uh um considers them marketing and and and

that's the thing I think if there's one mechanism it's not obviously core to the game but it's core to how we approach building our game um and and and hopefully having a a you know a multi- deade uh IP then that's that's what I hope I can I can I can bring to the to the gaming industry awesome Alex I I'll I'll I'll answer two two parts inside of it uh the first part is really the community part uh what we did in our first season where we actually have this famous YouTuber inside of the game as a character uh is that we actually made an announcement that the top 100 players get to play in a competition with him at the end of the season uh so we actually bought in 100 players who were our top top 100 on our leaderboard to come in and play on with him uh in a famous location inside of Mumbai uh for every one of those players who came to that event they said that it was life-changing for them uh we kind of felt like you know you'll see more games

do that over and over again I don't know whether they whether you know like we we've not been able to do it season on season like we're in our third season but we did this only for the first season but we definitely see it doing it at least once a year but we bring in all the famous YouTubers and people are and they are biggest fans their biggest players are kind of playing with them so I think that's one uh from a game perspective we have this interesting idea uh that we kind of currently working on which is if somebody shoots you down in a game you declare him your Nemesis uh and every time that he jumps inside of a next game you have a chance uh to kind of jump into that game with him uh and kind of interesting you know so so that's kind of we think that you know with a lot of PVP mechanics uh you know you have people who are who are who are on a nemesis leaderboard you know I am obsessed with this this will be so funny if it were like you just follow this one person around so so you do you do have you know two-way blocking you like declare your friends your Nemesis even though they've

done nothing to wrong you correct but but you know these are still things that we're tuning but we do think that you know there's something there like you know like I see your reaction inside of it and you're smiling at it uh and we've definitely had that reaction every time that we've tried to simulate this we don't have it running inside of the game but there something that we we think deeply about and you'll definitely see this inside of IND us that's very cool I'm sure that's a matchmaking um horror show but um from the outside idea it sounds awesome um as a I'm a very big like PVP like league league gamer as well like if I could like create if I could Nemesis like a certain like jungler or another 80 carry I think that would be such a cool like feature um but that's awesome wow this was this was really truly terrific guys since Robbie got to say two I I'm going I'm going to add a second one also which which which are the which are the profit IES which are about the uh about keeping the engagement I it's it's super fun when uh

when when when you're when you're doing it and and and I think that's but I'm I'm GNA steal the Nemesis idea as well yeah well uh let's all go tell your like your CTO your Tech director that you got to get this done in the matchmaking and they'll just tell you all the reasons why it's impossible probably or something like that exactly but um wow guys what an amazing episode and thank you both for your tremendous insights and I'm super excited to play your games when when they come out um and again Robbie I know that yours is um in beta currently um so we usually conclude the episodes by asking you guys to share um uh some info about yourselves in case that and there are members in the audience who want to work with you for you stay up to date on your game um so uh how can folks get in touch with you if they're interested in reaching out uh so I'm all on the YouTube channel uh which is indust game you'll see a lot more about us and our Twitter is indust game we also have a decent Siz Discord 40,000 players inside of a Discord come and come and find us on our Discord which is in this game

awesome and I'm on Twitter uh Nikolai n i k o l AJ I also do actually read my my DMs uh most of the time uh and uh Nikolai scattershot docomo docomo spell my name awesome um on that note uh then we'll be concluding big thank you um guys for coming on uh thank you to our listeners um I'll be back in two weeks and feel free to hit me up at Alexandra nvic.org [Music] . or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website

www.nic.edu and advisory Services again that is www.nic.edu [Music]