Is Diablo Immortal Fun for Mortal Wallets? - The Metacast by Naavik

[Music] um and i think people get to choose if they want to play games and if they if they don't like it don't play the game there's enough great games out there [Music] hello everyone welcome to the metacast round table by navik and the friends joining us today or john raz freeman um oh sorry friedman i didn't pronounce d founder and ceo at super social david aymore recently back from a retreat and still looking very tanned ceo at playmond and aaron bush co-founder of navic or should i say a money your player yeah my gamertag i gave money that's right i didn't i didn't know that yeah it came

to light yesterday do you want us to call you like you you don't have to it it's probably been my like most go-to nickname in the past which is why i made it my my gamer tag so i don't hate it i like it but uh yeah it came about yesterday when we were sharing our our apex legends mobile um tags to play with each other and yeah yeah everyone clung to that for whatever reason um david what's your gamertag oh uh it's been a number of things over the years sometimes zalaga sometimes pog used to be a long time ago i don't know i jump around a bit nothing's too consistent wow that's a huge insight i've had the same gamertag since i'm a kid so yeah some personality going on there um what what is your gamertag

well my my roblox username is lordyanners to play on a nickname my wife has for me and then i'm building a whole new identity on web 3 gaming which i'm calling yoda khan which is a combination of yoda and genghis khan wow okay i go i go heavy i've always been enamored by um you know jin giscon historically is considered one of the most ruthless um you know warriors and leaders um and so you know i think what enamored me about genghis khan is his ability over many years to connect and bring together so many different uh cultures and and people in creating the the mongol empire and that has always been an unbelievable accomplishment where you know we live in a world that is so isolated and here he was

you know several millennia ago creating a collaborative inclusive society of very disparate tribes and populations and i i think it's pretty incredible so that's why hey you know one observation i think you put more thought into your gamertag than aaron did in to his yeah that is true i i maybe i need to come up with something new yoda khan i like it why uh what another question john why are you speaking from the jungle well i'm in my backyard i had a little crisis in my office just before our podcast started and so i had to migrate like a little bird outside um better to hear the birds than to hear the baby i think for the podcast uh listeners so here i am taking a break from the metaverse nice setting uh what's your gamertag maria my mygamertag is fuzzy land fuzzy land

that's excellent well where did that come from i don't have a good story well i'm a warm person so whenever you're hanging out with me it's like being in this land of fuzzy beautiful got it very good love it what do we got today maria um what we have today oh just before we start with the um with the topics i'm just really excited and i need to do a shout out i usually don't do this but i have to do this for oxalis games they raised 4.5 million they're uk based they're building a web 3 rpg called moon frost so if you imagine stardew valley meets breath of the wild meets a bit animal crossing check out the project it's amazing they promised me there's going to be a red panda that you can have in your house so looking forward to that i had the opportunity to meet the art director

gina nelson in a talk so yeah i'm just super super pumped they're very passionate about what they're doing so i wanted to do a shout out congratulations really happy for them very cool oh yeah i was expecting like yeah okay they got the money now they get to get work done yeah exactly and are you on anything new at super social that you can share with us yeah thanks for asking there's you know we're really hands hands down on on keeping um our incredible work on the roblox platform we have a really special brand world that we're building uh with an incredibly innovative brand that is going to go live in july so i'm excited to share more about that and then we recently and kind of softly announced a new project our first web 3 project called nftv which is essentially going

to be this really unique um game station on web3 you can think of it as almost like um sort of nintendo meets mtv meets netflix on web 3 around gaming so that's all i'm going to say and you know stay tuned for more yeah i'm going to do it i'm going to do a shout out as well we've released our game the crypt earlier this year we're announcing details of our second game next week uh you can find out about that at uh on twitter at the crypt game uh next week we're going to be talking more about that wow okay lots of exciting projects going on um i'm trying to wrap my brain around mtv station looking forward to knowing morion and um david is this the is this like the political game yes that's the game the next thing that

we're working on so happy to start talking about that you're sharing more it's next week yeah you said yeah on monday oh i'm so pumped okay thank you very exciting um all right well yon who is currently in the jungle has the first topic um yondu do you have your notes yes so um you know i think that what i've always been incredibly inspired by and actually amazed by what riot games have done over the years with how they've built the franchise of league of legends and you know recently i think they've announced uh riot forge which is inviting more developers to sort of build on top of their ip and build new game world new game experiences um that relates to the core riot ip um and

so and alongside that um i've been very curious to see how axe infinity in a whole different realm you know web web3 gaming play to earn i've been kind of very curious to see how they're going to go beyond the core play to earn demographics and audience in emerging markets that really propelled x infinity and sky mavis into what it became which is a you know multi-billion dollar sort of enterprise at least privately valued by investors and so the topic i wanted to talk about today is the recent announcement from sky mavis of the first batch of games built as part of their builders program which is essentially in my mind kind of a play a similar play like the riot forge which is essentially inviting developers to build within not only the ran their running blockchain but within the axa infinity

sort of ip world and what really captured my attention and i think they just announced it this week out of thousands of applicants that have applied to the builders program i think there's like 2 000 submissions i think 12 projects got greenlighted by the sky mavis theme to basically launch the first 10 12 games that are built as part of the builders program on the axe infinity world of ip um and so the reason i wanted to propose that as a discussion is because i think it's really interesting and i'm really curious to see how axe infinity are going to use that program and inviting co-creators to build new games on their ip world on the axe infinity platform quote unquote and to see if that's really expanding the audience that is playing in the axi infinity world today which as we know is very specific you know 60 or 70 or

maybe maybe even more percent of axe infinity daily users actually come from places like indonesia and thailand and philippines really emerging economies um and i'm curious to see if these builders program is going to help ax infinity to not only attract more game developers who build on the ip world but also attract new type of audiences who i believe are going to really need to play an instrumental role in kind of expanding the type of business that axe infinity is building versus continuing to be very limited um exposure to that play to earn user base that come from emerging economies and so that's my topic that's kind of the highlight of the announcement that they've made and you know i'd love to open up to a round table with with everyone here do the uh these games that live in the uh axi universe do they share the same tokens that's a great question um i don't know

i haven't seen anything announced or mentioned about the tokens so i don't know how to answer that um but you know i do think they do okay great so um they do yeah so not so just that token not the the potion one which is more associated specifically with x infinity no but i think that's pretty easy i made a change from one i read so i read their announcement and they made a change where before if you're in the builder program i think you had to help burn slp but they removed that to make it more accessible because the program so i my understanding so to the onion axi is your ticket to enter these experiences so you still have to acquire an axi at least to to play these and there's a builder program but there's a a creator program so if you're welcomed into the builders you get additional benefits and i believe you can also if

approved by sky mavis even sell nfts and tokens um so there's a more there's a wider breadth of experiences that you can build but anyone as long as you follow their guidelines can build an experience that uses the ip and the axes and they could be completely monetization free it could just be something that players can go in and experience correct yeah i think that's a great and then they have like this whole yeah no that's a that's a great highlight maria yeah i think that's a great call up in addition to the to the point which is the builders program is exclusive in a sense that it gives you those additional benefits to be part of this lecture like exclusive club of creators who build on on axis um ip but as as as maria mentioned any creator can build within the world of ip of axe infinity as long as you you know succumb to their guidelines uh but you wouldn't get those sort of extra access that the builders program get which

um alongside uh the benefits maria mentioned is access to the axe infinity team and really working much closer with those developers on on their games probably promotional activity and things like that so i do have a take on this i think in theory i agree that leaning more into ugc is good for axe infinity's quest to move beyond play to earn and attract players who are really net spenders in the ecosystem and there for fun when we wrote our initial axi infinity deconstruction which by the way part two just published in novik pro which was led by lars dussette and he did a really great job and we'll we'll actually publish this one publicly too in a couple weeks so everyone can look forward to that but when we wrote the original decon our take was that you know not only is the base economic system broken in axiom infinity but the way out is through ugc which is likely increasingly tied into

land over time too which you know that the details around that are still very much up in the air um but in practice though i think i'm much more critical of what we've seen so far with this program with the obvious caveat that it's just the beginning and a lot can still change so for one sky mavis is throwing tiny amounts of money at the the ugc effort so far when the builders program launched it dedicated 5000 axs tokens which was about 400 000 dollars when the program was announced and you know that that's not going to get you very far but second that 400 000 in axs is now only worth about hundred thousand dollars which you know is really like the cost of one game developer you know salary wise and it's not just that axs is worth less but it puts the volatility risk on developers who earn that axs at certain milestones and are receiving less value than they probably

originally planned for um and then also the revenue share program and i'm not sure if any of you have looked at this but it's pretty convoluted it's pretty convoluted and it's pretty unfriendly um in some ways and so the two main variables of the program are one how much monthly revenue and axs the game makes and then second um how that revenue gets split between going back to players going to the treasury and then going to the developer and if you look at the numbers um a couple things pop out um one the more money the game makes the lower percentage of it actually goes back to the developer which seems backwards and then second the system incentivizes um putting money back to players in game more so than developers earning outsized amounts so if your one million dollar per month

revenue um game gives zero percent or 50 of the revenue back to players the developer still only makes a flat 25 percent of whatever that is and the treasury keeps the difference and so you know i understand why sky mavis wants to incentivize developers to reward players but it's not super developer friendly and doing so is actually less of a step away from play to earn than it initially looks when when you're incentivizing players getting ways to earn axs and then the last thing i'll say is that if you look at the list of initial games it at least in my opinion it doesn't look super inspiring obviously having a long tale of content and new experiences has value but if you look at any content platform customer acquisition is still driven by more of the tentpole titles and i'm skeptical that any of these you know low low budget match 3 or

tower defense or racing games are really going to move the needle too much in terms of like really shifting the axe to infinity audience towards you know just a much bigger audience that's there not for play to earn and if you layer anything land related on top of that which we know over time that land is going to be a place where a lot of these experiences are hosted and will have all sorts of dynamics it's i think the future of that is pretty foggy at best so i had yeah so i admire the steps they're taking with ugc like it's important that they do that um but how they've executed on it so far i don't think it's going to cut it and they need to do a lot more i would agree you're good i believe in i was just going to say i believe they increased the 10 000 in excess and the new yeah it's still tiny though it's sort of hobbyist numbers so i agree with aaron in principle the idea of

having more games that are coming out for a community that wants a lot more um sky mavis content that can be created more exit content than engaging with the community and incentivizing the community and integrating with the token seems like a good idea just i agree with aaron that the numbers seem a bit wrong yeah and my hope is that they use this as like a first step where they can work with and learn from the initial developers to figure out how to tweak their policies or you know change the revenue share practices to you know move more towards a place where if they put 100 extra money to work that it would have higher rewards and value for the ecosystem so maybe that's what they're thinking i have no idea but yeah so far not not super excited about what i see what's also interesting i would add i think i would add also that's what's

interesting is alongside that announcement they also announced that they're gonna they're working with other more capable bigger game studios on other titles and so that also makes me wonder then what is all the purpose of this builders program right is it like maybe like more about pr or something or so i'm just trying to i think what you're raising aaron is also to me more like what is really the intention behind is build this program is it kind of just to be just to try and encourage and nurture some form of a community engagement and the build mods and and using ugc content because obviously the they incentivize the incentivization system financially speaking is is minuscule um um you know at best and basically relevant at worst uh and so i think that's also tbd on what is the bigger play that axi has in really bringing new type of audiences into their ecosystem

yeah i think at a high level it makes sense and the you know just thinking about they want to eventually become a platform not just a game and so if you pair you know platform ambitions for within axe infinity plus you know mavis hub plus the ronin blockchain like you can see kind of how it all comes together over time and what that long-term play at least in theory is but yeah i hope that they can um i hope they figure it out though because it would be a really exciting new model to learn from and i think that i mean ugc in general like it's obviously like a buzzword and it's you know like a major trend that's going on but seeing it applied more into like a popular like early web 3 game context and seeing it actually flourish would be really cool because not only would it be cool for that ecosystem but i think it would provide learnings for other teams who

kind of want to do similar things in their own in their own worlds to learn from too and so yeah i would love to see love to see things turn around there you all raise really good points i can't help but be excited still for the opportunity and even the way that they've allowed anyone yeah as long as you follow very loose ip guidelines anyone can create an experience for fun and i i keep thinking about who's the target audience for these builder programs is it people looking to make a living from creating these ugc experiences or is it people passionate about maxi infinity or if you don't have experience or you can't bootstrap your first experience in building a game studio you can apply and potentially you know you get access to product managers and game designers and you can learn by building something with an experienced

team at sky mavis um or even creating like that mech uh axi game and like axe cue axes controlling mechs to do battles that's pretty cool i'm excited for that and i also find it interesting that they might potentially be taking a cautious first step by you know they're not taking a cut of the revenue they're being um very open about wanting to bring back the the rev well the revenue generated back into the treasury so that it can be used by all players i agree maybe too cautious but it just feels in step with their values in terms of building the decentralization and more of a dow governance community where everyone gets the benefits it doesn't take away from your really good points though well if it shake things up in a different approach then i support that

be interesting to see the results of it are you on are you going to be building anything in this uh is that an environment that interests you no we we are taking um an an approach of at least with our new project nftv we're kind of looking to build a tiny ecosystem of our own i think the landscape is so open at the moment you know it's not like you have in quote-unquote web 2 these juggernauts like roblox and you know the epic ecosystem i think on web3 at the moment it's all very much up for grabs in terms of the opportunity because the landscape is so nascent i mean what are we talking about like a couple dozen million at best of people who are who have active wallets in in

web3 i mean the rest of the world still need to come to web3 and it's going to take time and so i think it it doesn't make sense in my mind at the moment strategically as a business as a company as a venture back company to build on other people platforms when at the moment it's all so nascent right right but i think if you're an individual developer and you have opportunities today you probably want to consider where do i go do i build on fortnite creative mode do i build on roblox do i build on core do i build on axe infinity ecosystem do i build on riot forge i mean for game developers the wider landscape web 2 web 3 is so phenomenal that as an individual creator if you're a 16 year old in your bedroom and you want to build games i mean there's just so many places you can build um and i i think axi as an ecosystem is i i believe they're going to be at a very tough spot in attracting

the best indie developers um until they can reach a certain scale and ultimately people are going to go where the best content is right and so if haxy can i can attract amazing developers who build amazing games on their ecosystem they're going to be successful um but you know users are voting with their with their feet and they're going to go where the most fun experiences are um and i think that's going to be more important in my mind than the economic breakdown because you know smart people want to fish where the fish are and you want to go where the users are and that's why again i go back to who is the ecosystem of users of axi if it's still primarily emerging economies play to earn users i i don't think that's going to be majority of the world of users i i that's pretty much a safe assessment in my mind to make for the long term

and those users are they're less plummeting too i'll just quickly add like actually infinities their like daily active user account has fallen like 70 percent maybe more from its from its highs and so yeah you can't bank on play to earn users because they're not playing to earn nearly as well as they they did a few months ago so yeah they're kind of in a tough spot but i yeah they have a lot of funding they have a lot of backing a lot of smart people so hopefully they can figure out how to maneuver their way towards something bigger from here i i hope they'll have more people who play to earn and play to to have fun than people who play to exit right and i think that's what we're seeing now there's like a lot of play to exit i like that new term the last thought on my mind on this topic is what how will it impact the price of axes and the acquisition of them and also if i'm building if they're an

entry ticket into these experiences it sounds that i'll be it will be out of my control the entry barrier into my game because if for some reason the cost of an axi skyrockets i don't know it goes to 3 000 pounds or something that means that playing my experience that i created is now blocked by by that value does anyone else have any takes on this topic or should we carry on well i would i would i would just i would just add to your comment maria that as a rule of thumb in my mind until digital assets like axes get to a price point where it becomes absolutely no-brainer for people to get in it's going to stay niche like majority of the world of gamers and users are just not going to come in when taxes are several hundred dollar each or even you know 50 or 100

i think ultimately these type of assets for majority of people to come in as an entry point maybe later they want to invest further but they got to get to a 5 10 bucks each you know so people can be like yeah no brainer for me to get in i just don't buy the use case where majority of the world in general is gonna enter web3 by purchasing two thousand dollar nfts or a thousand dollar axes i just don't see that happens i think it's madness to believe that that's going to happen um and for a subset of users yes but we're probably talking about a per ml percent of the total addressable user base who can come into web 3 in the next decade yeah well the floor prices are lasting like around like 30 so they're getting closer to that that price point um but i mean i think my guess is um with xeorgin coming out which will enable like free non-nft axes to be part of like the onboarding experience that

perhaps those can also be used to as like an access ticket to get into more ugc experiences it might just mean that like you won't be earning axs from those experiences in the same way that if you had like the actual nft axes but i think a lot of these details are still still coming together but in general like there still is no good sync for axes too and so even if we see demand rise like it i don't think anyone's really betting on like the price of axes to be a good investment from here so yeah i think it'll continue to get more accessible at least like free to start you know you know so we'll see maybe i should buy one now while it's cheap so i can drive my little mech and be powerful whilst being fuzzy yeah let us know how that goes okay we'll move on to the topic yeah or i might be crying um all right

my my tummy guy for fear for today is that um to fully upgrade a character in diablo immortal it could cost 500 to 700 000 dollars and i went into a rabbit hole yesterday so i will try to distill everything that i learned into explaining why um very successfully i just want to highlight that i will be giving a bit of a negative feedback on this monetization mechanic and will be a little bit critical but i just want to congratulate the team like it's a super fun game i've been thoroughly enjoying it it's easy to look out from the outside in and critique something so yeah big respect for everyone who who worked on the game so the problem maria you're just too too nice maria just just lay into it go ahead no i think i have big respect it takes a lot to develop a good game and i want to respect that

okay so you need to max your level your equipment and a thing called legendary gems in order to max your character and the legendary gems is where the problem lies so you need to earn these gems through doing elder riffs which basically is like this dungeon and you need to survive hordes hordes of enemies and you can only earn legendary gems if you fuse the rift you infuse the rift with crests and you have rare and legendary crests and then you have different kinds of gems with star ratings from you have one star two star five star but then within the five star you have partial star so you could get like a two out of five star you could get a three and a five star and so on um so in terms of the to get a guaranteed uh legendary gem drop with five stars you have to buy

um sorry not five stars any star you have to buy a legendary crest and i'm just looking at my notes of how much i think 100 yeah 100 can buy you 45 legendary crests just so you get an idea the higher star ratings i can drop so for example a five out of star it's one in 500 crests so you can start seeing the money adding up and then once you get when you finally manage to roll a legendary gem you can upgrade it and to upgrade it into the higher levels you need duplicates so if you have a five star gem you're going to then need to roll more five star gems to then fuse them and upgrade your master gem and if you thought it ended here it does not so once you fully upgrade a legendary gem you then get into i think you call resonance where then you need to get specific gems to infuse into that master gem and that

gives you even more powers and the higher the star rating that you infuse it with the more buffs you get for your character and now you think oh now it's over now the spend def has over but it's not over so when you create another character your gear isn't shared between characters you can change your character class but if you decide to create a completely different character you then have to start this all over again so if you're talking about a 500k investment you then have to do it again on another character after that intro can anyone highlight why this might be a problem i i got some no i want to start with some higher level questions to make sure that i understand because there's a lot of detail there and i read the articles watch that youtube video what is some of it one important thing for me to know is those things that cost a lot of money are they necessary to win to play the game or are they optional because i feel

very differently about something that you need to use to play the game versus something that just has some cosmetic effect or makes the game a bit easier so those legendary items that to achieve cost a lot of money how integral are they to playing the game the game has a an important pvp component and that's where the majority of the concerns are coming from from the investigation i did because if you're going to be pitted pvp with players who are able to spend this enormous amount of money in a short span of time then you're going to be crushed not based on skill but purely based on how much someone spent right and just to be clear those legendary items that cost you all the money they're not just cosmetic they have functional improvement in the game so these are the gems so you can farm by grinding the legendary items but then

you can make them even more powerful by acquiring oh sorry yeah rolling the gems and upgrading them and doing the resonance yes you get buffs to your character's power by doing so okay okay i got it aaron what do you think well i've played the game for about i don't know maybe like four hours so far and uh i have not felt uh a need to spend a single cent yet so from an early game standpoint um it's it's just classic fun diablo like um the controls work really well the environment's great the narrative's great and i'm just still chilling and i'm sort of i don't know at what point the like you start to feel like you need to spend to like become more competitive but i haven't felt that yet um so i mean i think it's a really really great game so far and my my hunches this

story i mean the stats around like what you need to spend to max out a character like that's pretty insane my my thought is that like the story is maybe a little you know bit blown out of proportion from the standpoint that like we just have to remember that like the the same players and news outlets who are bashing this this practice are the same ones who like hated when diablo immortal was announced in the first place and so you get a lot of like that the the echo chamber from the just like that core pc audience that is making things louder but but yeah having to spend insane amounts of money to be competitive and pvp that feels a little off i guess the question i would just throw back out is like putting it into the context of like other mobile games that like pay to win isn't isn't new i guess it's just a question of like how far do you take it and so i would the question i just asked back is

like compared to other pay to win oriented games like where does this like stack up against those well it's the biggest number i've ever heard five hundred thousand dollars to max out uh character if i understood that correctly but as to you know question would be how important is it to do that in the game and from what you said aaron it in your experience will be of only the first five hours it wasn't important at all yeah so i don't know the end game of diablo so diablo has the reputation that the fun the fun starts when you reach the end of the campaign so maybe aaron you just haven't got far enough to to feel the the impact of it and i agree i've i've just been enjoying it and having a lot of fun [Music] yeah certainly it's probably true that there's a group

of people that love diablo on pc that always hated the idea of mobile diablo that were just waiting to do this piece of mess i expect they did that before playing the game to make a point there's certainly an audience that doesn't like anything about this right i would just add look i mean it's that it sounds ridiculous amount of money i mean it's almost it's a it's ridiculous at the level of like it's obscene however you know people are people are sovereign individuals no one is forcing anyone to purchase anything um you know they've created a certain mechanics of a pay to win and if there are a certain class of users who are even remotely open or considering spending not even five hundred thousand like fifty thousand right i mean hey like you know people can vote with their feet and they can either do it or they they don't um um obviously the tactic is questionable but to aaron's point

nothing new under the sun these type of mechanics have been around for eons uh maybe no one has ever taken that to that scale of a spend uh but the the principle is is is pretty much the same um and so you know and haters will always be haters uh they may not have been they may not even be haters because of the amount of money they may be haters just because you know diablo is not only on pc now um but you know i i choose to believe that you know people can decide how they want to play a game aaron seems to be among those who haven't spent anything yet but do maria point maybe to be more competitive he will um and i think people get to choose if they want to play games and if they if they don't like it don't play the game there's enough great games out there good point i think it's like it is a good game and it's diablo you know you want to play it because you've played the

less pay to win versions and you had a lot of fun doing it and it's a good game when you play it's really fun for me there are things there are some things that make me feel like this isn't business as usual as we have in free to play and the first one is that it's not it is a free-to-play game but it reaches a point where it doesn't feel very free to play because you can you can only earn one of these legendary crests to get the gem once per month i want to go to mars on elon mask rockets but it cost me 50 million dollars which i don't have and so i choose an alternative and i either take a regular earth plane to enjoy the sky or i just watch it on tv and i think there's always other alternatives and if people want to spend the money to play diablo immortals great probably a lot of people are not going to do that and they'll choose other things yeah i think i'm with you on which is that

some people like spending what's the air blown ordinarily 60 70 or something the last one wasn't free to play was it was it aaron you'd know no right so this is a an opportunity to play diablo on your mobile in the free-to-play business model made by nettie's probably more directed toward the east and even though it's a fun game it doesn't have to be for everybody some people like playing you know the the east is a lot more comfortable with the play to win sorry pay to win mechanic anyway so i think that maybe expecting every game to be suitable for every audience is unnecessary but but nonetheless i suppose that did a group of diablo players consider it their get their game and it doesn't feel good perhaps for a game in the within their franchise to be made for a different set of people maybe that's what people are reacting to but yeah i'm with you and it seems like a lot of money but if people want to spend that then ultimately that's up yeah and i guess i would just add to you that if

it did have an impact on people playing the game and you start to see like that impact felt in retention and things like that they can change it like they're definitely being greedy to start but i don't think there's an iron law that this is the exact way it'll always have to be um and yeah one of my bigger questions too is just like i'm just curious how like live ops in general will work with diablo immortal because diablo is never really like pursued that kind of strategy before especially on mobile and so like what does it mean for this type of game and what it means for like a different for the economy and things like that like is it should it really just be catered around just like always leveling up your character for for a long long time or will there be more nuance introduced that opens up new types of like monetization avenues and engagement avenues um that you know could also help change the narrative so yeah i've just

been curious about that curious if anyone has thoughts on where they could take it yeah i think it's it's it's okay is it is it uh more eastern games i have downloaded it i haven't played it yet is it more of a eastern game style i mean the fact that it has aggressive free-to-play monetization mechanics suggested it is somewhat but in terms of gameplay well i wouldn't say in terms of game gameplay-wise it's very diablo but it was um developed or co-developed with a net ease who is a juggernaut in china and is very well known for the expertise in microtransactions so i find that a lot a lot of these games are expecting to find not even whales but i think one of the articles i really call it giga wells and they'll pay for the majority of the game development and so as long as they

manage to catch those those giga will players then they have enough spend depth for for them to spend a lot of money on i'm sorry my internet here is not very good i think they know exactly what they're doing sorry um so i wouldn't bet against someone there so xamarin says they'll probably end up adjusting it if they got some numbers wrong anyway right you get to do that with mobile easier to reduce prices than increased prices right but if the game is great that's the fundamental thing that is going to attract and retain people then the the economy they can adjust on the go i don't know but this you know this comes from where does do where do we draw the line as game developers in terms of morals and ethics in terms of how much you build spend depth into a free-to-play micro transaction game you know it doesn't even show a droop a drop table for rolling these legendary gems the the the probabilities i

presented are based on players who have purchased so many crests that they've been able to make out what the what the tables um are and so those i thought there's just at least some aren't they a legal requirement to list the droppers i thought you had to list the drop rates i i don't know a lot of these rules are still very issues yeah a lot of the rules are still pretty country dependent i think um i so in novic pro this week we took a look at um the uh norwegian consumer council's report on loot boxes which is a very riveting topic but it's apparently backed by by 18 countries so there's there's some traction to it um but you know if you dig into the complaints they're actually more general to the free-to-play business model than just loot boxes and so like you know complaining about things like

aggressive marketing virtual currencies abstracting the real world cost of items etc um and then it makes you know just like overly broad proposals on how to fix things and so my guess is that um some regulation might be good you know in terms around just like making sure there is transparency so consumers can make educated and fair decisions and you know like you know i'm supportive of like you know protection clauses around like minors and things like that when it makes sense too um but um yeah my guess is that uh maybe it's unsurprising but a lot of the regulators one are probably just gonna whiff whatever the the regulations become just similar to how like gdpr and i guess more recently what was it called like the digital markets act in europe they actually looked to be like pretty net negative in their execution despite their attempt to like do something positive and so my feeling is like we might see something similar in mobile games at some point it

might not be important enough to escalate up to like the eu or something and it might just be more country specific but that in and of itself also like can get really annoying and how if different countries are making their own rules like one that just like it makes it really hard for smaller developers to put resources into like adapting for country by country but even for big publishers too it's sometimes it it might not be worth it so yeah i mean i think from an ethics standpoint like you can you can try whatever makes sense as long as the consumer is willing to accept it you just have to make sure that like we live in an environment where it's fair and transparent and the right people are protected i just don't know the odds of that actually being enforced by governments consistently is going to be and i suppose this game wasn't isn't available in belgium and

another country because of the loot box laws i don't really know what the real reasoning is and if i know kids they'll be able to they'll be getting around that right now i'm sure there's people finding other ways getting in the games from a different app store right yeah i don't know yeah even if you look at the the drop rate 0.05 for one of these five out of five stars which then you need duplicates if you look at other free-to-play games is a tiny drop drop rate um even more so when you need multiples of them and they don't sell other crests where they're more expensive and have a higher probability of dropping that could be something that they improve in terms of monetization of the game we'll see um because i dropped off due to my internet i don't know how we're doing in terms of runtime so someone will have to help guide me i feel we need to move on

um so let's talk about apex legends mobile um so apex legends which is my favorite battle royale game by the way uh they've never been a first mover even on consular pc but it's always found itself a market because the gameplay is smooth it's great you know the champion abilities provide strong differentiation from the other types of battle royale games that are out there and respawn has done a pretty good job with live ops on um console pc2 and i see a lot of those same patterns existing with apex legends mobile it's pretty slick it's quite authentic to the original game in terms of gameplay such as having the same champion so i figured we should talk about the game um the launch and uh what makes sense to pay attention to going forward for a game like this but i guess to kick it off has anyone else played this game anyone having fun with it

and i downloaded it when you pointed out that it was out and uh but i was going to play it this evening how is it yeah i've been i've been playing it it's a lot of fun um i actually played a couple uh rounds with monu yesterday and we died really fast built time so it was a pretty bad first impression on both sides for us um um but you know despite of that i mean i am having a great time i really do appreciate how authentic it is to the original game i like that the champions and the abilities are the same except there's one that is exclusive to mobile i believe which is kind of cool um the the weapons are the same the revive mechanics are the same and the map works really similarly too um but i also think they did a they did a good job for what i've played so far um in the areas that work well more specifically for mobile so for example they let you trigger between like a first and third person view which third person you know typically plays better on mobile whereas

the default is first person on console pc um the onboarding difficulty curve is quite friendly similar to how call of duty mobile was and i think that does a good job of retaining players through like a early onboarding experience um it's easier to unlock new champions in the mobile game compared to the base game um and they also added a permanent death match mode which has appeared in the kind of the base console game as like a limited time event i think in the past but it makes a lot of sense to offer more of those like bite size modes on mobile and so kind of moving apex more in that direction a bit more similar to like what i guess like a call of duty like the traditional modes with like call of duty would be but creating the the apex versions of that to get those bite-sized gameplay chunks in um um and yeah they also added like a skill treat of sorts for champions which is

kind of new not sure how i think about that yet um but in general i think it's been a pretty a pretty fun game and in some ways it feels very much like a port but in other ways it feels very much like a lot of the mechanics around like objectives and leveling up characters with all your progress bars and things like it has been very uh you know free to play modified for mobile as well but it's been a it's been a good time so far have you played the game maria uh not yet i was playing diablo morton but i played i used to play apex legends on on console how about you yon you played it no i haven't played yet oh i mean it sounds like we need a session at some point yeah walk us through it i thought it was uh interesting so by mission i guess it's not aggressive when micro transactions in in comparison right we're not talking about it nobody's done that no i don't think so

but i was looking at the um some of the the launch data um so in the the first week according to sensor tower the game got about five and a half million downloads um has about 10 million total downloads so far um you know the downloads have fallen off pretty fast pretty predictively but it was a good launch but i thought it was interesting then i'll talk some of more about the revenue side in a second is that just to put things in comparison pubg mobile i think had 11 million downloads at its launch and call of duty mobile had 48 million downloads at its launch and apex was never it was never going to compete with that like those like that cod number is insane um but you know it still will need to compete in future downloads if it hopes to carve out market share for itself and i think it has a chance of doing that similar to console pc but um you know pubg call of duty mobile they get about one and a half million downloads per month or so each and so apex will have

to figure out how to get more in that zone as well um to to really stay competitive but on the the revenue side it's obviously super early according to sensor tower they've only made about six seven million so far which is a revenue per download rpd of 58 cents that's not that's not awesome but it actually is a bit better than where call of duty mobile was in its first month um and when call of duty mobile came out i think um i think it was adam telfer who wrote a great post about it at the time on on deconstructor of fun it hadn't really figured out its like monetization optimization yet especially around cosmetics um which is you know a huge part of the monetization in these games because you know you can't really create a pay to win element and like a battle royale game super you know easily and expected to you know remain popular all over the place so

it's you know it's not unprecedented where they're at so far but apart from you know staying competitive in downloads and obviously retention which is too early to judge um you know i'd just be watching to see if that rpd curve can generally match what some of the earlier movers were able to um achieve so yeah those are kind of my my quick early thoughts on i guess both the gameplay and just the early metrics so far but i i am curious just to throw this out to all of you when when measuring the success of a game like this what other elements or metrics would you you know keep a close eye out on well in terms of mobile free to play then d1 session time on day one and uh session time on d0 and then percentage d1 d70 30 uh updale all of those usual metrics i suppose i never heard of that rpd i guess that's a number that will

increase over time right what what's your window there rpd overnight yeah just since since launched because you know it couldn't really it's still too early to get a good like average revenue per download number over like any reasonable period of time so yeah i was just kind of watching the curve just to see how like the initial monetization for download was comparing to the other just the other games in the genre kind of over their similar time frames well and another one would be cpi i mean that's uh be interesting you know how much they're paying for those downloads and probably the initial spike is by people waiting for that game so there's like an ongoing question as to how um what the cpi's look like i had another i had a question for you aaron which was why why did call of duty do 10 times what apex did in his first week what why is that i mean call of duty is just like you know one of the biggest brands and like all of gaming that already had an

enormous audience and i think they they did put quite a bit of marketing budget into the launch of that game if i remember correctly and so they just went all in on making sure that the game got as big of an audience as quickly as possible um that is just really hard for like most anyone else to to match doing that i'd also be interested in understanding how having a mobile version of the game is affecting player behavior i assume it has um cross save um i don't know because it's not it's not the same game as on as so it's not you don't really cross play it's its own version um it has a lot of similarities but yeah similar to how like call of duty mobile like yeah it has its own modes and stuff like it's built specifically for for mobile unlike unlike fortnite which is cross-play yeah this one is built specifically um

right so if you've progressed in your console version and acquired cool skins i don't think so i think this is less of a play to get like the same audience playing in more places and more of an attempt to just build the audience out further and like attack a new yeah a new demographic of sorts yeah that's that that's the kind of the pros and cons of going with a a cross-platform game versus you know having a dedicated experience when you have a dedicated experience you can attract different type of users different type of audience right mobile core mobile gamers are not core pc gamers in terms of what they look for however and then on the other side with cross play and what fortnite has done you get to save everything but then you're you're really still tapping to a core demographics that uh probably wants to

play that exactly same game modes and so on and so forth and so i think it's a strategic choice of what these brands are doing with with their with their franchises i don't think there is it's it's in my mind it's less of a good or bad decision it's more around what is the angle what's like the measure of success is it about diversifying the user base then having a dedicated version of the game for each platform makes sense is it about having a loyal community that just goes across with you in cross play and enabling that cosplay experience is your priority then the fortnite approach makes more sense i expect we're going to keep seeing different modalities for different brands i guess as it is still more financial driven than anything like i know apex legends the the console version um like it's always had like a very very tiny percentage of its audience contribute the vast majority of its revenue which is you know pretty typical for like a free-to-play game in general

um but by being able like if you were to port that over to mobile it probably wouldn't perform as well as if like you could modify the free-to-play design and economy around more like mobile best practices and so yeah if they were deported you would get the light advantage of being able to play with other people although like you know still not not maybe the fairest gameplay um but yeah i think the level of success they'll see on like a you know revenue per install type of basis is just going to be a lot better by building specifically for mobile than than otherwise i thought it was interesting that it was built by reed spawn and light speed yeah is that who it is so i must admit i didn't know who lightspeed was but in digging around on a website they made pub g mobile so i think a lot of that the the experience of making a great mobile game in pubg mobile has

been used to make this a solid game so i know a lot of it it's hard to know how much of it came from respawn and how much came from lightspeed but i'd imagine a lot of things that they've learned in building pubg mobile yeah tencent is the real winner because yeah that studio is building apex they built pubg also i'm liking on the name of the studio but they also built a call of duty mobile too um so yeah they're kind of behind all except for free fire i guess all of like the the major hits here which is pretty crazy oh really they did i didn't know they did call of duty as well wow that's uh isn't that strange that these big uh behemoths uh being built alongside each other to some degree yes um but yeah i don't have i guess too much to talk about since either none of you have like really dug too deep into the game um

but i i guess just like another more general question um like i'm not super deep into the economy yet i'm also you know just the kind of player that cares approximately zero about cosmetics which is a huge driver of these games um but in terms of like what you know about other other games like this like a call of duty mobile free fire etc um like how would you expect a game like this to improve its economy and monetization over time like what are the you know the core things that they'll be looking at like new modes that it will could think about launching etc like what are any best practices we've seen from others that apex could learn do you want to from that maria um i haven't played it so i might just repeat things that they already have so apologies for that um yeah i expect the battle pass they do do they have a battle pass siren

i think it seems you're doing okay or maybe i'm so excusing that and optimizing it in terms of the rewards and and the costs i'd expect them sorry um i'd expect them to be doing a lot of cross cross promos potentially um with brands like we see in other games from this type doing very based on cosmetics skins other show-off factors from what i remember from apex legends on console they allow you to really customize your appearance when you drop into the matchmaking to your team you can customize the badges that you're showing and building out your your persona i wouldn't expect them to sell power to players because it's um it's a battle royale like you've mentioned and yeah lots of lots of live ops so always giving players a new reason to buy something fresh

that then goes away and so you want to buy it when it when it goes live yeah there will be dashboards upon dashboards upon dashboards for people looking at all the data points carefully balancing you know if it's like the kind of free to play games that i've made in the past then balancing pushy monetization against um against retention and making sure that it's not pushing people away it's hard to get that right probably doing something i'm sure they're doing things around segmentation as well i mean a little different i guess but if you're if you're creating this kind of game because you need a level playing field but yeah they'll be trying many things at once i'd imagine yeah i'm sure they're doing a lot of a b testing in terms of um user funnels into when you get the first starter offer popping what is the starter offer what are the contents and the price points of the starter offer also doing personalized offers based on player behavior some other type of segmentation so i i agree they will be

there will be dashboards upon dashboards and optimizing and maybe testing the um the optimization of the monetization yeah that's all good i the other thing i'm curious about too is um uh you know ea has kind of like a mixed record of you know launching and supporting mobile games and i don't know all that goes on behind the scenes you know i've heard certain grumblings about you know some difficulties with glue etc but yeah i just kind of hope that they will be able to like build the right support structure especially around like user acquisition um for getting this game to the point where you know it can more sustainably reinvest into all of that testing to like improve and become more of like a revenue more like sustainable like meaningful revenue driver um yeah i mean this is is it the biggest ea mobile game

i mean uh probably not yet i'd be surprised if they i'm sure they're pretty committed to this release i mean apex legends obviously an enormous ip and this looks like a great implementation so i think that uh and it's not dead on arrival it seems great so i'm sure they'll be sticking with it won't they i hope so how are we doing for time uh we're right at an hour so i'll hand it over to you maria if you want to wrap up with anything i wanted to share a very very quick story of someone i know who who played apex mobile and he is not a big battle royale player so he actually would rely on a bit of a tutorial to understand how to how to play the game and the tutorial is not very friendly for completely new players who are not used to the mechanics and at one point he had to leave to go and take care of his cat and so by the time he went back to the game the bubble

had squeezed and so he was outside just constantly dying and because he's playing with bots the bots kept trying to revive him and then he'd die and then he they'd revive him and then he'd die so perhaps that's an optimization in terms of their tv on improving the experience for players who are not accustomed to playing battle royales and have to look after their cat yeah or a money with his dog that's right all right well yeah we'll wrap up this episode lots of juicy gc discussions um if you want to continue the conversation join us on avec's discord aaron mentioned some articles in navic pro we have a promo code in the show notes if you want to get discount on your first payment and you can subscribe to the free navic newsletter to keep on top of all the industry news so thank you everyone for joining um john i hope your office will be okay soon and you can leave the the bird migration jungle

could be worse could be worse that's true and really excited to hear what's coming next for super social and playman's games thanks we'll be keeping an eye on it and we'll see you next week [Music] you