Is This New Marvel Game the Next Big Mobile Hit?

[Music] So, this is another release that we've been tracking, which is Marvel Mystic Mayhem. This is an RPG from Neti is releasing on mobile. They're calling it like a tactical focus is being added to the game. So, there's real-time combat very similar to Clash Royale. So, what will happen is that you drag cards onto a hex grid that triggers special abilities and attacks based on the squad that you brought in. And uniquely, you're only bringing in three of your heroes into a match. And as we know, like squad RPGs traditionally need really wide and deep syncs. And so only having three characters is completely antithesis to where squad RPGs have been going where they're adding more and more characters that you bring into matches. Like if you remember Capital Games and their Galaxy of Heroes, like you now put heroes on ships and you were bringing in ships. So they were just like a deepening the meta collection mechanic. And so this shores this up and tries to add a lot more of this real-time combat.

I found it strange because you still have autoplay, which is the the way you're going to play the game 99% of the time. And I want to talk about Widow Defender again, which is a huge [ __ ] problem with this right now, is that you don't have autoplay. It just ends up playing like a normal Squad RPG, which I think ends up cheapening their thesis. The art is beautiful. Maybe they'll get away on that. But more than anything, I wanted to spend just like a moment and talk about like where Marvel games are entirely because this one has fallen off the download cliff. I don't know what NEI was trying to do here. It had a decent launch in the United States. They definitely boosted it to number one, but we're looking at, you know, only 5 days later and that it's pretty much fallen off of every country's chart, which tells me that they're starting to shore up UA. And they didn't have like a particularly high UA to begin with. And so, if this shortens, DAU is eventually going to fall rather rapidly. And I don't think they have enough here to be able to set this to sale in a sustainable way. Yeah. Yeah. It's really falling quickly. And you had some charts showing the other Marvel games. God damn it. There

are many. Marvel Snap, Contest of Champion, Future Fight, Strike Force, Mystic Mayhem, Puzzle Quest. Totally. It's like what do you benchmark against? And I think the thing that actually stood out was was two two interesting points here when we look at all the Marvel games. First of all, Marvel Puzzle Quest. Do you remember Demarge out of Cambridge or Massachusetts? This game has been going for [ __ ] ever, I think. Well, they got bought by Sega and I don't know what's happened to the game since. I don't know if Demmerge is on it anymore. That game is actually the steadiest out of all when it comes to daily active users, but the ones that have suffered the most have been Marvel Strikeforce, which Scopely had, which they bought from Fox Next, and there's still bleeding in Marvel Snap. Like, the amount of bleeding that's happening in Marvel Snap has been crazy. And I used to talk about it more and it is continuing to decline in terms of revenue. It is actually the worst when it comes to the change between their launch revenue and where they are now 26 months after launch. This is the key one. This is looking at all all Marvel games and the amount of revenue they

make monthly. Wow, that is crazy. Now you can tell a story about web stores for I would argue Marvel Strikeforce, which is I'm sure what Scopi would tell. I think the key to whether or not there's web store activity is usually to look at downloads because your LTV should be adjusted and you should be able to spend more in equilibrium on UA. And so if I don't see increases in downloads, I have a hard time believing web stores made that much of an impact. They haven't been bound in terms of downloads like it really depends on when you benchmark Strikeforce. Like year to date things look awful for Strikeforce, but like you look on it on like a little bit of a broader time scale, it's not as bad as you would imagine, but they have some some problems year to date. And the game is at its lowest point in terms of active users. And I think it just mirrors overall problems in squad RPGs in general. And I think Mystic Mayhem doesn't have a whole lot to offer here. They could have offered it. They could have offered it with this real-time gameplay [ __ ] but they decided not to by just putting on autoplay, which no one solved. I'm sad to see this. And Marvel Snap is Look, I'm not going to diss the autoplay thing because autoplay is how people

play games in the West, right? But I'll just take a step back and it's like the amount of money that was spent to build this game is insane. Like the quality of this game is ridiculous. Beautiful. The art is unbelievable. Yeah. Compared to like Marvel Snap, no offense to those guys, like look, that took quite a bit of engineering and development, but this is like a completely different level. And the fact that they're making literally zero money on this game is pretty frightening. Well, this is not the first game. You remember Marvel Super Waret? Oh my god, there's so many the graveyard. Remember the MMO? The mobile graveyard. Yes. But it's the same company. They're like, "Guys, four years later or five years later, here's another game for like 30 million down the hatch." You wonder why NIS got out of this business, right? They pulled all their investments, right? Because Marvel Rivals is doing well. No, no, it's not. No, no, no. Marvel Rivals is an awful place. We haven't covered this, but it's DA decline has continued since last we talked. They saw the writing on the wall like a

lot of these really costly development processes and then they're just not making any money, right? So like big loss for them. This game is beautiful. I think the turn-based RPGs, this is antiquated. I don't think people are really playing them as much anymore. Like a lot of that shifted to more 4X style games. Well, I have a thesis around that with Mr. Adam Smart. We'll be having a podcast soon. And I think that the general thesis is like did 4X eat Squad RPG faster than Squad RPG could eat 4X because that was the direction that like Elder Game Squad RPG was going anyways. And I think they just got beat to it. Yeah. Oh my god. I'm looking at this game. This game is absolutely gorgeous. It's like the hiding. The animations are good, too. The art is original, but still pays homage to the Marvel art style. Yeah, there's original storylines, which are actually pretty deep narrative stuff. Breaks my heart when games like that fail. That's That's so disheartening. I don't understand the low downloads. Like, they should have dumped more money

into this. I they should have sustained their app store ranking for at least a couple days afterwards. Yeah, it slipped so quickly. Well, we'll keep tracking. We'll come back to it. [Music]