Metaverse Platforms Aren't Games—And That's the Problem

Hey, Ted. Thanks for joining. So, you wrote a piece claiming that the metaverse is basically dead, not dying but dead. And so, for our audience, I was wondering if you could explain your thesis.
Whatever people think about the metaverse, people are they'll talk about oh, Meta, basically they renamed their entire company to be Meta. Basically saying we're focused on the metaverse. And then there's Epic with Fortnite. They try to do this whole transformation making Fortnite into a um metaverse, as they say. But then you kind of look at what's happening. Meta has spent 80 billion trying to create a metaverse and no one no one really uses it. And then Epic and you know, barely get 25,000 players for like their non-Battle Royale games. And to me that just kind of just

doesn't seem like there's really a metaverse. So, that's why made the bold claim that the metaverse is dead. Or at least what companies have been trying to make.
I and I think Tim Sweeney was trying to turn UEFN into the metaverse. But before we go further, I think it'd be useful to try to kind of describe what is the difference between the metaverse and a games platform? And what would you call Roblox as as the nearest kind of competitive product to UEFN? So, what's the difference and how would you describe Roblox and UEFN today?
Sure. So, I'll say a games platform is just a place where you can play games, variety of different games and the platform is just a mechanism to deliver games. Meanwhile, what people seem to be calling the metaverses it's kind of like an interconnected sort of virtual world, which to a certain extent games

platforms are, but there's that whole connected aspect of it. And honestly, in my mind, you can't really make the metaverse right now, cuz the amount of effort and technology that's required to kind of connect all of these different experiences together and make into like one like never-ending world. It's just kind of impossible right now. So, I think what these companies have been trying to do is, okay, let's start out by creating a games platform, cuz that's kind of like the closest thing that we have right now to kind of connect all these experiences.
Right.
to some degree, oh, sorry, sorry, Ted. Just just to clarify. So, to some degree, what you're saying is like a games platform is basically a place that you can go to to play different games. And there might be account services, there might be some core services around that. But when you're talking about the metaverse, that that line between games platform to metaverse is is one not well-defined, but it would have some level of interconnectedness. And whether

that's commerce, whether that's social features, whether that's concerts and things like that, which Fortnite has done before, that additional set of interconnectedness is what you would call the metaverse. But if it's just a place where you play games, that would just be a games platform. Is that how you're understanding it, Ted?
Yeah, that's that's correct.
Okay.
And to go back to what Roblox is, that I had I would still kind of consider it a games platform right now, and not really a metaverse.
And And what would What would it take to get it to become a metaverse?
I think it's mostly just level of connection, which is
Okay.
people or players just jump naturally between experience to experience, and then kind of use that as I I don't want to say it does cuz but it's essentially a second life, you

know.
Sure.
We which actually exists and is pitched as a metaverse. It's I think it's it's kind of just like the next level which is we don't just think of it as just like oh, I'm just here to play a certain game or a handful of games. I actually just play like I I do this for all my social interactions or virtual experiences.
Right, and that's sort of the kind of experience that Meta was going for, right? So, to the point that you're talking about where it's almost like a virtual world that you would kind of exist in almost live in separate from the physical world would be another kind of vision of what the metaverse is. Although, I I I think that it's been very difficult for Meta to pull off that vision.
Mhm.
Would you agree with that, Ted?
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay.
And so, going back to like the post that you wrote cuz I thought it was quite interesting and a topic worthy of discussion. You like your last line in your post is

so, this is how the metaverse dies with Star Wars Tycoons. I actually love that line. So, what exactly died and why is it important? Why does it matter? Why What and what got you up to want to write about this topic?
I'll say it's kind of like this kind of iteration of the metaverse, I think is kind of you Epic and Meta have kind of proved that like the way that they've been trying to build out the metaverse it just doesn't work. And it's the way I see it is okay, what's the most popular games on Fortnite? It's Battle Royale and then a Star Wars Tycoon, right? And I just don't see that as a metaverse. It's just so far away from what they've been pitching as the metaverse. When they first came out, they were just like, "Oh, look at all the different games that are on Fortnite now." It's like, "Oh, you can race your cars or play in a band or do all these different things." But, when you actually look at the numbers, it's just Oh, people are just playing Battle Royale and

playing these idle tycoons.
Right. And for our audience, and for old guys like me, cuz I'm not in Roblox, I'm not in UEFN very much, but I thought that was also quite interesting where, to your point, the vision of what was kind of marketed to the public, which was this expansive vision of commerce, of all these different kinds of social experiences, of a second world what if you believe in the meta vision, but what we actually got was these brain rot tycoons. And so, for our audience and for me, too could you explain what is it What is this thing that's actually taking the place of the metaverse in UEFN and in in Roblox? What is a brain rot tycoon?
Yeah, sure. So, I'll kind of start out by explaining what a tycoon is. Specifically, it's an idle tycoon. And basically these are kind of just simple games where your whole entire purpose is

gaining money and then using that money to get these objects that generate more money and then the kind of goal is just keep making money. And what we've seen now is brain rot characters have become super popular in Roblox and Fortnite. And basically, what they are are just AI-generated weird characters, creatures. And they've kind of just tied those together, like just mashed those together. So, now you got like an an idle tycoon and then you got brain rots and now you got kind of almost have like the perfect sort of engagement platform
[laughter]
where all these You just get all these kids cuz they love Brainrot characters and then cuz these idle tycoons are just naturally addictive. You just kind of just wait around and just wait until you can spend more money to make more money and you can actually see like all these idle tycoons just have crazy engagement

numbers and retention.
So so they promised us the metaverse, but instead we got Brainrot Tycoon. And so many people who analyze these platforms in UEFN in particular have blamed a number of things on why they haven't been as successful. So bad discovery, bad tooling, not enough rev share, and and you say that maybe you agree or disagree with that and it'd be good to hear what you think about that, but I I think the argument that you make in your post is that's the wrong way to think about it. So could you explain your reasoning and your rationale for why UEFN in particular has not been able to achieve the success that they had hoped for?
All these things are good and if you want to keep having your developers develop games, these become important like making sure that they can generate enough income so that they can

continue making games. But the problem is it's there's kind of like the root of issue which is you need kind of like the audience and player base that's actually willing to play all these different games. And so the problem that with UEFN is it's just so tied with Battle Royale. And this is kind of like this isn't necessarily unique to just right. You could actually try to do the same thing with any kind of popular game. So if you connected with FIFA and say, "Oh, we're making FIFA into the metaverse." Or like Call of Duty to metaverse is still just people play FIFA just for FIFA. They want to play football / soccer. And Call of Duty, they just want to go and play Call of Duty.
And sorry, but maybe I could get you to expand on that a little bit because I think one of the analogies that you made in your post is this comparison where you're saying Fortnite is a mall, Roblox is a bizarre. I think that kind of connects to what

you're talking about. So, could you explain that concept for our audience?
Yes. So, this is first what I want to clarify. I kind of realized that back in the old days, malls were kind of like a social hub where you just kind of like walk around and, you know,
[laughter]
check out different stores. But, when I say mall, I'm kind of thinking about the post-COVID world. Like, to be honest, like no one really goes to a mall unless you got you have something specifically you want to buy. Oh, there's there's some shirt that some store in a mall like has, and I'm just going to go and buy that shirt, but then I'm not really there to just hang out, check out stuff. I'm just going to go back in. And so, for me, it's like Fortnite is a mall where, okay, they built out Battle Royale. It's a It's Don't get me wrong, it's a good store. Like, a lot of people are playing it, but people are just there to go to that store. And you still have all these different stores. You have Festival, and you have Rocket Racing, Ballistic, and whatever, but you kind of see no one's really trying to go to the stores.

And the difference with that and Roblox is kind of more of a bizarre. You're kind of there to You don't necessarily have something that you're looking to purchase. You're just kind of there to just check out what's available, and then you might go and see something interesting, and then, "Oh, let me go kind of look at that, talk with the the owner and whatnot, see what they have to offer." And so, that's That's kind of what I wanted to kind of convey is the difference.
Right. So, I think there's kind of two interesting kind of points or thesis that that you had presented in your paper, which is one, the whole vision of a metaverse, we didn't quite get there. Instead, we have kind of a games platform. But even within a games platform, Fortnite is a mall, Roblox is a bizarre. They've been able to drive players more meaningfully towards other genres. And so, why could you expand a little bit more into why you think that difference exists between

the ability for Roblox to potentially have more success and UEFN into the point that you've already made, like it does seem people are going there for Fortnite, for Battle Royale. Maybe you could help characterize or help the audience understand, me too, to understand why is it that they have not been as successful as Roblox in terms of even as a games platform?
Yeah, so I think it kind of stems from what when you're building out a platform, you don't want any one game to sort of kind of take over, right? Cuz then then you don't really have anyone left for like the other games on your platform. And so, what I do remember, there's a quote in my article that comes from the one of the guys at Roblox and who basically just said it was really tempting to try and build out a game. Minecraft was coming out and being popular. The temptation was there to build something like Minecraft to try and get people into the ecosystem. But

they kind of decided not to go with that and I think Fortnite kind of proves why that's like that was the correct decision. And so you see like it we've Yeah, it makes sense from like a business perspective why you would kind of do that, but now you're kind of seeing why it this is a problem, which is you built up this audience with expectations. They just want to play Battle Royale and they've kind of dedicated their whole lives to Battle Royale. So like any hour that you spend outside of Battle Royale is an hour you're not spending in Battle Royale. So, now there's a sort of tension between the player and the platform, which is do I want to engage with more with the platform or do I want to keep playing this game?
And maybe the pushback on you a little bit, Ted, is basically one kind of data point that I thought was always interesting, which was the Travis Scott virtual concert inside of Fortnite, which was able to draw 12 million concurrent players.

And so, to some degree, when we talked about the metaverse being a more interconnected space, a space where people can share something, that was one example of potentially a metaverse type of experience and in terms of the on the platform level, one example where there was kind of a popular experience that's not Battle Royale. And so, how would you explain this or what do you think was going on with the Travis Scott sort of virtual concert experience that kind of defied the current inability of UEFN to turn into a metaverse and turn into a platform?
Yeah, so I'm Yeah, obviously that's a lot of people that watched this concert, myself included. I think I should have first time I downloaded Fortnite was cuz of the Travis Scott concert, which is funny. But, the thing I think is what's sort of like this these concert experiences is they're kind of low

commitment. So, you kind of watch this for 10 minutes and then you can kind of go back to doing whatever. And so, it's it was almost kind of like a red herring. They made this cool thing and it was enough to get people people playing Battle Royale to go check it out, but then you may watch it once or twice, maybe even five times, but you can't just keep watching it forever, right? So, you end up
Right. So, you're saying it was more of a novelty and maybe the draw was more Travis Scott than the actual experience or that kind of model itself. Is that what you're saying?
Okay. And maybe maybe one of the question I could ask you is along the lines of well, so I'd like to kind of hear your thoughts in terms of where do you think the potential opportunity that still exists or do you So, one, do you think UEFN is completely dead? Fortnite has changed identity before, right? They were Save the World and they pivoted over to Battle Royale. And if you look at Roblox, it just took them a

really long time, nearly two decades to build out what eventually became this really ubiquitous and very popular platform that almost all kids play. So, do you think UEFN still has a chance or how do you think about UEFN's capability to kind of get to a point where it becomes what they had imagined, more of a more ubiquitous platform, more of a metaverse?
Yeah, so I think my main issue with where you have UEFN is right now is um if they want to keep doing what they're doing right now, it's honestly very difficult. And that's because you basically need to just make keep making good games. Um which nowadays has become you know, so so difficult. Um and you have to kind of use that as a way like a jumping off point to be like, okay, well, we got people

we made these games that are interesting enough that, you know, even Battle Royale people um came in and checked it out and maybe are just playing it now. And like you have like new audience that audiences that have come in and, you know, now we have we have that uh that player base that we can um that developers can cater to. Um and honestly I kind of see that's the only way to do it in its current state. Um because it's yeah, it's just the problem is the pool of Battle Royale is just so difficult and you know, I don't I don't think any third-party developers are going to like figure out like oh, how do I get people off of Battle Royale cuz I mean Epic's you know, pouring so much of their resources into Battle Royale it's like how do you really compete with that, right?
Right. Maybe we could shift gears a little bit here. We've kind of talked about, you know, the the platform UEFN on a high level. So I was I was thinking we could now go into a little bit more of the specifics and starting with like

the first-party slate. So you've got Rocket Racing, Festival, Ballistic. What do you think of that slate and why are those things not as popular, [laughter] right? Nintendo certainly does a great job with their first-party slate and is very popular. What's missing?
Yeah, so to me they just kind of feel like MVPs. They kind of just threw them out there just as a proof we have we have different games now on our platform, but there's nothing that they really do particularly well or that makes them unique. Rocket Racing is literally just a generic racing game. Uh Festival is just it's like Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but without the coolness of those games. Ballistic is literally just Counter-Strike or Valorant, but they didn't really do anything other than uh you can play as Bugs Bunny or something like that. And when you're thinking about oh okay, when we're making a game you nowadays you kind of have to either do something really well better than

what your competition does, which is actually funnily enough, that's kind of what Fortnite did with Battle Royale is they had PUBG and it was a popular game but it was paid and there's bugs and it was hard to get into. So then Fortnite just decided to come in and it was just like, all right, let me let's just do our kind of take on Battle Royale. And then turns out when you make your game free and you have interesting mechanics like building stuff, you can potentially start a cultural revolution, you know, with your game. And so there hasn't really just been that sort of moment with these other games. There's nothing that gets people from Forza to play Rocket Racing or now there's a Clone Hero for Festival or they didn't get any of the Counter-Strike or Ballistic players or Counter-Strike and Valorant players to play Ballistic. So that's the key ingredient that's missing.
Right. But from a first-party perspective, when we think of other companies with platforms like Valve or

Steam, for example, and Valve was able to make a number of games across different genres, right? Portal being an example with no combat, no multiplayer, no progression, but it became a fairly beloved game. Why did that work for Valve? If you were to hypothesize or speculate, whereas with Epic, it seems like it's kind of like Fortnite. [laughter and clears throat]
Yeah. Yeah, so like you said, Portal's one of the most beloved games. And it's just you can play it even today and you're you'll still be like, oh, wow, like going through portals is just so cool and so novel.
Right.
But I I think one of the differences is there it's not like you had to like download like Half-Life to play Portal. It was just It was packaged together, but it's not like one was kind of reliant on the other. So you can kind of get that sort of curiosity from the Half-Life players. Oh, they just finished Half-Life. Let me check out this other little game that

was that came with my bundle. And then once that kind of s- happened, there's kind of like a snowballing effect where people were telling each other is like, "Oh, you got to check out this game." And it's even a good game for people that don't like Half-Life or don't like um don't shooters. They were able to kind of get a new audience from that. And then kind of after doing that for a little bit longer, they were kind of able to uh cultivate this audience on Steam where they're not necessarily tied to one particular game, although certainly there are people that just played Dota all all the time or Counter-Strike, but there's just kind of an audience there that's willing to kind of go check out new games and even if you're not into the shooters or games that Valve has made, there's still a bunch of other interesting games for you to play.
It is interesting how some companies are able to make successful products across different genres and have multiple hits, whereas some

other companies aren't as successful. That's probably a bigger question for another podcast, but another thing that you talk about is the 40% engagement payout. And so I was wondering if you could talk about what what is that? Talk about payouts and maybe you could also compare the payouts of Roblox relative to Fortnite. And how do you You're an independent developer. How do you view that value of developing on UEFN versus Roblox?
Yeah, so basically how the engagement payout works is so whatever sort of purchases from the item shop that they have, all the skins and all of the cars and whatnot, so 40% of that is reserved to be able to pay out to the third-party developers, and the way they calculate that is it's based on engagement. So, if your game gets more users, then you'll basically get more from that payout than

the other games.
So, to some degree the algorithm is what's driving the other games. [laughter]
Uh yeah, and we'll probably get into this later, but the difference with that and Robux is sort of more is based around in-app purchases. So, if someone buys something within your game, then you I Yeah, I believe it's 20% You end up getting 20% of a cut of from that.
So, it's a different model essentially. It's engagement versus transactions essentially is the difference in the models between the two platforms.
Yeah.
Something that was very interesting was K-pop Demon Hunters. I I'm as surprised as anyone how popular that was on Netflix. I think one of the most successful shows ever. 537 million people I think was the statistic I read about how many people watched it. But the Fortnite islands built around it are basically empty. So,

what How would you attribute that? Why have they not been able to be as popular?
Yeah, so the main thing is it kind of starts from the developers. And so, like you go as a developer you kind of like think about, "Okay, I'm going to make something for UEFN. What am I going to do?" And because the engagement model you kind of go, "Okay, I don't want to make something super crazy or super risky. So, I'm going to just do what I've seen gets engagement and naturally that's just idle tycoons or little arena shooters or whatnot. And then so, then you're like, "Okay, I got to make it kind of unique. Let me try throwing like K-pop Demon Hunters onto it." And then the Battle Royale people like kind of maybe they do like K-pop Demon Hunters, so they kind of like go go check it out. And then but then they see, "Oh, it's just idle tycoons and like little shooters." So, then they're like, "Okay, I'll try it for 5 minutes and then bounce." But then you have the

actual the larger K-pop Demon Hunter fan base. And that's a whole different audience, right? I believe it's a majority female. But then so you can kind of imagine like a female one they would if they're not already in Fortnite they would have to download like a 50 GB game just to try out like these islands. But then they get to the island they're like, "Oh, it's just like an idle tycoon." Like no one's made like a cool like action RPG or something like that. So then they're like, "All right, I guess I'll just bounce from
What has been delivered may not be what players are looking for and there could be something of an audience mis- mismatch, especially to to the point that you're making if a lot of the audience for K-pop Demon Hunters female. So maybe we could now talk about some of the stuff that is working. You mentioned Star Wars made with Disney's blessing. Pretty big budgets, professional studios. And I think it had something like 26,000

players. Like could you talk more about what does that tell us about UEFN and what is actually working on
Yeah, so like before it's it just seems like whatever is made to maximize engagement gets all the players. And right now it just seems to be idle tycoons. So now we have an officially sanctioned Star Wars idle tycoon. And don't get me wrong, it's actually very well designed and very very polished. But if that's kind of the best that UEFN has to offer then it's kind of a little like, all right.
[laughter and gasps]
And it just seems so far from what they were kind of promising with the metaverse.
So maybe we can go into a little bit more depth on that. To some degree, could you say is that working then? Are Like, maybe we didn't get the metaverse, but maybe we got a platform for idle tycoons. Would

you consider that to be some kind of success on UEFN? Just not what Epic had imagined as being what would be successful on their platforms. And idle tycoons are also successful on Roblox as well. Maybe you could go into a little bit more depth on that.
Yes, I think it just kind of proves that yeah, you kind of have, no offense to idle tycoons. I used to work on an idle tycoon back in the day. But
Okay.
it's it is kind of more like easier to make than most games and it just kind of proves, okay, people are still making games, but they're just kind of making the lower effort sort of games. Yeah, you're not seeing like a a Mario Kart or like some other like big like God of War type game. You just We just have idle tycoons and I guess it's fine, but you kind of think about how from like a

developer's and player's perspective, it's like it it's not like the most enticing way to get someone to develop for their platform or explore their platform.
Right. So, kind of like one of the arguments you're making is, and we talked about this before, but one, they're easy to make and two, the platforms are kind of optimized to for those kinds of games that have that much engagement. But, would you consider that maybe a problem also for Roblox where if you optimize for that, if these idle tycoons are easy to make that any game platform that that does that would have idle tycoons as being like the number one type of game being on
Yeah, you it's it kind of goes for all platforms. Roblox, yeah, has idle tycoons. Um The mobile app store, there's tons of idle tycoon games, like Steam, too. There's a bunch of idle tycoons. Literally, one of the most popular games is a banana clicker, where you just click a banana

and then
[laughter]
numbers go up. But, I think the main difference is You see it as idle tycoons, but on Roblox, you know, you don't just see idle tycoons, like sort of like social life simulators, shooters, fighters. There's still like a variety of games. Surely, they might be using sort of the idle mechanics, but it's still generally kind of like a more healthier sort of eco-ecosystem.
And I I like to actually go back and revisit this notion of the metaverse. Back in 2020, I had an opportunity to interview Tim Sweeney, and one of the things that he told me is that nobody knows exactly what the metaverse will be. Six years later, today, what do you think we know now? Are you of the opinion that just it's just a dead concept, or how are you thinking about it?
Yeah, I think just the way that these companies have sort of packaged the metaverse, I think it's just at least in that sense, it's not what people are looking for. Yeah, there's

Roblox and Minecraft, but other than that, they're all the other kind of attempts have failed. And so, I unless there's something you can provide more than what Roblox and Minecraft provides, I don't think there's really any significant sort of evolution of the metaverse.
Maybe in Tim Sweeney's defense, because I do think that part of the way that I believe in, you know, I don't know Tim Sweeney. I just did that one interview with him and have heard him speak on occasion, but it does seem that one of the things that he thinks about are kind of like the environmental the environment, like the an ecosystem, developer ecosystems, and and things like that. And I think that one of the reasons why he was so focused on the metaverse is because he felt like if this concept of the metaverse took off, then you would have essentially the ability for a single company to kind of control the metaverse and own all the

commercial aspects of what that thing was. And so while the metaverse itself did not kind of come into fruition as he probably didn't tended. And I know he he was very serious about this because I had heard from some Epic employees shortly after 2020 that that any initiative at Epic had to be related to the metaverse or [laughter] it was not greenlit. Today, to your point, UEFN is kind of dominated by a single game. So, single game instead of a single company. And so do we have this kind of And you kind of talked about it, but it does seem like there is this ecosystem problem within UEFN as well. Is that solvable?
It's I think just the way it is right now is really difficult because yeah, as we were talking about just Battle Royale just takes over so much of players' time and interest that trying to get people to move away from that it's

just I almost I'm not even sure that's really a solvable problem. If you look at the numbers, it's literally kind of like 50% of the 1 million of concurrent Fortnite players are there for Battle Royale. And now everyone else is kind of fighting for that other half. And it's still kind of just like a small pocket if you compare that to Roblox. It's like 450k players versus Roblox's what? I think it's six six million? If not six million, it's like 9.44 million Roblox players.
Okay.
And yeah, it just kind of comes down to were you able to kind of build out this bigger audience so everyone kind of gets a nice share of the pie or is it still I know you have good intentions, but your game is kind of just taking away all that opportunity. So for from a developer's perspective is it even worth it for me to even try like getting into your ecosystem?

Going back to 2021, one of the other things that Tim Sweeney did is he was very critical about Roblox only paying creators 20%. He also very famously fought the war for us and that's something I'm very appreciative of him and Epic for doing is fighting the 30% platform fees, for example. But to a developer, do you think like how much does it matter what the payout is relative to the size of the audience, right? Because Roblox will offer developers, you know, 6.6 million browsable players, UFN, you know, less than half a million. So you as an independent developer, like what matters more, the revenue split or just the size of the audience?
I I'd say the size of the audience um matters um cuz you only kind of get the benefits of the better payout if you know, the audience is big enough for it. Um Like I don't want to be like uh I mean I'll I'll be straight up it's like, okay, if I'm getting like even

like 100% of zero zero dollars, like that's zero dollars, like you're [laughter] honestly um
Right.
I will say yeah, I will say to Tim's credit, you know, like he as far as like, you know, in-app purchase um monetization goes and like rev share when it comes to like, you know, Epic Games Store, like he's doing the right thing. Like I see like, okay, if I'm going to get like you know, 100% of in-app purchase revenue, um like that does like get get my attention. Um, but then when you look at the player base and you're like, "Oh man, I got to compete against like Battle Royale and Idle Tycoons." Like then it's sort of like becomes like, "Okay, like is it really worth the risk for me to kind of put in all this effort, um, just for like a small smaller piece of pie versus like, you know, maybe I'll risk it on like Roblox

or Steam or, you know, any of the other platforms available."
And it it's not just Epic. It's not just Tim Sweeney who had a strong belief in the in the potential for whether it's a games platform or a metaverse. Disney, for example, invested 1 and 1/2 billion dollars into Epic, uh, as an equity stake explicitly to build a games and entertainment universe on top of Fortnite. You know, that was 2 years ago. And the main project is still not out. And what do you think? Like will Disney's involvement does does that help? Does that potentially help fix some of the audience problem? Or to the point that we talked about earlier related to, uh, K-pop Demon Hunters, is Disney just going to make a even bigger mistake than the sort of K-pop Demon Hunters example?
Oh, I have to kind of say that because good luck cuz that's that's a lot of money that you're

you're dealing with. And yeah, I think
Right.
as we talked about before, it's very easy for this to just become another K-pop Demon Hunters mistake where you have you made all these games, but you don't get the Battle Royale people to go check it out. You don't get Disney Disney adults to go download and check it out. If you really have to just make sure that that's, yeah, that your game is able to do that. Otherwise, it's yeah, you kind of that's a lot of money to flush flush out a toilet, honestly.
And maybe one other question on this topic, which is when we talked about the different kind of visions of the metaverse, there's also as of the time of this recording, June 12th, on June 15th, Horizon Worlds will shut down. And so, what do you think happened there? Is it would you draw similarities to UEFN or is there a different reason for the inability of Horizon Worlds to gain a

bigger audience and gain more traction?
Yeah, I think it audience-wise, it's a little similar. You can kind of say, "Okay, I don't know it off the top of my head how many Quest owners there are, but it's kind of like you already have this existing audience, and you're kind of just trying to throw this sort of this platform to them and seeing, "Hey, do you Will you guys check this out?" But I think kind of the difference is there wasn't any big sort of like game that was that was kind of tying, "Oh, I kind of a little I take that back a little bit. There there was already a competitor, VRChat, right? That has already kind of grabbed everyone's attention, and they kind of didn't really do a good job of convincing people, "Oh, instead of being in VRChat, you should go check out Horizon Worlds." So, it's kind of like a it's a different it still stems from the same issue, but it's a little different where it's not a homegrown problem like with Fortnite. It's more just not understanding what the competition what competition was out there and how do I actually get people away from that.

And now just talking about the future of UEFN, in your post, you did lay out kind of two paths forward. And so, can you walk us through how you see a potential improvement to UEFN in the future? Walk us through your two options.
Yeah, so the first option is just spin UEFN entirely from Fortnite Battle Royale. Just make it an entirely different game. And that sort of makes sure there's no influence between one and the other. You're going to have You don't have that problem of Okay, we're just trying to get players from Battle Royale. We're just trying to build up a new audience. And then the second is kind of honestly, throw in the towel. Just accept that this is what it is. We just got a bunch of idle tech kids, and we don't have to invest so much money into trying to make it something it's not.

And then that just saves you time, resources. You don't have to worry about trying to make these big games to try and get people off of Battle Royale. But you can just be like, all right, this is it. There's still kind of opportunities to do interesting things. One thing that we didn't really discuss was Okay, we can kind of use the fan as kind of like an incubator to the Epic Games Store. And but that still kind of comes off that comes from spinning off the fan, just making its own things so that developers have the opportunity to build out their own games and create an audience.
Okay. And let's say you were to try to take the other side of the arguments that you laid out in your post. What would UEFN have to show, let's say in the next 12 months or so, for you to think, "Okay, I got it wrong in in my essay." What what would have to happen?
It's it honestly kind of comes down to player

distribution. I'm going to have to I would want to see I went over the top 12 games of Fortnite and Roblox. You basically need to have the same thing in that Roblox has, which is there's no real game that dominates the others. Players are just kind of out there just doing playing a bunch of different games and usually these games were able to cultivate an audience that isn't reliant on Battle Royale.
Okay. And I think one of the reasons why I thought it was great to talk to you is because you represent an actual data point an independent developer making real-world choices amongst these different platforms, whether it's UEFN or Roblox or Steam or Discord activity. And I don't even know what's going on with Discord now. I think they've been retooling all their game stuff over and over again, but walk us through how you think about these different platforms. And what would it take How are you thinking about which platform you would want to build build for? And how do you actually you I think you have a

checklist as well, but maybe you can go through that and walk us through how you think about these different platforms. What would it take to get you to build on one platform versus another?
Yeah, finally mentioned Discord just cuz actually back when I was an independent developer, my first game actually was released on the Discord game store. So, it's actually a very It's actually something that I know a lot about, which is Discord kind of came in they're like, "Hey, bring us your games. We have such a big audience, right?" I don't I don't remember what the number is, but you can just Yeah, imagine all the Discord users. But then the problem that happened, which to be honest, one, they probably shouldn't have They probably shouldn't have gone with our game as a Discord exclusive, but two, you kind of realize just cuz you're a Discord user doesn't necessarily mean you're going to use the Discord game store. If anything, it's actually the same problem that Fortnite's having, which is

Discord Discord users are there to use Discord to talk with their friends and communities and whatnot. They're not necessarily there to buy games. And so, I think what I've learned from that whole experience is that understanding what is the actual customer behavior is there kind of proof that some they'll throw all these fancy numbers at you, but is there actual proof that people are willing to check out different games? I think it's just very important. And I kind of say out of all those if we're looking at all those platforms that you mentioned they actually do have good audiences. It's just you kind of have to for Roblox and Discord specifically you have to kind of tailor the experience. So Roblox is primarily based off kids, hence why brainrot stuff is popular and also does QT low-fi graphics about being social and I don't really know what the numbers are on those Discord activities, but I'm sure that's probably doing better than back when I

was on the Discord store cuz I don't know. Who [laughter] knows?
I don't want to tangent onto Discord, but I do think from a gameplay experience perspective, I thought the platform that they had is amazing, right? The ability to have to be able to see all your friends and to play a game together. I thought that the potential for Discord was incredible. It's just it's not surfaced. I remember playing a game with some folks from Discord who showed me the capabilities. But then I try to go back and I'm like, okay, let me do that again. I'm like where do I even go?
Yeah. [laughter]
I couldn't find him. So that so it was I think that's that might be more of a discovery UX issue, but anyway, that may maybe another topic for another time. But I did want to ask you one last question before I ask you may maybe some questions about more about you as well. But I think we the biggest thing that's happening right now

in not only games, but in society in the world is AI. And so one of the things that we're seeing is the ability to be able to create content very easily. And so, you'd have to imagine that with AI, that all of these platforms will get flooded by an enormous daily shove content. And so, what do you think happens? How do you think that impacts these platforms? And how are you even thinking about it as an independent developer?
And honestly, it's so much more difficult to release a game. It's just the bar the bar to entry is so low, but being able to succeed is just so high. I Honestly think it just comes back to curation. There's just all these players are getting so much content thrown at them and now they're just they have to kind of naturally become more pickier about what they they spend their time on. And that kind of means the quality bar has to get higher and

that's just kind of difficult all around cuz it's just hard and you understand too. It's just so hard to make a good game nowadays, right? Um
Yeah, I I've I've been getting my butt kicked for years. [laughter] Okay. Yeah, did you have any other thoughts on that? Sorry.
Yeah, and I'll be honest. It's I don't especially if I'm thinking about it from a big company perspective. I don't know how to really solve that other than either you're going to have to spend a lot of money or you got to figure out how to do things more cheaper. And I'm guessing that's why a lot of these big companies are trying to go with AI and trying to see if they can make things cheaper, but we'll kind of see where it goes. But to end on the note, it's like you just can't produce slop in a world of infinite slop.
Right, you have to distinguish yourself in some way. Okay, so maybe to close the conversation, I'd love to find out a little bit more about you, your story.

So, for our audience, it'd be great to learn a little bit more about you. And also, why what interested you about this topic? Why did you wind up writing about UAFN, Metaverse, things like that. And yeah, it'd be great to hear more about your personal story.
Sure. Ted Park. I'm a product consultant and former indie game developer. I used to run my own little indie game studio right after I graduated college. And one of the interesting things was our game was like one of the first games on the Discord game store. So, yeah, it's kind of platforms and thinking about what are the benefits of each different platform. It's just kind of something that stuck with me. This was kind of like a natural natural extension of that. And I still kind of remember back in I think it was GDC when they first announced UEFN. And they kind of made that big announcement. Had a lot of hype around it. And so, there's kind of like an opportunity for

me to sort of Oh, man. It's been what? 3 years since that's happened. So, I just naturally, as I was playing Fortnite, it was like honestly, I was just playing cuz I was like, should I make another Battle Pass article? And then I was like, you kind of see next to while you're playing Battle Royale, it's oh, there's Brain Rot Tycoon, there's all these different icons. And you're like, huh, okay, that's kind of interesting. What is that actually, though? So, I kind of just went down this rabbit hole and this was kind of a result.
Okay. And are you fully Did you give up on your dreams of being an independent developer? Or is that out for you? Or maybe you could talk about your transition into product consulting.
Yeah. Yeah, it I'd say it's it's a little on the back burner. Yeah. Maybe shouldn't have released it on the Discord game store.
[laughter]
But No, no. But I the reality is sometimes you make a game and for a variety of

reasons it's
But you also released on Steam as well, right? So it Discord wasn't the only
Yeah, Steam and also consoles. Even with that, sometimes you just don't make a game that's successful. To be frank, but you still have that sort of thought in your mind maybe I should kind of get back into it at some point, but I don't
I think you should.
I don't But to be honest, at least right now I don't think it's going to be on UEFN if if
Okay.
Unless I get an idea for
What platform would you build for? Yeah, so let's say you have an idea. So to for you, what would be the platform that that you would go for? Would it be Steam? Would it be mobile? Would it be something else? Web maybe? Because it seems like web is becoming increasingly viable as well.
Yeah, for me I kind of do value being able to try it different things and not be confined by any particular sort of restrictions. So from me, Steam is probably the way to go. But yeah,

web is also an interesting thing to check out. It's pretty much the 100% freedom, which has its caveats, but it is a cool idea.
Okay. Ted thanks so much for the post. I thought it was a very interesting topic to explore. And I definitely appreciate your insights and your thoughts on that. And I guess we'll see how UEFN does. I'm I'm I'm a fan of Tim Sweeney just because I think that a lot of the things that he's trying to do out of principle rather than just for commercial purposes is something that I I think that our industry needs, but we'll see how it go how it goes. And for our audience, we will catch you next time. Thanks so much, Ted.
Take care.
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