Monster Hunter Now Launch / Luda Raises For AI Sim / CS:GO 2 Launch

[Music] welcome to the Novi gaming podcast where it is our mission to explore the business and future of video games we bring together the industry's brightest Builders investors and thinkers to keep a pulse on current events dissect emerging Trends and games share Lessons Learned and have a great time this podcast is also part of novic growing ecosystem which ranges from free and premium research to Consulting and advice services for more information visit [Music] www.nic.edu their free-to-play monetization strategy have a daunting task when considering Security payment methods user experience and Global expansion I'm here today with Neil Davidson executive chairman at Coda payments Neil how has Cod of payments helped games teams Drive greater success

we like to say we help mobile game developers think outside the app when it comes to monetization that's because outside the app they can collect payments from their players at half the cost or less of doing so through the app stores Cod shop is our Global Marketplace for game currency and in-game items trusted by tens of millions of Gamers around the world and developers that want to accept payments outside the app on their own websites can use Coda pay which allows them to support hundreds of local payment methods globally with a single integration whether our partner leverages Koda pay Koda shop or any of our other Solutions we offer local market insights provide live local language customer support ensure tax compliance and manage fraud risks if your listeners are interested in retaining more of the revenue they generate I hope they'll get in touch with us at Kota awesome thanks for sharing Neil and if you are listener are interested in learning more about how coda payments Solutions can take your

game to the next level head to codap payments.com or check out the details in the show notes and with that let's dive into the weekly Round Table hello everyone welcome to another novic round table I'm your host Devon Becker and with me as always some great panelists Aon and Felipe here how you guys doing today fantastic happy to be here yeah I hear you uh doing some hiring yeah yeah we have opened some some positions so we look like uh specifically for a elite game designer a senior game artist to join our studio that is in earli stages so these roles will be part of the core team H we are focusing on hybrid casual games uh pule games uh with this setup or mentality I would say and yeah so looking forward uh to see like applications because like we are really doing fun stuff and I think it it's going to be something that everybody

could enjoy so I want people like to join in this ventour with me uh and just a quick question is it is that remote or on site H we are working hybrid from Barcelona in Spain cool awesome well where can people go find out more information about that yeah I think we have posted the the jobs in the in the navic newsletter so they can well hopefully everyone listening subscribed and they get that you can see I believe it's at the end of the digest usually yeah issue got our got our job board awesome well so make sure to check that out and and see uh you know just had of curiosity if nothing else right cool well hopefully you get those filled quickly and uh you know some good some good talent out there especially with unfortunately the amount of layoffs we've seen lately definitely might be some good ones to scoop up potentially yeah but uh yeah on to other news we have quite a few news topics today on some interesting stuff uh Monster Hunter now came out from Niantic so we're gonna cover how that launch is gone Luda managed to raise some money for AI stuff

so that's still happening Esports not in a great place at the moment we're going to cover a little bit of that and Counter Strike to though did manage to launch and kind of forced its way into everyone's uh steam accounts pretty much so yeah cool why don't we just get started on how Monster Hunter now did yeah so I can Kickstart this one um and really what I really want to do is just highlight a piece that mon wrote for novic digest uh a few days ago about Monster Hunter now and its launch and of course our partner at data. were super helpful for capturing for capturing all of that data here so so Props to them for enabling us to do this well but um really in short Monster Hunter now which is niantic's latest title um as of the beginning of the month is now niantic's fourth largest title after just like two weeks um you know on on the market and as of a couple of days ago it had officially gross $15 million which you know will surpass Pikmin Bloom's 20 million uh in no time so it's a pretty

for for Niantic specifically it's a pretty great uh start and something they haven't this kind of success they haven't seen in a while and this is notable partially because we've been critical of Niantic the past few times we've talked about Niantic on the podcast it's been more with a skeptical eye or more just you know being saddened by you know some of the games that were either getting cancelled or came out and didn't do well because it wasn't a great fit for a location based AR based type of experience but uh with uh H Monster Hunter now uh they're doing a lot better and so what Manu did in his piece really well uh was just kind of laying out you know why this game succeeded when so many others failed and for one you know similar to Pokemon go there's a strong genre IP fit here players roam around various to various destinations and fight monsters so a location based element Works more here than in other

IPS and then second the focus on Japan really seems to be working out monster hunter is obviously very popular in Japan and the development team here on on the now game was wise in designing aspects of the game like Avatar selection for that audience they also had a super popular showing at the Tokyo game show and now 70% of Monster Hunter now's Revenue comes from Japan so they unlock that market really effectively and lastly the game just stays pretty authentic to Monster Hunter uh monu kind of framed monster hunter now as a Diet Coke to monster hunter's Coke and it kind of makes sense uh even though there's there's you know there's monsters there's a storyline there's an RPG element um and even though the RPG element and intensity is rather light to serve a broader mobile audience it might not be the best fit for all the hardcore Monster Hunter Fans but it's still is um

you know intriguing a bunch of them and it's widening the funnel for who could be interested in Monster Hunter so uh it's a win so far obviously it's still very early we have to see what retention looks like what their live Ops are going to look like uh but it's definitely a win for Niantic and so I think it's worth calling out and and celebrating uh I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they have their mojo back and you know their their next game launches from here are going to all be you know just as successful uh but it's a big deal for them to have a successful game not just for the game sake but also because games have been the funding mechanism and and part of niantic's broader AR mapping Vision which is really interesting but naturally just takes a lot of time to play out because we're not all walking around with ar glasses yet so they're biting their time for AR to really have have its moment and the games are a good bridge to that so thought that was a really compelling

uh story of the past couple couple weeks and excited to see them doing well a couple thoughts on that I'm kind of curious so like I mean a lot of the IP of most of their games has been like Japanese based right with Pokemon uh even Pikmin but then like you've seen ones like uh NBA that's not really obviously Japanese focused uh you know obviously a c couple of those did well couple of those did poorly we we did call out that that it was likely Monster Hunter was you know the one that that had the most chance to be a success because it was a good fit and and I'm glad to see that that panned out right like so that does I think give Niantic like at least uh an understanding of like hey maybe we need to make sure this is like a good fit before we try and like just do this licensed property and then lose it because it doesn't work uh so it's it's interesting to see that but I do want also though you know you mentioned the Japan Focus if Japan's geography makes a difference right uh so they you know they it's a very small territory they're used to kind of actually doing taking advantage of that with uh for example they'll have like the Nintendo switch games that would you know have like the ability to play with

other people nearby that they've done back in like the DS games so like they could take advantage of kind of being this sort of more crowded but like only slightly spread out Island uh in that sort of like close proximity uh whereas you know the US for example is very spread out whereas like you know the coasts have a lot of population but then the middle could be pretty sparse and and I do wonder if any of that factors in to these location based games working or not working in terms of like the social aspects or like the you know the battling over our territory kind of aspects like you have with Pokemon gyms um and and this one also didn't seem to at least when I played through a little bit of it didn't seem to have much of the AR aspect or at least didn't try and default to it it was definitely focused on the location based aspect instead yeah so I don't know if you have any thoughts on any that um not too much I mean I think it's just a really popular IP in Japan and it lends itself to location based gameplay better and it seems like Niantic has just learned some lessons from the past so kind of the trifecta of that enables

it to stand out more than not I think you're right that these kinds of games do better in more urban areas where there's just more people with more places to go and battle over or explore that makes a a lot of sense but you know obviously there are a lot of cities worldwide so it's not it's not just about that but Japan also you know they are a high spending country on games too so if you're going to double click into any any region that's not a bad one to to make your on yeah I think it also makes sense to now thinking about it that that both Pokemon and um monster are kind of like open World style games whereas like obviously NBA is not an open world Style game right because it's just basketball court and then Pikman Bloom was never really to my understanding much of an open world kind of game it was more kind of level-based um so maybe that's also like an important thing because in the sense of the location based like thing mapping correctly to the game's Central sort of uh sense of like exploration and and the way content is is like you know provided to you like Pokemon for example you you you had a tendency in that game to kind

of wander around and find encounters and obviously that made sense same thing with monster hunter whereas the other IPS they've done maybe don't have that so much uh and so that that might be something as well to look out for in future Niantic titles like hey how much of a match is there with even the location based aspect uh to the original Ip that they're that they're going with because there's like I believe a Marvel one still slated as well if I remember correctly I think so I don't I'm not super bullish on that for the location based reasons but yeah I guess I guess we'll see right like how fature IP does because it's you know Niantic seems to also be kind of a technology company in a lot of ways and kind of pushing their their light ship SDK and stuff like that and I don't know how much like they've actually been able to get people to to use that for the most part because obviously they need to kind of have successful demonstrations I think be able to pick that up so I guess we'll look and see like maybe this will actually be a big thing for Niantic to kind of get some more people interested in using this just hopefully with good fits but we we'll find out I don't know about the Marvel one like I said not not super bullish on that but we uh we did have

some fundraising though coming in like there's still trickles of it maybe more in the single digit Millions but Luda managed to pick up some money for their AI training game sim yeah exactly so more more race of AI company uh in this case Luda well is an AI company that allows anyone to craft AI agents uh with like legol like building blocks uh like they claim to do this like quite easy for for like so any anybody can can do that uh and kind of like introducing a new category of social experiences where like you have a kind of playground and you can create your agent and like see that interacting with the world but also interacting with with other agents so they have raised uh 7 Millions uh to support its work leading by bit craft ventor and compound um and they they were presenting like a new uh system called realtime reinforcement learning that allows users to make these AI Creations

interact with the real world like like without any lack and and without having to code or animate them in order to to perform the actions um and um like the company believes and also the invertors uh like have a stress that they they part of the reason that they have invested there is because they consider that these agents are ideal for ugc gameplay and uh as any user can create them and like this could create like a really a new way of interacting and and playing so like a new category let's say of of games so well interesting interesting to see what they they come out with uh they haven't like really so much just uh few videos like showcase what uh like very simple how the thing could be but um like not not much detail

on that so well more companies racing from from AI so I think like it's definitely the the Hot Topic uh now and they were saying that they they've been like working on this stuff for quite long so there were people like working already at Google five years ago on like this type of Technology uh to enable but they they are sowing today so what what are your thoughts on on more AI more AI companies racing this is a different type of AI too right yeah I was just gonna ask um by AI agent like what exactly does that mean in in practice is it like an NPC is it something else like like what like what do you think like the end result product wise is really G to look like it's kind of a like I would say like it's kind of a character that you can like create like uh like very basically you can Define like the the

shape and then like the the agent understands the shape in the sense like do I have wheels then I like I'm rolling over the floor or do I have legs and I can like step and jump and like do other stuff and then they interact with the with the 3D World so they can like in the video there there's a Basketball bow and the the tiny Avatar like runs into the basketball ball and like kind of stumble into it so this is what I think like they are ref to agents so I am understanding that you could create like several agents and they can cooperate or they can like interact with each other but also like each of us could be joining and creating our own agent and then like this is kind of your representation the of yourself in this world so that's why they're maybe stressing about the social part of social component on this and maybe also if you could like I don't know uh create different environments then that's about

like what this the ugc component so you can create like an environment and different type of characters that interact with each other and being something that is like even just Pleasant to to watch right it's not interactive but it's Pleasant to to see what's the reaction what's happening gotcha I mean I'm I don't really know what to make of Luda specifically I guess we'll see what they what they come up with um and and how it how it works when it's when it's all live um I mean I think I like the idea of pointing AI towards like user generated content like I feel like there's a ton of opportunity to unlock there I mean user generated content it's it's been all about democratizing creation in some kind of way and AI tooling is an accelerant of doing that and so it kind of you know opens the floodgates further for people to be able to create all sorts of interesting and wacky things most of it probably not going to be interesting but if if it you know know exponentially enables people to create

much more um then a larger amount is going to be um really interesting uh to come out so I think that this framing is kind of compelling um and it's in contrast to what we've seen with other companies like nworld AI um which I did an interview with them a while ago and of course they're focused more on like serving like big studios and Publishers and that kind of thing and integrating their more AI NPCs into you know big open world types types of games um one one question that I did ask them that I have been thinking about and I'm curious to hear your guys thoughts on this is um especially like the NPC part is this a disruptive innovation or is it a sustaining Innovation meaning that if it's a sustaining Innovation does it just make everything that's going on better and you get more better of kind of the same thing or does it

actually like create something new like new genres um new types of game experiences Etc and I haven't been able to get a great answer to that question yet um and maybe it's a mix of both but either way I'm not I'm not completely sold so I'm curious where you guys fall on how AI Falls in that disruptive sustaining Innovation Continuum yeah I think like I I agree that it could be both and I think like for me I see that more as a tool and then you can use the tool for just like uh slightly Improvement and quality of life Improvement and what already we already have or it could be really a game changer and it depends on how how well you elaborate on the on the things that this tool can offer uh to really build like completely different immersive experiences but this is still I would

say early days so I think like this is something that we could imagine happening in the long term but it's still like a lot of technology and adoption right to to get there I think like all this area is moving very fast and we see like new tools new applications dayto day but we need to keep up with that speed right in order to be able to generate and leverate on that like to create experience that really are up to the capabilities of of the technology and that will take time yeah I I think it's F it's funny think about with NBCS like looking at what NBCS generally do in most games right they either there to deliver like text lore pretty much like pieces of like World content or Quest givers primarily right they're they're they either you know are a fiction generator or they're something that's there to facilitate gameplay in some way uh I don't know if they they this changes much in terms of the questgiver side of things but in terms of like the world fiction kind of things the ability to be a little more

responsive I think is the interesting part here so where there's like a little bit more room for customization like it makes me think back to even going back to like you know the old Nintendo Super Nintendo RPGs where you put it in your name and then like the the characters would use your name in the sentences right like that was kind of like the early sort of responsiveness to something that the user did but obviously very canned kind of mad Li fill in the blanks out this technology I've seen a couple companies starting to integrate this sort of thing to allow the game itself to customize content a little bit more um like even ubisoft's uh use of the bark stuff that if you remember that they were talking about that a while back I think at GDC where they were using it to help write uh barks which are for those who aren't aware like the kind of call outs the NPCs especially enemies will do where they just kind of shout stuff uh to stop it from being kind of repetitive to extent like because generating a lot of that is kind of problematic and so I think in some areas like that where content either needs to be like kind of trying to avoid that sort of repetitiousness that happens a lot with with the NPC dialogue or just to

customize it to people to customize it either to like stuff that they've like uh stuff how they have in their inventory stuff that they've done uh party members like there's lots of little things that can be tweaked uh to that player and even like their their name and so I think that stuff is like the obvious use case where it starts to just be reactive in like a very controlled way right where it's it's like just one step above procedural content basically and I think that's that's probably the safest bet is to like go hey procedural plus really like procedural but where we don't have to predefine everything and write all these algorithms we could have some stuff that's like on Rails like respond gameplay mechanic wise that's where I don't I don't know that there's like necessarily a way you could do this unless it's the type of game that is okay with being a little chaotic right where it's okay that like this doesn't help progression that things might go totally off the rails I mean we've seen a lot of bad AI in games and how sort of like game-breaking it could be how disruptive it could be obviously when that's AI generated and like not even necessarily pre-programmed that's much more likely to happen I would think so that I think that area will be if they're trying to do that with these

kind of games that could be really pretty problematic and the thing that kind of like screams potential problem out to this me uh from the Luda race is the idea of real-time reinforcement learning so most of these things haven't had like real-time learning they're just like using content and then generating content off of that but it's not like learning anything new right like you're not adjusting the the ai's models in any way like no new learning is actually happening it's just kind of you know read only and so if they're actually talking about like modifying the game based off of stuff players do that's where it starts to get really iffy in terms of like people really messing with it it it doing really unexpected or potentially offensive things like the guard reils have to get a lot better with that sort of stuff and like we can't even do content moderation properly for kids so that seems like dangerous territory but again that's just a word they're using and like you said they haven't really detailed the ton of it yet so let's kind of wait and see on that but anytime you're talking about realtime learning I start to think back to that you know Microsoft bot on Twitter that got turned into Hitler in about a day uh it just becomes very problematic so I

I do hope to see these things though even if it's baby steps because I think condent like can get boring very fast and like that's a big problem for players like that's why you know Rog likes are cool for example right because they procedurally generating new content but like that doesn't work with a lot of other game genres and this offers at least some flexibility for some areas of that so I'm hopeful but I am also pretty skeptical of of raises like this towards stuff that's very like lingo driven where they're like coining a phrase and trying to sound smart but I know uh bit craft is pretty heavily into like a lot of AI stuff and so in games and I'm not surprised to see them leading this but I think they do a pretty good job like looking over stuff so I have a little bit of faith in that aspect I guess I don't know just really curious to see how this goes because uh we we are probably gonna see the these kind of AI raises for a while right if if there's so money to deploy in games and web 3 is not it and there's not like anything else really kind of popping off like you got to pick something that's like a potential for a huge disruptive technology if you want a 100x that right

yeah and I agree with with Aron I think like I've seen like many companies working on AI focusing on like creating a product for another company to be able to uh like produce in our case games faster better whatever but not so much focusing on the end customers so I think like more and more we are going to see uh more companies focusing on this on like serving the the customer not the companies to be able to to L on AI to like create their own experiences or like enjoy experiences yeah my my last thought on this um and part of why I was asking the disruptive vers sustaining Innovation question is just because even like as like an investor like how do you view this market and what you should fund if if you think it it much of this is going to be a sustaining Innovation sure maybe you can create some tools that will be sold to company sort of sass like or or whatever and you can have you know small

tuck-in acquisition exits or something but if it's sustaining there's not really a big platform shift there's not really like a big transformation in the way things are made it's it's a tuck in um technology and so like where does a industry new industry defining companies come from uh if it's sustaining if it's disruptive like what is the disruption going to be is it going to be some new type of genre or gameplay that we haven't seen before that gets unlocked um if so who really wins probably more like the game company in that case or someone who can like pair like creating the in product with technology maybe not like the middleware in between um and so I've just been sort of you know I'm not privy to all of the conversations that all of these Venture capitalists are having with all these companies to see what's coming down the pipeline so I'm definitely blind to a lot but I've just struggled to answer that question in

terms of like okay where is like the next really big idea that facilitate some type of like tectonic shift that's going to be that next like multi-billion dollar company and not sure I've I've seen it yet yeah I think this is this could go a little bit into like how westw World Is Right like the series so like really being in a in a world where like you're like surrounded by a NPCs that really behave like humans so it's not like I need to go into this world and either play with NPCs like de was saying like our like programmed to behave like this and this like the cases that would happen and like what is not there won't happened or I need to wait for having like other people being there and really interacting like a human beings right like like there could be like worlds where you have both things happening at the same time like and not needing anyone else so and that could be disruptive different type of

entertainment but that's not an AI company that that's still it still is more like who's making the thing and maybe it's vertically integrated but like that's what I haven't been able to wrap my head around anyways we should move on to other topics Ste yeah definitely yeah I I just just was one last thing it just keeps Mak me think of when we're talking about user created content or user generated content to use the specific acronym I guess um it it and try to make that easier through AI it makes me think of spora a lot for like what that tried to do with like democratizing like sort of the 3D modeling aspect of like the the creatures and things like that like tried to do a lot of that and I'm like I wish Will Wright was doing some of this stuff with the with the a I'd love to see what he'd pull out of it but I think he's still kind of stuck at his web 3 project at the moment so we'll see how that goes but I I would like to see it apply to that and and we also have to keep in mind the only two real proof of concepts of this AI advancement stuff that we've seen is like the the language stuff and the art stuff we really haven't seen like a lot outside of that that proves like AI has has really made those big leaps forward so I think outside of those two areas like it's

it's good to be skeptical until we see some good outside proof on that but uh speaking of audience interacting with games and influencing them Esports has been in kind of an interesting place as of lately we've talked about it I think a few times but there's been some some big shifts as well uh probably the biggest one here with the the owl which is overwatch's League uh just kind of imploding a little bit uh like basically getting shut down for the moment to kind of rethink it I was going to say a lot of bit right well because they they say they're going to like relaunch it right like this is just kind of rethink it but this could just be like the end of it right realistically it was always kind of a forced League let's be honest it was kind of like a I mean Esports is built off marketing budgets right it's it's uh you know a big advertisement for this is a competitive game and we're going to try and create you know brand around it and all that stuff but like it never really like it was it was kind of a casual game to be forcing competitive on and then like they tried different ways of doing it and they were all like I I don't know maybe wrong but I feel like they were all kind of forced and so this

is maybe kind of an inevitable thing here that that was going to happen sooner or later with it and I feel like a lot of Esports seem to be kind of going this direction where just maybe they're not as sustainable long term as we were hoping like you know even like my own bias kind of watching what's what's happening with Rainbow Six Siege which was kind of the one of the unexpected Esports uh has been running for quite a while but I I'm kind of also seeing that trending downhill a bit running into a lot of problems I don't know what the budget's like for it anymore but obviously I've mentioned it before that that that game is one of the few hits Ubisoft has had consistently providing earnings pretty much year-over-year like helping keep that company alive and the Esports well probably isn't the Big Driver that is definitely a contributor to some extent so I'm kind of curious whether or not like for example OverWatch uh the OverWatch league is actually contributing to the bottom line because this is happening keep in mind in the middle of like trying to transition over to Microsoft right where they want to like they wanted to make a good impression but they kind of waited till the the deal was Inked and passed all the tests and everything to kind of be like okay now we can shut this down

right because they I'm sure they wanted to look attractive to Microsoft as part of this deal and you know Dia 4 is part of that as well where now it's kind of like down like 99% of its player base uh but it looked great at the time you know during this acquisition that's taken forever so it's just one of those Trends and I think the the one to watch for me with these is what happens with riots games right uh obviously the big one League of Legends but they also have other ones like valerant that they've been trying to launch so I think that's the thing to watch is whether or not Riot can even sort of sustain its orts ecosystem because it's been one of The Big Spenders in that category you know fighting for things like you know good pay for players uh all those sorts of things that cost a lot of money try to run those and I think even DOTA is just kind of coasting uh from valve and stuff like that so I don't you guys any thoughts on uh Esports in generals kind of falling apart here sure I can start uh my take is simple if something is not sustainable it won't sustain um and so we've been been going through a reset of things that aren't sustainable that

makes sense and it's going to continue to go down that path unless um you sustainable models are put in in place um and um I've been preparing for an interview that'll publish next week with the co- CEOs of ESL Facebook group which will be really interesting I'm looking forward to it um but in preparation I was looking back at a couple previous interviews that we did um this year with other leaders in the Esports space one with nicolea Point Jameson who was uh CEO of Evil Geniuses and more recently John Robinson who's uh president and COO of 100 thieves and in both of those interviews we asked them if you could change one thing and the world of Esports to make your lives easier what would it be Nicole's answer was media rights which has still sort of been a mess and around all of these games and not uh standardized in any kind of way um and then uh John Robinson his his answer was uh just pointing out the fact

that well the structure doesn't really work and so like if you want to you know come up with a more sustainable structure you need to like get everyone's incentives aligned and currently um the Publishers have different incentives from orts organizations and like others in the Esports space because they view it more as marketing um they're not actually trying to profit off of Esports itself and make it be a sustainable business on its own right and so he actually did complement some of what like ESL was doing with csgo um in terms of like like you know like they're running csgo tournaments but they don't own csgo but they still have to find a sustainable way for for them to sustain a business and for everyone else to sustain a business with them so if you change the structure you change the incentives um and so I think that's directionally right um and I'm curious what the ESL face of gods will uh say about that too

but in my view like I think it's just a structure reset that's needed that clearly what has been going on hasn't really been working but maybe under a new structure with more aligned incentives and just more thought put into like cost um will'll will come out better on the other side but it's definitely Esports winter for now yeah it definitely seems like it's been difficult to really kind of even find continuous viewership and and profit from that viewership and stuff like that it's it's definitely not the same as like you're not seeing people pay for pay-per-view like you would with traditional Sports you're not seeing people go to the physical events at the same like level that you would but also like we're in kind of a weird global environment where these games are not necessarily like localized like say the NFL is or a lot of these other physical sports that tend to depend on physical location outside of something like World Cup or Olympics or some of these other ones that are a little more Global and so it's we have this kind of weird thing like OverWatch tried to do this sort of like local teams BAS B off cities but then the players were like never from those so you had some really weird

mismatches of attempts to try and match traditional Sports and orts like like you know franchise models and all these other things where like we're we went through a lot of iterations to try and figure it out and like you said maybe now it's just we kind of got a clean house and reset it a bit uh but but one area that I found interesting that I've seen uh you know talking to people at PlayStation and things like that uh around their sort of like Esports scenes is the idea of like at least in the US one thing that does seem to work kind of well at least at a very small level is rather than like the hugely televised you know Arena level is as sports games uh you know running like FIFA Madden those kind of things at like more local Grassroots level smaller tournaments not trying to make it this big televising which is ironic because they're just digital versions of those physical Sports so like technically they're imitating it far more than the Esports are uh and and in a way like the incentives are are weirdly like a wi right it's still you still have the publisher Who's involved but it's also mimicking a real sport probably with licenses outside of you know EA's recent FC game which is in a

in a weird place with that so we'll see how that one does but uh it's it's kind of going back to the old school Esports which was like more Grassroots tournaments local tournaments uh you know people just playing it because they like the game they understand the game everyone knows how to watch those you don't have the issue of like with a lot of these games as a new viewer to Esports you have to go through this sort of period where either you already understand the game really well or you have to learn it when you watch it regular Sports not as hard and most people kind of know them to an extent so you go to watch let's say they were you know to televis a local Tournament of you know FIFA or Madden or whatever you You' get it right you be like I know this sport I can tell what's going on the commentators don't have to do as much that lift so it's kind of interesting to see that and I don't know if that will really grow above that level but there is at least some level orts that like makes a little more sense I think and those obviously have a franchise model to keep going for the financials of that right so it's not necessarily advertising in the sense of like let's try and sell a DLC or an app purchases let's try and keep keep this game extend uh its lifetime as a game as a service instead they have the annual

model so it's a very different business model around the game as well so thought it was interesting like just some different things that are kind of working I don't see those being necessarily adopted by the bigger games uh like the kind of games is a serve as competitive games but I think maybe yeah maybe we do need to Fig figure out a better model but uh I mean at least valve is like seems to be doing okay with his kind of hands-off approach as you mentioned just kind of be like hey tournament organizers can run what they want the publisher isn't necessarily try to run it the same way and maybe that is like what we go back to where it's just like hey you guys do kind of what you like here's some rules follow these rules do these things yourself just don't tarnish the game and uh and run it as a tournament like with your own profit model with your own sponsors with your own like rather than making that a marketing vehicle for the game so much I mean it's done quite well for a Counterstrike uh and speaking of which Counter-Strike to got uh kind of I was was beta for a while and kind of got really kicked out there maybe a little uh too aggressively in uh Advent the idea that it was also the original was Dlisted so want to crack into that fppe

yeah yeah you're right so I commented on on on this news a few months ago when B announced that they were going to launch Counter Strike to so they they releas it like few days ago and as you said like it's has been felt a bit like of a rush uh like I was hearing some jokes about rashby like ter is do in Counter Strike so kind of like the appro that they've taken it so let's let's recap the summary of major major changes that uh they have they have added in Counter Strike 2 compared to Global Offensive so they are using their well new game engine Counter Strike 2 uh is using source to game engine uh which is a significant upgrade from the The Source engine like results in improved graphics performance and and physics they have updated the maps so several of the classic Counter Strike maps have been updated for Counter Strike 2 and these

updates include like ne new visual effects improv level design and back fixes uh one of the the major improvements is the subti system so Counter Strike to Features a new subti system that allows for more precise heat detection and collision detection so basically you have like um like the the actions that the players are taking like being synchronize with the server uh much more frequent frequently so this uh enables to to be more precise of what the actual what actually happened in the in the game play and who who killed who first H and resolve this uh more properly so players are really satisfied with with the this Improvement and the latest one probably the most visual one is the responsive smokes so now smokes in Counter Strike to re react more realistic to realistically sorry to the

environment and the player movement and also like now you can suit through uh smoke uh and then create a hole where you can see uh through it so kind of like changing the the way of interacting with the smoke that as we we know from the past and as you said it's been a replacement of csgo so I guess that people are both they didn't want to like split their user base uh between the the players going for the previous because they they want still like to keep what they had or the status or whatever uh they they migrated everybody to the new one uh inde did there were complaints because like this wasn't really properly announced and there were tournaments that were being held on csgo and then suddenly you couldn't play any longer so they needed to decide like what to do like where to try to go to uh some pirate servers and and finish the tournament or like move into

CS2 uh there are also being complaints uh because like there are some content being lost uh as of now at least like as some game modes that haven't been created in CS2 yet and also Community created maps that are not available yet it's also not working on on Mac H I saw some jokes about it like it's a bad news for the players of uh ma of Counter Strike but well still like uh it's something that some players is still there I guess that if they they did the move without having ma version ready is because like it's not going to create a big impact anyway uh but this is more on the complaints that there are still like things that it felt that it was R like it wasn't really finished uh and probably people questioning why they did the move if like the Global Offensive was working really well still and they could have waited a

little more to to finish this and properly H launch it but on the other hand the response has been really really good so more than one. five million conquered players were playing I think on the first day on the first couple of days uh that was massive so to to give a an understanding of of the the scale of these like among the top 10 uh games with concurrent players like H Counter Strike 2 had more than the other nine together so was really really massive uh I heard also some uh unconfirmed like uh data that they made like 40 million in opening loot boxes in the first 40 minutes so it's like a million per minute that's insane it's insane really insane was there new content or

something for people to be opening that or were people just like that excited I think there was new content so they had like migrated all the content that they had before all the Skins the the weapons and everything H people were uh preserving this when migrating to the new new game but I I guess that they were having like new stuff uh with these loot boxes and I guess that what was what was creating this um craziness yeah I don't I don't have that many thoughts on like CS2 in in general other than like yeah I mean it seems like a transition that's going relatively smoothly they're like leveling up the look and feel of the game for you know just future proofing it a bit more but man the case openings part of that of your notes Felipe is like just what leaped out to me and so I was Googling a bit and I I was seeing that um earlier this year it was reported that um valve makes about like

$54 million a month on average just from like these case openings um and it's probably gone up since then because I was also seeing that there was like a like one month uh where players spent over 100 million on on these cases so like in general like this is probably one of like the most the best like gaming businesses out there just CSO cases um like that's just insane um and still like everyone knows csgo is big but like that still is like pretty underrated um if you ask me but or like transactions on it just to be clear like how are they making that money on the cases uh I don't know I can go go figure that out I think it's like cases being opened like so like the keys I think so um okay yeah uh because then there would just be also the trans the market fees on top of that which would be even higher yeah which is like the other piece of that like that was just like the case openings but then there's the

marketplace that builds on top of that so it's like very an underrated business but yeah fify what you were saying about like making however many millions and however many minutes like that's that's like next level um insane so obviously that's not sustainable but it really just shows that csgo players they're into these freaking cases so good on valve for figuring this out um there's probably something here that others can learn from from what Val is doing uh hopefully not every game turns into just a bunch of these like loot boxes um but wow pretty incredible I gota wonder if some of the case opening like frenzy was also people like uh Hoping to either get stuff that's like very exclusive to the early launch meaning like maybe it gets taken away later or whatever and like there's never an opportunity again and this was like the OG csgo 2 stuff basically or that there's bugs in the in the loot boxes that they could exploit early on right there might even be some that people caught on to and it's like

hey let's open as much as possible before valve catches on could be those kind of situ I mean there's a lot of possible factors there but I gota imagine like people are trying to take advantage of the situation in some way or another or think they're going to to really be doing that or they're just really that excited but I I don't know if it generates that much but I guess you know when people hear numbers like that for for the case openings in the profit like you don't have to wonder why valve doesn't make that many games like the amount money but it also does make you think like why don't they try and make more games that use these like case kind of things and maybe they could be making significantly more money uh because again they they make the money off the game uh through the the case openings and they make the money off the market which they also own and get you know transaction fees off of so it's a very lucrative thing for them to be doing and how much maintenance have they really had to do on that game over time like it's got to be I mean I don't know how much they make too off of like DOTA too we haven't really even dug into that that's another one that's just kind of been somewhat coasting for them for a while that they've they' got to be

making good money off of Team Fortress 2 I think did okay with for them for a while as well but that's see maybe slowed down a bit but it's it's just interesting as as their sort of business model with the games that kind of are games as a service that they do very little service on right like it's it's a weird game because you know we're used to games in service is like live Ops live Ops live Ops like every week people gotta be pupping out content or your game's just going to die whereas valve is just like no we're good we we'll put out some new stuff for people who have in cases we'll put out new cases that's got to be like the lowest level effort profit model for like games as a service that anyone is like just the cost to benefit ratio it's got to be insane on those and it's it's interesting like to I me because they inherited that game success from like a modder basically uh that they picked up and and it's and it's stupid I didn't find a way to monetize like some of the other games they picked up like portal to the same extent but I mean you look at the steam charts for the game right now like which kind of got like merged Counter-Strike GO one and two and it's like it's it's only picked up like it definitely did not lose players from from dropping that but I do I do want maybe know this if

they uh Dlisted csgo one because of the the sort of fragmentation they got when they first launched csgo it took a while to really catch on because you had people stuck on 1.6 and on source and I know there's some other ones like nexxon has their weird Counterstrike and there are some other ones but generally people like a lot of people stuck on CS go I mean CS 1.6 and I imagine they were like we can't have people dragging into this new economy we need every won in this one game I mean do you think that was a big factor in it definitely definitely I think that that was like kind of the learnings that they got in the past and that they tried to prevent that happening again with this new one so I I completely think that's that was the reason it seems kind of risky though when you're like I know they didn't change the game huge amount but definitely the competitive scene like I mean you mentioned the the the the actual events that already got kind of screwed up by that like I hopefully they worked something out with valve where they could maybe host an old like build or something locally but it's it's a situation where you're also changing some important Dynamics the smoke stuff

you mentioned like maybe doesn't sound like a huge thing but anyone who's watched csgo competitive smokes are a huge part of the game right they they drive a lot of the gameplay in the early and mid game in terms of like who moves where and like a lot of the Dynamics of it and all of a sudden you could punch holes in that and the way it bows is different and like that's it's got to be a pretty big deal I mean I haven't seen like csgo 2 competitive Esports and I'm looking forward to seeing how that impacts those but then you so got the level design changes I mean this is a game that's Infamous for having one map pretty much dominate the game for years with de de dust right where like people don't seem to like change too much in this game they like to really refine one map and so you take out some of those Community maps and some of the other Maps you revise the classic Maps change the like I mean it's cool for seeing a meta shift but if I know anything about Pro players they hate change they hate having to like learn something new having to work at it again uh I mean the audience loves it right but the but the pro play players I got to imagine are like really not happy about having to like this forced transition into into

like new things they have to learn you know but again this is as I mentioned earlier this is like valve is kind of a little more hands-off with the competitive scene so they just kind of be like well sorry you know like they're not the ones running most of these tournaments so I I kind of wonder if that Dynamic is a little more okay with them because of that situation but I agree but I would say also that um that they have been like kind of doing a Navy test right like they had like open a a vaa for small percentage of the population that they were only being able to play CS2 or probably these were able to play both CS2 and csgo while there were other people that were kept playing only csgo so I guess that they understood and that's why like although we see risky to to do this this thing this way and R it in in such manner they probably saw that the engagement with CS2 was high enough or even like even better and and that's what probably they did this this roll out this way and like

at this time right so probably uh we need to to to to think to believe that there are really smart people there because they for sure they are and they have analyzed all these details so probably they they analyze like okay what is highly engaged players what are tournament Players like what's their behavior are they sticking to csgo while we opened CS2 or are they playing more on CS2 and probably so that that was like really working for them I mean obviously they have a ton of analytics right owning the whole platform that it runs on and everything like that plus like you know explain that the amount of data from the game sounds like it's a lot more so they should be able to yeah to do a lot of data mining I would imagine I also wonder like the big question I have is so like uh csgo is also kind of Infamous for cheating right like not necessarily because Val does a poor job at it but because cheaters are very incentivized or like the the cheat developers right to continually sort of win that arms race as much as possible I do wonder if like the engine change and the technology shift has any advantage

against cheaters like if like at the very least if this disrupts them for a while because like the engine being different maybe the cheats they're using don't work anymore they have to scramble to fix that uh if this could be a big Advantage for players like looky to avoid cheaters like because that could be a pretty big deal for a game that tends to deal with that a lot like a lot of people especially you just with with the game being like free to play like you can create account after account uh stuff like that you have this you know they try to deal with status systems and it it seems like a complicated problem to solve but I I mean I you can't just engine change right all the time to kick out cheaters but I I do wonder if this could be a significant Advantage maybe even a factor in why they forc the switch just to possibly like shove everyone into a new space and force the cheat developers catch up I mean there there if I remember correctly two valve has been known to like Sue cheat developers and things like that um and and like try and deal with that as much as possible or stop that but I mean that's you know one of those battles you can't always win but yeah really look forward to seeing how this goes like this is kind of early I think to get

metrics on it but I think it'll be for the whole industry to see like whether or not this is a good thing or bad thing for a company that's been very successful for a long time in a game that's been you know we're talking about orts dying like this is the oldest Esports game that's still active right at this point basically I mean if you consider it you know from 1.6 or whatever onwards uh as one game like this is because I don't think many people are playing Starcraft 2 competitively so much anymore so I'd say this is probably one of the longest running so it it's kind of funny that we're talking about all the newer ones you know falling apart and the oldest ones like hey no we're just releasing a new version we're still going strong and we're still the top game on Steam you know with like a billion players almost uh active at any one time it's I and the amount of money being made so I don't know hopefully some lessons can be learned for these other Esports games uh from this in some way or another but valve does kind of keep a lot of stuff kind of tight to the chest so we uh we wanted to uh also end things here on on kind of a fun note uh we got a little trivia from Aaron here he's got some questions we're gonna see uh See see how quick we are on the draw I think yeah I

have no idea how this is going to go but you know it's a light Newsweek we try things out let us know what you think but I got a trivia Showdown for Felipe and and Devin here it's a bit smaller group than we were aiming for um but you know it'll be a one-on-one battle um and we'll see who the ultimate Victor is but here's how it's going to work I have 10 questions that I'll run through they're all about the business of gaming um I'll ask the question and I'll give you 10 or so seconds to type your answer into the chat that we have and then when I say go hit enter so that the message goes through we can see what everyone says it is a competition of course but feel free to keep it Lively um and active if you want to discuss options or try to sabotage each other's answers um in that short 10sec spans that I'm going to give or so uh for every answer

you get right uh you'll get a point or some of them whoever's closest uh will get will get the point and at the end we'll see who has the most right answers and of course the winner wins Eternal novic gaming podcast Glory so H the reward is definitely worth competing for um and for everyone listening you know play along why not let us know what you think but also you know if you uh if you outscore any of these fine fellows or underscore let us know send me send me an email or send us an email at podcast.co or hit us up on Twitter with h hasag ibeat Devon or something something like that if you want to flaunt your Victory or hashtag I lost to Devon if if if Devin comes in clutch today we will see um but let's go ahead and kick it off I hope you guys have the the chat open um first question question number

one according to cirana what is the bestselling console PC game of 20203 you guys have 10 seconds there's some some big options out there no Googling Googling is cheating um in this example if you don't get it right we'll go with uh maybe a second round but do you have your answers locked in yeah all right hit enter go nope you were both wrong so Devon said Zelda FIP said balers gate three I'll give you five more seconds to to give one more guess um and if not I'll go with whoever was closest Five four three two s one there was some big ones enter no not Starfield the God of

War the answer is Hogwarts Legacy oh my goodness yeah yep that's the bestselling game of 2023 um kind of a w i mean the Harry Potter Wizarding World IP has been very underutilized for years and so it's it's also yeah there's been some bad Harry Potter games too it seems like so it's living its moment but number two um is Zelda tears of the Kingdom um and so I'll go ahead and give Devon close points that point there point I was I was one platform you know half a point sounds sounds good for this one you get half a point for that Deon question number two it according to data. what was the number one grossing game on mobile yesterday I mean we all know what the the biggest mobile games are so uh it wouldn't shock me if someone got this

right at least on number two but let's lock it in hit ENT turn three two one go it's not gensin or Candy Crush guys you you got this I'll give you one more one more shot let me see if I can give a give a hint it's it's a relatively new game it's not it's not one of these these uh Classics of many years let's give it one more shot in five four three two one go monster hunter it is it is not Monster Hunter it's a new one the answer de you're not going to put in a number two I you know I don't know man like that's fine the answer is Monopoly go really yeah expected that yeah and then um Royal match is actually

number two and then Candy Crush so new games are starting to take over the tops of the charts but there you go no one no one gets points on that one feel free to to to teamwork with each other if if you need for for some of these I don't think either of us would have dug up Monopoly go out of or Monopoly now um so the the next two might be might be a bit harder and so I'm going to maybe whoever is the closest on this one um will will win um out of all of the gaming companies that are over a $500 million market cap so basically just all of the big gaming companies what is the best performer on the stock market over the past three [Laughter] years I'll give a I'll give a hint they don't make games all right I'll I'll give I'll let you get guys give give a shot here you look you really threw us off with that one man like that they

don't make games all right well five four three two one go no it's not Roblox that's a good guess they haven't even been public three years though Devon do you have a do you have a guess I mean Unity no I don't think they've been public three years either um I'll give one more shot to you guys think think about the memes think about the memes no no it's not Facebook Devin you got this I believe in you me I know you know this I probably do too and I'll feel stupid the minute you say what the answer is all right well I'm just gonna go ahead and say the answer bust it out the answer is GameStop GameStop is the best performing like games industry company of uh you were counting retail come on now well I told you they don't make games but you know what yeah I see

I see the memes now that that that much is obvious that that movie just came out too by the way I don't know if any of you guys have seen it on uh like dumb money on the whole like uh Reddit GameStop thing I haven't seen I'm kind of looking forward to it it looks fun the ultimate meme stock yep is uh is GameStop but if you guys answered Sega which is the the the next one I would have given that but I wasn't expecting anyone to get that one kind Sur say it you know too like I mean they they I feel like they've kind of spread out their stuff but yeah I guess they're doing pretty good like picking stuff up they've been on a quiet role um arcades so the next one the next next question feel free to teamwork however you guys need on this is the flip side out of all of the these large companies what is the worst performer all right five 4 3 2 one zinka Facebook is that your answer

Facebook said I hope Facebook no it's not it's not Facebook Facebook's like more than doubled in the past no they they should be punished for their spending but they're not so do you gu fipe well I was thinking Unity but you said like it hasn't been public for so long but they feel like they they have uh really like lost like a lot since they they they do the APO they have lost a lot I don't think they've been public they haven't been public three years embracer is close is close really okay it's close I'll give you guys one more shot think close to embracer what could it be whoever says it first wins the point oh it's on tip my brain too don't want to think of the name still front fipe you got it there you go oh nice yeah because you think back three years ago was like the peak coid Heights everyone was bought in on the m&a strategy um and it's unraveled before embracer like took over the podcast still front was the other one so I just couldn't remember the name off

good job Le yeah well there you go um so number five currently take to Zinga is the largest gaming deal of all time and and if Activision Microsoft goes through that'll be the next one what is the largest deal after those so the third largest gaming deal of all time it's not it's not Bungie no it's not zenx whoever gets it next whoever gets it first wins it's not King it's not no what was it I feel like it's a big company buying a mobile company though like I feel like that's got to be it it is it is big big mobile acquisition who else was it it's been a while it's been a while I'll give you I'll give that hint too you guys got this it's Peak I I don't think peak's been acquired yet um the other ones before that I'll give I'll give five

more seconds before I'll just just say it five four three two last chance one the the answer is 10 cent acquiring supercell they acquired 80% for it was like 8.6 billion I want to say so it valued super like 10 billion at the time that was 2016 so it's been a while since that one happened but yeah big big deal all right how how B how was that compared to like the riot pick up forens set Riot was pretty small com comparatively I think um I can actually maybe look it up right now right acquisition Ser like for comparison right because you got like mobile games and then like someone who's got this giant ecosystem around one game somehow being much cheaper um I'm not 100% sure I might have to dig so they didn't buy 100% of Riot but I think they bought a majority stake for 400 million at the time nice

Riot I know counting majority Stakes but you know yeah well some some point it feels like we'll be counting Ubisoft under their Acquisitions the way things are going too so so no one got that one um this this isn't looking great so far Felipe I have a point for you and Deon I have half a point for you so listeners out there I know I'm sure there's one of you feeling really good right now getting your hashtags ready uh but let's go to number six in the first half of 2023 winch Venture Capital firm invested the most money into games startups all right five four three two one go yep you both you both got it right it was okay I was gonna say my second answer was um uh Anoka Brands Anoka brand is uh they're not they just been throwing money around yeah I don't think they would be considered like

a yeah in the same category per se but I I guess pretty pretty high um I'd say a6z still ranks like at this point as well not just the beginning it seems like yeah bit craft was pretty close at number two yeah um as well um and makers was number three for the first half of 2023 if anyone was was wondering getting getting ready for future Tri rounds um all right how about this one and this one is who gets the closest wins what you what did you say fipe that we split the point because we both guessed or I I'll just give you both the full point why not nice enjoy your point um all right so next one whoever gets closest wins as of the latest quarter how many average daily active users does Roblox have it's a big number unless you first guess is probably wrong but let's get throw it out there probably both of them are wrong oh

probably way too low so so Devin you guess 15 million Felipe you guess 300 million the answer is 65.5 million so Devin you you are closest it's AIG right rules Ma sorry oh ma yeah that makes sense you made really answer way too small fully paid like crap 300 million I hope hope it's not that it's crazy I mean it wouldn't surprise me they are multiplatform as well gotta keep that in mind and now they're going to be on Quest so or on Quest already all right so it's it's getting close Devin has two and a half points Felipe you have two points um so question number eight uh what are the top three bestselling video game franchises in history in terms of of units sold um so I'll let you put in your three guesses put them in like back to back um

like your grouping of three guesses and whoever has the most right out of the the three it gets the point so I'll let you think about it for five to 10 seconds five four three two one let's see what you got all right Devin you guessed GTA Final Fantasy and Mario um Mario is in that list and fipe Pokemon Mario Harry Potter Pokemon is also in I wasn't sure if we could put Mario because Mario's like in like 50 million different franchises so I wasn't sure if that was a valid answer but it is valid I think uh I think Mario is number one let me see if I can pull it up Mario is number one with 832 million units sold wow um Tetris is number two with 495 million and then Pokemon is is that counting like all the um the weird like spin-offs that they did as well I assume

uh I am not positive actually don't know most of it almost all that is just like the mobile game paid downloads I think of I don't even think these are all the variants um just Tetris was very popular um so Felipe you win the point um and for those interested Call of Duty is number four GTA is number five FIFA is number six I forgot about Call of Duty dang should have thought yeah so those are I feel like GTA was just pulled up by the by GTA5 well the tables are turning it's now Felipe with three Devin two and a half well that's because GTA 6 hasn't come out yet that's not my fault there there you go you should have thought that through uh so number nine including handheld hybrids and home systems what is the bestselling video game console of all time I'll give you five four 3 2 one and go totally wrong

but I just that do answer something you're both wrong it's not the switch and it's not the PlayStation I bet it's the original game boy one so uh let me see if I can pull this up so the switch is number three and the PlayStation one is I don't even know where it is on the list it's not okay it's number one two three four five six it's number six so there's I want guess older ones but I don't think people bought as many units back then right so it's hard to like go off of time for that one It's Tricky yeah so I'll give you give you one more guess um and whoever gets it right or closest um when so again this is handheld hybrid or you know like full Home console yes that is is the Atari the Atari Jaguar obviously that was definitely all right maybe four three two one go let's

see what you got uh so fle said PS3 Devin said the Nintendo 64 so pretty off with that one the winner is still Devin with the switch at number three so I'll give you a a half point for that you didn't quite nail it um number two the the number two is the Nintendo DS actually uh which sold 150 more for Million number one is I two I I thought about putting the DS but is that counting like the different versions of the DS or is that just the straight original DS that's just the straight original DS not the 3DS um right because there was like DS Light there was all these other like DS version SI what make sure so yeah number one was I was going to go with Virtual Boy but you know and PS2 and Nintendo DS are pretty neck and neck as number one and the switch isn't done yet so I don't know if it'll get to surpassing those uh

so the others are at like 154 155 million Nintendo switch is at about 130 so I don't know if it'll get to the number one spot but maybe once that Super Mario Wonder comes out I know they got to get selling quickly before switch two comes out if they want to top the charts so Deon I'm gonna give you a half point for that and you know what that means you both are tied at 33 with one final question left and the final question for you all is again whoever is the closest W all right and so um let's see uh Devin actually let me ask the question first um at the time of recording how many published episodes of the novic gaming podcast are there and I think um for reference S you can confirm I think this is our 116th Round Table episode so you have that information to work with right

which which which shows are we counting here are we counting all the interview counting all everything every episod that we've had H okay I'll give you I'll give you a few seconds to think about it before you drop it into the chat but this is the tiebreaker who is the biggest noic gaming podcast fan of the of the panel uh I didn't the answer I had to I had to look it up myself to come up with it so don't feel bad either way but five four three was a question sorry was the question how many episodes of the novic gaming podcast have been published as of the time of recording so not including this episode all right let's see it in five four 3 2 1 and go Felipe I just told you that there we're on number 116 of just this this segment he thought you said ma understanding the question that's what I asked because I wasn't

understanding it watch if still be closer than me I'll let you give one more guess so that you fully understand so again how many episodes of this podcast are there with the information that we're on 116 of this one okay okay so yeah I'll let you throw one more guess in basically is it over or under 265 I'm sticking with mine I feel I feel confident about that one being close enough I mean if if Filipe goes 264 I'm gonna be upset okay right higher you're gonna go higher higher so drum roll please there are of the novic gaming podcast 200 and 45 episodes oh so close I 250 and I revised it up too so Devin you you clutched it out with this win of the inaugural Nava

gaming podcast trivia Showdown I hope you can fully bask in its Glory um we got do more the who's the closest ones that's apparently my best game yeah we should we should do more of that I probably had some that were too difficult um I can't I can't get the right answer but I can close to it right that's that's all my half points so anyways some good learnings from doing this through um but anyways thanks for for bearing with me as we gave that a shot I hope that was a a fun way to so that's for sure like uh that's that's pretty good well there you go that's all you got for me Devon cool cool well like Good Times hope hope uh you at uh the listener at home or wherever you are got a few of those as well definitely fun I will have to do that again sometime hopefully with some more contestants for me to beat with those who's the closest but uh yeah thanks for that Aaron cool cool well the thanks of course to both of you for joining uh and of course the listener as well thanks

for listening hopefully to all 240 something episodes we got to get up to 300 now we got a new goal so we're just gonna have to crank out a whole bunch more interviews and crypto corners on you know on the side of these so make sure you're listening to those as well if you're a round table listener and aren't aware that we also have uh other great shows make sure you're listening to those as Aaron mentioned he's got a great interview coming up we we've got a lot of interviews putting out with some great content different format than this obviously so and of course you know again I like to repeat this every time because you know people get discover this and don't know you make sure you're going to nov. and uh subscribing to the navic digest great great content we're continuing to ramp up that content and quality all kinds of good insights data all kinds of all kinds of awesome stuff so make sure you're checking that out even if you don't read all of them at least subscribe so you can catch the ones that are uh of your interest but again thanks everyone make sure also that you hit us up uh at our email if got any feedback comments questions you want to brag about your score uh privately as not on social media it's fine as well uh it's podcast nov.com

again just for those who are familiar it's novic SP 2as so it's n a.co so make sure to to hit us up we always love to get some good feedback but in the meantime enjoy your weekend thanks for listening and we'll catch you guys next week if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five-star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast nov. or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what navic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.navicamls.net doco thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode