Nuverse Winds Down / Shrapnel Lawsuit / Business Of Gaming Awards

[Music] welcome to the navit 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 of course excellent panelist as always got a nice full table today we've got Matt Aaron and Sebastian how you guys doing awesome hell yeah sweet doing great man managed to Corner Sebastian for half a second back at home so hopefully he'll he'll stick around for the whole episode and not just travel mid mid episode here but I believe you had some stuff you wanted to uh talk about real quick Aaron yeah so this is just super fast so I think a couple weeks ago I mentioned uh that novic we we recently launched a revamped mobile user acquisition Consulting vertical um and if you haven't seen that you can check it out on our website but what I wanted to briefly say today is that we're actually looking for a couple more great talented people to work with us on it and so if that's you and you know Mol user acquisition work inside and out uh

you want to work on some exciting projects with exciting teams uh reach out to us we'd love to chat uh you can hit me up at aeronet nvic.org really cool guys here at novic so definitely take advantage of that especially these uh interesting times we live in but uh speaking of which some some a a few quick interesting news stories that are uh I mean I one of them I guess is less negative but uh there's definitely some some stuff shuffling around we'll get through pretty quick and then we actually have a a little bit of a Twist here we're going to do what's called the business game awards where we're kind of like uh talking about our nominations for Awards in sort of the business side of gaming so we'll dig into that after we cover the news real quick quick we just start with uh some

fun news here that uh I don't think it's made the complete rounds yet around bite Dance and nver yeah I don't know if I would categorize this as fun news but it was the biggest news story that I saw coming over the weekend and there was a reuter's report basically that uh bite dance owner of Tik Tock um is going to be announcing their intention to step back from uh video games specifically their um subsidiary called nerse um and where most people know nerse from is nerse is the publisher of Marvel snap uh the card battler um and so yeah this is a big this is a big move um new verse and B dance over the last several years have made a lot of Investments and moves to to really have a bigger uh position in gaming to compete with some of their domestic rivals in 10cent and net ease um new verse is also not the only gaming

Endeavor at fite dance they have a a VR um group called Pico they have a couple of other um like a casual gaming group and a mobile app store and things like that but nver is definitely the biggest one and um the the report States and by the way they haven't come out and stated this officially but the Reuters report states that they're going to be fire firing several hundred people uh and unwinding a bunch of the projects that are under development possibly looking to divest some of their existing assets so for those of you who are uh fans or players of Marvel snap they've already come out on Twitter and said that it's business as usual for them uh I don't know if uh you know their stake is going to be divested or something like that um uh we'll see time will tell as I said the report has not been um formally made by bite dance itself this is just reporting from Reuters but uh big news and um sad news for the people who are being laid off um but you know this is just a preview I'm writing about this for novic digest coming up soon so stay

tuned there uh I did a really quick analysis in some of my research and like all of the revenue that um newers has made in the you know fiveish years that they've been around keep in mind they also acquired moon at a 4 billion dollar valuation a couple years ago uh mobile Legends bang bang you take all the revenue post acquisition for moonton plus their own games it was like just over a billion dollars and bite dance made like 26 billion in Q2 this year alone so it's like a drop in the bucket for them and it seems like they're they're taking a meaningful step back from video games so I'll just pause there I think there's a lot of different ways we could take this but that that was the big news story that I saw this weekend yeah I'm not I'm not sure if you saw the same thing since you were doing some some uh research for the writing I had also done some like related to some of the Ubisoft stuff I was writing about and looked at all of new versus games and metrics like a couple weeks ago and definitely saw that like they were like most of their games were not doing great some of them were Dlisted like overall I was kind of surprised that uh they just

like overall as a company were not looking like their portfolio was not super successful like they had had some stuff that maybe did okay and then just kind of dwindled off so it is uh it's sad to see that kind of go down like the Marvel snap wasn't enough to kind of keep it like interesting I guess for them I mean I I look forward to your piece Matt once you on we have more time to kind of see what's really going on and you can kind of Flesh this out a bit more for us but yeah in my mind like the quick take is it was a case of buy high sell low in a sense they really timed going all in you know kind of at the the peak covid times um and spent as you said billions of dollars on this effort and you know if they you know divest moonton and sell some other assets they'll they'll get a good chunk of it back so it's not the the worst thing in the world but it is a a really big and interesting just strategic shift I guess and I don't think they're the only ones to do it and probably you know for a company like bite dance you can't just

look at the game division in in a vacuum right like it's part of a much bigger entity which includes Tik Tock and you know the Chinese equivalent of of Tik Tock and all the crazy things that are going on on there which right now includes like a massive e-commerce push among other things and when you when you go into something like e-commerce in particular as we've seen many times that's an extremely expensive Endeavor and we can even look at another example in the games industry C limited which owns Gina and how they have you know increasingly struggled to prioritize their gaming vertical and doing new and interesting things uh with free fire and other games and have also had divestments and just less Focus there as they've invested more in their e-commerce business and competing there which takes heavy subsidies so in my mind I mean I would guess that this is in part to just refocus on some of the bigger opportunities right in front of

them that are perceived as larger markets that are more timely to invest in and if they can get a few billion dollars back to accelerate their investments in these other areas um that's probably what they're thinking uh it could be could be a little off but um yeah when you're a massive ecosystem you just have to think a bit differently and unfortunately even like big business verticals you have can be victims to the larger success you're trying to achieve yeah I I'm with Aon there uh just for people who don't know bite Dan is on track to make hundred billion dollar this year right like in terms of Topline Revenue which is um maybe a few billion off of meta right like so we're talking about one of the largest revenue generating companies in the world so given that it certainly just seems like one of those Focus points uh as they as they move in that direction I I think especially with how the macro economy is going we're seeing a lot of this refocusing and it's more about getting the ex Executives you want who you know

can ship products into the right groups and making sure if that's gaming that's great if not whatever I am curious though what the trickle down effects are because we do know that the Tik Tok for example is has a big gaming push inside of their ecosystem does this affect that my guess is not at all I think that this it's a little bit like you can't really project what Amazon's doing based on what Amazon's doing you know like it's like yeah like there's so many people and there's so many divisions and so many kpis who the hell knows I think you're right s like they're they may be stepping back from game development and game publishing but they're not leaving gaming alog together they have this massive like UA distribution arm um that touches gaming that I think it would be foolish for them to just set aside it seems to be doing quite well um but um yeah there's a lot of different angles to this that I think you all kind of touched on some of it could be you know macroeconomic slowdown in China some of it could be like another case of big Tech tries to do gaming and fails um there's a lot of lot of different angles

we could sort of analyze this from but I think the tldr is like new verse didn't quite work out but they're not going to leave gaming entirely how they remain remains to be seen let's say are you guys bullish or bearish on with gaming on Tik Tok I know they're doing interesting things um that you know are like it's like a a new generation of instant games that you know people were raving about a few years ago but do you think it'll trans trans into Revenue success or does it even matter for them I'm bullish I I just think it's unfortunate that I'm bullish because the trend lines would suggest I should be bearish but I just happen to be bullish like like it didn't work for SNAP right like Pon left snap it didn't work for other people but I just fundamentally philosophically believe that gaming consumer should be married and therefore will continue to bet in that direction that it's going to work out for them eventually although Maybe not to the revenue scale of selling

items no I'm just I'm just surprised they weren't able to leverage you know all the data they have at Tik Tok all the stuff that they could do for UA potentially with such a captive audience and such a strong algorithm that they weren't able to find some way to leverage that for gaming in a time when UA is like one of the biggest struggles that they just couldn't find an angle there that was like worth pursuing like as a competitive advantage over a lot of the other like mobile market in general obviously it's on mobile right that's why you're looking at Tik Tok the mobile market struggling like it seemed like I mean maybe the Privacy stuff was just too much and the the issues with uh the US government when it comes to like by dance and that whole like thing going on maybe that was just they're just like ah let's just back away from all that but as you said just maybe a scale issue it just seemed like a surprise that like I bullish like Sebastian and they just they couldn't find a way to like make it work right now maybe later on but it seemed like a good opportunity but we do have uh another interesting shake up at the and of course as Matt said not truly interesting in the good way uh interesting in the uh spectator popcorn

sort of way uh where there's some some some shakeups I guess you could put it happening over in sort of the web 3 space uh with shrapnel and uh neon take that way yeah so if you haven't seen yet this is just an interesting thing to look into which is that trapnel uh six of their co-founding directors are suing uh their other controlling shareholder the details are going to come out eventually but for the time being just know that there's a clearly a board fight governance does matter like if there's two takeaways from this is one shrap no house is a really interesting spot they just raised a lot of money they've raised you know tens of millions of dollars already their game isn't out it's not close to be out right like full plan release is still over a year away I think or maybe seven to eight months away that said there is a fight at the director level we'll see what happens corporate governance does matter

like Founders also matter of course like picking the right Founders making sure everything that's really important but do know that corporate governance does matter which I think we lost a lot of sight of especially in the craze of the last few years and we're starting to see some of the consequences of that in the last little fake here so um links in the notes highly recommend just reading about it long story short it's a lawsuit whenever you see a lawsuit in startups that means a lot of things broke down prior to the lawsuit because you just don't like suing each other yeah I think this is a lesson that prominent Sams in the the tech world have have learned over the past year or so but also like I have a this type of thing happens more um as a result of down cycles of certain types too where typically as long as valuations are going up everyone's raising money everything is good but as we've talked about before when um when you're faced with down rounds or just valuation resets it messes up your cap table um incentives get skewed uh people

are upset um these types of of actions become more prominent so I I pretty much guarantee you that there's more of this type of behavior lurking in the background all over the tech industry and the games industry um hopefully not you know as frequently to this this extreme um but I just have a feeling that we'll see more of these types of stories uh emerge whether it's like this exact flavor perhaps not uh but more more governance shakeups uh you know management buyouts all sorts of you know Ripple effects that are a byproduct of harder downtimes paired with strange governance quirks for sure well one thing I will say about crypto in particular because I've seen some of those deals is that there are some exrain sities in terms of whether tokens are securities and as a result people have moved them around so

we'll see what happens there I think that is going to be something that we'll see bite people in the butt for the next X number of days years months yeah as you said Aon like something we'll see more frequently and I think web 3 is probably an area that's a little bit of a magnet for it as people kind of like look to figure out what to do with those Investments maybe did or didn't work out it it's a little frustrating as um someone who believes in the future of web 3 to see something that is like not game related at all once again um you know sort of shoot shoot itself in the foot um but regardless of whether you're bullish on trapn as a game or not it just it sucks to like see the potentially see the actual product impacted by stuff that really doesn't have anything to do with the game itself it's more like you know as Seb was saying like board governance and things like that uh it's just frustrating like there's nothing to be done as a fan but I just wish that web 3 would kind of get its act together and you know put out some good games instead

of doing this kind of I don't know whatever this is I think we all kind of expect these sort of growing pains with any any space right like it's unfortunate right and you know there's going to be casualties and other things and and messiness and but good stuff will grow out of it too so we we'll we'll look back at this in a few years and be like oh yeah remember that shrapnel thing yeah whatever you know but for right now it sucks for them but in the meantime as you said like they they're still uh working on the game it's it's way off early access next month I believe so you know which next month meaning like what two three days from now so should be uh should be pretty interesting to see how that game's going but in the meantime we actually got some other Insight from some some game analysis on the academic side uh paper you ran across Sebastian that you want to share yeah this is really cool I I love academic papers in general I think they are really cool to look at some people with very different non like business related insights come through it uh effectively uh Gandhi at all it's a paper coming out of UCLA uh with the third author being from riot

games they analyze around three million different League of Legends games to measure different outcomes and how engagement works it's a really cool paper I highly recommend reading it if you don't read it you can find some blurs that we've tossed into notes I've also wrote about it on a couple platforms myself some really cool insights the the paper is called belief entertain what was really cool is that it seems as though winning doesn't matter in terms of Engagement which I thought was pretty cool that's a little bit count intuitive they found that higher engagement occurs when people are actually behind in the game regardless of whether they win or lose the game and they measured basically the engagement as a function of are they willing to play another game within an hour of completing the previous game and they look at different probabilities from different stages other cool insights you saw a bunch of stuff around how people prefer to have suspense versus surprises and that's actually really interesting because that's something I feel like as a game developer I always screw up in my head which is

you want people to have anticipation as opposed to being surprised by the alchem itself so really cool paper it's still a working paper hasn't been I think fully published in any major journals quite yet but highly recommend to read I think it's really cool I there's like a lot to talk about it by when in interest of time I'll I'll pause there well I hope uh I hope someone like valve can also do like kind of a follow-up sort of research thing as well because like obviously League of Legends is is a bit of a specific spe ific game uh they have a ton of data and a ton of players but like I I hope that that stuff translates across other games because you know Counter Strike obviously has a huge huge player base and I imagine valve could provide a ton of data and also DOTA as well uh to provide some like a parallel game that may or may not like prove that obviously you know replication is a big part of science so I'm really curious to see if they could replicate that but in the meantime good read for the weekend right yeah one one thing I will note is that there is a great line inside this paper that I think is something that we

should all talk about and think about which is that despite the fact that a lot of people play video games like economic research on Leisure and video game leisure in particular is an incredibly under research ecosystem we've seen some research come out of other places but candidly you know UCLA is an amazing amazing Economic Department and for them to focus on this and is is a great thing to have so I I will say like it's a really great paper belief based utilities something that's really awesome uh it it touches upon loss AV verion highly recommend to read hopefully all those onchain games Matt zo's writing about will be able to provide a lot more transparent data for these kind of researchers right the future that's validatable because it's onchain but uh in the meantime we actually wanted to do some validating of our own we wanted to go through and do some awarding here and the this sort of award season of games it's sort of on the business side in terms of like you know people making good decisions bad decision decisions uh some some games some studios things like that so we all

kind of just going to go through a few different categories some nominations discuss them so I'll just kind of start in order and then we'll kind of change up the order I guess with each one just to keep it interesting so we'll just start right off with uh the biggest winner company or Studio starting with Matt um for me uh biggest winner the the the thing that really jumped out to me first when I was reading this category was larryan Studios and balers Gate 3 um probably they aren't the biggest winner in terms of Revenue or commercial success but to me this game is really a masterpiece and uh you know they bet on themselves and they really doubled down on what they believed in which was you know their their way of making games no microtransactions really long Early Access period developing with the community staying true to the IP of Dungeons and Dragons and um they put together like an amazing game that has um you know an insane level of detail um a really you know great replayability

for what it is a single player game largely I guess you can do co-op which I've heard is very good I have not tried it myself um and uh it's it's really like bucking the trend we'll come back to this in one of the later categories um but uh it's not a you know live service game it's not a microtransaction loot box situation it's it's a good old single player RPG and um it's uh it's beautifully done so that's my biggest winner gotta love seeing quality and dedication and like actual passion behind something winning out for once right Erin what's what's your biggest winner yeah well the first thing I want to want to say is that like these awards are not real we're not handing out plaques or anything so before anyone gets Grumpy in in my email which I know would totally happen uh we came up with this a day ago we're just having fun but if you think we're wrong about something let us know if you have feedback on like the categories or or what we're doing let us know too maybe we can sharpen it up be more official in future years or

something but um to to answer your question Devon the the biggest winner to me I think is scopely U they were acquired earlier this year for $4.9 billion do um which is not the the largest you know acquisition of of the year which of course is Activision by Xbox but um this still I believe is the sixth largest video game acquisition of all time I I think that's right the last I looked um but not only did they you know have that great exit outcome for the business but they followed It Up by releasing Monopoly go which became the largest mobile hit in a very very long time and just propelled them to just definitively be one of the largest um Mobile gaming companies in the world and you know definitely top in in North America so I think it's been an incredible year for them of just those two backtack achievements that is hard

to top in my mind sounds like they passed go a couple of times I'm so sad I went third uh we don't talk about this beforehand and legitimately Aaron took mine because I I I will agree that scopely is definitely one if if not scopely I think the answer is Activision Blizzard if only because Activision Blizzard and is is a company that managed to get their acquisition done that's pretty much all you can say in this ecosystem right now what more can you say other than that like it is not the case that we are bigger and better than trying to get an acquisition done in this ecosystem right now so I will I think they're all close but if I had to rank them I would probably have you know scopely one Activision Blizzard to I like how he stole yours so you stole mine Sebastian thanks but yeah I mean I I'll add to the Activision Blizzard thing that I think um not only did they finish the acquisition uh didn't sound like the compromises were too much on their side outside of the Call of Duty part like it didn't seem to

affect a lot of the rest of the business yeah maybe the the cloud side streaming side but that that wasn't really going to affect like the blizzard side but blizzard side especially also like they they they put out a game that was maybe not the best Diablo they ever done but made plenty of money off it put out probably you know one of the more subpar Call of Duty Modern Warfare recently still made tons of money off of it and now they just get to go quietly Into the Night of Microsoft and kind of like bethesa where they just kind of get to you know do whatever now at this point obviously like being acquired you know might mean changes and everything but I think at this point this is a great sun setting almost in a way for them in terms of like they're at a place where you know maybe they should just move on to being part of a bigger entity and uh now Bobby kotk can you know move off into the night as well and we can see what Microsoft could do with company so I think it's a a good ending in a way but we'll see what what it means for next year speaking of uh that topic in general we've got the opposite side here The Biggest Loser uh in terms of uh who just didn't didn't

work out so great this year but we'll uh we'll change up the order a little bit we'll start with Aaron sure so I I have a feeling there are a handful of possible answers here but the one I'll throw out is embracer uh which you know went from being a a king maker you know acquisition extraordinaire um you know had dreams of being a large you know holding company and an ecosystem of many types and that dream has unfortunately started to unravel in major ways and uh you know over the past few months they've been in the process of layoffs divesting all of that not fun stuff um so I think you know in terms of one company that's kind of had to hit the reset button um that's probably the most prominent uh one and in my mind and hopefully you know this isn't just to like dunk on on people um but hopefully they are able to kind of effectively hit

the reset button and you know over the next couple years you know we have like a category for you know like best turnaround that they can kind of find their find their footing and find their their way back to growth and profitability and just like big hits um um sooner than later embracer tops my list hopefully the companies underneath it don't end up biggest losers as well and they get you know get to the right place in that obviously that's the uh the downside of their strategies that a lot of other people are impacted but uh we'll see what Sebastian's got to say here hopefully that wasn't the same answer for you it was the same answer for me but you know that's fine uh I I'm I'm always happy when eron and I are aligned in in our vision and thought around this type of stuff you know I I will say the The Biggest Loser in a lot of ways is literally this going to sound really bad because I don't want to dunk on people but I think the biggest loser in 2023 are the games that didn't ship right I think as a rule of thumb if you

aren't able to ship your game and you run out of money you're in really bad shape and so we don't know quite yet what the biggest losers in 2023 are in all honesty but there are a lot of web3 companies that are raising money right now and it is not quite there and they're not going to be able to get a thing out they barely got out their vertical slice they're not going to be able to raise a lot more money and so in a lot of ways the AAA Studios that raised money 21 the web 3 triple ey or single ey Studios that raised 21 as well who spent 18 months working on a vertical slice to find an ecosystem that wants an actual product versus a vertical slice I would say that as a rule of thumb if you didn't ship a game after raising 21 you are the Biggest Loser of 2023 it's interesting you say that so because I feel like this year has had such a glut of amazing games that got released um there was a chart um I forget where where I saw it but it was like number of 90 plus Metacritic releases by year and 2023 was like Way High higher than all the rest and you know one of the hypotheses for that was

that a lot of games got delayed during covid they all kind of got pushed into 2023 so it's interesting to hear your other side of it which is like you're a big loser if you didn't get it out this year because everyone is pushing it out this year yeah no one one of the hardest things about gaming just to rip on that in particular is that especially Triple A and triple i games take about four to six years to make and problem with that typically is that you just can't predict what the future looks like in to the four four six8 years especially let's say say you're making try to make a triaa if you're trying to make a triaa MMO RPG the fastest I've seen it get done is four years and that's with a bunch of people who are burnt out in Asia right like that is the utmost there for everyone else it's just takes a long time and so if you expected and we started seeing a lot of this over the last six months or so but if you expected to have eight take all your money spend it in 18 months after

raising and then be able to use that to raise more money there are a lot of losers in that game right now because you're just unable to raise money because interest rates has changed everything has changed right and so given that I can't emphasize enough that you should take a step back and that certainly is one of the hardest things to do this year in terms of game development W I think Matt's uh think got the other big Target here if you want to jump into that one yeah yeah I mean the big loser probably on a lot of our listeners Minds has got to be Unity right um definitely The Biggest Loser in the pr game this year um ju you know I won't run through like all of the sort of blunders that they they've had but you know around the time just before they made the announcement on the runtime fees they were something like I don't know $38 a share and then they took a nose dive down to like 25 a share and I think just this morning they announced they're going to do another round of layoffs um and that brought the share price back up to like $30 a share um so

unfortunately more layoffs in the industry uh I think Aaron's pick embracer also announced some layoffs earlier this week um so that's going to be a theme that we're going to see throughout these Awards probably Unity The Biggest Loser in my opinion just like the backlash was uh Swift and intense and while I don't think they're going to go anywhere anytime soon just because of their Market position and and how easy it is to use unity and how much it's taught in you know development programs all that stuff uh longterm you know I think they've done some damage to their brand and their reputation we'll we'll see where they go from there one of the craziest things about this topic real quickly is that I think a common response to what we saw at open Ai and now what we're seeing at shrapnel is that your board is awful they're out to get you they hate you that I think is the wrong takeaway the right takeaway is that you should surround yourself with people you trust and have really good

opinions and are willing to tell you that you're wrong because if you have a board that does that you got to avoid decisions like happened at Unity the board signed off on that decision there's like no way the board wouldn't have signed off on that major of a decision which makes you wonder hey make sure that you have a group of people you're working with who not only have the ability to affect your decision but also that you trust your decision and so one fun fact that we take away from not only Unity but also open AI strap know everyone everywhere else is that a board is a double-edged sword you can have a really good board that can help you make really good decisions you can also have a board that screws you either by pushing you into decisions you want to make and also by like not allowing you to stop making decisions that would really be harmful to you yeah I was I was just gonna say too that um I actually feel pretty good about Unity turning the ship around from here I'm not um that worried about

the the kind of the trust and branding Point longer term which might sound a little crazy and toned deaf for now but I think that just a lot of the decisions that they're making to kind of refocus back on what they do best and what matters most um and doing it in a more profitable way is going to set them up to kind of serve their core purpose better in in the future so I so yeah y he definitely is a big loser of the year there's no question about it but it wouldn't surprise me 2024 2025 if they kind of come around as one of the largest um winners in a sense but last thing last thing I'll say on this before we move to other topics when you were getting abstract with it a bit Sab I thought you were going to say that like the Biggest Loser is like the people who are like affected by all of these like layoffs and stuff which I think is another like valid answer uh that might creep its way into other other categories but I would actually wager to say that um kind of what you classified

as largest loser those who haven't shipped their games that might actually be like as a category the largest loser like next year um as um you know they just have to kind of fight through and struggle through um managing cash flows and fundraises and all that kind of stuff maybe they're starting to see the pressures but next year is might when it might be when it hits the hardest yeah uh that that you're completely right I I will say and people aren't going like this take because it is too much of a hot take at times which is that I think generally speaking like turnover Is Not a Bad Thing uh it's hard to recognize in the moment but I think it's very similar to games like poker or ecosystems where you have a lot of winning and losing which is that like yes instability sucks it sucks for you as a person who are seeking stability but we you should remember in gaming in particular because this might be the first cycle for some of the people who

are new to the industry this is a really common cycle you work on a game it goes really Gang Busters and if it doesn't you got laid off like that is the ecosystem you opted into I think there's debate right now whether that should be the ecosystem I actually think it's a reasonable ecosystem because that's the ecosystem of entertainment that's work for like movies and television I think it could work for gaming as well we're hit driven industry and so my emphasis to everyone who's affected by this is just hey take a step back enjoy your holidays figure out a way to like financially support yourself consider leaving the industry at least for a little bit if you need to find more stable employment but subsequently that we should talk more openly to people who are coming into this space that hey and be honest and transparent we have 18 months still vertical slice if the vertical slice does poorly we go bankrupt and we call it a day and we we try again another time the people I see who really succeed in the space aren't the ones who never failed in gaming they're often the ones

who were willing to stick it out and it's not because sticking it out is necessarily A plus plus positive thing it's just that if you really enjoy working on it you just just assume that something like a high percentage of the project you work on fail and if you're uncomfortable with that you should not work in that genre of gaming or that genre of ecosystems it's just unfortunate when it happens uh I think it's a surprise I think it's the biggest thing right and the instability when you just the number of teams that have shipped a game and then been fired before it even hits the market uh that those are the real sad stories right where you're like oh cool let's see how it does oh wait never mind we we'll find out from the sidelines but uh you know it it as you said it's kind of the standard for the industry and maybe we could fix it maybe we can't but at least hopefully people had fun working on games but uh yeah I was goingon to go with unity as well and I think uh Aaron you're probably right only because like uh they kind of a cap of audience unless people are going to go to gdau or switch over to unreal what's the choice at the end of the day like uh I'm glad they

threw a CEO as a sacrifice and I think that was probably the thing that helped kind of let us move past it and then all right cool we're good now but I did want to throw you know one on there as well that was kind of like my runner up which is I feel likeably doesn't get mentioned enough which is uh payday 3 and star Brees I feel like they kind of bet everything on that game like they restructured everything they really focused everything like look Payday 2 was like our only real thing that we could make work like we really need payday three to like be the thing they made money off of it to an extent but I think they kind of torched their Cash Cow and I wouldn't be surprised to see layoffs come at starberry next I I don't see a strong future for them and it's like yeah they shipped but should they have I don't know like maybe they had to uh so I just feel like that was uh for for a franchise that had a lot of potential you know big loser to me but start with you this time Sebastian for biggest surprise yeah I mean I think the biggest surprise of this year has to be just straight up interest rates and its effect on a a lot of different companies

and so the the thing that I assumed last year was that people were paying attention to interest rates and that they're paying attention to risk of Ruin and paying attention to the idea of that hurdle rates change as improvements go through to summarize really quickly that concept if your base if if interest rates are 0% your hurdle rate the amount money you need to make on your money is lower because you just have to make more money than no money but if interest rates are like 5% or 6% where if I do nothing I will make 6% your hurdle rate is a multiplication between the return you have times the probability of the return and so I think the biggest surprise for me is just that gaming as a result of that was did not anticipate the fact that hey if you only succeed five 10% of the time your hurdle rate for outcomes has to be so high in order for you to succeed and what's weird to me is I always tell people all the time

that you know if you're a genius you're six months ahead of the curve and if you're an idiot you're six months behind the curve we're now 12 months plus into the curve and so it's just unclear if at some point you're like you're not being dumb you're being malicious right and so there are some people in the space who are continuing to change their world view and continuing to go through on a path that's just not sustainable and I think that's the biggest surprise to me I would imagined at some point you have to take a step back say hey these businesses aren't working the people who are doing them know they're not working and they're continuing to do them for some reason we should investigate this and so that I think is a biggest surprise that we haven't seen more of a trajectory change from a lot of the companies in the gaming space over last year guess the trajectory change was layoffs at this point and and downsizing and refocusing as they like to put it uh for sure and and they and certainly they should keep doing that but it it just blows my mind because uh there just some business models that just don't work when interest rates are this high and

I've heard from very intelligent people where they're like hey I think that interest rates are going to drop precipitously and it's like it's if that happens we're in a recession and there's a lot of bad things have occurred right and we talked about this with Aon last time I was on you can't expect the World to Change that quickly like Co doesn't happen all the time one would hope and it's weird to see a bunch of key decision makers make that point and the answer almost certainly is that they're incentivized to that they're not dumb they know that this is not working but that their incentive structure is such that you should keep perpetuating this idea as opposed to looking for a way to win in poker if you're drawing dead you're drawing dead right but a lot of these companies a lot of these Executives aren't drawing debt they do have a 5% chance of turning it around I just find it super surprising they're not taking it well we saw a lot of people betting on the FED pivot like really early on and continue to do so and continue to do so so there's definitely uh you know bad money chasing after bad so it's I guess

we're not it's not surprising we're in the situation now just hopefully 2024 is kind of the Year where we start turning around a little bit some of those people that uh got laid off start start up new Studios things like that but uh Matt we go we'll go to you next for your biggest surprise uh yeah I mean maybe it's not the biggest surprise to everyone but for me the surprise uh was the dominance of AAA single player experiences kind of a throwback to the games industry of old um you know games like balers gate I already mentioned but Zelda uh Spider-Man 2 Starfield I'm sure there are uh many that I'm I'm forgetting here but um you know as someone who comes from Mobile gaming and games as a service primarily like um these it was kind of a breath breath of fresh air you know like these aren't live service games they're not doing microtransactions but they beautiful experiences they tell a story and they performed really well commercially um and so to me that was the biggest surprise uh after several years of you

know live services and and uh you know endless uh uh you know fortnits and Call of Duties and you know no shade at those games they're very successful but that was like the dominant model it still is the dominant model um but at least this year with all the amazing single player experiences that came out um those sort of stole the show in my opinion and that was the biggest surprise for me yeah for me um I mean I would I would agree with Matt especially with wers Gate 3 just popping off to the degree that it did that that definitely surprised me but probably the other answer and this is a bit repetitive is just what Unity did with its runtime fees and just choosing to shoot itself in the foot like it's so surprising even now after it's all unfolded that they would actually choose to do that versus other options that they that they had and of course we don't have to rehash that again but but man that's that's going to be surprising to to me for for a long time that they kind of chose to hit the self-destruct

button with that you did actually make me think of another one Matt though like that I had originally put but like the Super Mario Brothers movie being part of that as well I I don't think anyone expected that like after like the previous one you know like people were probably just like ah yeah super brother yeah people are a little excited maybe it'll do okay and just blew everyone away the amount of money that made Nintendo had a lot of wins this year you know Zelda was quite successful um the uh what was it the Super Nintendo World or whatever the theme park opened up earlier this year obviously yeah yeah and uh they just announced what like a couple weeks ago the Zelda movie is gonna be coming at some point so uh Nintendo's on on a hot streak right now hopefully they can keep it up because this is like late stage switch and they tend to F flub every other console so maybe maybe switch to is where we see them take a little bit of a turn hopefully not I would love to see them knock two in a row out of the park especially now that they've kind of merged sort of mobile and I mean the the

handheld and console because they were kind of like alternating a little bit there as long as it's not a virtual boy moment uh hopefully it'll be a great one for for Nintendo and switch 2 I actually uh I had a little bit of kind of a different random one where uh the big surprise for me was just kind of out of nowhere the Apex mobile Legends uh or Apex Legends mobile like just pulling it out just it was a big release everyone was excited about it it was really well done uh executed on like a very difficult game to p over to mobile everyone's like cool this could be the next Call of Duty mobile and then just like it wasn't very long before it just joed right out just gone and it wasn't like it was just a complete failure there was like a lot of things going on behind the scenes and stuff like that but I think it was a pretty big surprise to not really take the time to turn that game around to find some way to salvage that obviously they have some other plans in mind but like that's a I think that's a pretty big investment and a pretty big deal to just take a game of that caliber both brand wise and quality in terms of like the amount of development and stuff like that and just be like no take it off the store uh and we obviously haven't seen a followup to that yet uh so I was at EA when this

happened uh so I won't comment like on what was happening in the company but I think it's interesting the reason that this is a surprise to a lot of people was and this is a bit of a meta commentary here but it was because it won these Game of the Year Awards and um I know fully recognize we're doing an endof Year award show right now um I actually wrote a piece along with Jen donaho for our friends at deconstructor of fund about Awards shows specifically for mobile or mobile gaming end of the Year Awards and how they really don't mean anything from a business standpoint uh and and to me like this all factors in right like Apex getting cancelled was a surprise because it won game of the year from Apple and Google and it was this beautiful game and you know it ran fairly smoothly like it it translated the like kind of fastpac uh traversal of Apex HD to mobile it was like a beautiful game game um but from a business standpoint it wasn't hitting the mark for EA um and and to those of

us who are on the inside maybe it wasn't as surprising I can only speak for myself but yeah interesting meta commentary there that you know the award shows you know our awards that we're giving out today may not prevent any of these games from getting canceled in the future just gonna throw that out there maybe I was a little behind the curve but like I remember when gench and impact like won or Google SED things I was like I haven't heard of this game and then B up after that and I don't know if there was any relation or anything like that but it's like one where I've seen the opposite right where like maybe it didn't mean something necessarily in terms of pushing it but I think it got also a lot of people to check out the game out of curiosity what is this game I've never heard of that just won this thing um I mean that was that was me and I imagine a lot of other people maybe not like I said maybe I'm just behind the curve on that one but felt like that was a moment where I was like what what and then just after that just took off hard uh whereas like Marvel snap was just like yeah of course they only W something whatever like they're doing well it's fine yeah this is a bit of a tangent but like the the timing of the Awards being given out um

also influences that because I also looked at genshin and it won some awards like the year it came out but it also won some awards the next year um which just it's just really strange the way they time these Awards announcements so that also plays into it but anyways it's unrelated it's it's like all the Oscar movies coming out in December or putting them back out in theaters you know that whole sort of thing we're trying to like game the awards a little bit but uh speaking of like the timing and everything like that trend of the year is what we want to look at next in terms of uh you know obviously we've talked about that a little bit throughout the year but we would take a little broader perspective we'll uh we'll start with you again uh Matt sure so uh you know gonna ring the the layoffs spell here again um the to me this was the trend of the year I also uh well I'll I'll save that comment because I see some other folks have my backup choice here as the trend of the year but uh I like I'm sympathetic to the argument that um there are good things that come from turnover that um yes we've experienced a lot of layoffs in the industry but

compared to say Tech broadly or gaming historically it's actually not you know as as large as it could be um I'm sympathetic to those arguments I understand them that doesn't make it any less of a trend uh and part of that is the way that um games journalism has evolved as well uh to cover these sorts of things and sort of put them front and center and and shine a light on what's happening in sort of gaming employment generally yes I'm using the term evolved Loosely um but um yeah for me industry layoffs was was the was and is the trend of the year because it's continued throughout the entire year up to and including today uh with the unity layoffs that we're just announced so it's going to keep happening unfortunately which which really sucks because we're going into the holidays but I I would foresee this to be a thing maybe even into 2024 um for me that was the biggest Trend hopefully it's uh it's the end or close to it right I would hate to be talking about this same thing again next year uh just be a big bummer hopefully Aaron you've got one that's maybe a little bit less of a of a downer

nope I I I agree with Matt I think I think 2023 viewing it as like a great reset year um is absolutely the the trend of the year and to me it's just a question of like is 2024 going to be different right like the I'm I'm curious what what if you guys have different answers for this but to me it's more interesting just to think about like what's it going to be next like is it are we just are we going to have kind of back-to-back years of it's of it being a prolonged reset or is it going to bounce back like is there going to be some very clear Catalyst that moves the industry in like another Direction like is is the AI frenzy like finally going to be become more than something people just kind of talk about and actually like be embedded more into more projects and that be the next Trend um I'm not sure but I I totally totally agree with Matt on this one well I think uh I think me

and Sebastian's one that might be a little related in some ways to yours want to go smashan I don't want to relate it to that that sounds really depressing no AI is the biggest trend of the year and it's not even close I think everyone else is wrong like it's just like look AI as a tech has been around for a long time as as applied to gaming it's been something really interesting but we're seeing acceleration and it's fundamentally changing how a lot of game studios are being built as far as I can tell uh for me personally it's completely changed my heris sixs around funding of game studios and game ideas right like we're we're seeing basically in in my opinion the first Domino of AI is that we're going to be able to get things to Market faster with fewer people and test out the ideas a lot faster that to me is by all accounts a no-brainer we talked earlier on the show about how gaming historically has four six 8year lead times if we can shrink that down you're talking about a world in which people are making content that is almost real time like Tik Tok that is the biggest

trend line in gaming for 2023 and it's going to get even bigger in 2024 you can't say AI without ugc but at the same time it's this movement away from the idea or the promise of what the metaverse was supposed to be which is hey everyone can live in Virtual Worlds to the reality of hey we actually have the ability to generate content pretty quickly now which is freaking awesome I mean I think at the end of the day like if you tie this to layoffs in the other way it's that like the budgets and the cost of making games just keeps going up so much it's like this is almost going to have to be like a reflect reflexive thing on that where it's like we need to find a way to like cut cost not to fire people just so we can stay in business uh you know you talk about the interest rates and all the other things that people are struggling with and obviously uh Sebastian as well you're you're you're pretty close to the metal when it comes to uh using AI for games right with your business startup and stuff like that uh actually using that but I think there'll be parts of it that is maybe a little overblown as is with any new technology

right like we're excited about it doing everything and it'll do some of it really well some of it pretty poorly and then it'll change from there right but I think uh I I kind of missed the days when game studios were like 10 people 20 people and you make a game in a couple years uh and now that's just Indie right which is like not quite the same and uh you know I I'd love for AI to just reenable that instead of these layoffs being like this Mass Exodus of people from the industry it's like now a whole bunch of people could start up these smaller Studios with AI to help them leverage in fact Broken Sword was a great example that for those of you remember the old Adventure game Broken Sword they made a comeback and the only reason they were able to kind of like bring that game back was using AI stuff to help them be able to bring back that level of animation with the the kind of budget and stuff that they had that's an example right there of like the kind of thing I like to see more often to help like this be a good thing there there are two quick things I will say about AI which are one in the history of tech we've seen effectively an expansion of necessity of information in order to make things right so if you

go back 30 40 years if you understood a bit of electrical engineering and understood like basic computer programming you could effectively make a game because like the states and necessities of like research in order to make a game was so small you and a team of three or four guys and gals can ship a game as things became more complex and as you need to know set theory and linear algebra and understand openg like the explosion of necess necessary people to make a really high quality game increase the point where you need large teams AI represents a contraction where the technology has got to the point where we can do more with fewer people that's a really important thing it's not just linearly scaling that's awesome that's super cool the second thing though which I think is also applicable just to the macro of game development is that it was never going to be linear forever right I think one of the things that we talked about last time that I can't emphasize enough is there is only so much money in the world you can't have an exponential growth curve in definitely if you do you just run out of

money and so we knew that this type of Correction would happen and it's been really cool to see it happen real time hopefully it ends up being a good thing right that's that's all we could hope is but it'll be a mixed bag because everything is but the end of the day like uh hopefully people will be able to uh keep it going in the meantime though let's go straight on to best move Aaron yeah um so I'm going to pick the launch of ufn uh by epic as the best move uh it's not you know an acquisition or an investment or anything like that but it's a major pivot by one of our industry's most important companies that fundamentally is changing their Direction and trajectory of what they could be and it's definitely been off to a maybe like a rockier slower start than many people expected who just had very high hopes uh for what ufn can be but I think you know if you give it some time and you're a little bit patient it's a pivot it's a it's a shrewd move that could be worth tens of billions if not more in the future so big moves from

epic definitely hopefully a lot of creators profiting from that uh in the near future and Roblox you know having competition Sebastian what do you got though yeah I think this went a little bit underreported but I actually thought that the acquisition of uh roio which I think happened this year like correct me if I'm wrong but sega's acquisition of roio was actually pretty awesome Sega is a company great legacy brand at added a mobile component to their portfolio uh it gives them a chance to become relevant it can stay relevant in 20 the 2020s and Beyond if you think about where they were to where they're trying to get I I can't think of another acquisition that may be as influential as Sea's acquisition of roio Matt might have one that he thinks might be as influential for me it was the acquisition of scopely by uh Savvy games um you know I recently listened to the the podcast you did Erin with Javier which I thought was really good and and really

kind of like changed my opinion on this a little bit like the the resources that they can bring to bear now um to fund UA to fund new game development to push into new platforms like we already know scop Le is trying to go AC crossplatform some of their new titles um I think it's it's really interesting what they can do uh with all these additional resources and if you take the bull case like scopely could be the next sort of incumbent Mega publisher uh if they continue to grow um that spans all you know mobile console PC uh we'll see if they can get there but to me that was um that was a big move for them and look look they had been a large company for a while that was looking for an exit uh I I think that there was rumors they were trying to go public back during the boom times a couple years ago that didn't happen obviously their next door neighbor Jam City tried to go public and didn't and there was a number of other companies just like like them that um you know wanted to make that move and just couldn't quite get the timing right or get the funding or whatever um you

know scopely wrote it out and they they came to a good uh exit and they're position for you know a bright future so to me that was a that was a very shrewd business move also for Savvy like they get a big piece you know well they definitely it was one of their smarter Investments for sure like I mean we'll see if they could follow Monopoly go though I mean that's a pretty big big act to follow there obviously there's G be high expectations of whatever they put out next at this point my mine was uh was was almost half a joke but also kind of serious at the same time which was just uh blizzard finally shutting down OverWatch League that just that needed to be killed uh it was not GNA happen uh and and the opposite of a of a best move was was probably just OverWatch 2 from them H not a great move overall but uh you know they're moving on as I said the acquisition finished so we'll see what they do from here but uh speaking of which let's go to best turnaround and see what we got here we'll start with Sebastian yeah I I think the best turnaround we've saw was actually Monopoly go I don't know if you guys have been watching or if you're privy to it but Monopoly go has been a project

that's been into works the fact that it was having difficulty shipping and then shipped to be this like monster winner hell yeah one of the coolest moves we've seen great turnaround U real quick uh runner up actually I'll let everyone else go and then I I'll tell you the runner up if they don't mention it all right Matt throw it out for me it's got to be cyber Punk um you know cyber Punk has recovered from its you know bug filled launch look it was always a great game in my opinion like I played it when it came out on PS4 so like the old generation and yeah it crashed for me a ton but it's a beautiful game it's a great story it's really fun um but yeah it was basically unfinished um and they've turned it around they put out a new DLC they got Idris Elba in the game now um and it seems to have recover at least like they brought in a new wave of Interest they also did a Netflix show which was kind of kind of fun um so they've reignited interest in this IP which they I believe

continue to invest in and they're goingon to make new games in I think initially they were planning on doing some sort of free-to-play multiplayer thing I don't know if that's still happening maybe they've asked that for now but they have bigger plans for the cyberpunk IP we'll see where they take it in the future but they've at least writed the ship and so for me that was the biggest turn around super thankful for that too because I love the IP and what they've done with it and what the show did with it and I would hate for that to be the end of that story but uh what you got Aaron yeah well I think those are those are great answers I've been waiting for cyber Punk the ultimate edition to come out I also R don't quote me on this but I think the Phantom Liberty expansion had a 24% attach rate which is which is crazy and shows how much people have come back to or have you know jumped in for the first time but anyways uh my answer is a bit more abstract and it's non-mobile handheld gaming um which uh the steam deck released last year and it was sort of a question of like all right where is this going but I think in

2023 we saw the steam deck hold up really well and kind of double down on its its long-term future we've seen um other companies now jump in to the the handheld Arena um for the first time or um just in new ways like with the PlayStation portal the the rag Ally uh Lenovo Legion go is just launching and so uh you know now that the tech is good enough to play most console PC games handheld and a new type of crossplatform kind of way I think that this year has proven that um non-mobile and even non- Nintendo handheld gaming is back across the ecosystem and that it's only going to be gaining share kind of in new ways over the next few years but 2023 in my mind really kind of solidified that that Viewpoint for me which is interesting well it'll be interesting to see how that factor in with the you know that switch 2 sort of thing going on and CU Nintendo had kind of dominated that space and now maybe it's competition

it's not like a PSP kind of territory anymore it's they've actually gotta do some real moves but yeah mine was a little bit of more of a I was gonna go with cyber punk as well but of course I wanted to have a a good runner up just in case and Battlefield 2042 I know a lot of people still kind of knock and most of them probably haven't tried the latest version I personally wasn't a huge fan of like the latest content but I think they've turned that game around quite a bit uh it's fun game to play now it it probably isn't going to be a classic like Battlefield 4 was because that was also a huge disaster on launch and they managed to write that ship and it became a classic probably not going to happen as much just because the same people not there but they've turned it around I was looking at the numbers before we even went on and they they've massively picked up the numbers I mean it's dropped a little bit but you know Black Friday sales have helped with both that and Battlefield 5 uh like that franchise you know maybe doesn't have a huge future right now just due to the state of uh you know the all the people there what EA's doing but you know Vince seems to be doing a pretty good job managing things there and I I think uh

there's some potential there and it was it was a great turnaround for a game that they could have easily just been like screw it move on do the next Battlefield you know the way Call of Duty kind of does just like that game sucked that's fine just another one next year who cares so like I appreciate that they uh put the effort back in hey my runnerup since someone brought it up balers gate three right cuz balers Gate 3 launched with a lot of bucks three years ago no one just gives them as much crap because they were like in released for so many years but that game went from buggy to being fully featured and almost The Only Game of the Year well then obviously cyber Punk should just been Early Access then we all would have been fine 100% like that that's the biggest takeaway here you cyber Punk if you're launching a game always just say it's early access uh do what Dota 2 did be early access for seven years right just just don't discount it too heavily that you don't get any sales when it's finally out well we'll go around with the last entry here which is best new entry or up start of the year like it doesn't have to be a brand new company or a brand new game necessarily but something that really popped off this year unexpectedly maybe we'll start with

uh Matt again go back all right well I'm going to start by bending the rules here a little bit because my uh entry was CCP announcing the fundraise for their web three gam $40 million uh led by Andre and Horwitz I believe um this is a new entry into uh web 3 let's say CCP has been around for a long time uh making Eve online but the sentiment at the time and I tend to agree with this is that like there are few if any uh existing gaming companies that are better equipped to make the switch to web 3 than CCP because Eve is already like um such a a heavily like spreadsheet game like they had an integration with Excel like um you know it's amazing you know potential synergies there for web 3 and you know they've been active in some of the um fully onchain uh stuff that I've been following so I'm really fascinated to see what they do with their next

project and um you know can they uh kick off another web three Bull Run we'll see um but for for me that was the the best new entry into the into the space at least for CCP was their their big fundraise and their big announcement I think a lot of people too are thinking it's going to be like integrated into the games when it sounded like from what Hillmar was saying in uh in Korea that it's going to it's more around the business model and and working with Developers and things like that and you know we had that big web two wve and apis and then microservices and who knows maybe they're kicking off the next big wave of like sort of like Tech business integration across Services we'll see and maybe it comes from games that would be a pretty interesting Twist on things what do you got Aaron uh actually I'll kick it to Sab I know you have a hard stop in a minute in case you need to jump out before we're we're done I'm also curious what you have to say oh man M mine is also a bit cheating but by far I think this is is the biggest thing the biggest game launch that's happened this year and that no one talks about is fc24 the fact that EA Sports got rid of

FIFA and they still did like aund like 14.5 million users in the first three to four weeks of global launch that's huge it's a huge coup for them to basically not have to have FIFA on the cover and still get it to be so amazingly big it's destroying Revenue numbers EA is doing super steady that was a big risk uh for everyone involved they were concerned that the change of name or change of title would be mean that like FIFA would have more power it's actually huge blow to FIFA because effectively means that they have less power than EA Sports FC did it's a really big launch and and congratulations to EA sports team for doing this huge launch and and and for basically making like probably a billion bucks well we got to keep that train going what do you got Aaron those are the the oldest new launches that I've heard I'll go a bit more recent it's it's not they didn't start this year but I'll I'll give a shout out to Embark Studios uh which is

majority owned by Nexon and they're the team that um recently just had a successful open beta for the finals and which I think will launch um fully I think in December uh but but we'll see um but the reason I'm giving them a shout out is not just because the game itself was so successful in open beta and and looks really compelling but because they were able to ship it with um less than 100 people at the peak of working on that game and this kind of goes back to what Sebastian was saying earlier in the episode um where uh you know teams are starting to have to think about how to be more efficient that the trajectory of just bigger teams bigger budgets is unsustainable and that with new you know AI tools just software Tools in general um some team teams are starting to figure out how to get more effective efficiently and launch bigger hits um with smaller teams and smaller

budgets and I think Embark Studios is like one of the torch bearers of of teams that has figured that out right now so we'll see you know where the finals itself really goes but this uh the studio is more than just this one game and what they're building out but I've been really impressed so far and their ability to kind of chart this new path that I have a feeling many other Studios will will learn to follow feel like you really teed mine up for me here like perfect followup to it which is which is a battle bit like you know there there might have been bigger you know launches bigger like surprise hits things like that but to go with like I I believe it was a three-person team like you know you're talking about 100 people I'm talking about three people and they're going up against Battlefield that was in the middle of struggling uh you know it's it's that's a pretty big deal and it showed that like Graphics aren't everything but it was definitely like hey if we can replicate the same gameplay you like it could be voxal it's fine this could be Minecraft Battlefield and I think it just showed you know like

that constant thing we keep seeing every year which is like some of these lowii games just coming out and and you know doing great so lots of potential there for those three man teams especially with that AI stuff we're talking about uh maybe we start to see those come back and this isn't such a shock to US every year uh in the near future mostly but I want to thank everyone for uh I think an interesting and uh and pretty fun award thing I feel like maybe we didn't even have as much time as we would love to to really dig into every specific entry but I think a lot of a lot of great stuff to chew on it was a very interesting year and I think we'll have an interesting 2024 as well probably won't be the only self-reflection we have kind of winding up the year here but I do want to say you know thanks of course in the Thanksgiving Spirit thanks to everyone uh who's been listening this this is like what the 124th Round Table obviously I wasn't here for all of them but those of you who suck around the whole thing like thanks that's amazing especially uh I mean Aaron you've been around here for for most of them I would think as well right yeah I think Matt has been been on the squad since the beginning of the round tables too

awesome so yeah like thanks to you guys thanks to all the listeners and uh yeah I want you all to have a happy holidays if you're listening to this you know delayed traveling whatever like you know enjoy the rest of your holidays we'll obviously be back for a couple more episodes for the end of the year but uh in the meantime enjoy and we'll see you all 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 novic has to offer make sure to check out our website www.nic.edu and advisory Services again that is www .n. thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode