Pocket Gamer Connects London 2026 unwrapped | Week in Mobile Games podcast

[music] Hello and welcome to the pocket gamer.biz podcast week in mobile games where we discuss the week's news and provide some insights. I'm Craig Chapel, head of content at pocket gamer.biz. With me as always, our news editor, Aaron Assel. We've had a busy week. We have been at Pocket Gamer Connects London. That took place on January 19th and 20th, but we were down a bit earlier. Left a bit later. Aaron, how are you feeling? How did it all go?
Yeah, feeling good. A little bit tired at this point. Um, ready for the weekend. Um, yeah. No, I I enjoyed it. Yeah, it made a changeing around all over the place instead of sat at the desk as much as I enjoy sitting at a desk. And yeah, obviously was a great opportunity to catch up with a load of people I haven't seen since the last one or even the one before. And
yeah,
met some new people, colleagues I haven't met before and obviously loads of industry people and

did some cool interviews with like Ravio and Scope that at some point will be out on the site. Yeah, I think it all went well for me at least. Yeah, enjoyed it. What about you?
Yeah, I had a great time. So, for those that don't know, I've probably mentioned it a few times that I was ill for last year's show. I did actually make the trip down and realize what an awful mistake that was because I was very ill and then proceeded to be off work for about three weeks which is uh never happened in my entire career. So [laughter] I was I was exceptionally ill. So I missed it last time. So it was great to be back at the London event specifically. So I guess I haven't been there for two years now. And you know, I probably the first time I went as a as a total guest was in 2017 and the event has grown just significantly since then. Uh so it takes place at this a venue called the brewery if you weren't there. And this year we also expanded to a place called the Barbcin Center which is literally just around the corners. Uh

it's not far at all. Maybe it was a little bit confusing. We'll fix that a bit next year. But that was a really nice venue uh to sit in. Um, but yeah, just so many people. I think we had about I think the the the official numbers still been looked at, but it was like circa 3,000 people, which is crazy. I can't remember what the number was last year, but I think usually it's like 2500. So, it it's just grown significantly and it's become I mean, I would say this cuz I work for Pocket Gamer. So, you know, I think I feel like it generally has become like a key part of the industry calendar now. It's like cemented its place up there with like the big big shows. Dare I say late GDC and Gamescom and London is kind of an excellent place. Lots going on and it's a great place to kind of connect everyone together from wherever you are in the world really. And uh yeah, it was really like like you said, really nice to catch up with people, see old faces, meet new people, going on a few sessions, get some really cool insights,

just learn what's what's going on in the industry. It's like a nice way to start the year where he sets up also the rest of the year. So yeah, had a very very good time. So for those that listened last week, you may or may not have noticed that after about 15 minutes, Aaron just disappears from the entire show, never to be seen again. Riverside just decided not to record that part of Aaron and not tell anyone that that was happening either. So I don't know, no idea what happened there. Good times, right? We're going to uh for for this show, we're going to jump into some kind of the big trends and interesting takeaways that we had from Pocket Gamer Connects London. So, if you're there or not, um hopefully it'll be interesting to see basically what's going on in the industry, what people are thinking as we get into the year ahead. Before we get into all of that, I'm just going to quickly do the usual shout outs. So, the usual shout out won't be PGC London this time, but we've now done that. But, we have so many events happening this year. I'll run through them as quickly as possible. So, PG Connect Summit San Francisco on March 9th. Got the Dubai

Game Expo Summit powered by PGC on May 20th, 21st. PG Connect Summit Malmo on May 27th. Barcelona June 15th to 16th. We had our first one last year. It was probably I think it was our biggest launch of a new event that we've ever done. So, we're we're very very much looking forward to that. Got Shanghai July 30th. Helsinki, which we're calling PG Connectnect Nordics October 13th and 14th. Bangkok octo October 27th and we'll have Jordan in November and we'll be doing Canary Islands in December which will be lovely because it'll be freezing cold here in in the UK and I love to go to somewhere that's very warm. So hopefully hopefully I'll be down for that one. Right. So as I said we're going to uh basically jump into the trends of the show. So, one of the things that was being talked about and you could kind of see around the show and I have seen some people post it on LinkedIn before before we even went there was kind of UA financing is this this new trend that's coming in. So,

getting in investment that is ahead of time specifically for growing your user acquisition campaigns. I remember I spoke with Aken Babiaget last year and he was basically saying that I asked him the question you know do you need to scale quickly these days or can you you do things slowly can you have like say a slow soft launch as well how quick do you need to scale can you do it slowly and sustainably so say you've actually launched so can you do it slowly and sustainably or do you need to go like you you know roughly KPIs you just got to go for it and I think he talked a bit about UA financing and it's kind of like you need to be fairly quick these days and it's I think it's in particular because we spoke about the trend of China before and in China these big teams one person told me last year that like marketing teams are sometimes bigger than their design teams and even more respected at the studios not to say designers aren't respected but that's just a different kind of culture there so that is a big trend and now you've

got these we've had them for a while but you know maybe some more companies providing those UA financing options so we had some boos there that did that and some people on stage is talking about it. And then that feeds into the topic of user acquisition getting more expensive. It's harder to market your games. It's harder to get rise up the stores. Nicholas Levelvel talked about this last last year at the Wigan Game Summit. He was saying, you know, maybe need like 50 million really to to have a big successful game that's just for UA. And then um I spoke with the still front CEO Alexis Bonte on stage and he was talking about you know the challenges of UA and kind of h how to how to tackle that and maybe that's just through trying to get trying to remember what he said now try try to get through some uh I think sorry the direct consumer push is actually we'll talk about in a bit is actually helping that so developers can get more of their money in their own pockets rather than to Apple and Google Play but the problem is is that money is increasing recently going into UA and so he was saying you know some companies

could spend like 50 60% on UA like it's it's crazy and I think there's a bit of an undercurrent that I think people are very respectful of applovin and what it's been able to achieve and I think there's pretty differing opinions on on what it all means for the industry I think because of the high costs now for UA and apploven's position in the market I think there's some unhappiness about one company kind of starting to rule the roof Boost and the high cost associated with that. But then others I think are very happy because Apploving has kind of nailed also acquisition for you. So you actually possibly get like a lot of return. I'm not not a marketing expert by any means. So people please correct me if I'm wrong with some of those. But that was kind kind of the feelings that I was getting at the show. But yeah, a very interesting time. Did you hear anything about kind of UAL loving financing?
I didn't come across much atloven stuff to be honest. I guess we were we were purposely trying to get to to different parts of the show.
Yes.

But UA generally was a big topic um that everyone seemed to be talking about. We had some talks kind of dedicated to it and in others it just came up as a thing that's um kind of ever more expensive really I think. And we might get more into this shortly, but retargeting and that kind of thing was certainly um a bit of focus that I noticed, I guess, to you know, or the idea of rather than spending loads to try and reach new people who don't know your game yet, you know, try and keep hold of the ones you've got or find them if they start falling off, that kind of thing. And you know I um the last thing I'll say on that is so I mean I've been doing B2B journalism on and off since 2011 but since 2016 is when I really focus solely pretty much on on on mobile. I've done some before and ever since then that is the thing I've heard every single year is UA costs are going up. So sometimes I I hear it and I'm like this is kind of been going on forever. But it does seem

particularly putting people and companies into a pinch at the moment. Right, Aaron. So, you mentioned something there, but what else have you got for what trends are you going to talk about?
Um, so I guess I'll start on a a good note that there was a lot of optimism I felt this time kind of good vibes, positivity. Obviously, you still had kind of the concerns about, you know, job cuts and the AI implications and things, but I felt like last year and the year before those were, I guess, major talking points. And there was obviously there were exciting things happening at the event, but it was all kind of in the context of like we're going through a tumultuous time and lots of people are losing their jobs whereas it felt yeah a lot more like we're coming out the other side of that and um people are just excited about whatever they're working on. you know th those kind of concerns might have been mentioned here or there but they weren't I guess the focus of a a talk or um you know speaking to rooms full of people

who've lost their jobs you know it was now I guess a lot of either indie developers or people who you know are still with the big companies and utilizing the AI and stuff and just generally I guess feeling good about where things are going which was nice to see of course it was nice that yes just a kind of positive energy all around really.
Yeah. So I think like you know it's still been tough times for a lot of people in the industry you know
around the world we recovering a lot lot lately soft for example been layoffs etc. So, you know, it's absolutely still tough for people out there, but to to your point, it did feel and you know, I I travel to loads of events over the past couple of years, and generally a lot of the time it's been either people feeling super down, like you say, or there at times there's kind of like an undercurrent of, it's hard to describe, but people sort of trying to be optimistic, but knowing how bad it is and how tough it is, or people just not really wanting to say too much about the

current state of the industry and this was possibly the first time where I felt like like you right it was oh yeah there's some good energy here people are excited for the year ahead I hope that continues and I hope we don't get crushed by these waves of layoffs now layoffs do ultimately happen all the time so there will be some but hopefully it's not like this crushing trend and hopefully we see you know these startups that have been struggling to get investment we see them to start getting some sort of funding and investment. Right, Aaron, what else have you got?
Yes, so obviously direct to consumer was a huge trend from the event which I guess is unsurprising with all the Google and Apple stuff that happened last year. So in particular, so I sat in on a talk by Omar Toro Alazer, apologies for my pronunciation, but he's from Appcharge and he had some interesting comments. So he said quite boldly that

so app charge is DTC DTC is app charge but he also talked about kind of just more broadly how big BTC has become the industry uh that it's pretty much mandatory now to utilize BTC and he kind of went into strategy around those ecosystems a bit obviously like web shops um he said that few studios break past the kind of 10 to 15% revenue coming from that um that source, but that some have got to kind of 30%. And yeah, I guess tying this in again with the retargeting thing, um it's that's partly kind of players who keep coming back to per purchase from the web shop rather than people only going to it once. Um and he talked about that it's a kind of fast evolving ecosystem. I guess it's still relatively new. I guess warned that whatever people are seeing working well today might not stay that way in the long run. you know, it could change

over time, but currently stuff like keeping the brand consistent between the game and the web shop kind of helps build trust people. Uh, you know, cuz there are still players who haven't used them before and that, you know, you need to build that trust and confidence that they're actually making a genuine purchase for the game that they're playing and they've not been led to some, you know, dodgy scam site. um cuz you know a lot of players conversely have spent on Google Play or the App Store so they feel quite safe and comfortable just making a purchase within the game. But yeah, he kind of talked about yeah trying to make things as seamless as possible as um just as easy for the end user as it can be. He he brought up some stats as well um that were quite interesting. So, just to rattle off a few from my notes, he said 79% of one-time buyers continue to purchase a second time from a web shop,

and 84% who bought three times will end up buying a fourth time. And 87% who've bought a fourth time will buy a fifth time. So, basically, once they've done it, you know, once or more than once, it just keeps going up. Um, and apparently at the moment 90 97% of web store revenue comes from repeat buyers, which you know, obviously that's a huge majority. So potentially, at least me speculating, but um if and when more kind of gamers do try out web shops and get used to these being a thing, like I guess they're only going to kind of grow in their revenue share as more people move to them because evidently at the moment it's mostly, you know, most of the revenue is coming from people who have already got used to it and keep buying through that instead. So I thought that was quite interesting. So, I joke about this all the time and I think I probably said it one or two podcasts ago when I did the trends of the year, which is direct consumer is

just the uh forever trend that is going on that we talk about in mobile at the moment because it is right and it feeds into the other trends. So, direct consumer gives you more money for UA to pay for your new overlords that are app loving now, not not the apps from Google Play, but um it it's yeah, it's really exciting. I also spoke with um Exola, chief marketing and growth officer Berkeley. Yeah, I mean obviously they'd be very bullish but you know they just had a big rebrand. They've actually been going for 20 years which I can't believe anyway. Yeah, they think like the 2026 is basically the year for DTC whereas 2025 was like the year where it kind of maybe all came together especially from the regulatory front and this year we're going to see another big push. I mean my personal thought was that I don't know the jump in Q3 was impressive and I think we'll see it again in Q4 of director to re uh direct direct consumer revenue growth but uh when

because of the new sort of a new incoming ruling for the US for the app store which is that Apple will be able to take some share is that will we later this year see a kind of leveling off of direct to consumer growth or maybe slight decline because as platform world is take that direct to consumer take that link out revenue that they're maybe not current well at least the app store is not currently getting but yeah and the other figure uh that I'll say is you could really see how big direct consumer is and how much and how much they're trying to these big companies are trying to push being the one that you that developers publishers should go to to be their partner just looking at the show floor when the the big boos you know app chara had like these big boos the top floor of the venue and then you had loads of and then you had a bunch of other companies I think like 10x fastspring as digital turbine anyone else is kind of providing those DTOC services would had to be there [laughter]

basically so it was that's really fascinating to see just looking around the conference room so absolutely maintains a big trend we'll be talking about it probably every every other show this year so the one of the other things I wanted to talk about was there was There was a fantastic panel that had the UK video games council members on it. So the people on the panel were Yuki CEO Nick P, Games Angels founder Nick Button Brown, Jeo co-founder Emily Bailey, Mini Clip CEO Sard Chudri, and Chocolatefish CEO Donald Alowski. Now, for those that don't know, the UK Video Games Council was set up. I think it was last year and actually I think it was Nick Button Brown that said actually in a little bit of a rush because they had to respond a bit to a government announcement on it to build a closer connection between the UK games industry and poly policy makers in government on key issues. So, they each member, it's not like one voice, they all have like different opinions on stuff and then they kind of collect

these and kind of let the government know I guess like the pain points of the industry. And I think and then the idea is to help trying to work out what new policies could be brought in that the industry needs because I think we we just haven't had that close connection before despite like I'm sure trade bodies' best efforts like Yuki and Tiger. It's just not really happened. And so you might think that this could be like a almost vanilla panel in terms of yeah know we we love the government well we want this you know we we'll do our best to get it I'm sure. But they they pulled no punches really in saying like the absolute difficulty it has been historically of getting UK government support. So Sad again, Mini Clip CEO, he said the reality of the UK games industry today is it has the talent but none of the support that other regions in the world have. That's despite nurturing talent and having hubs of creativity for film, TV, and technology alongside games all in one place, which is very rare. He said the UK has people

that have built studios that help the country's industry grow wildly over the last 30 years. You know, we have very famous people in the industry, right? Ian Livingstone, Peter Molyneu, a bunch of others that have really helped grow the in David Braven. But he said none of us should give the government credit for that. He said they did absolutely nothing. He used the example of Turkey which mentioned before is getting all the investment right now and they have loads of funding and tax relief options for you if you're there. They heavily supporting that industry even giving them cash. So uh it offers support for games companies including a cash rebate worth up to $1 million to support user acquisition funding. Like so for example, if we ever report oh that like that Turkish pixel flow raised like a few million dollars, right? We're not we're not even counting like the free money effectively that they get elsewhere to help them grow that that that few million is very important but that's not the only thing that they get and they also get tax incentives to

grow. I have heard in the past that in Turk slight slightly broadening this topic now I have heard in the past like the tax incentives may not always be what they seem. I don't know how true that is, but people seem very happy about it in general, but they're happy. I have had some criticisms about that. Anyway, so he used those examples. He said the UK could do something similar, but the government isn't even close to setting up something like that. And then he used he said hubs in Canada, Vietnam, Israel, and China don't just emerge without that government support. I guess we've built it in the UK without it. And our own tax incentives didn't come until I can't remember the year. I want to say 2012, 2013, something like that. Uh that was after develop magazines, B2B games media magazine I used to work for but years before they did a famous cover which was well the last person to leave the UK please turn out the light which is based on another famous headline because of this exodus of talent to Canada which had amazing tax incentives and the UK was just extraordinarily slow at competing and now you're finding

extraordinarily slow at competing yet again and you also saw government support schemes in Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands. So, a couple quick quotes done, but uh JO co-founder Emily Bailey was kind of echoing those sentiments and she said she wants developers to get more access to finance, but that the UK is absolutely shocking. To quote, she highlighted one country with a much smaller economy that is about to open a prototype funding scheme giving out up to $100,000 to studios. Sad as the final bit, Sard said that if he was starting a 100 person studio in gaming today, he would not do that in the UK. And he said that is a damning indictment to quote of where we are today in the UK. And again, remember he's the CEO of Mini Clip, one of the most successful games companies in this country. And he's been there for a very long time. He's one of the leaders of our industry. It's very sad that he would say that, but I'm glad he is giving voice to that. Right. that is what is needed and when I said earlier

you might think this is vanilla but this is the kind of push you need and uh Emily Bailey also said she wouldn't even start a twoperson development studio in this country given the incentives that are on offer elsewhere Nick Paul did say that what he'd heard is we don't get the same recognition in games because as other sectors because you know people don't turn up and during the show we had the minister for trade Chris Bryant which is great actually so that is like a show recognition for the games industry that we have this big politician at the show. But as much as he's saying I want to support etc. Well, you know, I had the chance to ask him a couple questions, he completely dodged like when are we going to get extra government support. He just wouldn't answer it and started talking about something else in politician style. At least he was around shaking hands as we had there. But his his also advice was, you know, you just got to shout. You got to shout shout shout. You got a lobby. So, anyone that's in the UK listening to this, you're in the games industry, you own a studio, you work in a studio, you just got constantly, uh, pressure your local MPs, uh, you got to con constantly

pressure government and say, "Look, we need this. This is a problem." Whether they listen, we don't know, but I guess if you don't raise your voice, you'll never get that. And to close out, now I'm rambling. I'm on one of my rants. And to close it out, I uh I always use this anecdote and I never I don't actually know if it's true. I think it's true but um I I think it would be roughly true which is how we operate meta I think it was meta so this is in the US but meta just to show how other industries lobby they they're extremely serious about lobbying efforts to protect their businesses in the short medium and long term and to kind of catch any potential legislation criticism as it happens and that definitely does not happen from what I've seen sorry that that doesn't happen with games anywhere and remember the digital fairness act in Europe for example maybe behind the scenes stuff was going on but it was announced in March right and then by September October weeks a month or two before um

consultation was closing that's when we heard about Ilapan it took to come out and say hello everybody this is happening it could destroy the industry it could destroy Europe's mobile games industry anyone want to talk about it it's like goodness me that would never happen for meta and to never happen. So, the industry does need to sort out his voice there and I'm glad that something like the UK Video Games Council exists. Sorry, I ended up a bit of a rant, but that was an interesting topic. Any thoughts on that, Aaron? Or you or you can kick off another another trip?
Uh, well, I think that actually leads quite nicely into another thing I was going to talk about while we're on the subject of the UK broadly there. So, one of the panels that I sat in on was kind of an industry health jet. Um, so us two games CEO Maria Canyans was one of the panelists and she'd said kind of counter to what you were quoting a minute ago that the UK could be a good place for US studios that are looking to expand. She said that the UK is in a a very unique place bringing together media, tech, and

creativity, which she thinks the UK the UK excels in each of those areas. and she talked about the country having great local talent and noted that UK is growing which she said means that's more companies being created in the UK. So she said there's definitely like room to improve with certain things that I guess like you were saying with the digital fairness act there's certain things where the industry needs to get better at cultivating communities and actually communicating stuff maybe and that there's room in the UK to improve in making more jobs for young people just out of uni. But yeah generally her attitude was that the UK is quite a good place for game development. So it's interesting hearing those different views there. There were there were a bunch of people on the panel like it went through a whole range of subjects like um VC funding and they talked about direct to consumer as well. So you had like Jim Ying from Harder Capital, Stuart Finy the CEO of Curve Games, Mihi

Bontu the CEO of Amber Studio and Chip Thirsten head of gaming at Fastpring. So it was quite a long panels. They went through a lot of topics, but yeah, the kind of UK the strengths of the UK perhaps were or was one of them. Actually, a few of those talked about their optimism for for 2026 specifically and talked about obviously the the post-pandemic crash that um the funding during the pandemic. I guess there's the delayed effect that that meant companies making more games that currently players have had plenty of choice for things to play and then maybe it's going to be scaling back a little bit now as things have of shrunk a little bit. But also obviously there's the AI side of things which some people think is going to create new opportunities possibly even create new genres was was one perspective there as I say like BTC they talked about you know like midcore being well suited for it casual games maybe

less so but so also quite an interesting comment from Chip Thirsten was he said that perception is reality so if publishers think there's less opportunity and like investment opportunity then there will fewer investments because publishers aren't going to be asking for it as much. So, I guess some of it's kind of the mindset of the industry or where it thinks it's at. It kind of has that almost self-fulfilling prophecy element which I thought was quite an interesting take on things. So, hopefully if everyone really is more optimistic that will actually kind of, you know, they will manifest good things as a result. I know it's more complex than that.
I get that. Don't me. I just don't agree with that necessarily. [laughter] just just how people describe the difficulties of getting funding cuz we know that VCs are putting in less cuz they're kind of going elsewhere
and then it's just people trying to scrape together different different investors to complete a funding round. It sounds very challenging. uh to to to your earlier point about I I mean to be

fair like so sad was and some some others on the panel you know they were kind of having a bit of a go at the government but they were still very like saying the UK games industry is very vibrant certainly weren't
putting down the industry that wasn't the point of that it was putting down the government support which is not
creating this great ecosystem and and I think more to the point of if you're starting a new business yeah there's so much talent here and it has all that connectivity which is something they mention which you don't get that that much elsewhere which I guess is you know and we're still getting companies set up here so to her point it's a good place for US studios I mean we're still getting like it's not US but we're still getting like supercell like properly launching a a London studio right there's plenty of talent here it's also a good place to connect or except for Brexit for for [laughter] for other countries to work here but uh um yeah the point is it's for new businesses it's like yeah the incentives if you want to start up a 100 person team maybe

it's easier to do that elsewhere but it certainly the points that um were made there by Maria are definitely I would say shared pretty widely terms of how good the industry is just you don't you don't have the government to thank for it [clears throat]
whereas maybe in other countries you do right uh I mean there's so many takeaways we could do I I'll just name some quick ones and maybe I only got a couple more quick ones but uh obviously AI was a big thing at the show that is going to be a big thing this year and I guess I didn't the things that I heard were kind of the same things it's from companies anyway it's you know it's to support you it's not to replace anybody but then you obviously in the news you see like bit more extreme a craft being like you know voluntary redundancy program for anyone that doesn't want to do AI or we're explicitly we're going to replace workers I think that's like them just saying the quiet part out loud for big publishers. And then you also have small companies 106 which is Susan

Cummings doing kind of really cool interesting things using AI to make games that weren't possible before. They have a nice chronicle small team to to do that. So there's I you know there's some really interesting kind of applications of it. The debate is going to go on uh obviously where it all heads this year. Quite excited about that. I mean so we had so this year we expanded like I said to the barbcin we had two summits there one of them was the apps business summit and then the other one was the trans media summit two big trends in the industry kind of excit especially the apps business summit it's kind of have that there I'll have an interview on the site soon video interview hopefully if I can sort out the sound with uh yeah do you want to go Simon Hayden talking about kind of his move from games to apps and why that's all happening so that's pretty exciting we had a lot of apps companies there and and Trans Media Summit. Again, we even had Tom McKay, the voice actor in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 on stage with our very own Charlie Scound kind of talking about actors making that move into the gaming world. I mean, I know

that's kind of been a thing for a while. Claire Obscure, great game, fantastic cast, by the way. But yeah, just talking a bit more about that kind of people's interest in there. So, yeah, we had a lot going on. Lots and lots of other things kind of happening at the show. Aaron, any any more thoughts on AI or any other? Yeah, I was going to say I was going to jump quickly back to your AI comment. Um, so firstly, yeah, you reminded me it was quite amusing as you say where people have said like you know AI is not going to replace jobs. I think of um was it two years ago at PGC I think. So like the week before I'd just written about like Google laying off about a thousand people and replacing them with AI. And literally a few days later was PGC London and someone was on stage saying like AI is not going to replace any jobs thinking like that was literally like the last thing I wrote about. [laughter] Um but yeah to uh to keep things relevant to this year. So I sat in on quite an interesting talk. um that was kind of a bit of a live poll I guess you

could say. So there was a speaker it was Martin Percy the director of AI basics thrills or chills and he basically asked the audience in this panel a series of multiple choice questions um you know bit of audience interaction getting people to shout out you know whatever they thought on different things to do with AI. And so part of that that stuck out that was quite amusing that I think everyone found amusing was so there was a question of like have you ever criticized someone for using AI you know while developing their game and everyone shouts like yes and then the next question is have you used AI in the development of your game and everyone shouts yes so then he's like so you use it and criticize other people for using it yes it's just I guess it's the unavoidable thing like You can't not use it now, but you know, it's very hard to meet the same levels without using it.
I mean, I push back. I mean, you can not use it, right? Yeah.

It's just that some teams are and in certain ways. I think the debate this year is really going to ultimately center around on what's okay or what people think isn't okay.
And then and then in the over the next few years, we'll see the results because they'll take a while, right? Games take a long time to make or in theory be a lot quicker with AO. Who knows? But uh we'll see like what comes of it like is the AI actually practical for it are the legal [clears throat] considerations like does it matter like I've said my thoughts on that plenty of times but you know ultimately what do the courts think and then yeah what do players think
because it's also because it's hard to know obviously we hear about it being a massive thing and obviously a lot of people are using it increasingly but like one of the questions was also like who you know who thinks it's going to be as big a change as the internet which a lot of people said yes to uh versus like as big as the industrial revolution which was the loudest

response seemed to be what most people thought and then the other option was like the next step of human evolution which a few people said yes whatever that means exactly whether they're talking cyborgs I don't know
it's starting to get this is starting to get real hyper bowl now I'm getting a a real picture of who was in the audience you know
yeah so So I was kind of thinking like yeah it's hard to know like is some of it overhyped because you know if people are really investing and going for AI like they want it to be a big thing and it's kind of
maybe it's working more than like the blockchain web 3 thing that is like you know people really pushing like oh yeah this is a huge thing and maybe people didn't buy into that as much. It's hard to know. I'm I'm a bit torn on whether AI really is going to be, you know, totally change the workforce and how everything operates or whether that's just people that, you know, are really pushing that idea because there's a lot of money to be made in developing AI. So,
I personally think like it is going to make a big difference, but it's just how

much of a big difference
is it really the next industrial revolution or are these just new slightly more helpful tools? And then I've said before like at the moment I think what makes a big difference especially at big companies is just the thoughts about its potential to do those things that like those questions were pointed at the next industrial revolution. It's that they're almost preemptively like we're going to lay off a thousand people.
Let's make it work and then we'll see where we are in a couple years whether they just hire all those thousand people another thousand people back because it all went wrong. Any other trends Eric or anything else interesting?
Yeah, just a final quicker one from me then. So there was a talk by Gina Jackson that she the generation game which was um yeah quite an interesting one. She she made it quite an entertaining thought going through kind of data from different organizations and places like and different organizations that have some involvement with the games industry. It wasn't so much

looking at games companies, I don't think, although there was some of that as well. But that basically wherever she looked and got data from on people that are kind of running the show, it's all sort of largely men in their 50s or kind of women in their 40s or a combination of the two. and kind of anyone really under 40 was just left out of the conversation basically and not really involved in any high-up decisions which kind of makes sense to an extent. But she was also arguing obviously just you know age doesn't um equate to kind of your skill or you know being in the industry for a long time doesn't mean you're naturally going to be the best equipped to decide where it should go next and that kind of thing. suggested there should be more involvement from people in their 20s and 30s and I guess kind of guiding where things are going which yeah kind of just makes sense to me as one of the the younger people you know um and she also talks a little bit about AI and that um a lot of young

people dislike it and feel like it's theft and stuff but that maybe the older demographics are more open to using it which I thought that was quite interesting that it's the younger people that aren't wanting to adopt it as much whereas I think maybe traditionally, you know, it's the young people getting on board with all the new tech stuff and then everyone else is the old like boomer type that won't get on board. It's kind of an interesting turnaround there. Maybe
I wish I was there for the talk. I look forward to seeing the video. Well, we'll have a bunch of the videos from PGC London up on the site over the next few weeks. So, if you missed it or want to see a session again or catch one you missed, then uh you can grab it there. Yeah, that sounds like a like a great talk. And uh I think that's one they they looked at for the UK video games council as well. You know, it's got to be made up of a diverse range of people. It can't just be or or here's the top studio leaders that have been doing it for 30 years. It has to be other voices as well to actually make meaningful kind of decisions for the industry. Right. Thank you very much, Aaron. And thank you everyone for tuning in. I've rambled

enough. Had a great time chatting about this. Had a great time at Pocket Gamer Connects London once again. It's our biggest show that we've ever done and up there with the best. Maybe the best, who knows? But it was it was honestly fantastic. As always say, yeah, I would say that I work here. Uh it was I felt really good vibes like you said, Aaron. It was a good buzz. Some good optimism thrown in. And yeah, excited for the year ahead. We'll see where it all goes.
Yeah, I agree. It was a great event. I guess thanks for anyone that I saw there who is listening to this.
Right. Anyway, thanks everybody. Have a good weekend. Hopefully see you at Pocket Gamer Connect soon or another event. And we'll see you see you. Have a good one.