Shooter Monthly #10: War Dogs Sells 2.2M, Cash Economy Breakdown and the 1v1v1 Debate

This game is going to ship early next year from Bungie and this is the first time anybody has ever seen it. It's the first time they've debuted it. [music] The original Doom was a really significant jump in gaming technology for [music] the time.
And there's one more thing we'll bring to Battlefield.
Set up that chainsaw.
I had to fight for that
programming mod. They're building, you know, their own level within Unreal
for Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Call of Duty. Entirely new Call of Duty.
Call of Duty. Call of Duty. One of the fascinating new additions to your squad is a dog.
Hey, is that about ready?
These things, they take time.
Yes. Shooter monthly episode 11. I thought this podcast, guys, I thought

we might have to shut down shop. I thought the Black Hole Games had consumed everything. And here we are at the advent of War Dogs selling 2.2 million copies. That's what we're going to be talking about today. Some other topics we'd love to get to, but let's just hit it right off. I've got the Chris's have joined us for will be with us in a moment, but Mr. Anos and Mr. Sides, how are both of you?
I'm playing Warogs, having a good time. Also playing Division 2 as its new season came out a couple weeks ago. I'm still a Division 2 gamer, but yeah, I'm excited to talk about Warogs.
Doing well as well. Warog is on the menu along with Marathon. They're division both of them actually. Very good.
Wow. Nice.
Let's just talk about the numbers of War Dogs, which is something else, especially when you put it in comparison. And this is what I was trying to do is contextualize some of this. It's why we're using a log scale to describe its cumulative sales over its first couple days on Steam. It has not launched on consoles, although it

looks like there are plans to. Right now, it's only a couple days since launch. It's done 2.2 million copies as a premium game. That is above Hell Divers by a significant margin. As we can see here, it is certainly above Hella Lucent Squad, these other large scale battlefield field like we have an estimate from Video Game Insights about how much money it's making, which is around 70 million based on its average selling price. Its daily active users, by the way, have not crumbled. It's not like we saw this big burst out of the gate and then it's dropped to zero. We've actually seen some stability in DAU or PSU. so far, which is encouraging to see. And when you look at the country composition of the game, this isn't like this flop from, you know, tier three countries and all these like weird Russians keep showing up in Tarov and you never know what's real and what's not and like are there bots. That is not the case. The

United States, 27% of PSU according to video game insight. So this is like pretty rich audience. You still have China at 10% but it's getting that Battlefield audience. Germany 8% UK the France is lower than it should be. France is actually in the battlefield more than you would expect but Europe actually comes out ahead when we look at it a regional basis. So by all accounts this looks like a real success. And so what is it that we're talking about? What is the success that is going on here? And we'll have more to talk about the studio and what's going on but I think the first thing to talk about is what the actual game is. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know this is web store rumbringer. 70% of top apps are using a web store. And the best ones, they're doing it with app charge. Do you want a $20,000 inapp purchase? [music] Yeah, Appch charge does that. Do you want to pretend that subscriptions are still a viable monetization strategy for games? Yeah, Appcharge even lets you do that. They get what high average revenue per paying customer means, and they're

[music] already doing over half a billion dollars in transactions a year. So, are you going to be the first to do a $20,000 AP? Don't accept microtransactions. Embrace macrotransactions. Learn more on appcharge.com. Guessing where your users come from? That's so [music] 2010. Absly is like having a cheat code for mobile marketing. Pinpoint attribution, real-time insights, [music] and analytics that actually make sense. Stop flying blind and start flying smart. apps flyier because your data is your best co-op partner.
Sattorii, it's the Japanese [music] Zen Buddhist term for sudden enlightenment. That flash where everything clicks. We're told that Heroic Labs team had theirs when [music] they realized that most studios run live ops like a horoscope. Vague, kind of generic, [music] same advice for everyone. So they built Sattorii, realtime experimentation, player level

personalization, events that actually respond to player behavior. Sayanara to your old live ops stand and Konichiwa to Sattorii from heroic labs.
Yes. on the Steam side of things that peak concurrent players for four days straight for an early access game at 40 bucks a pop on Steam. Every subsequent day for 4 days straight broke the last days pe concurrent record on Steam. So not only is it a success, but by all metrics all the success it's a success when it comes to having legs, showing signs of strong retention, blowing through expectations as well. So, I for one cannot be happier to see a new IP in a quotequote century market in the shooter space go against the grain, go against a lot of things that you don't want to do. For example, having cash,

having more than two teams in a massive scale map, not following any trends, but being very verbal, going against certain trends to exceed expectations. It's a beautiful story and I love seeing it and hope we get more of it. Let's just actually just describe the mechanics here and then we'll we'll blow it open to I think some very interesting takes by this this crew. So this is a up to 100 player server browserbased battlefieldesque military sim. So you will have three teams on any given map and what will happen is the team which has the most number of people inside a designated area will count upward. And so if you eliminate or kill someone, that temporarily reduces their count. And with inside of that circle, there is another circle in which your contribution is twice as much towards the tide of battle or the tide of score as you might say. Three teams up to 100

players fighting over territory with a persistent personal bank balance in which I think if there is a key innovation, it is it.
The military sim aspect can't be understated. The things we'll talk about when we get to the economy I think are fascinating, but even just like the scoring I think already incentivizes and changes the systems design of these large scale Battlefield games in a way that I don't think has been tapped yet. And so the thing you'll find is when you go into these maps, they're extremely large. In fact, they're intimidatingly large. And so you actually have to ride into battle if you want to get into the match and actually affect the score relatively quickly. Like walking would take you know what guys you think 20 minutes half the half the match.
I've walked it. It takes a while.
So there's a lot they're going to do on the roles based progression. And the way that they'll do classes is that there actually are not class restrictions. By

using certain weapons you can level up classes which might give you access to certain things. But this is an open class game which is something that we talked a lot on the Battlefield versus Call of Duty front. The other thing that is pretty dramatic and you'll see it on screen here in a little bit is that there's an in round currency system which you could basically call this game's I would say signature contribution which is that you will start with a given balance of cash and in the in-game shop from a vendor when you spawn you will buy guns, you will buy bullets, you will buy body armor. A lot of this is restricted. There is a level of, you know, you could call it power progression. I don't think that's fair. You know, in the same way I don't think we'd call duty gun progression, power progression. It's trying to be horizontalesque. And what you'll do is that you'll be able to earn cash by engaging in a ton of activities in game. And this is how they'll kind of reinforce their systems design. And I'm sure we'll have a lot to say about, you know, what you can do cash for, but suffice to say, you know, things like helping out your teammate, reviving them, pro-social things, pro play the [ __ ] objective, PTFO things will earn

you cash. And not only are you able to spend on this in-game store, but the other thing is that they clearly play Battlefield V and took reinforcements the out of that game. And you will have the ability to have in-game items used. For instance, like you could reinforce a barrier. You could build something new. There's a number of ways that you can use this cache currently in game. The systems design, I can't I can't talk about it enough, you know, just to give you a taste of some of the things they do. You can have these control towers which are on the map and that actually helps shift where these double point circles will drift towards. And so you can have a drift towards certain directions. And so there's a meta strategy and a level of coordination you can have in War Dogs that I don't think we've seen in these massive Battlefieldes games. Gentlemen, is there anything you think I'm really missing in kind of like what's going on in this game? I know we we'll talk about specifics, but do you think it's a fair overview or just kind of like the core

mechanics? Just one extra note is as you're talking about the economy that does persist round over round. It's like an account level balance. And so performing well in one round, you can take that with you to the next round and kind of steamroll with you or a snowball if you'd like to. It is really fairly straightforward. Like it's not doing anything groundbreaking, but this kind of persistent economy that travels with you, I think is really great and like kind of their standout feature in my opinion throughout the entire game where the cash is infused. That cash system adds a spice to everything you do. What I mean by that is there's two things happening at once. The team is trying to win a match and you, the player, are deciding what risks you can afford, which makes every action tied to your balance in the game that much more significant. And that carries with you matched from round to round or within the moment to moment gameplay. So, it's a very unique system and just adds spice to everything. And I think as we talk about like millennial gamers,

like there is no real wasted time, you know, like it's a nice way to compare yourself or like you may die. You may like get a load out, go out there and die, but if you made money, you felt like you did well, you know, even if you did die. But in here, it actually makes it feel pretty good if you're gaining up the money because you're on the objective or you're reviving teammates or or you know, you're getting tipped for doing well. There's a lot of other ways to be rewarded that isn't strictly the typical FPS kill death ratio. With what Chris just mentioned, I would be very careful in describing the War Dogs as solely a hardcore military milip. The question is how much tactical consequence it gives you while still leaving a room to mess around with friends. And this game does all that and above. One thing that I find really interesting about the cache system, it indirectly solves one of the problems that you usually see in games that have persistent economies across runs to round like extra extraction shooters. The biggest challenge, well, not the biggest challenge, but one of the challenges you run into extraction

shooters is gear fear. So, you end up hoarding like very strong equipment and you're always worried about losing them. The cash system solves that in a smart way because the game already tells you it's okay to die. you're going to make this money back within the round, but also persists. Like, let's say you can split your runs similar to an extraction shooter, but without having the pain of grinding runs, it's within the same round. You can grind the money to use it and spend it on other things. So, I notice when I'm playing this game, I have way less uh gear fear because by default, the money you're spending on equipment, you're not expecting to survive the whole round. The game has the TTK of a tactical shooter. Like, I died insane amount of times before even firing my first bullet. It's insanely difficult and not welcoming for players that aren't really skilled, but at the same time, the win objective is it's very hard for you to impact it. So, the game is not super competitive in that way. There's a lot of sandbox elements. I feel like the it's a hardcore tactical shooter that has some

sort of a casual sandbox win condition with this overall cash system. This is like, well, spend spend your money, have fun this round, grind the next life, spend money on the life after that. It just has this whole in round resetting indirect resetting mechanics, which I really really liked about the cash system because it solve a problem you've seen in a lot of extraction shooters as well.
I'm going to get nerdy for a sec. So, the reason I've been excited about this game and we've been talking about it, I've been kind of beating the drums on it. We were always trying to figure out Battlefield and like how to grow it. And I wrote a piece like a couple months ago basically arguing that I don't think we got teamwork, right? I don't think we got kind of the social aspect of Battlefield, right? And there's a lot of I think interesting interviews we can talk about with the CEO of War Dogs who's a very interesting character in and of himself and I expect him to become a character just in media. The more he opens his mouth, the more headlines he generates. Uh, which is quite interesting. But we have lacked the systems design, I would think, to

solve this principal agent problem. So, you know, we we are kind of like these metag game designers and we kind of have these agents who play our games and they have their own set of incentives, which isn't kind of what we want the game to be about. You know, we may want Battlefield to be about PTFO, play the objective, but we have to solve that with system designs. We have to align what's fun with engaging in the core objective that we want. And if you know, everyone's smurfing, you know, it might not create a really fun environment versus everyone being really tactical and coordinating. Have you ever guys heard of this game called Foxtrot? So, this was kind of like a smaller community hit on Steam. It was a top- down game. It was a war game and it was a persistent server in which everyone could play these really strong roles. So, you could be playing like just a transportation role of taking resources to the back and front of the front lines and that's your entire experience in the game. you can almost call it like a milit we say military sim I would say like it's expanding almost these life sim aspects

of the game and so we've lacked I would argue the systems design structure to help align those incentives in Battlefield games and to accomplish things like social and have that make sense and I think this is the glue that ties it together this is the glue because it's a medium-term reward rather than like adding to your account level progression cash is something that you can immediately redeem for value quickly and so they're to enforce this like systems design of cash earning throughout the game. Like taking your teammate to the front lines, you actually get a annuity like attached to them. So whenever they have a kill, you actually get a kickback, right? So you're like spawning these little hatchlings and you're like, "Oh, go go go little, you know, tadpools like go kill things." And so you guys were arguing that you feel a part of the action. You feel useful. It's because they're they're literally rewarding you for being useful. They're giving you this role that I think Battlefield has struggled to give you. And so, okay, are we going to make another plane for 10% of the audience? So, you immediately get just hit with this bifurcation. And I

think this kind of crafts roles and gives them all value in a loop in a system in a battlefield. This the whole point is supposed to be like a battlefield, right? A battlefield has all these different sim elements. And I think that's what this game this game gets right is this kind of cases. Now, I would have I have a lot of criticisms. I think like this one versus one versus one is absolute garbage. I don't think there's anything there's any part of this thesis that is attached. The cash is is certainly enough. And I also have absolutely no interest in this core. I don't know if you guys have different opinions here, but I absolutely hate this military hardcore arma core. Like I think they described as between arma and battlefield. I got more armor than anything else. I feel like I'm getting hit from snipers, you know, 2 miles away in my shoulder which has like, you know, my breathing stops. There's weight in the game based on the amount of gear you carry. I mean, there's all this like sim [ __ ] that I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever. And I think that's what will cap this game's growth to basically being Steam is like crusty Germans, crusty Frenchmen, and you know, the Americans who have like 10 guns at home.

I just wanted to kind of agree with the point, not the crustiness one, but it's the the hardcore part of this game is part of the studio's vision, right? Like when you when you read about the studio's journey, how they eventually came here and they were like, "We're going to be relentless. we're going to make this hardcore game. Also, there's a lot that we can say that the marketing, the way the marketing has been done for this game is, in my opinion, a big part of its uh success, right? Cuz I think the developers were making a game that in theory shouldn't be mass market and it shouldn't be appealing, but they went relentless. And I think as you said, Bill, like that part will potentially impact their future growth. Like for example, you go through the on boarding uh tutorial, but then there is no matchmaking. You jump into a server with people with different skill sets. They might get annihilated. There is no early loadouts for you to pick from. There's no like things to easy into the game. The way that some of, for example, the armor is being locked behind the levels.

You need to level up to start getting armor to defend yourself even though you're a new player. So, when you think about it, this is like a team that was very clear about this game is for hardcore players. And now this game has sold more than 2 million copies. Maybe they expected this, but I think this is like really huge. Now they are in the mass market, but the game wasn't built for that. This game is not easy to get into. So I think that's going to be one of the things they need to look at cuz the whole vision for the game was this is relentless. This is hardcore. This is not a game really for everyone, but with the numbers they're getting, they need maybe to maybe figure it out. I I like that they will most probably stick with their game vision. But looking at the numbers, they're out selling, for example, Arc Raiders and Hell Libras 2 in terms of curves and number of days they've been released, but both of these games maintain the long-term tale of going viral and being welcoming to players who don't usually play that sort of games. I'm not sure that's going to be the case with Warogs. And I hope I'm wrong cuz I'm very very happy about a success. I hope it just keeps climbing.

But I think that part it's maybe not so welcoming to players that don't usually play this genre and it might be scary for a lot of them when they try it out. Totally agree with your points and something around the social. Every game if you ever work on a game it's always like oh we need social features and it's like what is social? And you'll just like drive yourself nuts arguing what social is. Something I think it does really well as like a core I think to do social is like selfish motivation for social benefit which this game does like very well. You know, like I may not care about doing something, but I get cash for doing it and that's what I care about the most. We talked about the CEO a bit. It does give me like Nikita from Tarov vibes where like you can feel that this is their vision and this is what they're sticking to and you can feel it in the gameplay. You can feel it how they talk about it. They're like, "Yeah, it's going to be core and that's what we want and we don't really care." They even said like, you know, before they said they don't care about player numbers, which is, you know, you you have to care about player numbers to some extent. They probably didn't care about, you know, their goal wasn't

necessarily to do this well. I can't imagine they would ever like assume this, but there was some amount of players they felt they can get to. And I think that just listening to what's his name? Joe Bremer. Joe Bremer talk, you can really just feel like this is his game. He loves it. This is what they're doing. And I think that kind of exudes to players where like that's what we want to feel the developers talking about. That's how we want to feel them talking about the games that we play. And I think there's like a qualitative side there that's just really hard to one like forecast how the game will do and be able to really understand why it's doing so well. There's some sort of just yeah soft thing there that's super valuable and not really replicable. The three team dynamic means your relationship to the battlefield can change very quickly. You can be winning a fight against one team and suddenly become very vulnerable to the other. I wouldn't assume that three teams automatically fix the balance, but it can create opportunities for a comeback and it can also create situations where the third team decides who wins. Very

interesting dynamic and actually a spice that is very relevant to genres like extraction shooters. So, I think we can all agree that scoring needs to die for us. You might have a take on this, but like Battlefield's core conquest mode has been about this idea of tickets. So, you have two teams. They start with a fixed quantity of spawns which spawning takes away one ticket. If you get revived, it doesn't take one away. But you're also capturing these points which influence the rate of subtraction. The more points, the more subtraction. And so you can actually end up in situations where you have control of most of the points, even all of them, and you still lose at the end because you're running out of tickets. So there's all these weird conundrums that you get in with the ticket economy. Not only that, you immediately have this tragedy of the commons problem where everyone's like farming from the common pool. So, who gives a if I die or not, you know, like I'll just go into the group cookie jar and get another spawn. So, like those

have been system design problems that I think the game has struggled with and the solutions here are interesting. Exactly to your point. You don't have that you can have these swings at the end. You can have these late comeback wins in a way that you couldn't with the traditional conquest. I don't understand what 1 v one v one does for you. Has there been any game that has won with that format? Like Spectre Divide was that 1 v one? Like it just is like just seems like the most hokeiest, gimmiest. Why?
I could tell you I I can tell you for a factual most hardcore gamers literally hate what they call being third party. there's no real incentive for them or to get excited for a game at a high level that incorporates such. That being said, third parties are very fun for a casual gamers because it gives them the ability to either play spoiler or to get a win that they feel they didn't earn, which feels like two wins.

Give me a market example of when this format ever used. Three is always the answer, man. like three like it's always
the Beatles were four. [laughter]
What?
I worked on a game once and they said like three is always funny. Three people together is when it's funny.
Three stages.
I was like, "Okay, that's interesting perspective."
All right, I'll give you that one.
Um, three musicians. So,
there was I love Ringo Star, but
I think 1 v one v one does make it more casual. like it feels less less punishing because there's just so many there's I I do like the idea of like in like when you play board games in Katan, right? You can be that third player that's like I don't like you so I'm going to trade my wheat to this other guy cuz I know I'm going to lose anyways. There there's like this interesting agency there when there's three. When it's 1v one it feels a little bit more intense and I do feel like it is not as much agency when you're playing in team games.
That's different. I'm just saying why I

think it has been done from a design perspective but I am with you Phil I personally don't enjoy three teams there's something that I feel like for example when you play a BRS there's like a huge amount of teams fighting each other that makes sense to me or when you have two teams fighting each other it makes sense to me but as soon as it gets to three it never connected with me that sort of game so I wasn't saying that I disagree with you I don't I'm not a big fan either but again from a design perspective I can see how this solves some problems.
I forget if we had a specific term for it, but you're able, and I think we've talked about this once before, but in first-person shooters, in all of your telemetry data, if you're keeping the coordinates of the shooter and the person who got killed, you can calculate whether or not the killer was on the person who got killed screen. So, you know, did they have a nonzero chance of being able to shoot them is one way you can start to think about it. And one of the things, you know, you you might find is if you have map voting, there's a correlation between how often players get shot without seeing the killer on their screen and how often they vote for

the map. But when you introduce more sides, you increase the chance of this happening because the enemy can is more likely to spawn behind you because the direction of spawning makes it more likely, which is why battle royale, I mean, you can get spawned from everywhere, but they're trying to push you inward in the circle, right? Which kind of cuts away your back. Like in battle royale, I mean one of the strategies is just to stay by the barrier and then move with the barrier inward and it's exactly to prevent getting shot from behind. I would argue structurally I think like adding another team here like that just increases the probability of that happening. And I think the reason Rush has grown inside of Battlefield, which instead of conquest being like this absolute whirlpool cluster, Rush is actually people going in successive objectives inside of Battlefield, moving along like a linear path versus another team. And I that that to me is a mode that's always just made more sense and Battlefield that you're holding the line and that there are these like points of tension. There's a thing too where, you know, in in two teams it's, you know, 50 versus

50, but in this it's 33 verse 66. So maybe there's more opportunity to have the combat to see an enemy. There's more enemies on the other like that you're fighting against than in a normal 1v one. So maybe that provides something on the gameplay side where it feels more actionable and like there's stuff always happening. Maybe that's an idea of why they went this route or why 1 v 1 v1 exists. Or maybe that's why it doesn't exist cuz maybe that is unfair. 33 vers 66 feels harder. So maybe that's a negative against it. I'm not really sure. My only question to everyone here is from what you played of the game this far, do you think the game would be less or more fun if it was 1 v one or maintain one v one v one?
I've never really thought about it before, but now how its actual impact on gameplay, I'm not actually sure how it would change.
I should split it from a person perspective versus the target audience for the game. So, from a personal perspective, when I play this game, I'm not even paying attention if I'm winning or losing the match. I'm trying to

survive. I'm trying to figure out how to live longer, make more money, and contribute as much as I can, but really like I I feel like I don't know enough about the game yet to help the team win. So, I'm not even focusing so much on the win condition. So, if it was one versus one or 1 v one v one, I don't think it would change my game style at all for the first like 10 15 hours in this game. What might change things a bit uh more is um right now it seems like team switching is a challenge in the game, at least if you really what the community is saying. I feel if it was two teams and the numbers were cap, you would have less of a problem of that. I think more players will focus on winning the match rather their own personal journeys as a result of that. But that might make the pain of losing the match higher. That's my read if it's becomes a one versus one

versus what's currently existing in the game.
And just to call out a successful game that is one v one v one, Pokemon Go.
Okay, there you go, Philip. That's your answer. That's your answer. All right, I'll I'll take that one on the chin. [laughter] Do Do you guys think there's a Battlefield response to this? Do you Does this does this have any course correction on the genre level for a large scale Battlefield game? So, we talked about the systems design as being interesting. Does this do anything to the genre? a game like a Battlefield or any other current incumbent to if they want to take a stab at the market, maybe Warogs have created or tapped into, they need to at least do one of those two things of the features that Wardogs currently has, and that is either add a mode that's a 1v 1 v1, which is signature, I think, to Warogs, and or have a cache. If I could go back into the archive for a game called Call of

Duty War Zone back five years ago, I'm talking about the COVID years, there was a mode called Plunder where the whole entire game loop was battle royaleesque type of team composition where the win condition was not killing each other, but was to gather and extract money out. Maybe that mode was ahead of its time. Maybe a war zone or a battlefield could have a mode like that that is away from the win condition killing each other and more of an overall money allocation condition within that frame. A lot of people are mentioning Battlefield and Arma etc. But I don't know if you guys remember with the Gear Solid 5. It's basically bringing that games loop into the shooter genre is something that um I think what what's happening here that I'm enjoying quite a bit. But to answer your question, Phil, I'm not sure this will have a bigger impact. Maybe it will

impact more games that are similar to Arma rather than games like Battlefield. I feel what we're seeing here is some elements of Battlefield, but not as as much as other genres. And I think if you're taking a shooter game and you added the Metal Gear Solid 5 economy on top of it, this is what you kind of get. And maybe this is why this feels fresh because this sort of economy is not usually what's happening in other shooters. It came from another gen. I'm not saying the guys played MGS5 and thought let's let's just do that. But I I am happy that it feels similar to MGS5 in a way. MGS5 for people who aren't familiar and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong for us is they basically turned Metal Gear Solid into a free-to-play economy sim. You're generating troops on a timer in a textbased menu and sending them on missions for resources and they just likeing slap this on top of the game. That's my understanding of that that game loop. Is that the comparison? Is that a good analogy? Is what what should I take from that?
I think that's one way to describe it.

But uh I I I think what they've done is they took the concept of persistent economy that gives you power in a single player game. So for example, you go into mission early on, you're just sneaking around, you're recruiting, you're growing your team, similar to what you could do in Warog. You grow your money and then at some point you're like maybe this round I'm just going to go crazy and then you end up spending money on getting like choppers and getting crazy [ __ ] that lets you progress through the mission faster. that has the element of base building that you see in games like Vigor or Tarov etc. But you're always limited there with which you which you can get with like you never enter those games and have like full on raise hell because it's a PVP game so you can't really do that to other players. You always like pick up the balance warog with the cash economy you can just start buy all sorts of stuff that you have and then kind of raise hell from the beginning if you want to. Obviously, it's more balanced than what you can do in MGS5, but that's I think maybe going to be part of also the future economy

around VROG. I'm intrigu I'm intrigued to see if they're actually looking at MGS5 as a an inspiration and at some point you'll have this oil refinery in the middle of nowhere that you grow or whatever, which I really doubt, but I think that's what I meant about inspirations from this game. My concern is that any incumbents who see the success of Warogs will take the wrong things
and implement it. So if any EP of a major shooter that is listening right now, this is your lucky day. I'm going to tell you what lessons to take away from Warogs that you could only get here. Okay. Cash and the value of a life. The economy of old war dogs adds a decision before you even deploy. How much am I prepared to lose on this attempt? This is an itch extraction shooters have been scratching for half a decade. That can make even survival exciting, which is what Foras is currently focused on at the moment. Getting out of a bad situation means you've protected.

Waiting for a revive has a different emotional weight than replacing your equipment costs money. But there is a balance to strike. You want people to care about dying without making them afraid to participate. So my thought experiment would be does the money encourage a smarter push or discourage the push al if you're in a if protecting your wallet consistently means avoiding the objective the incentives are pulling against the g there's a fear of that we all fail losing losing stuff but the interesting thing here is how it it interacts with shared objectives that's the thing you should be exploring eps of major shooters And let me know if you guys disagree with my thesis.
I agree with the concept. I would disagree with the lineage. Like I I see Highguard. We were talking about in round progression as one of Battle Royale's biggest accomplishments. Chris, I think
Mr. Chris, you called it, you know, it's rogike. It's a rogike. We are getting

different abilities and powering up and there's vertical progression inside the round of a battle rail. And this has been something like all these shooters keeping around with and we saw it with Highguard, right? High guard had these fortifications, remember? You could build like a little bit cheesy. It was a little bit simple, but they still were trying to get you a little bit of in-game economy. And of course, like we have all the tactical shooters which have like CS GO and have like the in round, you know, earn cash, buy things, die. I just don't think people have been able to understand that this is a feature that first person shooters want and they're so wed to this idea that you can't have like power progression. And I'm not even talking about monetization. I'm just talking about like what is the extent to which progression can influence and affect different parts of the game. And because players are spending so much time on these platforms, I think they want deeper and more meaningful progression. And again, remember cosmetics are not a part of the game loop. Getting a hat in Fortnite does not propel you to any other part of the game loop. And cash, there is

propulsion. There is propulsion. like getting a certain item or vehicle could lead you to being able to generate and have a higher cash income wage, right? It doesn't always make sense to like bargain shop. Like you you do want to spend a certain amount of resources. And the thing they're going to be able to do with like cash I think is just unbelievable from a system design perspective. Like the tuning possibilities I think are really interesting here on what they optimize around. The thing that was interesting about the CEO is that he doesn't just plan on this being a Battlefield mode. He talked about openly a PVE mode. He talked about he's like, "Oh yeah, we already got an extraction mode that's cooking. There goes like three episodes of content for us. Uh we'll this have an extraction mode." Uh and he envisions like one like Warog account. And so like this guy this guy gets it. He's like, "Yeah, we're a platform."
He has a vision.
Yeah, he has a vision. But I I I guess like do I guess cash is a part of that vision like this game mechanic will probably appear in other modes. I mean he he talks about that in the interview

with I think Christopher Dr. is like man wouldn't it be great if you could like earn in one mode and then like use it in another.
It's going to be super challenging if they add an extraction mode that has the same currency as cash. I'm not an specifically economy designer anymore, but but as soon as you add an extraction economy to your progression that has non extraction mods in it, you're going to have to make some compromises over what you carry and what you spend on. I I'm very intrigued to see how that can be pulled off in a way that is really really interesting. It's it's it's difficult and I think maybe they can pull it off, but they're going to have to make some compromises if they're going to do an extraction economy and other modes. It's it's awful easy feat to do. Yeah,
awful idea. This thing this is going to burn and crash publicly and I'm so here for it. And like I can already write out the like Twitter, you know, type face centered font apology letter. The CEO will be like, "All right, we're sorry we

got this one wrong, guys." And like when they rebound, like I just I can already see it happening. contagion risk to like modes.
Are you saying that the extraction mode will fail or do you think the economical design is a lynch pin for construction mode winning or die? I'm just curious on your logic.
Too complicated to link those two economies together at at that level. There's too much spillover effect of okay, what happens if for whatever reason the cash that you can earn in extraction per hour is much higher than the other mode. you can have all these imbalances that you now have to think about between the different modes because even if I just am a cache maximizer, one mode is now connected to another, I want to play this other mode. And so like are you okay with that sort of behavior? Maybe you are, maybe you aren't. But it just increases the web of problems that you have to deal with. Like if you have a fire, what this is basically saying is that you have wood that goes along your roof and is connected to your own house. Whereas if you don't connect them, then it's just like, you know, the living room will burn down and you can save the bathrooms and the garage.

Can I give you a very dumb person take on what you just mentioned as a character? And please feel free to tear me apart, everyone here. This is a very dumb person's read on that. What if the extraction mode is our scene for an economy gone wild? What if we have that as a goal? That is what we want the extraction mode to be. I think that the cash is a great system, but it isn't really punishing. And if you want to get cash back, you can just go like AFK in the zone, like get in a corner, sit there, and you can just get cash back. So, like it's not really that impactful. And so, because you have the system that is pretty forgiving, I think there could be a possibility where, you know, there's this other mode where it matters, where it's actually important. I mean, that's what makes extractions extractions is that like those things matter and that's what builds the anxiety intensity of of wanting to extract. But in Warogs, it is a it's a great system, but it's not really punishing. It's not really painful to lose. It's very easy to get back.
What do you guys think about the gold

system? That's one thing that I was I saw that you can spend you can spend your cash on gold and there's buying the dip and stuff and I'm like I I didn't know what to make of it.
So, I think what we're getting to is like look, Poly Market and Koshi is popping off everywhere. Like, just add that as a system to this game. like start betting on every round, every kill. Starting to use your money to convert to gold like a stock market. Like I think it just hits like a, you know, like reptilian part of our brains of like gambling is great. It's awesome.
It's called stakes. I always say stakes.
Stakes. Sure. Yeah, we can do that. [clears throat]
I don't I don't Now, hold on. Hold on, Mr. Mr. Seattle. Um, [ __ ] always regulating fun [ __ ] Like, by the way, fun fun fact about Seattle.
Where'd he go? He He just That's what happens. You talk [ __ ] about Seattle. Get disconnected
for Seattle right now.
Seahawks.
I frozen.
I would never talk [ __ ] about Seattle after this.

Superman though.
In Seattle, a bartender cannot light a shot on fire. You cannot do flaming shots in Seattle. Uh I found that out.
Okay.
Uh one time, so just saying. Uh
I actually support that. I don't think you should like
That's weird. light up shots. I think it's I'm happy that trend is gone. I'm happy I'm all I don't see this.
Yeah. [laughter] What am I like having my
You don't have a US passport. Uh live free or die.
Talk about Seattle and regulation.
It does. Gambling is like st like no gambling in Seattle in Washington.
I think that's unfairly reductive. So, first of all, marketplace is exploding in first-person shooters like in a way that I don't think people have really come to grips with and it's always been there. Like we've had CS GO for a long time. I don't think you can just put it in like that category. We've had Rocket League for a really long time. We have War Thunder. A lot of these Eastern European games, you have versions of this inside of Tarov. Like marketplaces are exploding. Rainbow Six Siege. Rainbow Six Siege guys to marketplace.

We don't like we haven't talked a lot about that, but if you go to like Ubisoft's website, you can engage in their marketplace. And I would say like buying and selling on the marketplace is not just like randomized. I think it's like it's a reward for your skill and your knowledge about the game. It's not a perfectly competitive market if you're smart and you understand the game. You can make it an engaging part of playing the loop. Like it's it's it so to give you one example, FIFA. FIFA is the best example of this, right? Where you have players that can be bought and sold over the course of a season. And a lot of players love to play the marketplace. If you look at people who play the mobile FIFA companion app, just look at the DAU on Sunser Tower. Compare that against the FIFA Ultimate Team estimated players and you get a very high share of people who are just playing the marketplace. They love the information. They love the chase. They love the pursuit. They love the numbers. It's fantasy. I wouldn't reduce it down just like randomized loot boxes. I think I think there's more going on here that this it's a sim. I think it's this the sim element I would drive towards that.
I think you're talking about a very niche audience that'll make financial

TikTok videos that other people think they can do. And that's what drives some of the engagement. Like I do think there's value there, but I mean the people that are doing that I I can't imagine is like a large sector of it. I think most people are losing on any type of even like CS like holding on to CSGO skins. Like I I have to imagine a majority of people are losing. But the fantasy of winning is what is the engagement. That's the best part of PvP. It's literally player versus player where you described to me. It's like who's going to win and who's liquidity. in sickness and in health, in soft launch and in live ops, through every meta shift and every platform policy change. That's the kind of loyalty vibes built between your game and your players. AI powered targeting, a real meta layer, rorowass optimization that actually [music] compounds. That's what makes Vibes the fastest growing loyalty

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Let's talk about who actually made this game cuz I think that's not been covered enough. There is this the founder Joe Brammer who we talked about. It is Bulkhead Studios which is out of Derby UK which by the way I had to look up on a map. I had no idea where is Oh, is it Derby? Really? It was a studio that had Tencent backing and the founders actually bought it back. So you can imagine Tencent might be kicking itself. I mean this is total W for the West. The CEO has talked a lot publicly and he has a very interesting interview that we've been alluding to with Christopher Dr. He talks about and there's been some controversy over PC gamer misquote or quote to him about crunch and how sometimes crunch happens with inside of games. Although I think his comments contain a lot more context. And so it looks like this is a smaller team that made this game happen. This is not a 100% strong team. They said that was their maximum headcount. So I don't know

what it is. I don't know if we have a number yet, but I I would assume around 60 60 people. They said 400,000 units to break even when the CEO was speaking to Mr. Dr. And I I thought that was an enormous number. By the way, I actually thought that was a crazy bar. And you really could write a story about an obituary about this game, which is everything we've been talking about this podcast, which is like trying to get team size down until you can validate your thesis. You know, do you guys feel like this was the right strategy for this game to launch in this way and in this state? Like all the [ __ ] we've been talking about building up your audience community first. I mean, the CEO is a character. It's definitely a military sim, which is Steam first. Yeah, they have a Discord. They're going through all the normal [ __ ] I don't know. Has this been following our recommendations?
I think it's one of those things where a lot of the times when recommendations come out, they're more about like what is the norm or what is the average or what is a way to improve your odds of being successful. It's hard to replace a Joe Brammer. Like he is gone. I think

that we see a totally different outcome here. Not to um gloat him up too much, but I think the way he speaks, he feels very honest. Even when he's talking about crunch, like the way he's talking about what it's like to work on a game, he's not going around it. We've all worked on games. We've all crunched no matter how many times people talk about it. Like it just is what it is. It's part of this industry. And that is not necessarily good, but it just is where it is at the current time. And so I think that he's just honest. And so although from a recommendation standpoint, I don't know if I had to write up like a tearown of like what would my recommendations be if this would be the direction I would go. But Joe Bremer, I think, is the glue that kind of allows for this stuff to work together.
And if forced to do a postmortem based on this conversation, based on what we know about the game and what the game did to get to this point. Phil says of Ross, what the team Bulchin and the CEO did very well, I think is maintaining and edging essentially low expectations. He did say, "We would be happy if 5,000 people played our game." Okay. And that number, that sound bite has stuck

throughout this entire conversation. I'm pretty sure you've all heard that that target of 5,000 players. It's almost like when you watch a YouTuber and YouTube says, "Let's shoot for 10 likes." And then people just people in their mind that's manageable. I I could throw in a life. That's I can't help with that goal. Maybe that psychological pull is at play right here. So number one, setting low expectations. Number two, in his own words, he's not he is clear and concise through his communication, which goes a long way, especially when you know the audience and you know exactly who you're talking to. As just Judy says, you don't have to have a good memory if you keep telling the truth. And that goes a long way in terms of sentiment and trust from the players of the game. So good sentiment, low expectations, constant communication, all 10 out of 10 in my opinion. I think he also mentioned this in the green interview as well. Please correct me if I'm wrong, Phil, but he actually mentioned their wish lists and I don't know if this was shared previously. He

said it wasn't 7 million is correct is what he said. They had an 11% conversion of their wish lists and they are now at two million. We can do the math live and embarrass ourselves but but it's roughly that Chris I'll let you finish.
But millions in the wish lists. So from a publishing perspective from an inves perspective then it shows traction for finding product market fit.
To build upon this because I like your question like what what do we think of the way I guess basically their goto market strategy. So making a modern shooter these days, you do solid public play testing like they've done is very smart. You build a community that advocate for your game and that community seems to be have been involved a lot. They had so many conversations and closed play tests and then they opened them up gradually and then the community supported the game. So this game has been brewing for a while with its community which is also quite smart.

having a clear vision about who the game is for in a relentless way, which I respect. It comes with its own risks. And then to be honest, a couple of very smart marketing beasts that are easy to grab, like the whole 10 reasons why you should not buy the game. The thing that Chris mentioned, if only 5,000 players played the games, highlighting the wish list, highlighting that the studio is small also wins you quite a bit from the community. So from before this game even got into anyone's hands, you knew a lot about what it is, which is extremely important. And this is I think some of the lessons we mentioned from other shooters. Like with High Guard, a lot of people didn't know what it was. They saw the trailer, they didn't understand what the game was, and then when it came out, it took them a while to figure out what it's about. And Warog have solved this problem in a from a go to market strategy. Before any of us played this game, we knew exactly who was it for. We knew exactly what the game is about. I

can even imagine how the layout of the studio is because of the way that they put the studio as part of the game. It's hand in hand. They made you feel that the game is being built by the community by developers and the whole narrative of they they moved away from a publisher so they can have their own vision. All of this has been incorporated with their go to market and their marketing strategy which I think is very very smart. So the launch of this game is amazing. Being in early access buys you a lot of reasons for not having some things you expect at launch. Again this game has no matchmaking. You go and you pick a server manually which is kind of old schoolish but I think that's also because it's early access. It's okay. There is and if I remember correctly there's not really a lot of engagement systems, missions etc. Even the cosmetic economy is limited, the end game is limited, they got to reset the progression and balance it. All of this is fine because you're in early access. So even picking the early access, even though the game technically doesn't have

to be in it as well, is very very smart. So I I like their go to market strategy. I like how they've handled themselves. I like how they branded themselves overall. It's not my type of of game overall. It's not the kind of marketing that would work for me, but I'm not the target audience for this game. Um, I know a lot what they've done. This it's been smart.
Oh, yeah. And I mean to your point about the marketing side in the early access, like these are things that, you know, a lot of mainstream AAA companies just couldn't get away with. Even calling it an early access, I don't think would allow them to get away with what they did. Like if this was under an EA label, I think that their new studio, new IP, it really helps them be able to project to the audience that like, hey, we're building this with you. We're learning. You know, this is what it is. And again, the honesty of him, I think, is very important. And then on the marketing side too, they because they don't probably have the money or the team size to like hire some marketing agency to figure out these trailers, they just copy a Halo trailer. And like for any millennials, like that is perfect. Like it brings back the nostalgia, brings back the memories. It's literally just a

straight up copy of I think Halo 3 trailer, which is and I loved it. It was awesome. And so they're they're they're being smart with how they're using their resources and where to pull from, which I think is something that you get when you have such a small team and those constraints. Like I think game dev is a lot about constraints and what those constraints are. When you don't have constraints, like you can kind of just spin like crazy and go insane. So I think those constraints actually help them in how they're going to market.
So let me take one last tally before we finish this episode from each of our panelists. Let's say we fast forward a year from now. Is this a game that is still going to be in the top 10 or even top 20 shooters on Steam? I'll is that maybe it's a little bit of a kabout. If it's very similar to what it is right now, I don't think so. If it maintains what it has right now, I feel there's a limit on the market you can hit with this sort of u design which is also a very fine

line to walk. They need to make this game somewhat accessible in some areas to widen the market but at the same time not compromise on the vision that they have. So I think that's the key challenge they would need to do. The second thing is what you when you talk the time frame of a year or two years there is the core mechanics but there's also engagement systems that need to be in place to have that. And this is why I'm saying like I'm I'm not sure how it's going to look like a year from now. If they release proper engagement systems then they might maintain this momentum. But if the engagement systems don't come soonish then maybe a year from now it won't be there. They will most probably have another strong user acquisition beat and then maybe they'll pop up again in the top 10 etc. when they leave early access they have their engagement systems in place. Maybe they figured out the multiple modes. They made the game more accessible for a bigger audience. They had consoles. They

leave early access. Maybe we'll see another spike, but I think maybe this game will be more than a year in early access. So, the nuance for your question is a year exactly from now, but that would be my answer. If everything stays the same, not really in the top 10 by hitting the key parts that I mentioned combined with maybe exiting early access, I think they'll they'll have a shot at that.
I think to your point about like releasing, you know, once they go to 1.0 know or even like small updates along the way I think they'll get a lot of benefit from. I am pretty surprised something that Anos was saying how like it has grown day over day like that is pretty impressive as well to see their their PCU grow like that. I do think as we go into fall, it's outside of, you know, obviously GTA 6, but I feel like fall is going to be a relatively competitive fall this year. And so I can see a world where they have this out, they release it, they let it hang, they live through the fall, and then January, February, they have an update that during a little bit of downtime that brings it back. And so I can see them not holding a relatively strong retention from where they are now, but I

think their updates are going to have a lot of re-engagement. I think their reacquisition is going to be very strong. And I think for us said a lot of very smart things. I'm going do my best to kind of fill in some areas that he mentioned as well. First and foremost, the CEO of the company, Bulkhead, did say expect a wave of naysayers when the games Steam player numbers show a dip. Again, that goes along with setting expectations and controlling the narrative and discourse, which is very smart from just a perspective. That being said, I do have a strong belief that all engagement systems have a shelf life and it will need to be juiced or reholstered once in a while to get people to either re-engage with them or stick with them. That's another conversation altogether. That being said, answering the question from a year to today, do I think War Dogs will still be in the top 20, top 10 or relevant

shooter, I'll say yes, on the condition that number one, it's in a 1.0 or leaves early access. Number two, that 1.0 version has systems in place that with feature sets comparable to what we see in other shooters that are currently there. Let's use an example. Counterstrike. If there is an in-game economy, a playerdriven economy within Warogs in the 1.0 version where players have an impact of they play the game, they get an in-game currency that they could use to get consumables or durables in the game that they could trade with each other for fake money or real money along with if they do add other modes. I for one believe that any extraction game that comes out, this is the Division had just had an extraction mode. So a Warog's game with a gracefully implemented extraction mode with extraction features combined with you

could call it a UGC or or playdriven economy that would guarantee their relevance in the shooter space for the next 10 years. I'm gonna take the under on this one. I think this probably ends up between 25 and 50 in terms of Steam rank in a year. Just looking at what's in that bottom half. I mean, we're talking about Unturned, Stalker. I mean, the finals, by the way, has dipped quite a bit. Destiny, you know, there's just kind of names you would know here, but don't feel like they have the force the force of recency or relevance kind of behind them. I mean, Left 4 Dead is here. Well, when you dip into the top 25, you're talking about Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty Battlefield 6, Hell Divers, Day-Z, Delta Force Warframe. These are games that have their [ __ ] together. They have a roadmap. They've been executing for a really long time or there's from a studio that knows how to execute. The biggest question for the Warogs team is, can they execute on a live service? Chris, you've talked about this, Mr. Sides. You've talked about this a long time. The West sucks at live

services. And I look at this more as it's going to be a weird comparison, but Battlebit. You guys remember Battlebit? Battle Bit Revolution two years ago, military sim block like figurines. I think it was a team of five or six. So, not anywhere close to the scale we're talking about year. But that being said, like the Steam audience loves these military sims. I think they'll stick around. They'll be crusty, but I don't think the studio has the ability or I I haven't seen anything that suggests the studio knows how to execute against the live service. They've helped out, by the way, on Hell Let Loose. I don't know if you guys also caught that. That's a very interesting part of their relationship. So, they get this genre, but they don't have a monetization strategy that as far as I can tell. And if they're going to add one later on, I think that's even worse of a disa. That's that's the worst thing they could do is say like there's this whole monetization loop like two months in. I don't see them doing that. And launching new modes is just a distraction for a team of this size. I I just think it's a laughable strategy. Battlefield is not a mode. It

is a genre. If you're going to tell me like, "Oh, hey, we're just going to tack on casually as a sub 100 headcount studio and extraction mode tied to your war dogging." I don't know. This just sounds like founder Payota fantasy like in the woods somewhere.
Phil, you're not wrong with what you mentioned when it comes to the games that this list from Apex Legends to Marvel Rivals. You mentioned the finals and you mentioned Alibabet. Those two games in particular had, I think, very strong, dare I say, impeccable core gameplay and moment to moment action. And the crazy thing is that still isn't enough. That's essentially table stakes for the past 10 years now for a game to even sniff a hint of success. for all the other games that are in the top five, top 10. Starting off with I think is the most underrated shooter I guess is GTA 5 being propelled essentially by its online version of course and with its

business model along with role playing systems. And then you have Counter Strike 2 or CS GO 2, whatever you want to call it, which is being kept afloat not only by its 20 plus year old core loop but also its in-game player driven economy. There's two clear paths that I see. You could either do an Overwatch and Marvel rivals of live service content drops for in perpetuity or you could in a sense offshore it to the players within economy. And I just want to also say something based on what Phil said when he said like ah the west sucks at live service while yeah I'm quoting I'm quoting Chris
like let's let's look at the games here. There's a quite a bit of western games here. So I'm not sure this was the right time to say that.
I think the west subset live service. These games are 10 years old. Like they're just not like modern live services. They were made before like

live service was even a concept.
All right. Sure. [laughter]
That has been episode 11 of Shooter Monthly. What will we cover next week? We might be covering the new World of Tanks hero shooter game. Let's see. I don't know. We'll negotiate with the gentleman. Let us know if you liked this format. We've been kind of been going back between doing a little bit more topics. I think we're still going to do some topics. Chris needs a victory lap for deathmatch on Marathon. So, I think he's got to have that. Yeah. So, let us know if you want if you want deep dives or a little bit more of a a news variety format. That'd be great.
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